Mount Teneriffe — Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014

Snoqualmie Region > North Bend Area

A few friends and I set out to do Teneriffe today just before sunrise since it seemed like a pretty modest winter hike not to far from home. We got drenched from the trailhead until around about 1700 feet and a transition to snow. The road is a very gentile incline until around 2300 feet where steeper switchbacks start. Pretty soon after this point we decided to put on snowshoes because of all the fresh powder. No tracks were visible in this section. The road continues with gradually deeper snow (eventually three or four feet today) until the junction to blowdown peak. If you haven't tried this hike before watch out for the several false roads which take convincing paths away from the main road. We had to do some backtracking after making a wrong turn around 3900 feet. The junction to the boot trail was very clear even in today's winter wonderland. The road takes a sharp left down past blowdown peak and a smaller road/boot trail continues up a ridge. eventually thinning. We completely lost the trail after continuing a while towards the peak, but if you follow the most prominent ridge you will get there. The final 150 vertical feet was very difficult with recent powder and with some deep drifts. Even with snowshoes we were sinking in 1-2 feet and it was quite tiring. The last few feet were ice today though which was a nice relief after so much powder making our way up the ridge. Beware of the large cornices at the summit. They are not easily visible and could very well give under your weight. Be smart and stay well back from the edge. Overall a great, but long snowshoe through the clouds in a beautiful environment. A map and compass were a must today and a GPS helped as well. Snowshoes are a definite requirement. We used microspikes for awhile as well but probably could have gone without. Car: 6:50 Summit: 12:40-1:05 Car: 4:12