Home > Trip Reports > December 10, 2005, Sahale Peak

December 10, 2005, Sahale Peak

12/10/05
WA Cascades East Slopes North
7551
14
Posted by Paul_Russell on 12/14/05 1:33am
The Cascade River Road is easily passable to milepost 20 (Eldorado Creek) where it is gated leaving about 3 mi to the TH.  Monika and I started from the car at 8:30am and made it to the top of the Sahale Glacier by about 2:30pm (~8mi and 6600' gain).  It's still a bit boney in spots in the basin heading up to Cascade Pass, but no problem negotiating with one short section to walk across.  It was a beautiful day with


Nice work! I like to see people that don't ask for beta and just go for it. Good stuff  ;D

Great picture of the pass with the cloud in the valley!

awesome... I'm suprised you were able to drive that far on the road, I would have expected it was under quite a bit of snow.
was the snow refrozen up high?  Sounds like just wind-packed, not sun-crusty?

Just windpacked, not crusty for the top 500' or so on the glacier where its steeper.  Actually soft enough to send down a few small pinwheels.  The only real crust we found was coming back down from the pass into the basin.  But it was pretty warm at the higher evelations on Sat; I expect it might be different this weekend with the lower freezing levels.

The Park Service could only say that the road was gated but had no info regarding how passable it would be. Thought it would be worth a try since its only at 2200' elevation, and decided we'd do Little Devil from the Monogram Lake TH as an alternative (at 1300').

Sorry for the dumb ass post, just trying to picture where you went.  The 3 miles to the TH was the same TH that would take you to the Torment-Forbidden travers and or Sharkfin tower?  Then you skied from the summit down to Cascade pass and then down the road from Cascade pass?  Sorry for this :)

So my Q is, how was it taking the skis up that trail?  If it is the same trail I has having a hell of a time in places durring the summer with trees and I was not packing skis.

No we didn't go into Boston Basin or summit.  We went to Cascade Pass and up Sahale Arm; only followed the summer trail a short distance then made as direct line as possible up the basin to the pass.  We considered going up the Boston Basin trail and skiing the Quien Sabe Gl, but opted not to, partly for the reasons you mentioned that its a more difficult approach.

thanks for another great trip Paul !  :D



Started skinning up the trail to Cascade Pass for only the beginning and then crawled/slid/pulled through  ;) the Alder for a short while before actually heading across and onto the valley floor to skin up what we could then see as the best way to ski down.  On the way down we had a nice view of a long thread of snow to take us within 25m of the parking lot so the Alder crawling was much more minimal.  

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the alder :)

You can usually avoid the alder altogether if you leave the road at the last hairpin turn (right next to the river).

Nice pictures and great timing!! Must be pretty cool to have this entire valley to yourselves!

Thanks for the info.  Again, nice trip.  I really like the pick of the skier and the vally of fog.  


VERY nice! I'm gonna have to go there sometime.  Anyone want to join me for it, some time in January?

Oh yeah.. hope ya don't mind I used one of your pics for my desktop wallpaper.   ;D

Nice trip! I love that photo looking east with McGregor and Oval.

paul and monika--nice trek!  and awesome photos to show for it.  you guys are such rockstars.   8)

oh yeah, and way to attack that alder!  

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december-10-2005-sahale-peak
Paul_Russell
2005-12-14 09:33:02