[Aligeo]

Hi! This is my first post, but I've been reading trip reports on this website for quite a while. Great resource! Yesterday was a beautiful day to scramble peaks in the Mount Rainier vicinity, so we chose to do the Fay, Pleasant, and Hessong traverse that is listed in the 75 Scrambles Book by Peggy Goldman. We drove to Mowich Lake. Warning here. You can only buy a day pass at this park enterence. And it is cash or check only. We began our hike at the Rangers station on a well worn path that lead us up towards Knapsack Pass. We cut off the trail to our right just short of the pass and scrambled up the ridge. Once we topped out on the ridge we were humbled by our first views of the Massive Mount Rainier.

We stopped for lunch on the ridge and could hear some rock fall action on the Willis Wall. We then scrambled to the top of Fay Peak. We followed a faint path on the ridge and ended up on a false summit that cliffed out. Then we backtracked and followed another faint path that was on the south side of the ridge. This was an easy scramble to the top of Fay. Now, for the part where we tried find our route over to Mount Pleasant by staying on the ridge. Peggy said to traverse southwest from Fay. So, we did that and came to a really nasty rocky gully that connected the ridge to Mount Pleasant. This gully was so loose that we decided to go one at a time. My husband took a couple of steps down and he set the whole gully off. It seemed that the entire gully was sitting at the angle of repose. We did not bring helmets and decided not to go down this gully. It would be much easier and less risky if it was covered with snow. So we scrambled back up the ridge toward Fay. We did not give up on finding our way over to Mount Pleasant. We kept wiggling our way down on the south side of the ridge into the valley toward Pleasant. It looked like this route may go if you had time and water. But, we had neither. Time to turn around. When we summited Fay the first time we noticed a trail that came up from the west. So we decided to summit Fay again and head down that trail to add some variety to our day. It was a pleaseant round trip. I should mention that there were a ton of cars by the lake, but we did not run into one soul during our hike! Also, there were millions of bugs in the air, buzzing around us all day. But they must not have been too hungry. I have less than a dozen bites!

Fay Peak

Many nice water falls off the trail toward Knapsack Pass.

These remind me of Captain Caveman!

Looking back toward Mowich Lake.

Looking up at Fay from one of the waterfalls

[ragman and rodman]

I did this trip a few years ago... taking a more direct route to Fay by accessing it from its west side... then traversing roughly 100 to 150 feet below the south side of the ridge connecting Fay to Knapsack Pass... I found the most difficult part of the trip along the ridge connecting to Mt. Pleasant... I can't believe that I allowed myself to get on the eastern side of that ridge, but I did... a few heart-pounding moves got me past the toughest part... after that, Pleasant and Hessong were a snap. I also did this trip 15 years ago with a more experienced hiker and I don't remember having any real difficulty... he was leading and obviously found a better route to Pleasant than I did a few years ago.

[b00]

thanks for the trip report! we tried and failed on similar route 4 or 5 years ago. but, we went back and followed a different route - going all the way to the top of knapsack pass and then dropping into the basin and following the easy terrain se to pleasant and hessong. that second trip we skipped fay and along with going up pleasant and hessong, we hit first mother and castle. castle was really fun, it has a cool ledge system that traverses the west side of its false summit. this made a realy neat loop trip. beautiful area.

[Aligeo]

Thanks for the replies. Glad we were not the only ones that were a little confused finding the exact route. The true meaning of scrambling! I will definitely revisit that area and try the loop with Castle and First Mother. But next time I will allow for some more time. We did not start hiking until noon, assuming the route would be straight forward.

[Meander]

Way to go Ali! Sounds like it was fun exploring, and you did get two summits in Now, a reason to go back. Let's go. Jenny