Tatoosh Summit Tagging (Unicorn, Boundary, Denman, Plummer, Castle, & Pinnacle) 9.7 - 9.8.13

Day 1 – Unicorn and Boundary Peaks

Looking east at Foss Peak (left), Unicorn Peak (middle) and Boundary Peak (right)

The weather forecast wasn't looking great for the weekend. I did find a of couple days of non-rain down in the Tatoosh south of Mount Rainier, so Aaron and I started to make plans. We figured a two day peak bagging adventure would be fun, and we could camp in the park Saturday night. Justin has gotten into rock climbing over the last year or so and is leading some good stuff on gear, but he has never really gone hiking and had never summitted a mountain before. What better way to ease him into the alpine experience than to target six peaks in one weekend? I had three days after our Enchantments trip to try and heal my heels. On Wednesday I wore flip flops to the office, but on Thursday and Friday I managed to squeeze my feet into some shoes, although they were off whenever they could be. Luckily three days seemed to do the trick and I could finally put shoes on Saturday morning without wincing. The forecast Friday night looked a little more dismal with a 30% chance of rain on Saturday, but we decided to head down anyways and take our chances. I threw my rain gear in just in case. We left Seattle about 6:45am Saturday morning. Our plan was to climb Unicorn and Boundary Peaks on Saturday, and then climb Denman, Plummer, The Castle, and Pinnacle Peaks on Sunday. I had copied some route information from Summit Post for little beta sheets, and included Stevens Peak just in case we had some extra time on Saturday. On the way down to the park, Aaron checked the forecast again and there was a minimal chance of rain on Saturday and nothing Saturday night or Sunday, things were looking better!

Unicorn Peak as seen from the Snow Lake trail

After claiming a campsite at Cougar Rock and pitching our tents, we headed for the little pull off parking area for Snow Lake and got ready. I had Aaron super tape my heels again. I brought my approach shoes for the weekend but I still wanted to avoid heel issues from the last weekend, not to mention I probably wasn't completely healed up yet. It was sunny and we had some views of Mount Rainier as we drove to the trailhead. I grabbed my camera to get a picture of Justin and Aaron getting ready with Mount Rainier looming behind them, when I discovered I had left my SD card in my computer at home - booo. The last time I had forgotten my SD card was just before New Years when we were down climbing in the Tatoosh too. Justin checked if he had an extra card but no luck, and Aaron didn't bring his camera. Justin had his nice DSLR with, but I still wanted to take some pictures myself. Just as we were about to leave I decided to grab my phone. I don't usually bring it with me and the camera quality isn't stellar, but at least I could take some pictures. Aaron ran up the trail with Justin, then waited for me to catch up and put me out front so they could stick to my slower pace. Maybe 10 minutes into the hike Justin rolled his ankle, but he kept going to try and walk it off. The trail to Snow Lake had more ups and downs than I prefer for my hike out, but it was a nice maintained trail. About a mile and a quarter later we had reached the end of Snow Lake and the maintained trail, so we continued on the well worn climbers trail until we hit the boulder field.

Boulder field leading to the gully with Unicorn Creek (low point in the ridge)

In anticipation of the boulder field, Justin stopped to tape his ankle. The basin looked a lot different from when I climbed Unicorn in June of 2011 and I wish I had snow again. The boulder field leading to the chossy gully did not look inviting, but at least I could actually see some stuff this time, like Unicorn Peak above me. We started across the boulders towards the gully and didn't really see any cairns or signs of a path. Once in the gully along Unicorn Creek we saw some climber trails along the sides and crossed over to the climber's right side. It was steep and dirty but it worked. We noticed a trail on the climber's left side so we crossed back over the creek and finished the gully up that side. On the descent we stuck to that side the entire time. We followed a little climber’s path up the climber’s left side out of the Unicorn Creek gully and got our first view of all of the upper choss that awaited us. This was going to be a long, tedious ascent, a great first alpine experience for Justin with a rolled ankle.

Reached the top of the gully, only a few more choss piles to go. Unicorn Peak in the cloud with our next navigation destination, the saddle, to the right of it

We tried to follow old climber paths to the left of the main gully, heading up along the ridge to avoid the choss for as long as possible. Finally we had to traverse to the base of the final gully up to the saddle, complete with a snow field at the top. We were all wearing approach shoes and had trekking poles. Assuming the snow field would be pretty hard and icy, I looked for a scramble line up the rock to the side of it.;

Choss and snowfield to the saddle so eventually we went up left and scrambled along the rocks

As we were trying to traverse across the choss to avoid losing elevation, Aaron had a close call of rolling down the slope with the rocks. We decided we just needed to head down now and make up the elevation from the center of the gully where hopefully things were more stable. It was a long process of taking a step up, sliding back down, and then doing it all over again. We took slightly different lines, trying to find purchase in the choss. It was the medium sized stuff that hurts when it rolls into your ankle and isn’t great for trying to kick steps in, although I did my best.

