[Pribbs]

This is the peak that rises to the east of Snow Lake and NW of Snoqualmie Mountain. The lower part of the Snow Lake trail has some sections of snow, but the switchbacks up to the saddle is where there is still a lot of snow on the trail. And lots of holes in the snow on the trail are opening up, so watch your step. It took us 1 hour 20 minutes to do the nearly 2.5 miles up to the saddle. The whole Snow Lake basin is still completely snowed in and the lake is still frozen over. Tons of snow in there still.

We descended straight down the slopes down toward the eastern shore of the lake, and then crossed the large inlet stream that feeds this end of the lake.

Immediately after crossing the stream, we hung a right and headed upstream along the stream into the upper part of the basin, where we passed several ponds along the way.

After we passed the last pond at 4500 feet, we began the steep climb up to the ridge above, aiming for the lowest point, the saddle on the topo map. We had to do some scrambling up dirt covered rocks and some steep dirt to get to the ridge top.

When we got on the ridge we hung a left towards the peak and made our way up the ridge. We ended up being on the left side for much of it, on the top for much of it, and on the right for much of it. We criss-crossed quite a bit. We just looked for the safest and easiest looking ways to go. Just do not run into any major cliffs or else you are going the wrong way. We reached the final straightforward rock scramble to the top and summited about 4 hr 15 min and 4.4 miles from the TH.

The views at the top were great, looking at Snow Lake, Chair, Kaleetan, Roosevelt in one direction, and the Middle Fork Valley to Lemah, Chimney Rock, Thomson, etc in the other.

On the way down we dropped off the ridge much sooner, at around 5050 feet and descended the steep forest until we found an open talus field and snow slopes that led right back to our old tracks from the way in. Then it was a matter of retracing our steps back toward Snow Lake and the creek crossing, and then trudging our way back up 300 feet of elevation to the saddle.

The 8.5 miles and 3000 feet of gain ended up taking us 8 hours. GPS track: http://www.movescount.com/moves/move223421412 PM me if you want me to email you the GPS track.