Harding Mountain was one tough trip today getting to the summit, as there was a lot of route finding thru obliterated / overgrown trail, bushwacking, loose boulders, steep loose rocks/scree, etc.
Cle Elum River road is in good shape. Just a few areas with some annoying washboarding. I parked just before the infamous Scatter Creek road crossing next to a couple of dispersed camp spots.
Scatter Creek trail is in good shape until the second creek crossing, where the trail comes out into a meadow. There was a track thru this meadow, but it was boggy and wet. I put gaiters on here as all the foliage was wet. The next couple of meadows, I don't think they used to be meadows, but were forested areas that got obliterated by an old avalanche, were very hard to find the trail. The first one was severely overgrown with trees and slide alder. There were some cairns to help, but it took some imagination to find a route thru. The second one up around 5100ft was very difficult to find a route thru. So many trees that had come down in the avalanche. Most of which have now been covered with waist/ shoulder height vegetation, which made it impossible to see your feet.I didn't fall, but nearly got tripped up , like 30 times.
Once past this I would pick up a pretty good treaded trail, but then it would disappear again thru a couple more beautiful meadows.To the right at the end of this first upper meadow, there is a pretty good trail that headed steeply up to another meadow, and then steeply up again to the pass between Solomon and Scatter Peaks. The trail is again severely overgrown, but there is still some excellent tread.
Once at the pass between Solomon Mountain and Scatter Peak you need to drop down over 500 ft down to a talus field underneath Harding Mountain. Again there is an old trail, but it faint at times, or is severely overgrown, so more bushwacking. Once at this talus field, I traversed over to the steep slope of Harding Mountain. This traverse was tedious with the loose boulders. On the way back, I eliminated this tedious traverse by dropping down another 150 ft, and avoided the loose talus all together. This did make it a 700 vertical foot ascent to get back up to the pass on my way back.
Once at the base of the steep slope, I headed straight up to the saddle between Solomon and Harding. Lots of loose dirt and rocks on this section, plus some bushwacking to avoid a stretch of alpine trees and slide alder. Up past the saddle, it was a class 2 scramble up to the summit, avoiding a couple of gendarmes, and treed sections.
Summit has some outstanding 360 degree views. So many peaks visible today, with no smoke!! Not too many ascents in the summit register. I can see why now. After putting my name in there, I began the long descent back to my car. It took me 5 hours to summit, and 4 hours to get back. Almost every step had to be placed correctly, as not to trip!
Awesome trip, but so very tiring. Started at 8am and finished at 5pm 12.3 miles with 5502 ft elevation gain
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