Forum Index > Trip Reports > Treen Peak 09/21/2019
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Bluebird
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Joined: 22 Jan 2014
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Bluebird
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PostSun Sep 22, 2019 3:55 pm 
As a steadfast appreciator of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie area, Treen peak has been of interest to me for quite some time. I first explored up the Green Ridge trail last winter on a snowshoe to Green Ridge, Hi-Low, Quartz, Rock and Lunker Lakes. It was a short winter day so we had to leave the remainder of the Green Ridge trail for exploration another time. Colin shares my love of the MFSnoqualmie and we decided upon a day hike to Treen Peak. We packed up with day packs which were pleasantly light without crampons, ice axes, ropes or rock gear. We did bring helmets and poles. The poles were indispensible on this trip- I often carry poles without using them but on this trip they only left my hands on breaks. We arrived at the unmarked and typically vague Green Ridge trailhead around 6am, surprised to see 4 cars already parked in the area. I thought they would likely be miners given the Purple Hope mine near Quartz Lake. We started up the trail by headlamp, chilled by the autumn morning air. It did not take long to warm up, this trail is incredibly steep and has enough obstacles to make it challenging. By my best estimates, it gains about 3400 elevation in about 2 miles (from ~1300 feet at the TH to 4700+ feet on the ridge), becoming gradually less defined after the turnoff around 3400 elevation. Once up around 4400 elevation the trail is very vague. We headed right towards a tarn, then gained the ridge crest but on the return found it to be more efficient overall and with faint tread if you simply continue up to and follow the ridge crest that trends left towards the 4600 elevation tarn. Once upon the ridge crest we found faint tread that ends near the end of the ridge. There's a talus field on the left here, we placed a cairn at the talus
where the tread dropped us off for ease of finding it on the way back. We dropped down to the tarn, surprised to see a tent set up there (no sign of people). We didn't want to bother the tent occupants this early in the morning so we continued to the left of the tarn and then towards the gully that lead us to Upper Garfield Lake. We went directly down this gully and it was unpleasant. Very steep with some water, lots of moss and all the slippery things. By now our feet were extremely wet from the wet blueberry, moist areas all the other wet things I'd found and my approach shoes made a squishing sound while I walked. We ended up bushwhacking to our right through some very thick shrubs/slide alder where I could usually not see my feet at all until we reached a rockslide on the right-ish (east) side of the lake,
where we took our second long break, filtering water for scramble ahead. We were surprised to see *another* tent across the lake. I half-watched them filter water under a tarp but mostly ate and drank my own water. I suspect they were equally surprised to see us there. Pretty strong folks to make it there with overnight packs! From here our route was a mostly pleasant forested sidehill ascent to Charlie Brown Lake's outlet stream. No problems here. From Charlie Brown Lake
we ascended a boulder field that started near the outlet stream , staying to the right of the boulder field and right of two large pinnacles
and then crossing more open forest, carefully avoiding any unsavory drops whenever possible to find another gully. This is the land of significant moss-covered slabs, so sometimes even class 2 steep forest walking has some serious risks if you take a fall. And *EVERYTHING* is incredibly steep here. The next gully was extremely steep and required concentration. We put helmets on and moved deliberately up. The end of the gully is more mossy slabs, but with care you can stay left-ish towards the rock pinnacle.
I was too busy trying not to fall to take photos of this gully. At the top here, we crossed over at the minor saddle around elevation 5400 and continued up up up the incredibly steep forest towards the summit of Treen. A couple class 2/3 mossy forest moves and we were on the summit ridge. We tried one summit first and realized the second one, farther west had to be the true summit. We found a destroyed summit register bottle
here with damp paper inside. If anything had been written on two of these pages, it's not recognizable anymore, but we could clearly see the topo maps of Treen on the other side. Last signature I saw was dated 2015.... has no one been here in 4 years?! We dried out the papers inside the register for about 45 minutes while we enjoyed the summit views in every direction. Colin sacrificed his 1/2 liter Nalgene bottle and I gave up my emergency paper and pencil to help fix the register up. It should be way more waterproof now and have a functional writing device. (summit pens should die, at least a pencil can be sharpened with a multi tool, a dead pen is just a dead pen). Wow, Garfield is amazing here!
And Otter Falls is so much more dramatic than I'd thought!
Colin and I had snowshoed to Dream Lake last winter, it was super fun to see it too!
We did our best to retrace our route back but BOTH of our GPS units tried to put us in the wrong location so we overshot the super steep gully, backtracked and then dropped too low. For what it's worth, I have had GPS issues and even my In-reach sometimes refuses to send messages in the MFork. /me shrugs. By then we could see Charlie Brown Lake so that helped with navigation. We eventually made our way over to the correct gully without falling off a cliff somewhere and carefully descended back to Charlie Brown Lake for another lovely break in the sunshine and a quick nap. From here the rest of the way back had much simpler navigation. We tried going up the boulderfield
near Upper Garfield Lake instead of taking the bushwhack/gully and were pleased to find it worked out better. We followed the boulders up and right, then traversed through some open forest and light brush back to the stream gully and then up the rest of the way. Recommend this route over the gully alone/bushwhack method. Once at the tarn we took another long break and a sunny nap,
our cairn helped us pop directly into the forest at the faint trail along the ridge crest. We continued to the main high point and then directly down until we found the faint Green Ridge trail, progress to the car was quick from here. We took several breaks and time for navigation, total time was about 11 hours, moving time closer to 8 hours. My GPS showed that we went 8-8.5 miles and 6700 vertical.

