[TR] Reynolds Peak - East Route 7/18/2015

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Trip: Reynolds Peak - East Route (S Fork Reynolds Creek)

 

Date: 7/18/2015

 

Trip Report:

I've been taking my youngest son hiking since he was 3 or 4. He's been doing progressively more strenuous trips over the past few years and I thought we'd step it up a notch with a trip involving more offtrail travel and some bushwhacking.

 

We drove up to the trailhead the night before and slept in the car. At 5 am we got up and my friend arrived just in time to head up together (safety in numbers with two adults).

 

Summit Routes says this climb takes 6-7 hours and we did it in about 7:50. There was more brush on the trail portion than I expected which actually slowed us some, and then there was the bushwhacking and offtrail stuff. We left the trail later than we should have - around 3 miles in, and crossed the stream. The upside was that bushwhacking was minimal here. We then traversed left until we hit the stream coming down from the valley S of the summit area and headed up, staying on the W side of the stream. We broke out of the trees in the lower basin around 5600' but ended up making a bad choice for avoiding the slide alder and headed up too soon. The result was we traversed steep cliffy terrain around 6200' before we could head up again and hit the upper basin at around 6700'. From then on it was just hiking open terrain to the notch just to the E of the summit. From here up we picked a class 3 line with a few exposed moves.

 

Arriving in the upper basin:

 

Terrain above the basin:

 

Summit view:

 

We were greeted by a swarm of flying ants on the summit. Our DEET mostly was still on (from the swarms of mosquitos and black flies that we encountered earlier), but we still had to wave them away.

 

Summit stoke:

 

 

For the descent we chose a more direct gully off the summit block and also a small stream drainage from the high basin back to the meadows in the lower basin. We still had some slide alder to content with there however.

 

Descending from the summit:

 

Total time was 14+ hours car to car.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Helmet. DEET.

 

Approach Notes:

Reynolds Creek trail is quite overgrown, as is the spur road leading to the trailhead. There are only a couple tiny snow patches in the basin and above, but there is running water for now.

[Whatcomboy]

Nice going taking the kid to the mountains. Those stinking flies drove us nuts on the trail to Dome Peak. Probably helped our time though cause our breaks were so short.