Mt. Prophet offers a faint echo to an early settler in the Skagit Valley, Tommy Rowland. He was probably afflicted with psychiatric needs as he was institutionalized at Northern State Mental Hospital some four miles north of Sedro Wooley where he eventually died. Hyperreligiosity was one of his symptoms and the mountain offers muted homage to him while he rests in one of one-thousand unmarked graves at the now abandoned facility.
Our party registered and received a camping permit at the North Cascade National Park ranger station at Marblemount. We started the hike by taking the one mile road down to Ross Lake where we had hired a boat shuttle to the Big Beaver landing. Then we hiked 11 miles up the Big Beaver trail stopping to make camp at the established campsites of Luna Camp. Within 300 ft of Luna Camp the hiker will have to wade through a wide stream making me wish that I had brought light footwear for the ford. We relaxed during the evening scouting out the roaring Big Beaver Creek which at present is not fordable.
On Saturday we left camp at 06:00 to reach the snowslopes before the heat of the day would turn the snow into mush. The best route for this peak is to recross the stream adjacent to Luna Camp. This will be the access to the ridge used for 3,000 ft of the 5,200 ft upclimb. Coming off of Mt. Prophet is a WSW knife edged ridge. You will encounter the ridge lower down where it is broadshouldered. It gains greater definition as you ascend. Where to exit the ridge is the key decision for a successful ascent. We exited right at ~5450 ft and found a narrow conduit that connected with cedar branch belays to reach the snow basin on the southern flank of Mt. Prophet. Later on in the season this snow basin will become a talus slope so a climb earlier in the season was preferable for our party. We kicked steps for the final 2,000 ft of gain. There are three possible connections to the summit from the snow basin. The one I recommend is the one we used. On the right of the snow basin is a rock wall which on a map has the endpoints of Pt. 7547 and Pt. 7361. We used the slope nearest to this rock wall to reach the summit pyramid itself. There is a false summit that created only ten minutes of backtracking and delay before the true summit is tagged. The views of Elephant Butte and the Picket Range are nothing short of spectacular. We rested on top for 90 minutes bathing in the beauty. On the approach we used two bleached logs to landmark our exit as refinding our route off the mountain was every bit as important as locating it initially. Camp-to-camp duration was 10.5 hrs Total mileage for the three day outing was 28 miles. Elevation gain of summit day is 5,400 ft.
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