[Bluebird]

The weather looked better in the Goat Rocks than the rest of the state, so rather than spend time reaching a socked in summit, we headed south on Saturday morning. We met our friend Colin at the TH and started hiking around noon. We planned for a mellow day so the late start was no problem. We reached Snowgrass Flats in about 90 minutes and set up camp near the large multifaceted boulder in the middle of the meadows. There was running water next to camp and with the chilly breeze bugs were absent.

We lounged around for a bit and then took a leisurely hike north on the PCT, enjoying the views of Goat Lake (complete with herd of goats) and the famous Knife Edge of the PCT.

The hike up Old Snowy is NBD and the summit was chilly and mostly socked in so we continued towards Ives after only a minute or two. The traverse to Ives is simple and features a beautiful natural arch along the way.

We hiked up the choss and despite a descending climber suggesting staying left was easier as we approached the summit, we went right and found that was just fine too. Nice views of Snowgrass Flats from here, including our campsite! We scoped out our objectives for the next morning: Gilbert, Goat Citadel and Big Horn from the summit of Ives.

The next morning we had a beautiful alpenglow view of Mt Adams, woke to a gorgeous sunny morning at 5am. We packed up our camp and started hiking south on the PCT towards Cispus Basin, stashing our gear along the way.

At the basin's main stream crossing, we started upstream towards the imposing face of Big Horn.

Jake had found a summitpost detailing a route to Gilbert from here, so we followed these directions, first contouring around the face of Big Horn to the climber's right, then contouring on faint goat paths until reaching a saddle around 7500 elevation. The goats have knocked the worst of the choss off the paths so compared to other parts of the day, this route really wasn't bad. We reached a traverse that looked somewhat improbable, that really did go just fine. It started with traversing this snow and a class 3 chimney downclimb on the rock pictured to choss below.

We finished up this part of the traverse with a nice solid rock scramble to a saddle near Gilbert. We hiked up a snowfield to find a gorgeous view of Mt Rainier and Goat Citadel.

We continued to the summit of Gilbert, which finishes with an easy and fun rock scramble with many options. Another party joined us here and we made space for them by leaving for Goat Citadel, which we traversed on the left-hand side without difficulty other than a bit of steepish snow to traverse. Jake and Colin found the summit scramble to be class 4-ish but Jake didn't claim an official "Peakbagger" summit because of something about a taller pile of choss.

We continued towards Big Horn next, climbing up a high point in between, then descending some chossy ledges and investigating some rap anchors. Colin determined the rap anchor was possibly suspect, the rap was of unknown length and we only had a 30m rope so we backtracked and went around the high point by going low, finding some cairns along the way down the choss to the snow at the base of Big Horn. Big Horn looked imposing from this angle and we considered climbing the snow finger.

We didn't climb the snow finger, but it might have been safer than all the loose choss scrambling we did to the summit block. There are lots of possible ways to go. Recommend a small party and 100% wear a helmet.

We reached the summit block with the short mid 5th class climb to the top. Jake "tested" the route by climbing all the way up it and then belayed Colin and I to the top.

We enjoyed the summit views and the day's accomplishment although I mentioned we still needed to descend the choss pile. And we hadn't been on the descent route yet. Colin needed to get home so he rapped and descended alone. Jake and I basked in the summit views of Rainier, Mt St Helens and Adams, along with everything else until two men from the other party joined us. Jake belayed them up and after spending time with them at the summit, we all rapped down with my rope.

The downclimb was slow because of my desire to always have a sold hand/foothold and quite a few of them weren't, or were covered in loose choss. I was able to figure out a way down that worked for me, so that was good.

The gully descent was pretty nasty, but after a little while we reached the goat trail we had initially been on, and shortly afterwards, back to gorgeous Cispus Basin.

We returned to our stashed gear, re-packed in a cloud of mosquitoes and ants (how did SO MANY ANTS GET INTO MY GEAR?!) before a quick 90 minute hike back to the trailhead, which was a hellstorm of mosquites that followed me into the car and required driving with the windows down to try and blow them out.

[wildernessed]

Awesome loop and pics we recently were out that way via Bear Creek Mountain.

Saddle before Devils Horns Mountain with a great view of the route into Conrad Creek below Tieton.

Devils Horns from the North.

Very nice ridge run but be prepared for loose rock, dirt, scree, talus, and using all parts of the ridge to work your way to Devils Horns.