8/30/2025 - 8/31/2025 Labor Day weekend occupies a prime spot on the peakbagging calendar in Washington. When a prospective trip to Holden was cancelled due to lightning-caused wildfire, we wanted to pivot to something closer to home that wouldn’t be overrun with crowds. Eric came up with the great idea to camp at Rock Lake and add on a scramble of Malachite Peak. We passed a huge number of cars parked at the Necklace Valley trailhead (I guess the secret is out about Tank Lak

8/23/2025-8/24/2025 The Drop Creek approach is a method for accessing Formidable and the Ptarmigan Traverse that has been gaining in popularity in recent years. It avoids glacier travel, making it a nice alternative to the traditional approach from Cascade Pass in late season. Plus, there has been some recent maintenance on the South Fork Cascade River trailhead that has made this approach arguably the most pleasant it has been in years. Huge thanks to the people who have bee

8/1/2025 - 8/3/2025 Blackcap and Lago from the summit of Monument Lake and Monument were on the docket for the weekend. Both are remote peaks in the Pasayten Wilderness area that are hard to get to by any approach. Monument Peak is especially rugged and the most remote peak in the Lago group. My adventure would start at the Monument Creek trail and take me all the way up and over Pistol Pass to a camp at Lake of the Woods. I had tentative aspirations to hike all the way in to

7/19/2025 Katie and I were in Whistler and enjoyed an excellent hike to Panorama Ridge to see the brilliant blue waters of Garibaldi Lake. The hike starts from the Rubble Creek Trailhead, and a day-use pass is required in the summer. Beautiful views abound on this hike with the Tantalus Range, Black Tusk, and Garibaldi and its surrounding glaciers stealing the show. Even though the round-trip distance is over 16 miles with 5000 feet of elevation gain, this is a well-establish

7/12/2025-7/13/2025 The goal for the weekend was Azurite Peak, a member of the Bulger List north of Tower and Golden Horn. It’s a peak that takes a substantial effort to get to regardless of the approach. I toyed with the idea of coming in from the Methow River side but had seen trip reports stating that the trail was horribly overgrown and in disrepair. Other climbers have come in via Mill Creek or even from Harts Pass, but there was another approach that piqued my interest.

9/7/2024 Hike in to Lower Ice Lake   I apparently couldn’t get enough of driving the Phelps Creek Road this summer, so I braved the endless miles of sharp rocks yet again, this time for a solo outing of South Spectacle Butte. There was some haze in the skies from wildfires, and I was hoping it wouldn’t impair the experience too much.  Leroy Basin The climb up the Leroy Creek trail is steep, especially with an overnight pack in the middle of the afternoon on a hot day. I was s

8/30/2024 - 9/2/2024 Day 1: Getting to the Trailhead (aka the crux of the trip) and Spider Meadows  Our annual Labor Day backpacking trip got off to a strong start when Katie realized she forgot her shoes and I forgot my climbing helmet right as we were pulling into the Phelps Creek Trailhead. Sigh . after a three hour round trip back to Leavenworth to buy new gear while navigating the razor-sharp rocks of the road both ways we were finally gearing up (with Katie’s brand-new

8/25/2024 A return trip to Tuck and Robin Lakes was in order, and I wanted to squeeze in a jaunt up Granite Peak while we were at it. I hadn’t been to Tuck and Robin in years, so the anticipation was high as Katie, Eric, and I set off from the ever-popular Tucquala Meadows Trailhead at around 8:30 am.  Cathedral Rock towering above Hyas Lake The first 3 miles were essentially flat, passing Hyas Lake and its nice selection of lake-side campsites. We then began a steep ¾ mile c

7/23/2024 With a beautiful day and time to kill on the Mountain Loop Highway after Higher Squire , I settled upon White Chuck as the perfect quick peak for the afternoon. It is a distinctive, isolated mountain that has long grabbed my attention, with its steep faces and 3800+ feet of prominence (making it Washington’s 25th most prominent peak).   One nice part of climbing White Chuck is that there is a maze of logging roads on the west side of the peak, and you can actually d

7/23/2024 Excited to check out a totally new to me area of the Mountain Loop, I set out on the Eight Mile Creek Trail towards Squire Creek Pass a bit before 9 in the morning. For some reason, I had become fixated on Higher Squire as a peakbagging objective (probably because of its proximity to Squire Creek Wall and the dramatic east faces of Three Fingers and Whitehorse) and now seemed like as good of a time as any to try it.  Three O'clock Rock The Eight Mile Creek Trail was

