Snowking Mountain (Exploratory outing)

- From Cascade River Road, FS 1570 (Kindy Creek Road) was passable (barely) in our 2022 Ioniq 5 (6 inches clearance) down to (and across) the bridge across the Cascade River.  We parked there, elevation 1,100', but only the hardiest of high-clearance vehicles would have wanted to go beyond.

- FS 1570 is blocked by large boulders just after FS 1571 (Sonny Boy Road) splits off at about 1,220' and just before the first hairpin.   Beyond this, FS 1570 is getting overtaken by alder and cedar, and the first crossing of (the north fork of) Vee Creek at about 1,300' looked steep and muddy, likely made much worse by the Dec. 2025 storms that appear to have made the washout bigger.   However, DO NOT DESPAIR.  Even though many trip reports and GPS tracks found online cross Vee Creek (and another unnamed creek) and then back again on the very long road switchbacks (including some sort of very sketchy crossing of a broken bridge), you do not have to do this.  Read on...

- Instead, some trail angel (THANK YOU, trail angel!) has been steadily at-work making very reasonable, flagged climbers trails to cutoff the forest-road switchbacks, which means you barely need to travel on the road at all.   The first climbers trail departs FS 1570 from the end of the first switchback at about 1,240'.  This takes you S / SSW until you end up on FS 1570 again at about 2,050'  (It can be easy to lose the blue/white striped flagging, but it's continuous.) At that point, just walk straight across FS 1570, and spot another climbers trail (now flagged with orange tape) that cuts off the next huge switchback and deposits you again on FS 1570, at about 2,260'.   Now walk the road a short ways NW and the last climbers trail, the best of them all, departs at about 2,270', just before the (south fork of) Vee Creek.  This is a steep but superb climbers trail (by North Cascades standards) that now takes you up and up.

- We encountered constant snow from 4,000'.   Recent storms made the top 10" (or so) still soft, and we donned snowshoes.   This was slow-going.   As a consequence, and given our late start (2:30 pm from the car), we stopped just before sunset, on the west shoulder of Found Peak at ~5,600', and a glorious camp with view of Snowking to the SW (see photo below) and Hidden Lakes Peak and Eldorado to the NE.

- The next morning we set out for Snowking at about 7:30 am, hoping for firmer snow conditions on the ridgetop, especially after a clear night. No such luck.  We found travel slow-going and tiring.  Happy enough with just being up there, we turned around on Kindy Ridge above Cyclone Lake.