[Justus S.]

From The Cradle to the Nursery November 4, 2010 Took this day off work to get out in the super awesome weather last week. It had been over a month since my last real hike! I was joined on this trip by Andy D! A few details since this seemed to be a nice route: We took the North Scatter Creek Trail, (just past the creek crossing on the road). This is a sweet trail that just goes straight up. Hit continuous snow at around 5500. We ended up with snowshoes on our feet about .25miles before the pass south of Tucquala (6300). We headed down to the pass between Tucquala and Nursery. Best to angle over left first, we dropped too much too soon.

Daniel from trail

Sunrise

The Cradle from pass below Tucquala

From the pass, the sun from the previous few warm days had done it's job and we were able to boot up to the Cradle/Nursery ridge. We crossed the ridge at 6640+ and traversed in snow on the eastern side. Snow was pretty well consolidated. We were on the South summit in a little over 5hrs. We also wanted to do the north summit so we dropped straight over toward the north summit, worked left around an obstruction, dropped a little, and scrambled up to the north summit(class 4). We were glad the snow had melted or this way would be a no go. I've heard there is a class 3 scramble route, but we didn't bother looking very hard. Round trip from south to north summit was about 1.5hrs.

heading up

Andy makes the summit

Andy on top

Glacier Pk and Cradle (N)

Daniel group

Andy enjoying summit of The Cradle

Rainier and Sprite Lk

Cradle (S) and Adams

Stuart from Cradle

We headed back the way we came and opted to tuck in Nursery. It was a grunt in snowshoes up the 1000ft to the pass below Tucquala. At the pass it was now dark enough so on came the headlamps. The trail out went pretty quick though.

Rainier and others from Nursery

The Cradle from Nursery

It was a beautiful fall day, basically perfect temps, almost too warm at times, and almost windless. Thanks Andy for another excellent trip!!! Notes: 12hrs, 10ish miles, 7+k gain. Snow in the 1-2ft depth range but for the most part good for booting. Of course this means nothing now since the weather has changed:(

Cradle Nursery

[Magellan]

Wow, helluvan effort, especially for November.

[seattlehikertoo]

Nice, nice work. The Cradle is imposing looking. It is good to know that there is a class 3 route because I thought it was class 4+. I don't know if I would attempt a class 4 without protection unless the moves were easy and exposure minimal.

[Type E]

Good work an ambitious day for the short days of November. I'm glad to see your route since I was hoping to use it myself. Eric

[wildernessed]

Nice. "This is a sweet trail that just goes straight up".

[Andy D.]

That was a great trip, I was pooped! Here are a few more pictures:

Justus hiking up The Cradle

Cradle South & North summits

summit shot

Daniel with lots of snow

1 label

Justus downclimbing the north peak

[yukon222]

Wow, very well done!! I loved doing the Cradle (South Peak) and the Nursery earlier this summer; can't imagine squeezing it into the shorter daylight hours now with the snow mixed in. And you climbed the North Peak too?

[ragman and rodman]

Impressive...

[Randy]

BC finisher #7!!

[seattlehikertoo]

Ooh, saw the pic of Justus downclimbing. Hmmm. Not sure I'd do that. Maybe it looks worse than it actually is.

[Matt]

That's a lot of groud to cover on a short fall day. Randy, congratulations on finishing the backcourt list. Edit: Congratulations to whomever is finishing the list.

[Randy]

Thanks Matt...in case it wasn't clear I meant that Justus is likely to be the 7th finisher of that list.

[EastKing]

[Eric]

That's strong work this late in the season. Thanks for the TR as I've been curious about the N peak. Beta on that one is sparse as most folks seem to only do the S peak and then call it good even though they both have the same elevation on the USGS map. So the pics of the scrambling it requires are a nice help.