Cabinet Peak

We scrambled Pt.6882 (‘Cabinet Peak’) on 5/9/2015, gaining 3,880 in just over 5 miles, over 10 hours. We parked at a large turnout on north side of the North Cascades Highway between County Line and Cabinet creeks, then hiked up the road to just past Cabinet Creek, where we entered the trees just before a rock band defined the road cut edge. We paralleled Cabinet Creek on a bearing of 137 passing through an extended field of blow down, not really any major obstructions, but tedious. At 3,800’ we turned due south and ascended an at times relatively steep and generally reasonably open forest to attain more open terrain on Cabinet’s northeast ridge at 5,000’. Patches of snow started at 4,800’ and became continuous above 5,200’. There were two short steeper sections on the final stretch to the summit but nothing not well within the definition of scramble terrain. Contrary to its portrayal on the USGS map the summit block of Cabinet is not treed in and offers a stunning view of the great mountains of the North Cascades: Redoubt, Jack, Crater, Ballard, Azurite, Golden Horn, Tower, Hardy, Ragged Ridge, Gabriel, Elijah Ridge and Bebee among others.