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Trip Report    

Alpine Scramble - South Slide Mountain via Sun Top

We enjoyed this lesser-traveled route's straightforward navigation, plentiful wildflowers, and fun T3 rock scrambling, although the rock quality is questionable in places

  • Sun, Jul 28, 2024
  • South Slide Mountain
  • Scrambling
  • Successful
  • Road rough but passable
  • We had read that a high clearance vehicle was recommended for the approach road, and I would agree as there were a few larger potholes. I would also make sure you are fine with potentially getting a few scratches on your car as the road gets extremely narrow towards the trailhead with plants on both sides. We just parked on the side of the forest road as there wasn't a parking lot, but there was space on a pullout to park.

    The Sun Top trail was extremely well maintained. After leaving the trail, we appreciated how easy it was to navigate this route, between following the creek bed (mostly dry), various game trails, and staying on the ridge. We turned around at the middle peak rather than go all the way to 6620 because there was so much loose rock. I am guessing one could probably traverse lower on the middle peak to avoid the worst of the loose rock.

I completed this scramble as a private trip because I didn't get enough signups for it to be an official trip. But my scrambling partner, Sarah, and I enjoyed the route, so we would recommend it for small groups.

We started from the trailhead around 8:30am. We followed the Sun Top trail for about a mile before leaving the trail to head towards the creek and lake. In retrospect, we could have stayed on the trail a little longer until we reached the creek, rather than cut through trees. We were able to follow the creek, which was mostly a dry creek bed, almost all the way to the lake. 

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Dry creek bed to follow after you leave the trail


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The Lake

We also found plentiful game trails to follow that took us in the right direction without having to do any bushwhacking. We saw a lot of evidence of elk and bear (including scat and footprints, and notably, some old bones of what we assume was an elk) but didn't see any wildlife bigger than a chipmunk. We saw lots of wildflowers along the creek bed and in the meadows / forest on our way to the ridge.

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What we assumed were elk bones

The game trails led us to a steep grassy slope that we ascended to the ridge, staying climbers' left. We were thankful that the elk had kicked some steps in for us -- that helped make things less slippery.

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Steep grassy slope -- Go up!

There was a bit more elevation loss and gain than we expected between reaching the ridge and the north-most Slide Mountain, but the terrain was not very technical until we passed that peak.

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View from the ridge south towards North and Middle Slide

We stayed on the ridge because we wanted to do some more technical rock scrambling. We enjoyed scrambling that was mostly T3, although there were a few places where the ridge was narrow (but not technical) and a fall would be more along T4 lines. It seemed like there were options to avoid more technical scrambling in most places if you wanted to go lower on the slope. We generally stayed on the west side of the ridge as the Guide to 100 Peaks recommends (although another trip report mentioned staying on the east side, we thought the west side had less exposure). Some of the rock was loose or not the best quality, so I would recommend testing every hold before trusting it if you stay on the ridge.

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Scrambling along the ridge

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More technical rock scrambling

We could see Mt Rainier peeking out behind clouds.

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We ended up turning around at the middle peak, rather than go all the way to the south peak, due to the loose rock. However, it might be possible to traverse lower on the middle peak and find a safer path. 

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Middle Slide -- BEWARE of loose rock

We retraced our steps back across the ridge, down the same slope, and down the creek bed to the trail. I refilled my water bottle at one of the running parts of the creek. On the Sun Top trail out, we saw 8 mountain bikers  (the first people we had seen all day!) and one dirt bike rider. We returned to the car at 3:30pm.

Overall, we thought this was a fun route, with easy navigation, nice views of wildflowers and the surrounding peaks, and some fun technical rock scrambling. We enjoyed the isolation of the route as we did not see another person all day until we returned to the Sun Top trail in the afternoon. We would recommend this for future scramble outings, although probably for smaller groups given the poor rock quality, to lower the risk of rockfall. I would also not take a group up the summit of the middle peak given the quantity of loose rock, but you could potentially traverse around it, or possibly send up folks one at a time.