Aaron went over to check the snowfield out since he was done with the choss but he didn’t like it. I made a beeline for the lowest part of the rocky face we would be scrambling up, looking for more solid ground. We made it onto the rock and scrambled/traversed to just left of the saddle. We happened to pop out on another climber’s trail, success! Now to head up from the saddle to the sub summit and then over to the actual summit block.

Off the choss! Heading up the climber’s trail from the saddle

Of course now that we were up high and could see things, the clouds had completely moved in and we had a hard time seeing nearby Boundary and Stevens Peaks. We walked over to the summit block and Justin geared up.

Unicorn Peak summit is the middle block

He would be leading the standard 5.6 route to claim his first ever mountain summit! Normal people would probably do an easy walk-up along I-90 for their first summit, but Justin was going to lead a pitch after a terrible chossy ascent to claim his. He definitely earned it! It was a bit cold up in the clouds and wind so we all grabbed our puffies. Aaron belayed Justin up while I grabbed Justin’s camera to get some pictures of him leading. Justin made several moves up before he was about to place a piece, and then he noticed the old piton so he clipped it. He did place a #0.4 a little above that to protect the next move, then he made a few more moves up to the slung rock to belay us up. One piece and a piton brought Justin to his first summit.

Justin moving past the piton and his one cam to reach the summit on the 5.6 standard route

He belayed Aaron and I up on the half rope and we walked to the high point on the summit block for a victory sandwich and the first of our six selfies with the super low quality front facing camera on my phone.

Justin’s first summit!

The first summit treat of the weekend was a box of nerds for everyone. We rappelled the short route back to our packs and packed up to head south along the ridge to claim our second peak of the weekend, Boundary Peak.

Boundary Peak south of us along the ridge

Aaron had summitted Unicorn, Lane, Eagle, and Chutla Peaks before the weekend while I only had Unicorn and Lane Peaks, so the rest of our objectives would be new for us and we were excited to get a bunch ticked off the list. The beta said to head along the ridge, dropping down on the right side into the trees when needed. There was mostly a boot path along the ridge so we made our way over. Although it hadn’t rained on us, it must have rained that morning and all of the trees and plants were just covered in water. I got more drenched walking through the trees than I thought possible, and had to keep my phone in a Ziploc bag in my pocket to keep it dry. We scrambled around Boundary Peak to the right to get to the easy walk-up southeast ridge. We found the low spot in the ridge, did some very low class scrambling, and walked up to the summit. Summit number two complete with pixie sticks for a summit treat. After another group selfie and admiring Blue Lake below us (with some awesome blue melt water puddles from little patches of snow), we headed down. Stevens Peak was a long ways away and I was ready for dinner already, so we just headed back down to the car.

Blue Lake below Boundary Peak

We carefully down climbed the section from the saddle back onto the choss. Descending the choss actually went a lot faster than we expected and we were able to chossade a little bit. We followed a little more of a direct path down as we knew where the trails were and could see them better. It started to rain a little so we stopped to grab our rain shells, but it passed after just a couple of minutes. We made it back to the gully with Unicorn Creek and stayed along the (skier's) right side, back onto the boulder field in the basin. We were so close to a real trail again! We finished boulder hopping and were ecstatic to step foot on solid ground. We took a quick break to eat something and then headed out on the trail.

Snow Lake

I knew the trail was short but it seemed to go on forever. Finally we popped back out on the road after a successful first day of peak bagging in the Tatoosh. We sat on the ground outside the car while Aaron and Justin enjoyed a celebratory beer, than we drove back to the campsite we had claimed that morning. Aaron fired up my little charcoal grill and we enjoyed some delicious cheesy sausage for dinner. Aaron and I even got a game of cribbage in before going to sleep about 9pm.

Day 1 Summit Selfies:

[Left] Unicorn Peak (6971’). [Right] Boundary Peak (6780’)

Day 2 – Denman, Plummer, The Castle, and Pinnacle Peaks

[Left] Looking west across the Tatoosh range at Plummer, Whapenyao, Chutla, Eagle, Lane, and Denman Peaks. [Right] Pinnacle Peak on the left, The Castle on the right

We woke up a little after 7am on Sunday and packed up camp. We were anticipating being on the trail at the latest by 9am. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Justin had never been down to Mount Rainier before and thus had never been to Paradise, so we wanted to stop by so he could check out the views. Since it was so nice that morning, and anticipating my desire to head straight home/to food after our day of climbing, we went up to Paradise before heading to the trailhead. We had a great, clear view of the mountains. Mount Rainier was out in all of its glory, sporting a fairly new, light covering of snow. We also had a great view of the Tatoosh Range and picked out all of the peaks we had summitted and all of the ones we were planning to tag that day. After pictures and sunscreen, we drove back down to the Pinnacle trailhead at Reflection Lake. We grabbed our gear and were on the trail by 9:10am.

