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Crew: Isiah and Owen
Date: May 24 - 27, 2025
Total time on trail: 4 Days
Distance: 36 miles
Vertical: 11,000ft
The question was simple. How many Bulgers could we bag in the Pasayten over Memorial Day weekend? The answer: not as many as we thought. The Pasayten is a beautiful and unique region of Washington's North Cascades. It's also massive. The area has nine of Washington's one hundred tallest peaks, many of which boast over 3000' of prominence. This trip report details our first adventure into the Pasayten.
Day 1: The Approach
Day 1: The Approach
We arrived at the Monument Creek Trailhead at approximately 9:30am where we left the car and set off into the woods. The sub-alpine in the Mazama was aboslutely beautiful and full of green: truly a desert in bloom. There were wild flowers everywhere along the well-maintained trail.
After 3 or so miles of trail we reached the bridge crossing. This was constructed within the last several years to save hikers from attemping the a ford that can be quite treacherous at times. After this the trail finally began the climb into the alpine.
After making our way out of the lush alpine meadows, the north cascades began to fill our backdrop as we made our way to Pistol Pass. This is the gateway to our first Bulger: Lake Mountain.
We went up and over Pistol Pass before following a short class 3 Gulley to the ridge below Lake Peak. The sub-summit of Lake Peak is a massive granite tower that protrudes like a finger from the ridgeline. As incredible as the rock quality looked, we were grateful that the true summit was higher and that we wouldn't need to climb the high fifth-class face.
(Post-trip, we were unable to find any records of this rock finger ever being climbed. It doesn't seem to have any remotely easy routes. We may have to return for this in the future.)
We finished our day by setting up a campsite high on the ridge below Lake Peak at about 6pm, concluding a nice leasurely approach before our summit day. Our stats for the day were roughly 12 miles, 6000' vert.
Not a bad place to spend the night
Day 2: Lake Mountain Summit
Day 2: Lake Mountain Summit
We woke up early on our second day in the Pasayten to a beautiful sunrise before making our way up the ridge towards Lake Peak. The route wraps around the spine and behind the granite finger towards the attainable true summit.
After gaining the ridge, we ran into a major problem: firm snow. The snow that was still present within the Pasayten was brutally frozen at this altitude and time of day, and we had brought no crampons in order to save weight. With no other options, we chose to take a nap. Glorious.
This is where our day began to head south, literally and figuratively. We now made our way towards Monument Peak across the valley. The descent started on excellent Granite (pictured on the right). After this photo was taken, we proceeded to pass a rappel station that we had to downclimb right past. We downclimbed onto a glorious cocktail of loose rock, wet rock, and wet loose rock. After many hours of tedious downclimbing, we found ourselves in the valley below monument peak.
Once the snow softened enough for me and my silly trailrunners, we began moving across the snowfield on the other side of Lake Mountain. We carefully made our way across the steep, firm snow, before getting back on rock.
The rest of the class two rock scrambling was uneventful and easy. Here we bagged our first Bulger of the trip before descending from the summit.
The view from the valley between Lake Mountain (left) and the Monument Peak ridge (right)
In the afternoon, our weather began to turn. A storm was forecasted to roll through overnight, but it appeared to have come through early. Instead of attempting to summit Monument Peak, we set up camp early and prepared to weather the storm.
Day 3: Monument Peak
Day 3: Monument Peak
We woke up late after the rain subsided and began our way up a gulley on the Monument Peak ridge as part of our route. This gulley featured the best scrambling of the trip. Steep rock with great holds and awesome exposure made for a truly great time here.
Looking back into the valley as the storm clouds roll away
From here we made our way up the ridge on loose rock up the summit. The weather continued to be unstable as clouds rolled through. We hastily made our way to the summit, hoping to get down the scramble before rain came in.
It didn't take long before we made it to the summit of Monument Peak. Check out the view!
From here we began our descent of Monument as another small storm rolled in. We clambered our way over loose rock that slid underneath our feet at every step, trying to get off the mountain before rain made our down-climbing dangerous.
It felt like we were outrunning the storm, and we were losing the race. As the clouds came in we were treated to a wonderful suprise: snow! Light, fluffy snow that wouldn't soak our rock. As the winds picked up we were treated to a light, fun, inconsequential dusting.
We picked our way down these two scrambles back into the valley. If you look closely at the right photo you can see our tent!
From here, we needed to leave the valley to go back over Lake Mountain and eventually back to the car. We descended the valley to find the easiest way over the Lake Mountain ridge.
Looking back at Monument Peak from the valley. The storm was over!
Our next move? Slog.
We began our climb of 3000' back to Lake Mountain to begin our return trip. This was steep, mostly decent snow and rock back to the ridge.
Here's Owen standing on the rock part of our return scramble with Monument peak in the background. You can see many more Bulgers taunting us from far away.
After making it over the ridge, we descending into the valley below Pistol Pass as the snow really started to soften. We clambered our way through the valley to setup camp at pistol pass. The postholes were intense!
We were treated to a nice cloudy sunset before our last night in the Pasayten.
Day 4: The Exit
Day 4: The Exit
Our way out was quite uneventful besides some nice flora and fauna.
Despite an encounter with a rattlesnake on trail, we safely made it back to the car in the afternoon before eating a glorious dinner in Mazama.
The Pasayten is incredible, massive wilderness area with a lot of appeal. The remoteness makes you feel truly alone (which we were) and there are plenty of high mountains to be summitted. We will definitely be back to complete the rest of the Bulgers at some point in the future when we have time for an even longer endeavour.
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