Trip Report
Basic Alpine Climb - Horseshoe Peak
Better than expected trip to Horseshoe Basin to climb Horseshoe. Oh yeah, its chossy but pretty fun nevertheless and in a stunning setting!
Michael Nanney
- Fri, Sep 12, 2025 — Sat, Sep 13, 2025
- Basic Alpine Climb - Horseshoe Peak
- Horseshoe Peak
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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The usual bridge over the Cascade River was closed for repairs so we had to backtrack a mile or so down 530 towards Darrington to take the detour to Cacade River Rd.
Cascade Pass parking was surprisingly crazy for a Friday morning (and unsurprisingly crazy Saturday on our way out).
The hiking to Sahale Glacier camp could not be more straightforward, although the blueberries and marmots can be distracting: )
From there the travel conditions got more interesting. The descent to the "arm" east of the Sahale Glacier was snowfree, which meant a bit slower travel than usual due to loose rock sitting on slabs. The "secret gully" descent into the Horseshoe Basin, which on previous trips has been full of snow, was completely melted and loose which required quite a bit of care to manage.
The traverse to Horseshoe itself starts out very easy on the slabs below the Davenport Glacier but after you hit the lateral morraine (you will cross a rusty metal cable from the old Buckner Mine in this same zone), it becomes an unfun mix of scree, hardpan, and talus to within a few hundred feet of the Horseshoe summit.
We started the trip at the Marblemount Ranger station, got permits for the Horseshoe XC zone, borrowed a bear canister, and started hiking from the Cascade Pass TH at 8:30. 90 minutes to Cascade Pass for a quick break and experiencing some unusual weather of thick, blowing fog on the west side of the pass and sunny, warm weather on the east side.
After a lovely hike up to Sahale Glacier Camp with lots of blue berries and marmots, we pushed to the east side of the Sahala Camp area and stopped for lunch and water filtering below the glacier.
The next step for getting into the Horseshoe Basin, whether you are doing Buckner, Booker, or Horseshoe like us is to descend easterly down to ~7100', hit the SE "rib" forming the west edge of Horseshoe Basin, and follow it SE down to the top of the "secret gully" at 6700'. The lower hundred or so feet of this descent have some pretty steep heather/rock scrambling and is a place to exercise care (and dig those helmets out of the pack!)
There is a substantial cairn at the top of this and another below at the top of the secret gully that is the key to accessing Horseshoe Basin.
In my two previous trips through here the gully had 8' of snow in it so we carried crampons and ice axes for training weight.
We made camp on the rock slabs below the Davenport at 6500' and then began the traverse across Horseshoe Basin. The slabs made for great travel however when you cross the lateral morraine the going gets tougher with hardpan, scree, and talus. We basically followed the cliff line from the old mine entrance all the way to the "dogleg" up to Horseshoe at 8100'. Here is a view from camp of the entire Ripsaw Ridge with Horseshoe being the high point just west of Buckner, the terminal point of the ridge.
From the dogleg we turned north and climbed hardpan to ~8300' where the scrambling began. Once on the rock, our path went up and left following good 4th class scrambling up and over the mini-ridge and into the gully on the far side which ascends to the right. Where the gully ends, the roped climbing begins.
Horseshoe ends up being a long way to carry a rope and mini-rack for five feet of 5th class terrain to gain a one meter square shaped notch at the summit. You'll see the tat on the right side of the square. We took the advice from other trip reports and only carried a 30m since the traversing scramble back down to the top of the gully is straightforward. That said, a fall would be a one-way trip so protection at the top is important. We used a #4 stopper and a .4 cam for the belay followed by a .5 cam in a downward facing crack to protect the summit climbing through the notch. Trip reports say the top feels overhung....it isn't, just move your feet left and the top of the square notch is a jug.
View from the summit of Ripsaw Ridge, Sahale, Boston, Forbidden, Eldo, and the mighty Boston Glacier clockwise from the left foreground.
Basic grads extraordinaire, Luis and Kali, on the summit.
The sun set on us on the way back to camp, so the headlamps made another appearance this season. The scree/talus situation was a little more interesting with the lights out and the real crux was crossing the hardpan of that aforementioned lateral morraine in the dark!
Saturday morning we enjoyed a leisurely and uneventful hike out passing two very cute groups of ptarmigans, one of which was already turning white in preparation for winter.
