Watch Mountain — Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021

I went out in search of some vitamin D and oxytocin, while ticking off some items on my "leftovers list" and Watch Mountain fit the bill.

Road Conditions

The road was still bumpy and there are 2 sections that I recommend high clearance for (a minor water ford and a steep section), but the most important thing would probably be to have AWD/4WD and be comfortable with single lane roads. Someone cleaned up the logs/blowdowns from last season, which made the drive more stress free than last winter.

I parked before the washout, like before, and walked up the road.

How it Went

Much was different this time: no snow meant that everything buried was now exposed, which meant... tons of slide alder 😔. The way up to the lake wasn't that bad, but I needed to limbo around and under loads of slide alder to try and get back up to the old lookout site, whereas before I just went straight ahead in the snow. It was very tedious and annoying, but didn't take that long.

Getting across from the old lookout site to the west peak though was kind of a nightmare. Lots of blowdowns, slide alders, or similar, steep sidehilling over duffy terrain, mossy rocks, some class 3 moves getting up and over a cliff band, and cruddy runout (Bearjack level BS terrain, but longer). Now I know why everyone chooses the Peppe Ridge Rd route with bikes 😕. At least Tahoma and Pahto were fully out and Loowit was partially out with Goat Rocks and Tatoosh Range, as well as Watch Lake and a lot of pretty aspens with golden leaves off in the valley by Randle. It definitely made up for the suckiness of the traverse. Lots of F bombs were deployed today, however (as you can guess by my using "BS" multiple times in this trip report).

Knowing I didn't want to go back that way (it took 2 hours to get from east to west), I thought I was being smart by picking a bushwhack route down to the road. I figured, if I have to deal with the bushwhack, I might as well make the traverse easier by following the road by Watch Lake (plus, it would make a bit more fun of a loop with less BS ups and downs). I would have preferred just following the road down from the lookout, but sadly the road that goes by Watch Lake meanders a few more miles, making for a long slog of a walk.

It was a great idea, but agghhhhhhhh... veggie belaying off slide alder, steep wet duff (pine needles mostly), wet alder leaves, dealing with thistles and devil's club, and dealing with other shenanigans made for a not so fun 500' descent from the decommissioned road. Once I got back to the road though by the lake, it was smooth sailing, so 🤷🏼‍♀️. My guess is that if I had a bike or something similar stashed to do the west to east return, it would have been much nicer going down the road, but that would have been silly: why go up the road to stash a bike when you can just ride the bike up to the lookout?

So, since I've done this with and without snow now twice and once, respectively, I can say with some degree of clarity that this area is best visited with snow. I also don't recommend going to the lookout from the east approach, unless you like loads of bushwhacking, are a self-masochist, or are for some odd reason seeking some serious adventure. It just wasn't fun. Also, definitely bring high tops and trekking poles to help stabilize yourself going up and down 30°+ slopes.

Oh, and a lot of the old roads on old maps have basically slid off the side of the mountain on the south side up high, so I wouldn't assume that those exist, like I did, foolishly did looking at old topo maps 😖. Looking at Google Earth and satellite photos is probably better for planning a realistic route. The CalTopo MapBuilder topo layer was really off too with some of the positions of the roads as well down by the lake. The scanned topos layer was more spot on there.

I ended up doing around 13 miles and 4.4k'. A GPX is attached to the peakbagger ascent trip report.

Other thoughts

If it wasn't for the road being so garbage, I would recommend folks head up to Watch Lake. It can't be camped at since it's on leased land (well, as of 01/2021) and the land leaser stipulated that all visits be day visits--unless permission is acquired before going, which might involve permitting and fees.

There are some really nice views of Tahoma up on the switchbacks, but Pahto, Loowit, Goat Rocks, and the Tatoosh aren't really super visible when snow free until you get up past the slide alder and start pushing up the SE ridge towards the east peak.

Recommended gear/skills

• Bushwhacking.
• Route finding/navigation.
• Small scrambling experience.
• Trekking poles.
• High top boots.

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=1796358