Scimitar Glacier, Dakobed

Over the long weekend my friend Blair and I spent a few days out in the Glacier Peak Wilderness hoping to do a traverse of the peak, approaching via the NF Sauk and exiting via the old White Chuck road.

The night before starting we decided to car camp at the washout on the White Chuck road since we figured it would be much quieter than the North Fork Sauk trailhead. We got an early start, setting alarms for 3:30 to finish setting up the car shuttle. After the annoying early morning drive we left the trailhead a bit after 5:30 and cruised up the flat approach miles. We switched to ski boots at maybe 5000' and eventually left the trail to set a booter directly up to a notch west of White Mountain at 6600' (the standard "winter route"). We dropped into the White Chuck drainage on the other side of the col, and found slightly overcooked but manageable snow. We skinned the rest of the way to Glacier Gap, with a not-so-quick stop to filter water from a tiny trickle of melt through a rock band involving some moat shenanigans and an ice screw spigot. But it was still fairly early by the time we reached Glacier Gap and having re-filled water we decided to camp a bit higher up, knowing that we were carrying overnight packs up and over the summit anyways. We found a really nice camp near the toe of the Suiattle Glacier, pitching our tent in a protected wind scoop and lounging around on some nearby dry ground for the rest of the evening.

The next morning we got a leisurely start, packing up camp and heading up the standard Suiattle/Cool route around 6:45am. We slogged up the glaciers and caught most of the other groups at the summit around 9:45am, just as it became enveloped in some fast-moving clouds. We didn't dally too long and dropped directly of the summit to the north as soon as we had some brief clearing. The first turns off the summit were fantastic for Memorial Day weekend, variable dry snow with some wind crust and sastrugi mixed in with boottop pow. After skiing several steep rollovers to the headwall of the Scimitar, we got sucked a bit too far skier's right, missing the main entrance to the gut of the glacier. We were able to descend a ramp on skier's right - with high consequence jump turns through some refrozen chunder - and eventually traverse to get back into the gut of the line. We crossed one notable snow bridge across the big bergschrund and continued down the glacier, the snow now becoming glacial pseudocorn. Further down the glacier there were three "cruxy" rollovers, each of which melts out as a wall-to-wall serac in late season. We brought gear to rappel if necessary and approached each rollover carefully, only to find continuous snow ramps through each of the rollovers. Some glacial ice was starting to poke through around the last rollover, but compared to previous trip reports it's very evident that anthropogenic warming is taking a toll on these seracs. Below the cruxes the glacier mellowed out, and we skied a few thousand feet of crust and schmoo down to the moraine. We were stoked to have skied the line, but being dumped in the middle of nowhere on the north side of Glacier Peak we both knew that the real adventure was just beginning.

From the bottom of the ski, our plan was to traverse onto the PCT and follow the PCT to a ridge near Milk Lakes. From there, we hoped to bushwhack down a ridgeline to connect with the back end of the Meadow Mountain trail (an idea that we got from a 2023 trip report. Then we could take out to the old White Chuck Trail and eventually the decommissioned road, where my van was waiting at the end of a ~7 mi road walk.

However, from the moraine of the Scimitar we found cliffs on the Kennedy moraine that were not evident looking at lidar data for the region and prevented a simple traverse to the PCT. Instead, we skied down the creek a ways and bushwhacked up the toe of these cliffs through some choss and eventually some very steep forest. From there, we were able to cross a steep creek bed and eventually find the PCT. This 0.3 miles detour set us back maybe 2 hours from our original plan, but it was still early afternoon so we weren't too concerned. One alternative I might try if I ever go back would be to traverse across the toe of the Kennedy Glacier and traverse across Kennedy Ridge much higher - there is a hanging snow ramp that appeared to go if it was gained early enough, but it is far above the Scimitar Moraine. But the lower Kennedy Glacier appeared fairly broken up.

Once we gained the PCT travel became slightly more straightforward but continued to be arduous and slow - the PCT traverses across several drainages, which included some sections of face-in traversing through steep forested terrain. Another drainage was steeper and had some overhead exposure, but fortunately it also was more open and had much better snow coverage so we were able to short-cut the PCT by skiing down into the drainage and booting back up on the other side. From there, we were able to posthole through wet snow until reaching our bushwhack. At this point it was around 6pm and it had taken us 6.5 hours to traverse 3 miles on the PCT! While we expected this section to be the crux of the weekend, it was more adventurous than we were expecting.

We decided to push further even though sunset was approaching, hoping to make good time and exit to my van that night. The bushwhack was quite straightforward - just follow the ridge - and fairly open. As far as bushwhacks go, it was cruiser. But at this point the long day and all the elevation with overnight packs started to catch up with us. We were still happy to do the bushwhack before rain came in the next day, but we camped at the old White Chuck trailhead just before 11pm.

When we woke up in the morning we were surprised to find out that someone else was actually camping at the old trailhead too. That was a bit of a shock considering how remote most of the previous day had been. He came over to our camp to chat and it turned out that he is a former ski patroller! So cool to run into cool people like that in such a remote and (literally) abandoned place. Also shoutout to him for offering us coffee and food, we must have looked pretty haggard.

The rest of the last day was chill. We packed up camp and suffered with our heavy packs one last time. We made it to my van in about 2 hours now that we had fresh(er) legs. It was awesome to have this trip in the bag - especially since I had a pancake breakfast waiting for me at the van - but a little bittersweet since it's not likely that I'll be back to such a remote area anytime soon.