Trip Report
Alpine Scramble - Bedal Peak
Solid snow pack still present above 5000 ft. Snow conditions were very good allowing for straight forward travel. Trail in the woods is still well marked with mostly pink tape.
Richard Babunovic
- Sun, Jun 25, 2017
- Alpine Scramble - Bedal Peak
- Bedal Peak
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road rough but passable
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Route via Merry Brook: Trail head is well concealed. Look for it about 50 ft on the up hill side of the switch back. Windfall along the trail makes route finding challenging in places. Watch out for a wrong turn left about 2500ft. There is pink tape at this point, you just have to look for it. In the rock fields, watch for carins or tape on the far side of the fields. Encountered patchy snow at 4500ft with solid snow at 5000ft . Using 5200ft as a back stop, found the obvious gap in the rocky ridge. The gap was accessible after crossing a minor moat. From there we easily kicked steps across the basin to the ESE ridge and then on to the summit. The more direct route to the summit was blocked by a number of bergschrunds/moats.
Great team! Thanks for making my first mentored climb a success. We left the trail head at 8:00 and summited at about 12:30. The conditions on the summit were spectacular: sunny, cooling breeze and only wispy clouds. We could see forever! Not being in a hurry to pack up and head down into the 90 degree heat in the lowlands, we spent almost 2 hours on the summit. The decent was a mixture of plunge stepping and glissading followed by the thigh burning trail in the woods. We were back at the cars by 5:15. Burgers and refreshment in Marysville made it a complete day.