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Winter Scramble - Preacher Mountain

Burly attempt of Preacher Mountain.

Rodica Manole Rodica Manole
March 29, 2026
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • The Rainy Lake trail is a complete mess especially the second half before Rainy Lake. Blowdowns, postholing snow, lost trail countless times on our way up, pretty much unrecognizable in comparison with a previous trip in May 2022 when Ian and I succesfully scrambled it but in a complete whiteout. 

    The log at the Rainy Lake outlet is still there and didn't have any issues getting on the ridge above the lake. More blowdowns and pretty bushwacky on that ridge, completely different conditions since we climbed it in May 2022. Back then we had more snow on the ridge covering the mess. 

Party of 5 left TH around 7:45 and had no idea what was waiting for us on our approach. Definitelly didn't expect the amount of blowdowns and the trail dissapearing multiple times. 

Snow started around 2100 ft. Put the snowshoes on about 1000 ft below Rainy Lake. It was very slow going dealing with blowdowns especially on the second half of the aproach below the lake and didn't make it at the lake until 12:30. Had a 2 PM turn around time and even though we knew it was not realistic to summit by 2 (given conditions), we decided to continue and see how far we get. We gained the ridge, switched to crampons and ice ax+pole and made it only to 4300 ft by 2 PM. Very slow going with more blowdowns encountered, bushwacky, completely deifferent conditions than some us rembered from previous trips. Turned around, dropped back to the lake, had lunch and hked out. We heard multiple slides at the lake from the steeper cliffs above. We did a better job on our way out sticking with the trail and identifying untravelled sections we missed on our way in. We got back to TH after 11 hours since we started and while we didn't get the summit, it was still a great, harder than expected day out with a very good group.