This was the longest day+ I’ve done in quite a while. The hike started Friday night with an 8:00 pm departure from the trailhead. We’d been shooting for 6:00, but underestimated the drive time (It’s about 70 minutes from Roslyn on a bumpy, but sedan-passable dirt road). The darkness caused a couple of wrong turns on the trail from the PCT to Peggy’s Pond and we rolled into camp at 11:00. Sleep enfolded us by 11:30 and too quickly abandoned us at 3:30 AM. The clouds had lifted and we were blessed with nearly full moonlight for the initial route-finding.

We left Peggy’s at 4:15 and headed NNW, ascending to the notch just west of the point labeled 6350 ft on old topo maps, arriving at the ridge at 5:30. By this time the clouds had returned and we had intermittent spits of rain and fog for the rest of the morning. The fog complicated the route-finding to only a minor degree. We contoured around, dropping slightly to 6100 feet to skirt below the steepest snowfields. We’d been worried that the snow might be slushy, despite the early start, because the nightly lows had been well above freezing for the past several days. It turned out to be a great consistency (neither ice nor slush) and we put on crampons at 7:00 AM and kept them on for most of the rest of the traverse.

We reached Lynch Gap at about 9:00 AM and found Pea Soup Lake mostly melted out, forcing us further up the ridge to the next notch, from which we descended scree to the shores of the lake and followed moderately sloped snow around to the glacier. At this point the sun broke through for good, providing striking views of the Daniel Pyramid. Our spirits soared as it also showed a smooth glacier with few crevasses.

This was only my second time leading on a glacier and the other two party members were new to glacier travel, so we took our time setting up the rope team and going over our crevasse rescue plans and techniques. This also gave me time to eat the burrito I’d purchased in Ellensburg the previous day. We reached the top at 2:15 with only minor detours to avoid crevasses. We also took a water break mid-glacier. We snacked, took photos, and enjoyed the terrific views north and south (the clouds were impenetrable to the west) and then headed down the standard SE ridge route at 3:30.

We were overconfident after our successful glacier ascent, thinking that the hardest part was over. We encountered some steep and very slushy snow interspersed with steep scree and steep hard packed dirt while traversing around the peak incorrectly labeled as the summit on topo maps. I reluctantly took my ice axe back out, but one party member did not--he slipped and nearly met a gruesome end, luckily saving himself with his hands in the soft snow. After collecting himself and carefully returning to our footprints, he made it the rest of the way to the gap south of faux Daniel. From there we crossed the snowfield to the SE ridge and hoofed it back to camp, arriving at about 6:00.

We departed at 6:30 and then, in full on zombie mode, mutely trudged down the endless trail back to our cars, finally arriving at 9:30 PM. We celebrated with chips and beer. Thinking that the food and celebration had pepped us up, we all jumped in our cars and headed down the road. Two of us quickly pulled over and napped, however, before continuing our drives home.

It’s a very rewarding route and a great step for the beginning glacier enthusiast!