We based at Peggy’s for a night to scramble Mt Daniel early the next morning. Cle Elum River Road was fine, if a bit washboarded and dusty. The ford at Scatter Creek didn’t give our little SUV any problems. Finding a parking spot on a Saturday morning in July however… wow. Lots of cars. But those parking lots at road’s end serve trails in multiple directions so once we got away from the road it didn’t feel crowded.
It was quite warm. We sweated on the way to Peggy’s. But it’s shady down low on the trail and the scenery is excellent after you clear the woods above Squaw Lake so we happily cruised on up. The rough traverse from the PCT over to Peggy’s along the side of Cathedral is about the same as it ever was. One piece of navigation advice: when you get to a sketchy gully crossing and the trail seems to dive down left, look up and right for a large pistol butted evergreen. Decide for yourself whether the trail (on rock) just above the base of that tree looks better than the dirt scramble down the gulley. We chose that higher path and while there was some exposure we all made it across safely.
Peggy’s was full of campers but we lucked into a good site courtesy of someone else packing up as we arrived. As soon as we stopped moving we were beset by swarms of gnats, flies and mosquitos. We hurriedly set up our tents. Except for a few brief wonderful gusts of wind the biting hordes never let up. It might not have been the worst bugs I’ve seen but it was memorable. We mostly stayed in our tents. Shortly after dinner the shade of Mt Daniel enveloped us and we hit the sack. It was a beautifully quiet night. Great stars.
Starting predawn to beat the heat we made good time up the SE ridge. Alas, the bugs also got up early to escort us up the ridge. Route finding on the ridge wasn’t tough. There were boot paths in the dirt and tracks in the snowfields. Traction was good. We didn’t put on gaiters or spikes until we left the ridge up around 7200’. That’s about when we finally left the bugs too. At that point we opted go right and drop onto the snowfield to do a rising traverse to the east col. We had boots, gaiters, crampons or microspikes, ice axes and helmets. Getting into the col we had to make our way around some very steep snow.
After the col thing got a little dicier. I’d recommend against doing this route unless you have prior experience on steep snow and scree or go with someone who can guide. That’s about all I can say about it.
We managed to get up the west and east peaks (The highest people in King County for a little while!) and make our way back to the col and back down the snowfield. Back at camp we took a quick splash in the pond (still with snow in places), packed as fast as we could and booked down the mountain.
It was so hot at the car my National Forest/Park Pass partially melted and curled like a potato chip.
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