Wow, what can you say. Don’t let the absence of trip report deter you. If you’re getting into route finding and are looking for a calf burner, this is the trail for you. The ‘X’ marking the start of the path (pic#2, 46.76248,-121.87738) is quite faded along the left side of Westside Road, but if you see some small pull offs on the right side of the road with view of Tahoma Creek, you’re in the right spot.
The path is overgrown and almost nonexistent for the first 500ft of elevation gain, but it becomes relatively straightforward and easy to follow for the remainder of the trail (pic#1). The are some downed trees and brush to navigate through in the first half of the trail, but thats why you chose this trail! Once you get past the lake, you encounter more high alpine meadow and exposed gullies/rock terrain along with intermittent stretches in densely forested areas. As others noted on here and on Peakbagger, you’ll be tempted to take the climbers right path up this steep gully. It might be doable if you’re looking for the challenge, but the sensible approach is to follow the path climbers left into the forest to continue up the mountain and navigate around the cliff face (pic#4). I fully expected Class 2/3 scrambling past this point, and was pleasantly surprised to find the gradient through the forest floor duff and meadows (pic#3) to be relatively tame.
Overall, very straight forward and in good condition. I felt like a could turn my brain off and not worry about route finding. The GPX routes posted to Peakbagger in 2023 are still very accurate/representative and guided my decisions well. No snow or chossy terrain to navigate so this is the time of year to go! This mountain deserves more attention, unfortunately for me the cloud floor decided to stick around for the entirety of the morning but I will definitely head back on a bluebird day to say hello to Mama Tahoma.
- Chinook
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