Gardner Mountain & North Gardner Mountain
- May 26, 2025
- 4 min read
5/24/2025 - 5/26/2025
Gardner Meadows made for an excellent early season adventure, complete with wildflowers, fun ridge-scrambling and snow-free camping.
Our journey began at the Wolf Creek trailhead, which is only a few miles west of Winthrop. Balsamroot was near prime bloom on our drive up the well-graded forest road, which made for a pretty drive and was a good omen for the rest of the trip.
Many trip reports allude to the up and down nature of the Wolf Creek trail making for grueling hikes in and out of the area. I found this to be overblown. Sure, there are a few ups and downs early on, but I didn’t find it to be particularly difficult or different from the average river valley trail. I could see it being significantly tougher during the heat of the summer, as the burned-out snags in this area leave little in the way of shade. Since we were visiting in May, we had pleasant temperatures, and some nice flowers to gawk at on our hike in.
One spooky moment occurred on our way to the meadows. Out of nowhere we heard a huge boom that only mean one thing…a massive tree had fallen nearby. There was no wind to speak of or any other outside factors that contributed to its collapse, it was just time for the fire-scarred trunk to fail. It was a great reminder that trees can fall at any time, especially in recently burned areas.
After that bit of excitement, the rest of the hike in was uneventful. Most of the traditional camping areas in Gardner Meadows were snow-free, we were pleased to find, and some avalanche lilies were just beginning to pop their heads up out of the ground in the meadows. It seemed like we had timed the trip perfectly! Looking up at the south-facing upper slopes of Gardner Mountain, it appeared that we wouldn’t even encounter much snow up high.
The next morning, we put that theory to the test, starting around 6 am and ascending straight up from the meadows, aiming for Gardner Mountain. The slopes were broad and grassy to begin with, eventually becoming mostly scree and rock. I was surprised to see how early things had melted out, and we only needed to take a few steps here and there on snow. Because of the straightforward terrain, we quickly gained the nearly 3000 feet needed to reach the summit area in about 2 hours and 45 minutes. Views were expansive, it seemed like we could see almost the entirety of the North Cascades laid out before us.
North Gardner Mountain, standing only slightly taller, looked relatively close to the northwest. It would be a fun traverse! The terrain dropping off from Gardner was a bit steep in places, with a gendarme or two to navigate, but ultimately was straightforward. There was only one place where we needed to cross a snowfield that warranted breaking our ice axes for.
Richard and Katie opted to take in the impressive views from between the peaks, while Mike, Eric, and I pushed on to the true summit of North Gardner. This involved more class 2 ridge scrambling, and was a ton of fun, especially looking west to the heart of the North Cascades.
The summit was covered in ladybugs, as some Cascadian summits are, and we took some time to enjoy the views before retreating to our friends. The scree surfing was prime heading down from Peak 8487, letting gravity do most of the work as we plunged our way down quickly. On a side note, this slope would be miserable to climb up without snow, so I’d recommend tagging Gardner and North Gardner in a counterclockwise fashion.
More cross-country rambling brought us back to camp at about 1:45, which made for a sub-6 hour round trip a pretty relaxed pace. We then enjoyed another excellent night of camping. It was a joy to be able to kick the feet up and relax after the day’s climb, rather than have to immediately pack up and hike out.
The time eventually came to leave the next morning, and we reluctantly shouldered our packs and began the 9-and-a-half mile hike out. Once again, the flowers were brilliant and we thoroughly enjoyed our walk. The final bit to the trailhead has a short climb of about 200 feet, that took a last burst of energy from our tired legs, but again I felt like the up and down nature of the trail was overblown.
Final Stats: 26.11 miles / 7373 feet of gain
