[TR] Broken Top - NW Ridge 7/12/2015

[nutsandbolts]

Trip: Broken Top - NW Ridge

 

Date: 7/12/2015

 

Trip Report:

Broken Top is my nemesis mountain. Maybe 1 out of 2 isn’t quite into the nemesis category yet, but I have floundered on this thing more than once. My punting has only been due to stupid mistakes and poor planning so I have no one to blame but myself. It’s just frustrating, because B-Top isn’t even hard. Whatever.

 

 

It did seem validating to summit this peak in our 12th month of this project. 1 mountain, each month, for 1 year. It feels incredible to accomplish this - primarily because I didn’t know how feasible it would even be. It seemed kind of impossible at first, but we made it happen with very little floundering. The struggles on Broken Top arose basically because the climbers trail was TOO well-marked. Go figure. This was not some game trail marked with a three-pebble cairn that you can only see in broad daylight after moving a couple of branches. It was a freaking 3’ wide gravel path! Apparently climbing is getting popular. Damn.

 

After our scenic detour, we scrambled up the NW ridge, rock hopped up the summit block, had some glamour shots taken (thanks Matt!), and high-fived the crap out of each other.

 

 

GPS data is here on View Ranger .

More pictures and words are here on Tumblr.

 

Approach Notes:

We started at the Green Lakes TH and path is extremely well marked and worn due to the massive amounts of day hikers it sees. However, looking at the topo and our GPS, it appeared that we would need to head around the west side of Broken Top and meet the base of the Northwest Ridge after passing the largest of the lakes. We hiked all the way to the saddle between S Sister and Broken Top before admitting we had missed the climbers trail. We elected to hike cross country and bisect the ridge to find the trail. Once we finally hit the ridgeline, we found ourselves ambling along on mixed, second/third class terrain until connecting with the proper climbers trail. Whoops.