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Trip Report    

Alpine Scramble - Copper Mountain, Iron Mountain & Pyramid Peak Traverse

A great day in the mountains, made more pleasant by cool temperatures for all the hard work.  With a cloud ceiling near Pyramid’s summit (~7000’) we had to be content with territorial views.  This counter clockwise traverse (~18 miles, ~6000’ gain) started at Longmire, then visited Iron, Copper, and Pyramid before returning to Kautz Creek.

  • Road suitable for all vehicles
  • Saturday rains forced our relocation to Sunday.  Due to an impressive amount of rain on prior days the Kautz Creek crossing was a bit daunting (thankfully other parties had constructed a makeshift but adequate bridge from broken alder and rocks).  The Fishers Hornpipe bridge is approaching failure (quite a tilt to the south).

With rain the night before (as well as dew) we were NOT looking forward to being soaked when in bushwhack mode.  At Kiya Lake (just above Devil’s Dream Camp) we waited a bit for sun to dry the dew (wishful thinking, but used the time to apply sun screen ;).  A few mosquitoes here and there, but overall not bad.

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[Photo by Jesse Bengtsson]

The sun never really showed up in a significant way and we were soon headed up the southern aspect of Iron…

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… with arrival on the summit of Iron a short time later.

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[Photo by Jesse Bengtsson]

After a leisurely loll on Iron’s summit, we were soon on Copper around noon (just under an hour to make the traverse).

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Pyramid still enshrouded by clouds (taken from Copper).

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Little change by the time of our arrival at Pyramid...

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[Photo by Jesse Bengtsson]

… but some nice views on our descent.

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A surprisingly good day given preceding weather. We left Longmire at 6:30am, arrived on Iron at ~11:30am, ~12:30pm on Copper, then ~3pm at Pyramid.  Our final arrival at our Kautz Creek cars was ~7pm, for a total of 12.5 hours (which included a number of leisurely breaks). Photos from this and other trips to this venue can be seen here and here.