Alpine Scramble - Cannon Mountain/Northslope Approach

We left Bridge Creek CG at 4:45 and were hiking by 5:30. We were able to park at the TH but it was busy. After a quick mile or so on the trail we turned left following various GPX tracks to where there was a clear boot path through open forest that could easily be followed by headlamp. A bit later we came to the first difficulty around daybreak getting up some steep dirt and rocks to a ledge below the boulder fields. Cairns guide you onto the base of the massive boulder field avoiding most of the vegetation. After that it's a long slog up 1000 vertical feet of talus, heading towards a grassy-looking area climber's left of the creek.

The boulder field ends at a cliff band between 5200 and 5400 feet. On the way up, we climbed some exposed third class with loose rocks on climber's left and then traversed above most of the cliffs. On the way down, we avoided the downclimb by taking a steep wet gully and bushwacking skier's left of the cliff band. After passing through the cliff band we continued upwards staying left of the creek and right of the cliffs (there is a vague boot path in places) to reach the creek at the corner around 6200 feet where we took our first break and filtered water.

A schwacky section as we crossed below the cliff band on the descent

After the creek you pass through a short marshy section in Hel Basin and take a sharp left turn continuing upwards on SE facing slopes, where a variety of boot packs lead you up through steep open forest with sparse vegetation, loose dirt, and rocks. At 7700 feet we hit the NW ridge above some gendarmes that would be difficult to climb. This makes a good fall trip as the Enchantments can be shockingly hot, but we were in Cannon's shadow until partway up the NW ridge.

The NW ridge is beautiful and fun climbing, it's on bomber rock and is not too difficult or exposed. There is sustained third class and a couple of places where I used layback, knee, or foot jams to ascend although other party members found different ways of getting up. The summit boulder was less exposed than it seems in some pictures. We thought a fall would be unlikely to be fatal and the slab had good foot placements and was grippy; two party members climbed it in trail runners. We added a page to the existing summit register. Regrettably, there was a lot of smoke at the summit spoiling otherwise out of the world views of the Stuart Range, Cashmere, and beyond. I put on a smoke mask and wore it the rest of the day.

Smoky view from the summit towards the Temple and Prusik Peak

On the descent we decided not to downclimb the ridge and instead headed left where we ended up descending into a steep loose gully. That section in particular was difficult with at least 50' vertical of loose third class downclimb and one move at the bottom where I laybacked against a dead tree, other people jumped down a few feet. We thought sticking closer to, but below the NE ridge would be a superior descent route.

I think this was the tricky spot where I ended up laybacking off that dead tree

Beware: there was loose rock in many places throughout the route, countless calls of "rock" and we wore our helmets from 5200 feet to the summit. At one point the person farthest downhill knocked loose a microwave sized rock. With a strong party moving steadily all day the time on route was 6 hours uphill and 5 hours downhill. Shoutout to Max and David for helping massively with navigation, and photo credit to David.