Cadet Peak - Aug. 20-21, 2022
I had already been up to Monte Cristo and Glacier Basin earlier in the summer as a conditioning backpacking trip, but my plans this weekend fell through and I decided to head back up there for a solo trip up Cadet Peak. I’d never been up any of the Monte Cristo Peaks so this was a real treat for me in near perfect summit conditions. I pulled into the Barlow Pass parking lot around 7:30am and it was packed. I didn’t even eat my breakfast because the crowds made me a little anxious so I just immediately started off at a brisk pace.
Once I got to the crossing of Weden Creek and the South Fork Sauk, the crowds thinned out and I only saw a couple of people on my way to Monte Cristo. I wasn’t sure how the weather would play out since most forecasts called for full sun or mostly sun. However, NAM, which is a higher-resolution forecast model and generally pretty accurate, was an outlier and called for drizzles most of the day. It was overcast and drizzling for a good portion of my hike to Monte Cristo, and then I had the joy of hiking up wet slabs beside the waterfall on my ascent up to Glacier Basin. The basin was fully socked in, unfortunately. I ran into another hiker named Blake who also planned to camp in the basin that night. Together, we set off to the far end of the basin and set up camp.
I finally got an inReach so I fired off some texts to my emergency contacts and ate a quick lunch before retiring to my tent for a nap. I woke up an hour later to a swelteringly hot tent. The clouds had cleared! I quickly filtered some water and then headed off to try my hand at Cadet Peak. Unironically, the hardest part for me happened almost immediately – crossing the deep gully that usually holds snow in early and mid season. The edges were impossibly steep and full of loose dirt. I skirted around the top where the dirt transitions to solid rock, and then scrambled up some ledges. From here, I knew I was supposed to find another rock gully with brush on the sides. I had some photos from previous trip reports but nothing even remotely matched what was in front of me.
Frustrated and kind of confused, I finally found a very overgrown gully that definitely had a light bootpath underfoot. I veggie belayed myself up and after about 100 ft I found myself on a much nicer bootpath which went all the way to the ridgeline on occasionally loose rock and scree. The views finally opened up and I could see Columbia and the Wilman Spires behind me. As I got higher, I could see that there was actually a cloud inversion all to the south of me. Both Gothic and Del Campo were poking above the clouds and I got a nice burst of energy. Around the 6500 ft mark I crossed some steep talus and traversed around the gendarme mentioned in several trip reports. This was the only scramble step on the whole route and it wasn’t very exposed.
The summit was a euphoric experience. Clouds drifted in and out of Glacier Basin below. I could see all of the Monte Cristo Peaks to the south, Sloan Peak to the north, and Glacier Peak to the east. It was very smokey in the distance but up close, the cloud inversion made up for everything. I’ve only experienced an inversion one other time on Dip Top Peak. It’s truly one of the most rewarding experiences you can have in the mountains in my opinion.
I lingered on the summit for an hour. The clouds in Glacier Basin started to build up until they formed a thick layer. I was a bit worried about routefinding in a whiteout, primarily getting around the gendarme and also finding the brush gully again. The cloud ceiling was much lower than I thought, so I went halfway down before diving into the clouds. Finding the brush gully was much easier than I thought, but crossing over the deep dirt gully was a challenge again. I decided not to go above it on the rock this time and figured I would descend until the sides eased up a bit and I could cross it directly.
I made it back down by 8pm which would have been just in time for sunset, but the cloud base was a little bit above my campsite and I resigned myself to being socked in for the night. I set an alarm for sunrise but the clouds didn’t part so I fell back asleep for another three hours, at which point the clouds began to break up. All in all, this was definitely one of the best trips I took this summer due to the inversion. I’m not the most confident scrambler so doing a solo trip on a new mountain is always a little nerve-racking to me. This outing was just what I needed to end my trip to Washington on a high note.
