Strava GPX here - 25.38 miles, 11,450 feet
In this current phase of life, it takes many stars aligning to get into the mountains—childcare and a very supportive wife, time off work, partner availability and interest, weather, conditions, wildfires, you name it. Blaine and I had set up plans and permits to climb Mount Fury months ago but the Luna Fire dashed them. We decided a pretty awesome Plan B would be to do the Inspiration Traverse as a lollipop / out and back. In the days leading up to our trip, it seemed like all of Washington, Oregon, and Canada were on fire but the forecast called for a Westerly wind and so we rolled the dice.
We drove up from Seattle to Marblemount on Thursday morning, securing our permits for the Klawatti zone and driving up to the Eldorado trailhead with some smoke in the air but signs of blue sky above us. We left the car at 11:30am with 3-4 days worth of food, a double rack and rock shoes in case we wanted to go for the SW Buttress on Dorado Needle, and all of the other gear we needed. The smoke continued to clear as we ascended and gave way to a hot summer day as we plodded up and then through the boulder field. We took our time and caught up together on the ascent, reaching the base of Eldorado’s East Ridge around 5pm. We stashed our overnight gear on the ridge a few hundred feet up and pressed on for the summit, arriving at 6:20pm to commanding views of the North Cascades.
We scampered back down the soft snow and decided that a campsite on the ridge would be more comfortable than moving another hour or so over to the col near Tepah Towers and sleeping on snow, so we set up shop around 7pm and watched the light show on Forbidden Peak as we enjoyed our dinners.
With some desire to sleep in on Friday, we decided that we’d first go out to Austera and Klawatti Peaks, moving our camp to below Klawatti for the night. After a quick breakfast, we began traversing across the Inspiration Glacier at about 7am. It was a brilliantly clear day to gaze down as far as Rainier and over to Forbidden, Buckner, Logan, and the rest. The Thunder Basin lived up to its name with waterfalls pummeling granite slabs below us. We dropped our camping gear below Klawatti at 8:15am and pressed on Northward toward Austera.
At the pass over Klawatti’s North Ridge, we were somewhat surprised to find a significant drop that would be easily rappelled but not so safely climbed without rock gear (which we left at camp). To ensure we’d be able to make it back, we decided to sacrifice 10 meters or so of our 70 meter rope and set up a fixed line we could re-ascend later. As we reached the East-facing Klawatti Glacier, things heated up significantly. We marched up toward Austera Peak, reaching the summit at 10am. What a cool position looking back South at Dorado Needle, Eldorado, and the sawtooth ridgelines that divide the Inspiration, McAllister, and Klawatti Glaciers.
We gazed over at Primus and weighed our options. In the end, it just didn’t look like fun having to drop down nearly 2,000 feet and then ascend what looked like loose, bare terrain for many hundreds of feet near its summit. We decided to keep our fun Type 1 for the day and headed back to our camp below Klawatti, getting there for a very civilized lunch before noon, followed by a glorious (but hot) nap in the tent.
At 4pm, we suited up to scramble Klawatti. Becky referred to the standard route on the south side as 3rd class. This didn’t really match with the reality of what we saw and we spent quite a bit of time exploring where such a passage might exist. Climber’s right of the buttress was not the right answer. Much further climber’s left of the buttress also didn’t seem right—it steepened significantly. We eventually found what we believed to be the right route going up just left of the buttress and then crossing onto it. But this seemed to easily be low 5th class and we hadn’t brought up any gear. The climbing seemed easy enough but neither of us were very motivated by the prospect of soloing loose terrain and then hitting hundreds of feet of loose 3rd to 4th class above, so we decided Friday would be an easy day. We instead enjoyed the ambiance of our remote camp and new-to-me views of a familiar zone.
On Saturday, we decided that we’d keep the Type 1 fun theme running and target the NW Ridge of Dorado Needle. We packed up camp and cached our gear at the col near Tepah Towers by 8:30am, then dropped down on the McAllister glacier, end-running a massive crevasse on our way to Dorado Needle. At 10:15am, we were at the base of the route. The snow to reach the route directly was suspect, so we started from the col below with a pitch of easy 5th class with a few trickier moves but reasonable protection. This pitch was sandwiched in the moat between the rock and the glacier and had an ominous but very cool and unique feel to it.
From the ridge crest and well-established rappel anchor there, we enjoyed two pitches of low 5th class climbing along the ridge to meet the summit. The rock was solid, the views were awesome, and the movement was fun and varied. We were on the summit by noon. Retracing our steps back down to the first pitch anchor took some time but was similarly fun and then we rappelled down, over the snow bridge and back to our extra gear at 1:15pm.
We had an awesome lunch in the sun here before making the trek down and back up the McAllister Glacier to retrieve our overnight gear before casting back off across the Inspiration Glacier. We reached our original campsite on Eldorado’s East Ridge by 3:45pm or so and set up shop for another nap. We decided the timing would be perfect to bring our dinners and stove up to the top of Eldorado for a sunset dinner that evening, which was magical. Our second summit of Eldorado was even better than the first between the sky pinking up and the dark chocolate cheesecake celebratory dessert.
After soaking it all in, we left the summit at 8:15pm, plunged down soft snow to our camp and were crawling into our tent for bed by 9pm without any headlamps needed. It was a great way to cap off an awesome few days in this special zone.
We got moving reasonably early on Sunday morning and were back down to the car before 11am. It’s definitely an effort to get in and out of this area but it wasn’t as painful as I’d feared on the descent—our conversation provided good distraction! After some baby wipe face washing, we were on our way to Sedro Wolley for celebratory Double Barrel BBQ. The Texas Giant 1 lb of beef brisket never stood a chance.
