Alpine Scramble - McNeeley, Antler & Dege Peaks

We had a small group of 4 for a weekday scramble up Dege, Antler, and McNeeley.  We had really nice weather.  Mt. Rainier was out when we arrived, though some clouds moved in as the day went on.  We started at 8am from the near empty parking lot.  We hiked up to Dege Peak and summitted at 9.  After obligatory photos, we headed back to the west and bagged Antler.  We did make the mistake of coming up Antler from the southeast which required us to do some bushwhacking.  It's best to scramble Antler directly from the south.  After a short snack break and more obligatory photos, we returned to the Sourdough Ridge trail and hiked to the Huckleberry Creek Trail.  We followed the trail down to Huckleberry Basin so we could scramble McNeeley.  I would recommend going fairly low in the basin near Huckleberry Creek so you can avoid bushwhacking up to the McNeeley Saddle.  Once at the saddle, we stayed to the west of the spine of the ridge and had a fairly easy scramble up to the summit of McNeeley with only limited bushwhacking required.  This is a unique summit in that not only you have Rainier directly to the south, because the peak sits in a basin, you are surrounded by other peaks such as Fremont, the peaks on the Sourdough Ridge and Mountain, and Grand Park off to the northwest.  There is no summit register, so can the next group PLEASE BRING A SUMMIT REGISTER AND PAPER????   From McNeeley, we scrambled down to the basin and then back up the Huckleberry Ridge trail.  We had thoughts of doing Fremont, but opted to return to the cars instead.  We were back at Sunrise at 2:30.