7/13/2024 The Twin Sisters are a jagged subrange of the Cascades west of Mount Baker that have drawn my eye for years. Their reddish orange rock and sharp ridges are a pretty amazing sight when contrasted against the broad, glaciated surface of Baker. The range gets its coloring because it is primarily composed of olivine, which lends itself to some great scrambling with good holds on nice, grippy rock. Because of this, North and South Twin both see a fair amount of traffic f

7/10/2024 Helena Peak is a fun scramble off the Mountain Loop that had slightly trickier route-finding than expected. It has 1000 feet of clean prominence and excellent views of some classic peaks and had always been an alluring mountain for me. Plus, there was some mining activity in the area that could lead to further exploration.  Walking Deer Creek Road I wasn’t brave enough to drive Deer Creek Rd all the way to the trailhead. The road was totally fine except for one bad

7/4/2024 - 7/5/2024 I have been climbing mountains in the Cascades for my entire life but somehow had never attempted Mount Rainier. That changed when our friend Rio texted saying he had a permit for Camp Muir – this was the perfect chance to finally have a go at the iconic tallest peak in Washington State.  Paradise to Camp Muir Our permit was for multiple nights, which would give us some additional wiggle room in our schedule to play with should we need it. A warming period

9/16/2025 - 9/17/2025 Katie, Eric and I set out for a fun camping and climbing adventure out of Monte Cristo – and what better way to reach the old ghost town than by bike?? I had read about an old wagon road that could be a good alternative to the standard Monte Cristo trail because it bypasses the South Fork Sauk river crossing and washed-out section of trail. The road leaves the Mountain Loop highway about ¾ of a mile east of Barlow Pass. Katie and Eric would both be using

9/2/2022 - 9/5/2022 Katie and I spent 4 days exploring Lost Creek Ridge over Labor Day weekend. This was an area that had always interested me, and I’d wanted to see Lake Byrne for years. Day 1 Wildfire smoke had started to plague Western Washington, and it was pretty thick on our drive out to the Mountain Loop Highway. I had been tracking the smoke forecast thoroughly and was semi-confident that it would clear out over the course of our trip. Nevertheless, it was a little da

8/22/2022 Took advantage of the long days of summer by doing a quick weekday evening jaunt up Tolmie Peak in Mount Rainier NP The Mowich Lake Road is long and unpaved, but aside from a few washboard sections goes pretty quick. By the time I took off on the Wonderland Trail it was about 5:15 pm and summit of Mount Rainier was in a thick cloud. It seemed like the entire state was under clear blue skies except for the northern aspect of Rainier, and I was pretty pessimistic abou

8/21/2022 Tomyhoi Peak is great Type 1 fun trip off the Mount Baker Highway. Eric and I started from the Yellow Aster Butte Trailhead at a reasonable 7:45 am. I had heard that Yellow Aster Butte was a nice hike, especially with fall colors popping, and I’d always wanted to check it out. We hiked up in a thick, weirdly humid, mist that was forecasted to burn off steadily throughout the day. It wasn’t long before we were bursting out of the woods and into beautiful meadows. We

Summer 2022 My dad and I are on a journey to reach the highest point in every state in the contiguous US. We knocked off 8 of them on a road trip through the Midwest and mid-Atlantic in the summer of 2022. Indiana Our journey to the highest point in Indiana began with a fun stop at the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown Indiana – the actual gym in the movie Hoosiers that is still used for Indiana high school basketball today. After shooting some hoops and touring the gym, my mom, dad

7/9/2022 Keyes Peak was a long time coming for me. I had been drawn to it since my first of many trips to Blanca Lake years ago. It also helped that it was the highest point of the Monte Cristo Range, and views down to Blanca and the surrounding area were sure to be spectacular. There is no way around the fact that Keyes is a long day. The stats are big, and travel on the ridge above Virgin Lake is often slow. I’ve heard of parties completely underestimating this peak and hav

The weather for the Fourth of July weekend wasn’t looking too great for western Washington. The saying “summer doesn’t start until July 5th" had never been truer. With that said, it looked like there was an option to squeeze in a short overnight before the weather rolled in and Townsend Mountain fit the bill. Townsend (not to be confused with the much more popular peak of the same name in the Olympics) is a relatively obscure peak in the Wild Sky Wilderness in the vicinity of