Sun’s out, guns out. Enjoying the views from Paradise before starting our second day

We made quick work of the 1.3 mile trail and 1000’ up to the saddle. We were treated to some great views to the south from the saddle including Mount Adams and a very hazy Mount Hood in the distance.

View south from the Pinnacle-Plummer saddle. Mount Adams is prominent in the center of the photo

We learned there was a route up the east ridge of Pinnacle from Summit Post. I kind of wanted to do it but it would be time dependent, so we decided to do Pinnacle last and see what time it was then. We didn’t want to get back to Seattle too late that night. We decided to do the walk-ups first and headed for Denman after dropping our rock gear at the saddle. Maybe a 20 minute hike from the saddle had us over at Denman.

On the west side of Denman, now to head up a couple hundred feet to the summit. We followed a trail up to the left of the scree

A little route finding up through the trees and we were standing on top of Denman next to the large cairn, claiming our third summit of the weekend. Justin commented on the trail over that it felt like cheating because we were on a trail. Unicorn Peak was probably not the best introduction to alpine climbing, but if there is an expectation of terrible choss a lot of approaches will seem way better. We got another selfie, Justin and Aaron demonstrated some over-under technique, and we had our first laffy taffy summit treat of the day. I brought four flavors, one for each summit and yes, I made everyone read the jokes at the top of each peak.

Over-under on the summit of Denman Peak

After a quick break at the top we followed the trail back to the fork up Plummer and headed up the trail. After the super short walk-up on Denman, the trail was a little longer than I expected but 30 minutes after standing on Denman we were claiming Plummer Peak as our fourth summit of the weekend. After another group selfie, more laffy taffy, and Aaron’s plumber summit picture, we were headed back down to the saddle for some lunch about 2.5 hours and 2 summits after starting that morning. In comparison to Saturday this was a cake walk so far.

Pano from the summit of Plummer Peak

We grabbed our gear and started down the climber's trail towards The Castle. We had kind of spotted the trail over from the summit of Plummer but had a harder time finding it once on the mountainside. We eventually started traversing across the meadows, heading different directions when we thought we spotted a trail. Finally Aaron found one above us so we started up. It was a fairly steep meadow but it was full of pretty flowers. I even think I found some mini Lorax trees!

[Left] Lots of wildflowers in the meadows below Pinnacle Peak and The Castle. [Right] Mini Lorax trees!

We got up to the trail at just about the saddle between The Castle and Pinnacle Peak. We continued along to the southeast corner of The Castle to scramble up the easy gully. Going last and noticing some loose stuff in the gully, I put my helmet on for the short scramble.

Aaron and Justin heading up the gully to reach the east side of Castle

We met a couple of backpackers at the top of the gully and spotted a couple of climbers heading up one of the lines on The Castle. The beta said the right most spire was the true summit, the north block, so we continued to the northern part of the summit block. We later found out we went a little too far north but we called it good enough.

East side of Castle. There is a big rap station about in the middle of the ridge, but we headed to the darker rock with another rap station since there was another group already on the rock in the middle

Aaron took this second lead of the weekend and managed to place two pieces of gear this time, a #1 and #2. The line he picked was nice and blocky and ended at a slung boulder, low 5th class. Aaron belayed Justin and I up on the half rope to the tight area on what we called our summit of The Castle.

Aaron led the short, blocky picth up The Castle

After another quick group selfie, we rappelled down and enjoyed our laffy taffies at our packs. Aaron had noticed a nice tree at the top of the gully we scrambled up so he figured it’d be just as quick to rappel down it, so we kept our harnesses and helmets on for the walk back to the gully. I tied a single webbing sling around the tree and down we went.

Rappelling the 4th class gully, could be down climbed fairly easily as well

It was before 2pm and I really wanted to do the East Ridge of Pinnacle, so we kept our gear on and walked to the saddle. I mean we had carried the gear with us, we might as well use it. One of the guys on The Castle had climbed it before and said it was a bit loose, but I still wanted to give it a try.

East Ridge (left side) of Pinnacle Peak as seen from the top of The Castle

The beta on Summit Post said the East Ridge was a three pitch 5.6 climb starting from the saddle between The Castle and Pinnacle Peak. Since I was the most interested in doing the East Ridge, I got the honors of leading it. Figuring we’d want as close to a full pitch of rope as possible, Aaron tied in at the end with Justin tied in on a butterfly knot about 10 feet from him, so I’d have most of the 60m for my lead. We looked at the terrain from the saddle and decided to just scramble up it. It was full of lots of loose, little rocks and there wasn’t really anywhere to protect anyways. We scrambled what was described as the first pitch on Summit Post and started climbing from the stand of trees. We had brought three single alpine draws, three double alpine draws, one cordelette, nuts #4 – 10, and cams #0.4 – 2.

