Scatter Creek, Scatter Peak — Thursday, Jul. 27, 2023

A scramble of Scatter Peak via Scatter Creek Pass. There was a trail work crew working on the lower first 2 miles of the South Scatter Creek Trail, improving drainage and rerouted a large section of the trail. Thank you for the great work! At 2 miles up we reached the junction and went left toward Scatter Creek. We crossed the south fork of the creek and then the main stem, both crossings were easy over rocks. After crossing the main creek, the trail soon arrives at the first meadow where is completely vanishes. This meadow is a bit wet and muddy, too. But the flowers are out in force! By following GPS tracks we found the trail re-enter the woods on the other side. This is pretty much the story of this trail alternating between large lush meadows and forest, often vanishing or hard to follow in the meadows. And beware of hidden blowdowns in the meadows which are nasty little tripping hazards. But the flowers are out in force, with paintbrush highlighting the show. We got to where we cross Scatter Creek again, which is the last water source and we topped off our water here. The trail steeply climbs up to a big upper flower meadow, crosses through that, then through some brush, then steeply up again to Scatter Creek Pass.

From the pass, we turned south toward Scatter Peaks, following the ridge then scrambling up through fantastic grippy red rock toward the base of the mountain. This is the same grippy red rock that is found on Bean Peak or around Ingalls Lake or Paddy-Go-Easy Pass; great stuff! There is a giant obvious ramp that goes up diagonally right-to-left (see photos), and we aimed for the start of that ramp. The ramp is wide and spacious but with loose rock in areas to be mindful of. We ascended the ramp to the top of it where it ended at a cliff. From here there is a nice little chimney to scramble up with some fantastic holds. This led us up to the north false summit where we had a view of the main summit. We crossed a small talus basin then up another little ramp (see photo) with some more rock scrambling to the summit, arriving just under 5 hours after leaving the cars.

We looked at the traverse past Middle Scatter Peak to Scatter Benchmark, but it looked like nothing but nasty loose talus, so we opted to return the way we came. When we got back to the north false summit, we scrambled down a slightly different way back down to the ramp that had less exposure than the chimney we went up. Then down the ramp and back to the pass and back out through the many meadows. Returned to the cars 3.5 hours after leaving the summit, 9 hours round trip.

GPS track: https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/3d565e34-d365-4230-9a1c-cce61bdde25c/

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/3d565e34-d365-4230-9a1c-cce61bdde25c/