[kitya]

My first hike of 2019! Well, it was supposed to be snowshoe, but it turned out to be just a hike. Snow is pretty much completely lacking until 4000+ feet, below that there is only enough snow to make it slippery, but not enough to cover the brush. The road is gated about 1.5 miles before the washout, adding about 3 miles of road walk to the trip. There are several washouts on the road prior to that, but they are shallow and dry now, so I just drove over them. Road walk is actually the most pleasant part of this trip, it is very nice gentle walk along the river. The real washout had deep, but narrow water, so not hard to cross. After the roadwalk we turned to the ridge and used direct route to Palmer. I, however, do not enjoy alder, massive blow downs and sharp brush. Because it is all second growth forest, there are no big trees to enjoy. Crossing all the brush and logs was extra tricky with Cookie, she likes to go squeeze under the downed trees, while I have to go over them, her leash gets tangled, we both fall, repeat. On paper it is such a short easy hike. In real life - not so much. Direct route intersects the old road a few times. The road is so overgrown, it is barely recognizable as a road, however it looks like it gets some maintenance as a trail - some trees are cut. On one of the road intersections I saw a shadowy bipedal dark figure, that quickly disappeared before I could say hi. Hunter? Ghost of a miner? Bigfoot? Weird stuff is going on this mountain. Finally after much fighting we reached the quarry. It is massive. There are 3 metal shacks around it, some completely destroyed, some still locked. I made a mistake of going left (instead of right - must trust trip reports I read), because it originally looked better on the left. While it gave me a fun rock scramble and a nice view from the top of the quarry, it quickly became super-super steep and very scary even with veggie belays. On the way back I went the right way instead and it was easier. We also found an open large hole in the ground - abandoned mine maybe and some equipment. The ridge finally became nicer around 4000 feet, though by this time I was already not in much mood to enjoy it. There are a couple of places where it gets super narrow and kind of scary to cross, as it is not obvious if solid ground exists under snow or it is a cornice. But other than these two places it was fine. I didn't use snowshoes (I could have, but was too lazy to take them out of backpack just for the last 0.5 mile or so), but I did use ice axe and crampons on the ridge just below the true summit. It was super windy and snow was super soft and sliding after hours of baking in the sun, so Cookie complained and we turned back around 80 feet to the summit. I loved the view of Lennox and Barring. 2 years ago I snowshoe to Lennox in spring and it is much nicer mountain in the same area Oh, and the traffic on US2 was just stop and go. It took 3 hours to reach from Gold Bar to Monroe https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/3298442886

[RichP]

Really nice pics. That mountain packs a lot of punch with its low start and the last part is quite steep.

[Sky Hiker]

Probably was Bigfoot or a meth head. Where you parked your little car there have been several break ins from time to time. The meth heads like to park their cars where you saw that green car by the bridge then wander down towards the gate you parked at and further down. Some shady characters there

[kitya]