Colchuck Lake, Colchuck Peak — Wednesday, May. 10, 2017

A quick report on our Colchuck Peak Attempt.  On our trip the road was closed but as of May 16th word is that it is open.  It was entirely melted out for our trip up.  

We made quick work of the road and hit the Stuart lake Trail which was snow covered almost immediately.  But the bootpath was easy to follow and being early in the morning the snow remained consolidated.  The bridge crossing was mostly melted out.  We hung a left at the junction with Colchuck Lake and wer pleased to find that bridge melted out as well.  The boulder field immediately after had seen some people punch through but we remained on top of the snow.

We followed the most obvious bootpath to the lake, but there were many different trails up so some familiarity with this area will be helpful.  The lake was still frozen over but there was also a bootpath around the lake.  

At four hours in we began the climb up to Colchuck Glacier.  The snow being in the direct sunlight already for a couple of hours was soft but we were fortunate to be able to follow a path already kicked in.  The snow on the glacier was more firm and our crampons got a good grip as we found ourselves at the col rather quickly.  There was some minor rockfall coming off the two surrounding peaks as we climbed but nothing major.

The final 700' from the col to the summit was a postholing nightmare by this time of the day (around noon).  We tried to stick to the rocks when we could.  There is one final steep section of snow to climb before the summit plane but it was easy to get up with the soft snow.  We made the summit in about two hours.

We then simply retraced our steps from there, glissading the glacier was easy in the softer snow.  However the track down from the lake to the junction with the Stuart TH was a lot of postholing again.  Still don't think it was worth the weight of snowshoes though.

Made it back to our cars in a little over 12 hours.