Trip Report
Alpine Scramble - Cashmere Mountain
Leisurely three day scramble, overnight at Lake Caroline.
Brian Hill
- Wed, Jun 27, 2018 — Fri, Jun 29, 2018
- Alpine Scramble - Cashmere Mountain
- Cashmere Mountain
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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First encountered snow near 8,000 foot saddle. We crossed two small snow-filled gullies while traversing the north side of the peak. Snow was soft and easy to kick steps into. Much of the route is simple to navigate, with boot paths and cairns.
Avoided doing an 18 mile day by landing a midweek Eightmile Zone permit. The weather was cool and calling for strong winds. We left the trailhead Wednesday at 3pm and arrived at the last good camp by Lake Caroline at 5:45. As soon as tents were up it rained for three hours.
We got up after 8am, knowing we had all day and not a whole lot to do. We left the trail near a green meadow at 6,900 feet, angling on a pleasant cross-country line toward the prominent south-trending ridge. There is a trail up the ridge that led us to large flat snow patches, and cairns that led through an easy boulder section to the saddle at 8,000 feet. From here you can see a trail leading up the west flank of Cashmere.
We followed the trail up about 400 feet before beginning to traverse around the north side. The terrain seemed simple to navigate and bounced between class 2 and easy class 3. There were 2 "gullies" with snow to cross. Very small. Once we hit the major north-trending ridge, we could almost walk up to the summit. Truly easy class 3. Other trip reports and beta we read made too much out of this scramble. One of the easier top 100 peaks I've summitted.
After some snacks, we traversed over to Cashmere's west summit, scrambling all the major gendarmes along the way. Good fun. The west summit is equally as easy as the main summit. We then followed a boot path down the ridge to Windy Pass and the trail back to camp. One more lazy evening in camp, and we hiked out Friday morning in no particular hurry.
Overall, I was happy with our choice to camp at Lake Caroline. The sites are high and dry. Little Lake Caroline is a very boggy area. Everything was green, flowers blooming, and the wind kept the bugs away. The route has trails and cairns, it's really simple. And the rock section was easy to navigate and very short. Experienced scramblers will have no problem avoiding class 4 terrain. GPS track here. Total time (outside of camp) was 12 hours, for those considering a single day. We weren't exactly killing it with pace, and we spent a lot of time scrambling other fun things along the way.
