[b00]

Skalabats (point 6697) and red mt (aka painted mt) 9-2-06 Fun. We all really enjoyed this trip - a little route finding, plenty of open terrain and great views, physically challenging, technically easy and a chance to sit on some rarely visited summits. We start at the sloan creek campground and walked the n fork of the sauk river trail a few feet to the red mt lookout junction. We headed up the easy red mt lookout trail. the trail reaches a moss covered rock wall at about 2800’. we traversed the rock wall a little to the right and had fun heading up 10 feet of exposed class 2 rock scrambling. we could of also headed right, up some class 3 rocks. at the top of this rock wall there is a faint trail. paying careful attention, we were able to follow this faint trail as it headed up the sw ridge of red/painted mt. At about 5600’, when we came to a clearing, we started our cross-country traverse over to saddle between red/painted mt and skalabats.

on the way to the 6000' saddle

The terrain was mostly open and easy, with a few spots of brush or talus to deal with. Once at the saddle, we dropped over the ridge (heading east), down steep heather. We reached the bowl below(to my surprise, there was water here) and scrambled class 3 dirty or veggie gullies to get on skalabats’ n ridge(on the way down, found some class 2 ledges and gullies).

class3 left, easy class 2 route on left

we made our way over to the East ridge and followed that West up the easy class 1 / 2 terrain to the summit.

greetings from skalabats :>)

We took in the views

glacier peak from skalabats

and my friends decided we would also go hit red/painted mt, so down we went to the 6000’ saddle and northward traversed a little below and on the west side of the ridge heading up to red. We picked up way marked by numerous flags along the ridge.

heading to the summit of red/painted mt

we summited, had a satisfying stay enjoying the views and headed down. If we budgeted a little more time, a swim in ruby lake looked like it would be fun.

ruby lake

about 9miles, 6000' gain. There was no water on the trail only at the bowl below skalabats. My buddy did red/painted as a spring snow scramble and said it was really fun. hey, these both are neat peaks and deserve a summit register. I should have brought a couple, but maybe the next party can. References: wta and route info from friends Equipment: poles or axe for the steep heather

three fingers left, whitehorse right

monte cristo peaks

red/painted mt from skalabats

smoke from the fire

1 label

pugh?

[Magellan]

I did not make the trip to Skalabats, but Painted mountain was an outstanding peak. Kind of lonely, and very colorful. I dropped the 5000' in about 1:45 and my quads were cranky for three days!! I don't move that fast anymore.

[b00]

[Justus S.]

Thanks for the report. Nice area up there. I havn't done Skalabats. It sounds like a great, little day trip.