"I had originally conceived of this loop to get to Ice Lakes without taking the burned-out Entiat Valley, with the bonus of needing only one car. That original iteration departed via the Rock Creek (1509) or Basalt Peak (1515) trails. Reports of terrible post-fire jackstraw lodgepole on Basalt Peak were not appealing and my dear friend Tanner was able to join with a second car, so we opted to depart from the Basalt Pass trail (1530) instead, shaving off a few miles and a 1000 ft. Aside from Ice Lakes, our primary objectives were to climb Mt. Maude and Seven Fingered Jack (7FJ), two of the tallest non-volcanic peaks in Washington (both top 9000 ft.) Day 1 (13.2 miles, 7149 ft): The trail to Basalt Pass was logged out and in good shape. We walked over Peak 6351 and Peak 6754 (Basalt Ridge), pausing frequently to admire the sea of peaks to the south dramatized by a light smoke haze in the valleys. Small plumes from the two fires near Lake Wenatchee were visible, but smoke would not become an issue until later in the trip. We reached the Garland Peak trail around lunchtime. Much of this portion of the ridgeline is a moonscape of light pumice and alpine buckwheat, with a lot of..." — TynanRammGranberg • Aug 31, 2022

"Silver Star Mountain via Burgundy Col. Interesting mountain! Lots of deadfall down low, but quickly clears and yields to easily followable trail. Early Winters Creek crossing is no problemo thanks to a dry log just a few yards right of the trail on the approach. We stayed at Bench Camp, with plenty flat sites for tents and water a short romp away on a well-worn side path (48.55487, -120.60359). The hike up the gully to Burgundy Col is effin’ hot garbage. Stay climber’s left of the gully proper to trade loose,microwave-sized death traps for equally unenjoyable (but far less dangerous) slabs covered in kitty litter. This area felt like the crux of the entire climb. Take your time route-finding through here both coming and going. The drop onto the other side of the mountain from Burgundy col was into steep. A party ahead of us rappeled down on a snow bollard, but we had no problems down-climbing the soft snow, which had a nice runout. A glorious boot pack highway leads all the way to the summit block. Silver Star Glacier was super closed in the early morning, so we opted to ascend unroped. Snow still covers much of the summit save for about a hundred feet of straightforward scrambling..." — wacbravo • Jul 11, 2022

"An all-out grepic (ahem, that's grim epic for those unfamiliar) to climb these 2 remote WA 9000 footers. We drastically underestimated the distance and vert and fell into a huge bushwhacking terrain trap. Left house at 5am, and after a hypnotically long and bumpy road to the Phelps Creek Trailhead, Josh and I were off at 7:30ish for a socially-distanced climb. Well, things really started out on the wrong foot. Kind of literally. About a mile in, we hit a gushing stream crossing and had no choice but to wade across. I took off my muddy trail runners and decided to just toss them across the stream. But I stuffed a sock in the first shoe and of course it fell out midway into the raging torrent. Gone. I crammed a buff in my shoe as a kind of make-shift sock that didn't work at all. Idiot. But this would be an epic day after all. The weather was perfect, minimal clouds and moderate temps. We made great time up to Leroy Basin and then after a bit of bushwhacking picked a direct route up a snow finger to Seven Fingered Jack. After a final stretch of tedious, loose talus fields we somewhat painlessly found ourselved on the summit of SFJ drinking crumbs of demolished cornbread muf..." — scott • Jun 19, 2020

"From Nathan and Terrence's trip report a few weeks back on WTA We are the Mountain Goats, Nathan (15) and Terrence (13), and recently (on Memorial Day) we climbed Eldorado Peak. We started from the trailhead at around 1 PM. We had a hard time finding the creek crossing on the way up, but on the way back we realized that on the road there is a small turnout, and a cairn marking where you want to leave the road (left from the parking lot) and bushwhack down to the creek. It's about 250 feet from the parking lot. There are decent logs to cross the creek (you actually cross twice) before heading back to the right (east) where you will find the the trailhead sign and trail. The trail starts in the woods, and it is very steep. Very similar to Mailbox, and even Snoqulamie Mountain. Pretty tough with full packs, and it takes awhile to get to the start of the boulder field at about 4,000 feet. You pick your way left to right over the boulders, which are large, so there is a lot of "hopping." There are a lot of cairns, and we we were able to pick up the actual trail here and there. Note that you want to stay to the right - the nice part about the boulder field is the views sta..." — BryHong8 • May 27, 2019

"I’d like to think I made history with this one. After a huge Italian dinner and beers, we casually decided at the midnight hour, “let’s do Dragontail tomorrow”. The prior 2 big days had started to take their toll, but the beer was talking now. Only thing: I had a catch a flight back to SF the next evening. If we went for Dragontail, we’d have to book it. I was skeptical. But Josh just said, “Let’s do it.” On the trail to Colchuck Lake at 6:30am. We flew up, under 1 1/2 hrs to the lake. I ran out of steam a bit on Aasgard while Josh surged ahead and flashed the whole pass climb in 40 min. From here, we made some routefinding mistakes that cost us precious time and eventually led us into walls of smooth boulders in a glacier headwall. Getting out of that mess proved to be our crux; we were also dangerously close to our turnaround time. Luckily, once above the rock bands it was smooth sailing. Crampons across to the top of the glacier and then a couple class 3/4 moves over a late-season moat to gain the Class 2 south ridge. Going down we skirted left and avoided all of the mess in the headwall. A climber’s route is well cairned and only moderately tedious talus and r..." — scott • Sep 9, 2018