[rubywrangler]

While mining this site for trip ideas, I came across a few TRs for pt 5740 aka slodal (iron's, Matt's, and others) and decided I needed to see THAT VIEW of Sloan. I tried to get there this time last year but wound up in a jungle of devils club and slide alder and ran out of time. I was hoping that this year's snow would make the bushwhacking less annoying and it did, mostly. I set my alarm for 5:30am on Friday and then, per usual, hit the snooze button 10 times. So Ruby the dog and I got a subalpine start at about 10:45am, which is when we ran into snow at ~2500' on Merrybrook road. We parked and walked a couple hundred yards to the first switchback in the road, then cut straight up the slope to hit the road again at 2800'. This probably saved zero time because the forest was so unpleasant, and the switchback in the road was not that long as we discovered on the way down. Oh well. We followed the road past its end and across bedal creek. At this point last year, the jungle began on the old roadbed. Currently, the jungle is mostly still under snow so it was much more pleasant. Where the old road splits on the USGS 7.5 map, we followed the left fork which leads to an open, bouldery slope with nice views of Bedal and the Sauk R valley. The boulder field was semi-melted out and less pleasant, anklebreaker terrain. It would probably be easier to cross the bottom of the slope and enter the forest lower, if one did not mind more bushwhacking to get up the ridge. Having wrestled my way through that forest before, I was inclined to minimize my time doing so this year and so we picked our way carefully up and across, angling for a big tree and a clearing in the understory. Once in the forest, it was a short, steep climb on hard-packed snow to get on the ridge around 3600', and then a straightforward uphill hike through open forest until breaking out of the trees at ~5400. Snow was hard and crusty until ~4700; above that it was a slog through cascade concrete (snowshoes definitely needed). At some point we began to hear thunderous avalanches which I assume were coming from Sloan or maybe Bedal.

first view of bedal

on the ridge

leaving the forest

After cresting the ridge the views really open up: the Boulder R Wilderness peaks, Shuksan & Baker, Sauk R valley. I could not tell for sure what was cornice and what wasn't, so we mostly stayed to the right (SW) of the ridgeline where we had views of Big Four to the Monte Cristos. We accidentally bypassed Pt 5740 and ended up stopping at the next bump on the ridge for snacks, photos, and avalanche-watching on Sloan.

finally on the ridge

boulder river wilderness peaks

sauk river valley

view SW from ridge

down ridge to sloan, glacier peeking

cadet + goat lake

sloan

looking back along the ridge

cornice to my left

cornice to my right

Coming back it was easier to see cornices so we tagged 5740 and were able to stay on the ridge most of the way. Once off the ridge we took the same route down, except stayed on the road instead of cutting the switchback, and arrived at the car just before 9pm. Snow was patchy on the road above 2500' and appears to be melting pretty fast.

dusk

6.5 miles and ~3950, 10 hrs R/T, including 1+ hr of breaks. We are slow. A looooong day but so gorgeous and totally worth it! More photos

[awilsondc]

Looks amazing!!! Putting this one down on the to do list...

[wildernessed]

Nice !

[mbravenboer]

Pretty good views! Somehow I completely missed this one until now. Thanks for sharing!

[Nancyann]

So good to see a trip report from you again, rubywrangler!

[Kenji]

You must have past our white subaru on your way up. Our route up on Bedal sounds trivial compared to yours, good effort

[iron]

lots of snow above goat lake! would be a good year for heineken peak.

[fourteen410]

[rubywrangler]

[Distel32]