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Type E
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PostSun Sep 22, 2019 8:04 pm 
Nice work, the miner’s trail doesn’t mess around E

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Randy
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PostMon Sep 23, 2019 9:00 am 
Nice report, don't believe I found a register back in 2002. East Garfield is another enjoyable scramble utilizing that same approach.

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yukon222
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PostMon Sep 23, 2019 9:21 am 
up.gif up.gif That looks like a lot of hard work with the exposed talus! When I did it in mid-June 2008, we had snow coverage from the top of the initial 4600' ridge all the way to the top of Treen. 6700' elevation gain seems too high though. I don't remember it being that much gain. Maybe 3000' gain to the ridge, drop 400' or so to the lake and climb 1300' to the summit? With the counter elevation coming back out, maybe around 4700' total gain? Wonderful view of Otter Falls from the summit. Quite impressive when it is viewed during the Spring run-off. ETA : i just looked up the Treen TR that Schmidt Altitude posted for our climb. They noted 6,391' of gain. Guess I blocked out the memory of the actual gain! :-) https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7967760&highlight=treen

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lopper
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lopper
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PostMon Sep 23, 2019 4:21 pm 
A Treen report is always click bait for me. Here is a scanned slide from a memorable outing there in the spring of 1980. In May conditions, it was easy step-kicking across snowfields from the top of Green Ridge. Mt St Helens blew 16 hours after this picture was taken.
May17_1980
May17_1980

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Mike Collins
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PostMon Sep 23, 2019 8:56 pm 
When I climbed Treen it was from the west going up to Charlie Brown Lake. No elevation loss. 5 hrs up and 4 hrs down.

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Nancyann
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PostMon Sep 23, 2019 9:32 pm 
Impressive effort and excellent trip report! That’s such rugged terrain around Treen Peak. Back before the dawn of time when I was still a teenager, my boyfriend, who was an avid climber, somehow got me up to Lake Carole. We drove up the Taylor River Road to a pull-off on the side of the road, somewhere before the Nordrum Lake Trailhead. I have no idea how we got the truck across the river, must have been a spur road with a bridge back in those days. We immediately started climbing up Treen through a thicket of vine maple, no trail. At some point we came to a waterfall with a rope dangling from the top. My boyfriend casually explained that we would be climbing up the cliff holding onto the rope. This was my first backpacking trip, btw. Somehow he got me up there and we eventually made it up to Lake Carole, set at the base of Treen Peak, absolutely stunning. I would love to go back someday, but probably won’t. Were you able to see Lake Carole from your viewpoint on the summit?

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Matt
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PostMon Sep 23, 2019 9:59 pm 
Like other said, much easier on snow. However, earlier this year we had no chance of finding the register since the summit area was under a large cornice.

“As beacons mountains burned at evening.” J.R.R. Tolkien
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puzzlr
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puzzlr
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PostTue Sep 24, 2019 3:27 pm 
It's great to see a TR for Treen. I pored over your route description and photos trying to figure out how you went up. I think it was different than our route in 2008. But I've heard about people getting up Treen in many ways, and even a new one by Nancyann. All are steep. In this photo is the route labeled "2" something like what you did? The two rocks on the left look like the photo of the pinnacles you mentioned. Our route was "1", but also very steep in places.
Treen route question
Treen route question
This photo was taken from the tarn on the ridge before dropping to Upper Garfield Lake And thanks for maintaining the register.

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Bluebird
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Bluebird
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PostTue Sep 24, 2019 7:57 pm 
I appreciate everyone for sharing their Treen stories. What a great place. I agree snow would be easier, we discussed that but we also don't mind a challenge or a bushwhack so we went now. I love the idea of the Carole Lake trip! I've a goal to visit as many ALW lakes as possible, am somewhere around 160 now and there are a handful left on Treen I need to visit still... puzzlr: As for the route, I admit to not being terribly tech-savvy. I'd still carry a paper map and a compass if not for having a GPS watch that I can marginally operate. A friend made these pictures from my watch track biggrin.gif I think the route is closer to #2 than #1.
Google earth image
Google earth image
Sat image
Sat image

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puzzlr
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puzzlr
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PostTue Sep 24, 2019 8:47 pm 
Thanks -- that's really helpful to see. I don't think anyone climbs this peak exactly the same way. So much depends on conditions.

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Randy
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PostWed Sep 25, 2019 10:04 am 
The Carole Lake story is amusing. I once did a trip in there from The Taylor River TH via Nordrum. What a brushy mess getting in there and then we went from Carole up to the 4600' tarn which was even worse. doh.gif Sorry for the thread drift...

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Islander
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PostWed Sep 25, 2019 11:11 am 
Used to go to the lakes to hunt crystals back in the '70s.

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iron
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PostWed Sep 25, 2019 2:33 pm 
nothing like a treen TR to get all the hardcore MFK'ers excited!

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BigBrunyon
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PostWed Sep 25, 2019 11:05 pm 
Gonna have to get in there and compete

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