Alpine Scramble - Florence Peak

Our group of 10 consolidated vehicles down to 3 to make parking easier at the trailhead. Despite the small lot being full, we managed to park alongside the road next to the river without any difficulty. Departing at 8am, we followed the boardwalk right then left to a sign reading West Boundary Trail. This trail ascends through beautiful old-growth trees, mostly hemlock, making the trip all the more rewarding. At 1.3 miles the group reached the stream with the waterfall above, which proved to be one of the more difficult sections of the trip, with a slip and fall potentially dangerous as the run-out is a twenty foot slide down the rock. Beware: the surface was extremely slick with a few members losing their footing. As a result, we set up a human belay helping those across this tricky section. On the return, after successfully crossing the stream/falls, we noticed a potentially better path by stepping down to a lower crossing over the slippery rock surface, then ascending the opposite side back to the trail. Continuing up the path, at roughly the 3800’ mark, our group left the maintained trail and headed off trail left to reach the saddle at 4300’. Thankfully, we found a lightly-treaded path that followed up through the vegetation with little bushwhacking needed. This took about 40 minutes. After a short break at the saddle, we followed the ridge north to the summit of Sweet Peak at 4560’. The summit is totally in the trees with no views present. We left our names on a piece of paper we supplied in the registry, which is a white PVC pipe placed on the rock within eye sight. Note: bring your own paper and pen if you want to contribute to the registry. The group then backtracked south back down the ridge to our break point, taking roughly 15-20 minutes then continued south towards our next goal: Florence Peak. Again, if you’re looking carefully, you’ll find a faint path here and there through the trees slowly taking you to the false summit, but most often we were breaking our own trail over downed trees and light vegetation. After about an hour, we broke through the trees and ascended talus to the false summit. Follow the ridge slightly down and up again to a meadow just below the summit block. At this point, you’ll find the junction of the Boundary Trail. The final section of the trail to the summit is about 150’, fairly steep to the second false summit that looks over to the true summit of Florence. There’s some light scrambling to reach the true summit and its 360 degree views, which was reached around 1pm. After returning to the junction of the Boundary Trail, we ascended this trail back to the cars returning at 4:30. Total of 8.5 hrs, 9.1 miles, 3777 gain.