John Douglass Posted June 2, 2019 Posted June 2, 2019 (edited) Trip: Sloan Peak - CorkscrewTrip Date: 06/01/2019Trip Report: My partner Alex and I climbed Sloan Peak via the Corkscrew Route yesterday. We left the parking lot on the North Fork Sauk River Road at 8:30 am and with a fairly leisurely pace made it back by 9:00 pm. This is a great shorter alpine trip with all of the fun elements - wacky river crossings, a cushy footpath most of the way, some glacier walking, heather ledges, and a short scramble to a pointy summit with an amazing view. Highly recommended. The approach is fun this time of year! Plenty of slippery logs for the initial crossings over the Sauk River. We crossed 4 braids of the river by walking across the logs Man on Wire style! After this, the trail is in great shape and makes for easy walking. We stepped over a few patches of snow starting at 4500 ft and then put on our boots at 5000 ft. We booted through the soft but supportable snow up to the edge up the glacier and crossed fairly close under the east face. No issues with the glacier, few cracks are open at this time. I would not want to be there when the face is shedding much rock, but there was only a handful widowmakers embedded in the glacier when we passed through. The heather ledges have quite a bit of snow on them still but are passable. The gully next to the south rib is still entirely filled with snow so we went up and around a heather covered ramp with no-fall type exposure. Once there, it was a short 3rd class scramble on clean warm rock up to the summit. Glorious! The glissade down was a hoot! We hustled back down to the Sauk and managed to cross 7 braids of the stream?!? My partner gave up at some point and started marching directly through the river and soaked his pants and shoes. Ha ha. Then it was merely schwacking through devil's club, alder, and stinging nettle until we regained the hiking trail to the parking lot. Apparently we haven't yet honed our Cascades approach/deproach skills yet Gear Notes: boots, crampons, harness, ice axeApproach Notes: North Fork Sauk. River crossings were.... Edited June 2, 2019 by John Douglass 2 Quote
geosean Posted June 3, 2019 Posted June 3, 2019 Cool, sounds like a cruiser, fun day. Thanks for the report. Quote
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