The Triad had come up a few times in conversations with climbing partners over the years. Goran had suggested we climb it on our way to the West Ridge of Eldorado. Colin and I had thought about ski touring over to it from Hidden Lake Lookout. But it hadn’t quite made it to the top of the list yet. During this odd time when my rock climbing shape is at an all-time low, it seemed like a nice single-day, late-summer objective.
Mitch and I drove to the Hidden Lake Trailhead on Saturday night and found a nice flat spot to sleep for the night. We’d packed and remembered everything except for his sleeping bag, and so he spent a pretty sleepless handful of hours while I happily floated off to sleep. We got moving right around 5:15am on Sunday morning, making quick time and reaching our turnoff from the main trail in 1 hour. Less than 15 minutes later, we were at the saddle to start the ridge as the sunrise alpenglow started lighting up the North Cascades.
The heather-covered ridge was truly awesome, with views of Baker, Shuksan, and The Pickets to the Northwest and the North Cascades laid out all around us otherwise, with Eldorado, Forbidden, Boston, Sahale, and Johannesburg close by and a close-up view of Hidden Lake. We hiked along the ridge for about 30 minutes before finding the spot to descend to the glacier on the North side of the ridge. It was quite firm in the early morning and we were glad we’d brought aluminum crampons and light axes.
The 3rd class descent toward the South from the next saddle at the end of the glacier section was pretty terrible. Loose rock and dirt on top of very steep rock and heather made for a stressful hundred feet or so before it turned into just plain unpleasant scree. We were glad to get past this “Drainage of Despair” as Mitch dubbed it and into the next drainage to the East, which was much better-behaved. We found our way down and across this drainage, then headed straight for the high saddle which started the East Ridge. It was about 9:45am at this point, so roughly 4.5 hours from the car. Things had slowed down considerably since the trail had ended on the ridge.
We had a snack and put our harnesses on before heading along the ridge. It was relatively straightforward to gain the ridge via some ramps and then a slabby section that switched back near the crest where we saw an old rap anchor. The very next section was the low-5th class pinnacle, which we decided to rope up for. I plugged in a little bit of gear, but the protection wasn’t great. Thankfully, while the climbing was exposed and relatively steep, it was quite easy with good holds throughout. I belayed Mitch through this section and then we scrambled together to the true summit at 11:15am, 6 hours after leaving the car. Our up-close-and-personal view of Eldorado was pretty awesome.
There’s not much to report about our descent. We rappelled the 5th class step and scrambled through everything else. The heather-covered ridge was now showing off all of its colors. And we saw a bear sauntering along the trail ahead of us. Whiskey helped me float down from the main trail junction pretty expeditiously for a car-to-car of about 10.5 hours. While the climb itself was short lived and the Drainage of Despair was pretty terrible, it was a gorgeous place and a nice, low-5th climb in the heart of the North Cascades.
