harding mt 6-12-07
the mt named after the president who died, before having to fully face numerous scandals - including his girlfriend (they met in the cloak room to hide from his wife) who reputedly bore his child - proved to be a fun day for all along for the romp.
i did not have much info on the route we were doing and here i am again, the junior partner with some very experienced mountain climbers. i hoped would not be a problem, if we face anything tough. no one else brought crampons, but i figured i'd bring mine so if we faced some firm snow, i wouldn't slow the group down. well, my worries again were for not. for this group, it was a very easy and well behaved trip. no major brush issues, no scarry creek crossings, no tough climbing, no steep hard snow to traverse, no massive amounts of blowdowns. just a pleasant walk, in a nice area, with wonderful views and straightforward routefinding (thanks to handi-peakbagger our lead routefinder extraordinaire.
we started up the scatter creek trail (on the green trails map, but neither shown correctly or shown on topo) to the signed junction with the county line trail. the county line trail goes right towards the scatter benchmark, we went left continuing on the scatter creek trail. the intermittent snow began here. the not so well defined trail soon crosses, without terrible difficulty, the creek on some rocks and logs. the valley here is pleasant, beautiful meadows. the trail, or what you can find of it, being mostly a
bunch of cairns and a small amount of flagging follows the creek on its north side for quite a ways until it recrosses the creek. it follows the creek up to the valley's 6100' pass sse of the head of scatter creek. we dropped over the east side of the pass on the trail. from here, a friend said that he traversed at about 6000'.
we took a look, but decided to drop down some more on the east side of the ridge that leads to harding. we dropped straight down a 150' and started a descending traverse on broad ramp at ~5900'. we continued the descending traverse on snow down to 5600', going below some cliffs and some talus that was not covered by snow. we then did an ascending traverse to the 6500' saddle on harding's gentle sw ridge. we followed the top of the ridge and then traverse a little on the right hand side of the ridge crest until we reached the easy class 2 summit blocks. it was cool looking through the summit registery left by the ubiquitous johnny jeans in 2002. he left it just a few days before john morrow summited - and johnny and the following few parties left john and one other party's scraps of paper in with the new registry he placed. few people visit here , the last was in 2005. usually only one or two parties a year, if that. it surprised me to see that 3/4 of the names were people i was lucky enough to either climb or be acquainted with. i guess peaks like these draw the same crowd :>)
about 12 mi 6000' gain
equipment: ice axes (although one in our party only used his for 5 min), i brought my helmet and crampons (did not use)
Thanks for the report. I have been considering that route since we scrambled up Fish Eagle Peak, next door to Harding, last year. Looks like fun. Here are a few later season shots of Harding from on or near Fish Eagle.
Looks awesome, thanks for the beta ! How were the views from the peak , other than the ones you got? Anymore pics ?
the views were great. also saw adams, rainier, glacier, the rest of the snoqualmie range - overcoat summit chief bears breast, citadel, daniel,cathedral rock,hinman, mac pk , cashmere, eightmile(our original destination), sloan, alta, three queens, hibox were the peaks i remember seeing. and i think granite/trico - but not sure. yes views all around :>)
if you did not want to do 6k in a day, you could camp along scatter creek. if i get some pics from my buddies that are worthy of your standards, i'll post them.
btw - i thought about you on wallaby, its about the same stats as bootjack and also has excellent views.
hey jim - fish eagle sounds like a great idea, thanks for the other perspective
b00, what a great set of shots! More! Please! Very trippy to view these shots. Thank you for the TR and route.
Where is Stuart in all this? If you have Ingalls, then Stuart must be just left and off the photo? One gets the feeling that this one peak is "pivotal" within the context of the Central Cascades, at least if one is not counting Stuart.
b00, what a great set of shots! More! Please! Very trippy to view these shots. Thank you for the TR and route.
Where is Stuart in all this? If you have Ingalls, then Stuart must be just left and off the photo? One gets the feeling that this one peak is "pivotal" within the context of the Central Cascades, at least if one is not counting Stuart.
stuart is in two of the photos, it is the peak on the left in the top (pano) pic and stuart is posing with my friend in the "stu & friend" pic. and yes it is a pivotal peak. stuart is a fun outing with an oustanding view.
Well, LOL! on me! I figured this out as soon as the one photo of Stuart appeared (above in thread). What was I thinking?! Ugh!
All those times I went to Ingalls Lake, I went out on the "arm" only once...it was long ago (1970's) so I don't recall what I saw and the old Kodakchrome slides are buried in boxes all taped up for the next move.... Also, went to Windy Pass a bunch of times....I believe one may see Harding from there. Now with restrictions on dogs in that area (Caroline Lakes, Windy Pass), I do not expect any hikes up there. Last time up was about 1995.
In any case, thank you for the exciting photos and TR. Makes one wonder why Harding is not on a lote of hiking / climbing "must do" lists.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
