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Basic Alpine Climb - Sahale Peak/Quien Sabe Glacier

Easy climbing with a little of everything: dusty climbers trail, slippery but doable slab, a short glacier climb, scramble, rappel, and 36 switchbacks. Perfect weather and great group!

Mija Lee Mija Lee
August 27, 2017
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • The climbers trail is dusty and a little jungly. The slabs still have a number of stream crossing, none particularly deep but most of them pretty slippery. The rest of the slab was an easy scramble. The glacier is in good shape, we did the traverse from the left, navigating a few crevasses but conditions were good. The scramble to the top was fun and the views were amazing. 

    We decided to rap from the top since we were the only folks on the summit at that point and it was still early in the day. We did double 40m ropes which still required a little bit of downclimbing. There is a new rap anchor up there with a cordalette, a new piece of webbing, and two non locking biners. It's fine now but that webbing won't last long, so you might want to bring a long piece of webbing and rap rings to help fortify the anchor. 

We had a great group of basics. They were prepared, fit and good company. It was a mentored lead for Nate who did an excellent job of organizing, communicating, and pacing the climb; it was the graduating climb for Brynn and Ryan. 

At 4 am, all of us piled into the back of one truck to shuttle to the lower trailhead. It was crowded with cars down there. We were all at the top at 11:30 and out around 5. We took a number of leisurely breaks to enjoy the perfect weather and the fantastic views. 

All of us camped at the cascade pass trailhead, some in discreetly placed tents, most in cars. 

We brought 2 40m and a 30m glacier rope which kept packs light. We had a few piece of rock pro and one picket and ice screw per rope team but did use them. We did not rope up on the sahale side. Getting from the quien sabe to the rock was reasonable. 

There were a few bugs on the way down but not many.