After daydreaming about climbing this mountain for five years I finally had the opportunity to make an attempt mid-week with one of my favorite adventure partners. We prefer the fast and light approach to mountaineering and as such, left the overnight gear at home and tackled it as a car-to-car.
Road is in great shape and should not cause an issue. Parking lot is obvious.
We jumped off at 0600, quickly found the logs that cross the river and began the grunt up. I was not expecting such an established trail and we made good time up through the forest, hitting the boulder field in about an hour. We followed the cairns for a bit but then our inclination to go straight up took over and we strayed a bit from the beaten path. Eventually we noted this and made our way back to the trail.
You cross the creek a few times before climbing above the treeline so here is your chance to load up on water. Didn't see many sources after this. The snow begins in earnest right above the treeline and we made our way quickly over to Roush. Some downlcimbing with hands is required here and a moat is opening up a bit at the base but it is navigated fairly easily.
We then began the climb up in firm snow as it was in the shade of the ridge. However once we hit the slopes that had been in the sun it was already turning pretty mushy. Upon arrival on the glacier we decided we didn't need to rope up and kept our gear in our packs. There was a bootpath across the glacier with a few signs of crevasses that are easily avoidable.
The last 1,000' of climbing up to the summit does take you around some larger crevasses but again, easily avoidable. The knife edge rim is pretty tame at this time with a well worn path that is wide on the south side of the ridge. By this time (11 AM) the snow was the consistency of mashed potatoes so we made a brief summit visit and then headed back.
Some campsites are melted out on inspiration glacier but I didn't notice any running water.
We quickly followed our path back down but sticking to the trail the entire way this time. Total time was 8:45.
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