[Bluebird]

One of my favorite methods for picking a destination is "I haven't been there yet". Brenda, Steven and I hiked to Bootjack and Highchair in October and I was smitten by the cool looking mountain to the south that I initially mistook for Hawkins (which I summited last November with the other Colin)... Steven identified it later as Mt Harding. I was able to talk Brenda, Alper, Colin and Brian into joining me. We reached the TH around 8am and started hiking shortly afterwards on the signed but not necessarily obvious Scatter Creek trail. If you reach the vehicle ford across Scatter Creek, you've missed it. The trail starts out pleasant but then steepens with lots of rocks, roots and ice. We had expected the trail to be worse... but there's always time for that to happen, right? The crossing of a Scatter Creek tributary was very icy but not too difficult (yet).

We continued up the trail and reached the junction with the Lake Ann trail (which has lost its sign) about 1300 gain from the TH and continued to the signed Scatter Creek trail, which basically disappeared after a campsite near Scatter Creek. But no matter, just follow uphill. We found occasional flags, mostly in the dirt. Not much of a bushwhack but probably more so in summer conditions. We crossed Scatter Creek around 4900-5000 elevation and continued through some open fields, forest and then, a wide swatch of avalanche debris before finding the head of the creek valley. There were also a couple of cairns along the way here.

At the head of the valley, we discussed the route and found most of the GPS tracks we had trended right and then left, above a cliffy bit to reach the pass above us. I lead up some snow and ended up on trail again, although often covered in snow or ice. The trail was intermittent from what I could tell, or maybe I just lost it in the snow and ice... but it lead us up to the pass. I need to keep learning the lesson about how high traverses don't always save time/energy over dropping down, so I lead us on a high traverse that quickly became steep and unpleasant. The guys weren't too happy with my route choice, but they didn't want to take over either. I dropped down some steep stuff with a light coating of snow on it, which no one liked either.

At this point we crossed a snow covered, reddish boulder field and then entered some kinda snowy rock/forest stuff. It is easier to drop down here instead of maintaining elevation. We ended up dropping down about 800 feet from the pass. There's some slide alder to deal with but it wasn't too bad.

At a large boulder field that was thankfully mostly melted out, we traversed across.

here it is from afar.

It looked like it would be annoying, but the rocks were most stable than not and in 15 minutes we were across and we started heading uphill to the low spot on the Mt Harding ridgeline. We bushwhacked a little through some tight scrub forest and then open terrain with some annoyingly loose rocks. We had to spread out a little so we didn't kill each other with rocks.

After this short ascent, we were at the ridgeline notch and continued up. It seemed easiest to stay climbers right of the ridgeline, which had more scrubby trees. It was dirt, rock and occasional scrub trees to navigate for about 500+ vert from the notch. Brenda found the summit register, which proved this wasn't a popular summit. I recognized several names .

We definitely enjoyed the summit views, particularly Daniel, Grindstone (which I climbed with Brian last month), Bootjack/Highchair (which Brenda and I also climbed last month) and Cradle (which Brenda climbed last summer). Brenda and I climbed Terrace, Lynch and Diptop last June and we found all of them too. So many great mountains I've visited in view from Harding! Stellar views of the Stuart West Ridge as well. I could go on about the views, but here are some pictures instead.

We had hoped to climb Solomon too, but all the route finding, postholing and short day meant we opted against it... we'd have to bushwhack through the avalanche chute in the dark if we we did. So we headed down.

Near the high traverse everyone hated, we stayed lower and found a faint bootpath about 200 feet lower. It was better. You should go that way. It popped up at the pass itself near a nice view of Stuart.

At the valley head we found another pesky balloon. Brenda packed it out.

We enjoyed the golden hour views

And then continued through the bushwhacky avalanche chute.

And out right at sunset. There are some pretty nice views of the crest and Daniel as you hike out through the open forest. Total stats seemed to be about 12 miles, 5000-5500 gain (depending on the device). Took us 8.5 hours rt.

[puzzlr]

Harding is a satisfying summit -- it takes a lot of work to get there. Too bad you couldn't add Solomon in, but you were dealing with some conditions that made the whole day hard enough with just one peak. Congrats. You're really tearing it up out there!

[Jake Robinson]

Nice report! You really have a knack for picking interesting, lesser-known destinations

[neek]

Interesting, I wonder if one could loop in Scatter as well as Solomon in summer.

[Bluebird]

neek, I'd expect so. Scott Rice's entry in the register mentioned that he came on a traverse from Scatter.

[Mike Collins]