[neek]

Went out with Dave to climb Treen yesterday and ended up grabbing Floating Rock as a bonus peak. Middle Fork road was smooth as pavement...until the pavement ended, then it was horrible as ever, and I can't imagine driving it without high clearance. And what's up with the potholed disaster around the campground and Garfield Ledges parking area? The Green Ridge trail is in decent shape; some blowdown and slightly hard to follow in a few spots. Snow started at 4200' where we put on boots and continued along the ridge. The bad news about Treen is that you have to drop 1000' before starting the climb. Snow has consolidated considerably over the past week, and conditions were great for plunge stepping. We put on snowshoes at Upper Garfield Mountain Lake and headed up to Charlie Brown Lake. From there we pretty much made a beeline north to the summit, heading up a fairly steep snow slope and skirting right of cliffs. The summit is buried under a massive cornice, but there was a nice rock outcropping on the east end to hang out on. Back near one of the high points along Green Ridge we decided to go for Floating Rock because it was so close and there was still plenty of time. This ended up being a very different beast, with some sketchy scrambling up the final ridge (very steep, some trees to bash through and sometimes cling to for dear life, untrustworthy rock). Fun though. Made it back to the car around 6:30 and missed the evening rush hour.

Floating Rock

Garfield

Upper Garfield Lake

Charlie Brown Lake

Heading up - we went to the right of this

Glacier Peak and Dakobeds

Preacher

Cornice on Treen

Along the ridge to Floating Rock

Getting interesting

Up this

Floating Rock summit

Nordrum Lake

Chair, Kaleetan, some volcano

Big Snow

[Now I Fly]

Treen is so cool! Stands out from so many of our favorite summits! Sadly, my only time up it was on a cloudy day. You guys picked a great day! And I love the idea of combining it with Floating Rock (I mean heck, you're already up there.) I still need to get that one. Does sound kind'a floating rock'ish. Thanks for the report.

[raising3hikers]

Nice big day in there guys!!

[ozzy]

Sickkk trip boys! We were on Big Snow the same day around 10am. We went in via Myrtle lake, you could probably damn near see our tracks from your vantage. Treen looks pretty sweet from over there it definitely moved up a few spots on my list lol! I'll be overnighting that one though. Cheers!

[mosey]

Nice pics of the area and great shot of otter falls

[RichP]

Sweet trip. I never thought about combining these two but it makes sense. Treen has eluded me so maybe I'll make it someday.

[b00]

crazy how inaccurate my memory is. i thought that floating rock was super easy and that we had an easy time with it back in 2012, then i re-read my trip report on this site and read how i underestimated its difficulty then too. i guess floating rock in middle fork language means sandbag peak. great work as usual guys! :>)

[Matt]

Cool. I haven't done Floating Rock yet, so maybe I'll head up there. BTW, East Garfield is an interesting scramble staring from that tarn at 4700 as well.