Trip Report
Winter Scramble - Mount Rose (winter)
a moderate snow scramble on the olympic peninsula.
Mark Scheffer
- Sat, Dec 9, 2017
- Winter Scramble - Mount Rose (winter)
- Mount Rose
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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it is a paved road to within a mile of the trailhead and drivable by any vehicle. the parking lot is small (maybe a dozen cars) and VERY popular, even in the winter. the parking lot was completely full on our return.
The route follows the summer trail and splits at the horse camp at 3,000' to allow a loop on the upper section. We went up the left trail and hit snow at about 3500'. due to the previous traffic and lack of fresh snow we did not need snowshoes for the entire ascent.
At the summit we elected to descend via the rest of the loop. this was considerably less traveled and also less steep than the ascent route had been. If doing the full loop I would recommend the clockwise route since the ascent was steep in places and would be less enjoyable as the descent route.
Start time 8:30 am. Back at the cars at 2:30 pm. The pace was moderate to slow. A possible option with a car shuttle would be to traverse over to Mt Ellinor and make it a double summit day for a much longer trip. One person in our group had done this before but it does take some significant route finding to make the steep traverse over.