There’s a bit of a back story to how we ended up day hiking in the Tatoosh and tagging Denman Peak, Plummer Peak, and Pinnacle Peak. If you just want to read about the climbs themselves, skip the next few paragraphs and start reading below the picture of Mount Rainier.
Background for the climb: my summer quarter ended Friday so Sara and I had been planning to make it a long weekend and head out into the mountains for an adventure since we haven’t really gotten to this year. Wanting to find something new that would be a worthy three day objective, yet a bit on the relaxed side, we finally settled on climbing in the Sawtooth range to tag a few top 100 peaks. Our plan was to drive out Friday morning and hike into lower Eagle lake to set up camp and hang out for the rest of the day. Saturday would be the big day, heading over Horsehead Pass to tag Switchback, Martin Peak, and Cheops. Then Sunday we’d head up from upper Eagle lake to tag Mount Bigelow, allowing enough time so we could take highway 20 home and make it to Cascadian Farm before it closed so we could get some ice cream.
Despite August being historically dry in Washington, it decided to thunderstorm on Friday. As the weather forecast appeared to get worse throughout the week, I studied for my final (which I took Thursday night) while Sara figured out some backup plans. Thursday things seemed to improve a little, at least for Saturday. We had spent quite a bit of time planning our trip so I think we were both pretty excited to head to the Sawtooths. Not wanting to abandon that, we decided to get rid of the relaxed first day and squish the trip into two days, combining our Friday and Saturday plans into just Saturday. Sara’s brilliant idea to take advantage of our day off on Friday still was to head to Chelan, rent some electric bikes, hit a couple of wineries, then find a hotel close to climbing so we could get an early start on Saturday.
We arrived in Chelan to find a newly started fire from the lightning strikes Friday morning burning on a hillside above town. We rented our bikes, stopped at the Karma and Nefarious wineries, and headed back into town – of course stopping so I could watch all of the aircraft flying around and dumping water or fire retardant to support the fire fighting activity. The DC-10 was pretty incredible to watch, it was much more maneuverable than I would have imagined. We still had an hour of our rental left since we didn’t want to drink any more wine, so we were going to try and check out some other sights around town. We soon hit a sheriff’s car though from an area they were trying to evacuate, so we decided to head back since everything seemed to be on fire. About 100 yards from our final destination, I was slowing down and used both brakes on the bike. We were told to avoid using the front brake, but out of habit from riding my own bike, I used both. The front tire came to an immediate halt while the heavy back end kept moving, resulting in me wiping out. I came away with some scraped knees and palms, but my left knee in particular was pretty banged up.
We hit the grocery store for some ice packs, and then tried to head north to find a hotel. The road had been closed and businesses out that direction were evacuated as a precaution. We listened to the local radio station list off areas and roads that were closed. From what we could tell, the two roads we could have taken to go north were both closed and there was just one more open leading south out of the city, so we decided to take it before the fires got worse. With my banged up knee and the fires, we decided it was probably a smart decision to scrap our climbing plans and head back to Seattle. I mostly laid around on Saturday, trying to walk a little to get an idea of how my knee would fair. Going up hills was good, going down hurt, and stairs were not my favorite. So we decided to find a shorter hike that wasn’t too steep, and settled on the Tatoosh range. Sara hasn’t had the best luck in tagging peaks there so we figured it’d be a fun day and we could hit Denman, Plummer, and Pinnacle without too much effort. I wasn’t sure how I’d do on the scramble up and down Pinnacle, but I figured I could do Denman and Plummer for sure.
We left Seattle at a leisurely 7:30am and stopped for breakfast in Puyallup. We found a parking spot near the trailhead at Reflection Lakes and hit the trail just before 10:50am. I was out front with my knee to set the pace. Luckily the up didn’t bother it too much (minus all the stupid stairs) and we made good time to the saddle, arriving about 40 minutes after we started. We grabbed a quick snack, admired the view of Mount Adams, which appeared to be floating in its own bed of smoke, and hit the trail to Denman Peak. The trail over was pretty uneventful and completely empty.
We picked our way up the west side of Denman Peak and found the giant summit, with the large cairn. We had the place and its spectacular view of Mount Rainier to ourselves. We had some more snacks (we were following the relaxed trip itinerary) and eventually headed back down to head up to Plummer Peak.
There was a large group in the little meadow below Plummer Peak and a couple of groups heading down from the summit. I figured it’d be a little more popular than Denman as it’s fairly easy to get to from the saddle. We found the trail and headed up the south slope through all of the scree to the summit. A group had just left when we arrived so we lucked out and got another summit completely to ourselves. Sara loved the little cairns people had built and we had a good view of Mount St Helens in the distance. After a long break with more snacks, we started down to head up our last objective of the day, Pinnacle Peak.
At the saddle we stopped so I could reapply sunscreen again. The chipmunks that hang out at the saddle are not lacking in food, and Sara decided to converse with one while I finished up. I was a little nervous about my knee in heading up Pinnacle as the sharp bend (i.e. high step) was painful. There were a few groups that had started up before us but I think most turned around. I didn’t try to find a trail, although I’m not sure if there is an exact one, but rather picked out the most blocky rock that looked like stairs and headed up.
It was a fun way to end the day - even though it was scrambling, we got to climb up some rock. We shared the Pinnacle summit with another guy on a conference/climbing trip so we recommended a few places to stop along his trip.
I figured I’d be slow heading down so we didn’t spend quite as much time on our last summit. We picked our way down through the loose rock and made it back to the trail. I was definitely slow going down this time, taking micro breaks when my knee would start to hurt more. I still hated the stairs along the trail, just because I either had to bend my knee a lot, or look super awkward and be really slow by taking one step at a time. We finally made it back to the car about 5.5 hours after we started. We packed up and headed back to Puyallup to find some dinner. My knee fared better than I expected and we got to spend the day in the mountains, enjoying the sunshine and admiring the views. While it may not have been the adventure we intended to have, it was still a good day in the mountains.