[ozzy]

I altered my plans last minute to get some extra shut-eye and decided on a smoot peak, Cadet! Id only been to the monte cristo area once so i was rather stoked! I showed up to Barlow pass at 0800 to see a handfull of cars 3 of which had broken windows. God damnit i hate these worthless people that do sh## like that! I wasnt as worried knowing i was gonna be back around dark. I set off at 0830 and made it to town around 1000. From there took a short break and found glacier basin trail. This place is pretty awesome knowing that a bunch old timey miners were up in here in the late 1800s!! f### animals, man people were hard back then. It took a while to make glacier basin because i wanted to check out every little area that had signs of the past left stagnant! Crazy to be here back then i bet! The trees sure do grow a lot over a 100 yrs! In a little over an hour i made the basin proper and cut north through meadows after the giant boulders. Aim for the gnarly redddish gully and acsend on the right side. Climb this for about 600ft or so then cross over the gully wherever you can, this was probably the hardest part of the climb for me lol. Then kinda traverse to the left and find hidden gully in the trees. This gully has some class 3 and goes up for 300ft -ish. I kinda trended left once out of this gully and found a nice gametrail/climbers on the ridge. I followed this to around 6600ft and instead of going left on slabs like most do, i went straight up the gully thats right in front of you. I was glad to be solo as the rock fall was unavoidable at times. Once at the top of the gully traverse slabs leftward to gain easy access to the heather slopes above. From there its pretty much a walk up.

Ive climbed his peak

Wilmans pks

Wilmans

the basin and Monte cristo peak

towards the top of the reddish gully looking south

Topping out of second gully

Mcp again

Wilmans spires

wilmans with Columbia in back

summit proper

Rover and sloan

mcp, kyes, columbia, wilmans

rover and sloan again

reg shot

gimp was here

The views were amazing on Cadet and the register was cool too. The pen in the reg doesnt work so someone may wanna take a pencil up there, i was kinda bummed not to sign in. Oh well at least its still there. I made the summit around 1500, that was at a casual pace. So i didnt linger too long as i wanted to go get Rover after seeing gimpilators' tr lol! It looked deceivingly far away but it took just under 30mins to get there. I stayed as high i could on the ridge on the traverse over. After reaching the cliffband under the summit i went leftward just below a snowpatch and found a heathery gully to ascend up to the summit, after the gully its a walk up. Soon i found myself on the 2nd pk of the day with awesome views of course. The register was pretty badass! I was almost more excited to get two registers than two peaks, lmao! This was a pretty rugged little area and it was so sweet to walk in the footsteps of some hard ass miners from over a 100 yrs ago, cheers to those dudes! After a longer summit stay i made my way down around 1700. It was later than i wanted to stay in fear of what might happen to my car lol. I made a leisurely descent taking in all the fine views and history again and made it to monte cristo around 2030. From there i made it back to a fuller parking lot around 2200. Thank god no busted windows. I checked some other cars too and nobody had any broken windows at that point! So it was another grand day to be alive, cheers to all you awesome people!

way to rover

closer , go under snow

silvertip and lake

rover summit

reg #2

main summit from rover

nice Schroder

lol a goat on xmas

gimp again

goat lake and sloan in clouds

Ye olde prospecter shovel

mcp and cool flower

mcp

thats the nasty little gully i took instead of goin left

the first gully you stray right of, from the basin

Damnnnnnn

cheers to another sweeeet day!!!

[Tom]

[Gimpilator]

Nice trip Ozz-man. I like your photos of this area. Cool that you got Rover too. Bummer to hear about those smashed windows. Damn crack-heads.

[Jake Robinson]

Another great trip! You write the most entertaining reports, always look forward to 'em. And thanks for the register shots too. I'll have to make it up there soon.

[Nancyann]

Another awesome trip and nice collection of pics. I hope you enter your pink flower photo (penstemon) in the calendar contest! I too, am always amazed at what the miners, trappers and explorers accomplished in the 1800’s. Almost like a different breed of human, such beasts they were!

[Slim]

[CarriesNineFires]

Ozzy, you always grab the bull by the stones and yank your way to the top. Your reports are always among the best. I'm glad your efforts were not rewarded with a smashing of your windows, or worse. I pretty much avoid the Mountain Loop Highway area because there's just too much of a sordid history of vandalism. It sucks.

[puzzlr]

One of the register pages mentions that "this must be a popular summit" -- not so much based on the infrequent entries later.

[Bootpathguy]

[Schroder]

[ozzy]

Man, thank yall for all of your kind responses! I enjoy all of your post so much too! Thanks for all the help/encouragement/entertainment over the years! Cheers to all you fellow wanderers!

[Kim Brown]

An excellent report. Great read - interesting-and nice register photos. Thanks for pointing out Randy's entry! We went to Monte Cristo today. No peak bagging, though.

[Anne Elk]

Really enjoyable report, Ozzie - appreciated all the details you included to make a great photo-narrative. NancyAnn, thanks for the flower ID. I would have guessed it to be some kind of gentian, similar to this one. I wasn't aware there were native dwarf penstemons - had to look that up... P. davidsonii, right?

[Nancyann]

I’m not a wildflower expert by any stretch of the imagination, Anne, but I checked my wildflower book after seeing these near the summit of Remmel Mountain last week, elevation a little under 8,700 feet.

Penstemon near the summit of Remmel Mountain 8/14/19

The flowers in Ozzy’s photo are more lush, but maybe it’s because they receive more rain.

[awilsondc]

You've been knocking it out of the park with your trip reports this year Ozzy! Loved your Formidable report too. Great photos, thanks for taking the time to write these up.