East Ridge Beta: Scramble up to the ledge with the trees and rope up.; Head up to dead tree, then up ridge crest to notch.; Traverse notch and sling horn on the other side, a few moves up.

Armed with the gear, Justin belayed me up as I started up the ridge. The climbing was blocky and I was careful to test the rocks before weighting them. For my first piece I slung an old tree that I could see from where I started. The protection was a bit scarce but the climbing was easy (even in my approach shoes) so it wasn’t too big of a deal. I tried getting nuts in but there weren’t really any good placements, so I used almost all of the cams we had brought. Some of the placements were between rocks that moved a little if I yarded on them, but I didn’t have many other options so I plugged the piece in and just hoped I wouldn’t have to test it. The beta said to head up the ridge and belay from a horn before the notch. From the start, the ridge looked pretty steep but it actually was pretty nice and I mostly stayed directly on the ridge crest. I reached the notch and found a nice horn up a few moves on the other side, so I decided to continue up. The notch was a short traverse with some fun exposure. I placed a #1 on the far side and then climbed up to the nice horn that I slung with my doubled over cordelette. I set up the auto-belay and brought Justin and Aaron up.

Looking down at the traverse across the notch from my belay at the horn

Justin has done a lot of cragging so the ridge exposure was a little something new for him to experience. He and Aaron made it up no problem behind me. We had joked that I got to place the remaining gear we hadn’t used for the weekend which were the nuts, #0.5 and #0.75 but I ended up placing cams #0.4 – 1 and slinging one tree. I definitely used the smaller gear and probably could have placed a #0.3 or #1/2 master cam, although that would have required finding more cracks too.

The third ‘pitch’ looked like the scramble to the summit, but since I was tied in they belayed me up anyways. I told them they could just scramble up but they had me keeping going, so I continued to walk-up until they told me I was almost out of rope. I did sling one tree for protection on the way since I was technically on lead, but the last section is an easy scramble that doesn’t require a rope. I found a nice pine tree to sling and belayed Justin and Aaron up to me.

Looking down 'pitch 3'. I slung that old, gnarly tree on my way up

We put the gear away and walked the last little bit up to the true summit where a couple other groups were already enjoying the partial views. Clouds had blown in across Mount Rainier and some of the area so the view was a little obstructed. We enjoyed our last laffy taffy, and I’m sure everyone up there enjoyed our terrible jokes.

Looking back down the East Ridge, a fun way to the top

We asked about the 4th class scramble route since that would be our descent route, and started off. We kept helmets on since we had them and we weren’t sure how loose the route was. We went down, trending right and following the path of least resistance until we made it back to the trail. We stopped at the saddle to put our helmets away and then started down. Despite the warning of loose rock on the East Ridge, I think all of us were happy we did that instead of the normal scramble route up Pinnacle, it was more fun. We made it back down to the car by 4:15pm. We had decided on our drive down to the park on Saturday that we’d get dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings in Puyallup on the way home and we were all looking forward to it. With the clouds having moved in, we were glad we went up to Paradise that morning. We grabbed some snacks to hold us over until we could make it to Puyallup and headed for home. 6 summits, 3 pitches of rock climbing, about 13.3 miles, and approximately 6000’ – a great weekend in the alpine bagging some peaks.

Day 2 Summit Selfies:

[Left] #3 Denman Peak (6006‘). [Right] #4 Plummer Peak (6370‘).

[Left] #5 The Castle (6440‘). [Right] #6 Pinnacle Peak (6562‘).

View Larger Map Map for this adventure

Tatoosh Range summit bagging. Day 1 was the green track to Unicorn and Boundary Peaks. Day 2 was the red track to Denman, Plummer, Castle, and Pinnacle Peaks.

Trail in to Snow Lake and then up Unicorn Creek

Heading up to Unicorn Peak - so much choss. The line on the left heading up near the saddle is mostly what we actually did, the GPS freaked out a little on the way down

Tagged Unicorn Peak and then traversed along the ridge to the Southeast ridge of Boundary Peak for a pretty easy walk up

Day 2 we went up the Pinnacle Trail

Routes up Denman (far right) and Plummer Peaks

Routes up The Castle (far right) and Pinnacle. We went up the East Ridge (right side) of Pinnacle and took the standard scramble route down mostly following the west side

Rock Pitches

• Unicorn, Standard Route (5.6): Justin led
• The Castle, a north line (~5.3): Aaron led
• Pinnacle, East Ridge (5.6): I led (P1: Scramble; P2: 5.6 on ridge, full pitch; P3: Scramble to summit);

Pinnacle Peak - East Ridge Climbing Topo