Malachite Peak and Rock Lake
- Lucas Peterson
- Aug 29
- 4 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
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 Lakes and La Bohn), finding a much quieter scene at the end of Rock Lake Road.
The trail to Rock Lake got going quickly and didn’t let up until Annie, Katie, Eric and I crested a ridge at about 5200’. This was a stout climb, gaining over 1500 feet in a mile. Once on the ridge crest, we didn’t have much time to rest before the trail tilted downhill, very steeply at first, before leveling out as we descended into Rock Lake basin.
The one-way distance to get to Rock Lake is a little under 2 miles, with about 1600 feet of gain, but the hike is much more difficult than it appears on paper. All the pain was forgotten quickly once we saw the brilliant blue waters of the lake and found a nice spacious spot to camp on the north shore. There are a few sites near the shoreline, but one party decided to take it up a notch by bringing inflatable paddle boards and setting up camp on a small island a few hundred feet out into the lake.
We spent the afternoon lounging and floating in the lake, enjoying the quiet alpine lake vibes. The couple on the island had since packed up and left, and there we were only sharing the lake with two other individuals. Pretty remarkable for such a stunning location on Labor Day weekend!
The next morning, Eric and I got up early and made our way toward Malachite Peak. We went back up the trail for a bit, before leaving it at a boulder field. We traversed the length of this boulder field at about 4800’ before ascending an obvious streambed gully to an unnamed tarn at approximately 5245’. This gully was dry and felt much more solid than the precarious boulder field we had since left behind.
Above the lake, we had to surmount a fairly steep rocky outcropping. We followed a series of rocky ramps before coming to another inflection point. Initially, we attempted to follow a climber’s path around the west side of the outcropping but didn’t want to lose all the elevation we had just gained, so opted to traverse further climber’s left and found an easy way up. This brought us to a well-established climber’s path, and we quickly found ourselves at the saddle above Panorama Lake. The sun was finally rising, and it was clear that smoke had come in overnight, obscuring some distant views and muting the sunrise colors. Regardless, Panorama Lake is in an awesome location.
We then made another traverse across a boulder field, picking the path of least resistance around the North Peak of Malachite. Much boulder hopping ensued – a theme for the day!
After traversing through the gap near the north peak, we once again made a short descent into the basin below the summit. This area contained the loosest and dirtiest terrain we had faced all day, and we took care not to pull too much of the mountain down as we picked our way toward the summit block.
We had done a bit of research beforehand and knew that there was a specific notch we should be aiming for to reach the summit block. Summitpost has a good description of this, and it would be easy to be suckered into the lower notch without noticing.
The summit is guarded by a class 4 gully that some people choose to belay and/or rappel on the way down. Since Eric and I were keen on practicing our alpine rock skills in lower consequence areas, we had brought a 60m rope and a few pieces of protection to get some practice. Eric led the “pitch”, placing a couple cams on the way before belaying me up. The scrambling was class 4 in places, and we went through an area of small, scrubby trees, making for some truly unaesthetic climbing – but it was still a lot of fun! The summit was great, with hazy views in all directions.
We rappelled the summit block, which made for a fun and painless descent. Dropping down into the basin below the summit was, in fact, not painless because of the loose-ness of the terrain. Everything felt much more tenuous and prone to slide compared to the ascent. With great care, we reached more stable ground before backtracking over the numerous boulder fields back to camp at Rock Lake.
We enjoyed the lake for a bit more and then hyped ourselves up for the steep climb out of the lake and back to the car. The way down was quite steep as expected but got us back to our car quickly. A burger at Zekes on Highway 2 was exactly what the doctor ordered after a great trip.
Final Stats - 9.7 miles / 4131 feet of ascent
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