Sloan Peak, Bedal Basin — Monday, Jun. 15, 2015

North Cascades > Mountain Loop Highway

Did a day hike up Sloan Peak via the Bedal Creek trail. No recent trip reports for this trail, so here it is. Road 4096 is in fairly good shape, and doesn't seem to get too much use, but there is a lot of loose rock kicked around by 2WD cars on the steeper stretches. There are one or two trees down blocking bits of the road, but they are easy to get around. No clearance issues. Mountain Loop Hwy from Barlow Pass to here has some very bad stretches of potholes. The Bedal Creek trail starts from the parking area at the end of the road, NOT down the closed portion of the road. There is a signpost, but no sign, at the actual trail start. This trail has gotten VERY little use, but the footbed is mostly in very good shape. There are quite a few logs down across the trail (10-15) in the first mile or so, none were major problems. I have an old (2002 revision) Green Trails map which shows the trail crossing to the SW side of the creek, as does the USGS topo; but the trail stays on the NE side the whole way. The trail is quite overgrown going through several avalanche chutes. Shoulder high salmonberries, ferns, one patch of nettles (ouch), etc. It's mostly obvious where the trail goes (I lost it very briefly once), but you can't see the footbed through all the vegetation, so it's slow going as you feel your way along. Long pants and sleeves are helpful. All in all, the trail is in surprisingly good shape considering how much use it seems to get. The trail ends at the toe of a rock slide / debris flow right where the thick forest ends. There is another signless signpost there. Perhaps it used to say "end of unmaintained trail"? You continue steeply up this debris flow and stream, or just to the right of it, until just past a 15' bedrock waterfall at around 4500'. There the trail heads to the right through some forest again, before emerging in some parkland. You continue generally up the obvious streambed there, and work up the left of two steep basins to the major ridge running west from the southern part of Sloan. These basins are steep and can be fairly slippery with vegetation. I ended up "skiing" down much of it on my boots, squatting, as it was too slippery to get decent footing while going down. Once on that ridge you can follow a bit of a path up the ridge, until it drops down slightly on the south side through a bit of small trees before opening up. Then it's traversing and climbing steep scree, talus and heather around the open SW facing basin up to the south ridge of Sloan at ~6500'. The first snow on this hike was a few patches starting around 6000', but you could use these or not, depending on preference. Crossing the snow in the SE basin was no problem, but there was an unpleasant 2' overhanging moat separating a 45 degree snow slope from 45 degree smooth granite slope at the bottom of the "lower shelf". This is EXACTLY the same problem that stopped a climb on Aug 1 of 2008. Which it appears I never sent a trip report in for, surprisingly. But the moat was smaller this time, and I did find a spot to get across where some snow had collapsed. Then crept up the bare rock, then up the "lower shelf" on heather and rock, not having to get on the snow at all. The gully connecting to the "upper shelf" had VERY steep snow, so that was not an option. After wandering around quite a while, I realized you could continue around the lower shelf, right around the south end of the mountain, to the west face. And spending a while poking around there, finally found the route up to the summit, which heads up, and north, from the "notch". So from the lower shelf you have to go around, then up to the notch, THEN head north. It's not at all obvious which of many options on the west face actually gets you somewhere. From the notch the route is easy and obvious and well used to the summit. Fantastic views from the summit, of course, this being the highest peak around other than Glacier and its subsidiaries. But I left my pack below, so no pictures. It was a bit of an intimidating climb, with the nasty moat crossing, and a lot of fairly steep, crumbly, very exposed climbing above that. The snow coverage was nearly identical to the time I was up there on August 1, which I guess I kind of expect given the snowpack this winter. There is water along the whole route right now, but it's pretty dry up there, and above 4500' there won't be any soon. Didn't see much wildlife at all; some goat fur and prints, some pika noises, some various birds. No people prints, except some faint old tracks visible on the snow slope, and some bootprints up near the summit (presumably coming from the "true" corkscrew route on the upper shelf). Some flowers blooming, penstemons, columbine, bunchberry, Columbia lily, Pedicularis, shooting stars, a little bit of heather, etc. Nothing profuse or spectacular. The picture shows my route across the snow (more or less level across the snow and rocks to the finger of snow on the right edge that leads up onto the shelf), then up the lower shelf (some snow visible here, more present but not visible). On this picture the lower shelf disappears behind the south ridge before it gets to the "gully", or wraps around the south side.