This was actually a three peak trip including Meany Crest, Banshee Peak, and Central Cowlitz Chimney done as an overnight with a permit in the Sarvant Glacier XC zone. We headed out Saturday around 9am or so from the Summerland trailhead and made our way towards the camp there before splitting off to Meany Crest. We dropped our packs and stashed them in some trees just below most of the boulders and then headed up to tag Meany Crest. Most of Meany is boulder and scree navigating, but it isn't hard to find your way. The amount of exposure you face largely depends on what route you choose when heading up the larger boulder section, there is no established trail or path here and the cairns didn't start until you make it up over the first hump/false summit, or I didn't see them anyway. At that point you can see some cairns, but it's pretty obvious where to go. The views from the top of Meany are fantastic, we could see our next objectives off in the distance one way and Little Tahoma and of course big Tahoma the other direction. Once we had a snack and checked out some views we made our way down and found a goat traversing our path just below the summit. After letting him head towards Little T we continued on back to our packs and then made our way back to the Wonderland trail and over towards Panhandle Gap.
The Wonderland trail is in pretty great shape, you can tell it's incredibly well used but it must see a lot of maintenance. During some of the switchbacks up to Panhandle Gap there are a few little snowfields to cross, but the snow was pretty soft when we made our way out and our way back for that matter, so no traction was needed there for us. After getting to the top of Panhandle Gap we made a left and headed towards to the Sarvant Glacier XC zone to find a place to camp. We ran into an extremely friendly ranger who told us where they generally recommend for camping and we headed that way. The park only allows one group of a max of 5 people in this area per night so it's a pretty amazing experience to have this huge section of the park almost to yourself. We set up camp on a durable surface that had beautiful views of Rainier, Adams, a bunch of other peaks, and a tremendous amount of wildflowers on display. We made dinner, watched the sunset and the stars come out and that was it for the day.
The next morning we got up, caught sunrise, ate some breakfast, and then made our way towards Banshee Peak. There is no established trail in this area, only some little goat paths here and there. The walk up in that early morning light was just stunning amongst the wildflowers and mountain peaks. Too bad I didn't bring my Julie Andrews dress for the occasion, it would have fit right in(I don't actually own one, but I could picture the scene whilst walking through this area). After tagging Banshee we dropped down a few hundred feet on the traverse over toward the Cowlitz Chimneys. The Main Cowlitz Chimney is quite intimidating, but absolutely gorgeous to look at. Here we found a large group of goats below the peak soaking in those sights, they are the original peak baggers after all and know all the best spots. We took a moment here to choose a route for the last 400' or so of the Central Cowlitz Chimney and then made our way up to the summit. There is definitely a fair amount of exposure here and plenty of loose rock, I'd rate this as a T4 as the runout would be pretty bad in a few spots if you were to have a fall. We took our time and made sure our movements were deliberate and before we knew it we were standing on the summit. I did have to use all four of my limbs for this ascent in several sections so make sure you're prepared for that if you intend on bagging Central Cowlitz Chimney. After the summit we made our way back to camp, packed up and then headed out. Total stats for the trip were 18.2 miles and just over 6,000' of total gain.
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