Trip Report
Sloan Peak/Corkscrew Route (C2C via Bedal Creek)
12 hours car to car of over diverse, lightly traveled terrain.
Zachary Elkins
- Sat, Jul 26, 2025
- Sloan Peak/Corkscrew Route
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road recommended for high clearance only
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Route-finding
The route has a few sudden turns that are easy to miss, but you won't get far before realizing you've gone the wrong way, and can quickly backtrack to the correct trail. The first, and worst of these is when the trail makes a sharp left up a very steep slope, despite looking like it continues straight for some time. The pink flags start to reveal themselves a little ways up the trail.
Bushwhacking
After the steep trail section mellows out there is plenty of shoulder high (or head high, for one of our party) brush you have to navigate through. Plenty of huckleberries and salmon berries to snack on, but what you actually have to watch out for is all the thorns, with a few Devil Clubs sticking out right in to the trail.
We heard from some climbers we passed on the way up that their experience starting from Cougar Creek was very similar.
Water
There is a pond at roughly 5300' elevation (lovingly referred to as the "Frog Swamp") that we filtered from, but were reluctant to drink. Luckily not to long later we dumped our frog water and filled up from one of the many snow-melt streams running down the rock.
I was reluctant to write this TR since Sloan feels like a hidden gem. Despite being just a bit down the road (a very unfriendly road, mind you) from the over-run Gothic Basic parking lot, we saw few other climbers on a beautiful Saturday. Two parties were coming down as we went up, and there were probably three to four tents set-up for a two-day summit as we descended.
We started at 8am from Bedal Creek on easy trail. At around 1.3 miles you need to make a sharp left to start going straight up a steep trail. It is easy to miss (speaking from experience) because the trail continues straight for almost a mile further (although it gets rough after a few hundred feet), and the pink flags marking the trail heading up hill to the NE don't start until you've already gained some elevation.
The rest of the route up the steep trail is clearly marked with pink flags on trees. The trail eventually mellows out in steepness, but makes up for it in bushwhacking, and eventually opening up for a bit at a boulder field at just under 5k feet. After a bit more bushwhacking (watch out for Devil Clubs!) there is a small body of water at 5300' that you can fill up at, but (depending on the time of year) I'd skip it for one of the many cleaner-looking water streams from the snow melt about a 1000' feet further down the trail.
From there we crossed some steep rocks which were slippery if you step in some water first, but otherwise a fun semi-scramble to cross. This is followed up by a steep snowfield that, despite being a warm and sunny day, was still very icy. Crampons recommended. We stashed our approach shoes in favor of mountaineering boots at this point. At this time of year the snow was clearly overhung a few feet around the edges (enough to walk under!), so be careful as you get on and off the snow to avoid punching through in to the rocks below it.
The glacier was hardly more than a half mile long, but had a few large opening crevasses, and a clearly weakening snow-bridge along the bootpack that we went off the main bootpack to avoid.
The trail along the backside of the mountain after the glacier is well traveled and quite pleasant. This leads up to the scramble, which is pretty mellow. The famous "bear hug" move towards the end has great hand and foot placement so it was not as daunting as others made it seem. The most challenging part of the scramble was ascending to the true summit. Our party took three routs, around the front, over the top and around the back. First two ways were fine, the third was a bit sketchy. The summit register at the top was clearly water damaged some time back :(
Despite planning for 9-10 hours, we got back to the cars at 8pm, marking an almost exactly 12 hour day. Cutting that time down to our target is definitely doable if you're efficient about breaks for changing shoes, filtering water and pictures. But we took our time and enjoyed ever minute of it.