Gunn Peak

A few weeks ago, Adam and I headed out to ski Gunn Peak, the tallest mountain in an area of the Cascades I’d never explored. With a low elevation start and some steep climbers’ trail through the forest before hitting skiable terrain, this was the perfect mission for us to bring out our ski blades. We had some crappy skiing conditions, beautiful views, and good brother time on a pretty mellow overnight. More pics on my website.

After a relaxed morning and a nice lunch at the Sultan Bakery, we drove easily all the way to the trailhead, which was chilly with the temperature inversion. We left the car just before 14:00 with skis on our packs and only three hours to go before sunset. There was only one other car parked along the road, and we’d hadn’t even made it to Barclay Creek before we ran into it’s owner, who looked at the skis on our packs, laughed to himself, and said "boy, you two have a long way to get before you reach snow." An auspicious start.

We crossed Barclay Creek with careful balance and minimal trouble, and headed up the steep but easy to follow climbers trail on the far side. We started encountering patchy snow a few hundred feet below the "tricky" gully crossing which itself wasn't bad. On the far side of the gully, there was more consistent snow, and we booted up through some icy sections until we popped out of the trees and got our first nice views of Wing Peak. Although we could have switched to skiing earlier, booting seemed efficient, so we continued up to about 4,700 ft before leaving our hiking boots where the previous tracks we had been following ended. We continued following the summer route, skinning up the ridge saddle at 5,400 ft between Wing and Tailgunner where we found a nice spot to camp.

With half an hour until sunset, we left out overnight gear and headed out to watch the sunset from Wing Peak. We traversed the ridge and ascended very crusty steep snow with the aid of ski crampons to reach the top of Wing, where we were rewarded with beautiful views in all directions, including Glacier Peak to the north, along with a great angle of Baring’s incredible Northeast Face. Before it got truly dark, we skied some impressively manky crust off the summit back to our campsite, and had a good time digging a nice tent platform and making dinner. My thermometer showed 16°, but it was very calm, so we hung out outside watching the stars before the increasing wind blew us into our sleeping bags.

After a pleasant night, I got up for sunrise and snapped some pictures before breakfast. We headed off towards Gunn just before 9:00, skinning a short ways west before skiing a fun gully and traversing into the basin south of Gunn. 15 minutes of skiing up firm snow brought us to the “hidden ramp” that provides access to the upper slopes of Gunn. This was about 100 vertical feet of firm 50° snow, which we made quick work of in our boot crampons. By 10:00 we were booting across the upper snowfield in the sun towards the V notch between Gunn’s true and east summits. It was easy to reach the notch, but the steep snow on the north side dropped an airy 3,000+ feet down into Trout Creek and seemed like a bad idea to solo. We regrouped, and by backtracking 100 feet we found a 15-20 foot class 3 rock scramble (doable in ski boots) that let us gain access to the East Ridge. 150 more vertical feet of easy but airy snow climbing brought us to the summit at 10:45. Great views in all directions, including down to the Index Town walls from far above.

After enjoying the view, we retraced our steps without trouble and retrieved our skis from the V notch. There was nice corn on the upper slopes, then we skied the hidden ramp very carefully as it was icy and shitty, side stepping much of it. The fan below was fun skiing, and quickly we were putting skins on to head back up to camp.

We got back to camp at noon and packed up to descend to the car. We skinned a short distance back towards Tailgunner before ripping skins and following our tracks back down into the forest. We retrieved our boots and enjoyed entertaining vegetated skiing all the way down to an icy section at 4100 feet, just above the gully. We put our skis on our packs here and used boot crampons to descend the ice, then changed into hiking boots to cross the gully. After a bit of unpleasant icy forest descending, we cruised down to Barclay Creek and were back at the car just past 14:30.