We all assembled at the Ash Way Community Transit Park and Ride on Thursday evening, July 29th.   The Ash Way Park and Ride is located at the corner of 164th SW and Ash Way, just north of the Alderwood Mall.  Take the 164th St SW exit (183) turn left, cross the freeway and turn left at Ash Way.  It is not a bad jump off point for trips that require travel north on I-5.  After shoe horning all equipment and team members into Fred’s Subaru we hit the road for our first point, Marble Mount Washington.  (About 40 miles east of I-5 on the North Cascades Highway.)   We grabbed a quick bite of dinner at the Turkey House located at the Darrington exit.  It was a decent turkey sandwich at a reasonable price.  We stopped and registered at the Ranger Station that evening and moved on to camp at the Good ell Creek camp ground about 12 miles east of Marble Mount.   Found a place to camp easily and settled down for the evening. 

 

  Next day found us returning to the Marble Mount Ranger Station to pick up a parking pass, oops.  We had a very slow breakfast at the only local place open and then started out on the climb in earnest.  We took the Cascade River Road to the parking area at the trailhead.  It is approximately 16 miles from Marble mount and 3  miles east of the end of the road at Cascade Pass.  We searched for the trail head based on some very poor directions from the local climbing ranger.  He said the “new” trailhead was   800 yards down the road from the parking area.  We spent about an hour searching and returned to the parking lot where we discovered the “old” trail head and creek crossing, less than 100 yards from the parking lot.   It was about 12:00 pm and we were all anxious to get off the road and up the trail.  After crossing the North Fork of the Cascade River on a jumble of fallen logs we hit the trail up in the Eldorado Creek drainage. 

 

  Up is the operative word here, especially if you are carrying a full overnight pack.   This is the classic Cascade killer approach.   We ascended the steep lower section of the trail crossing two major boulder fields.  The boulder fields were well marked with cairns, and if one looked closely some sections of trails that skirted the east edge.    We came out of the last boulder field and into the open meadows and rock fields.  Very beautiful, but not a great spot for camp.  We headed for the ridge to the west to cross over into the Rousch Creek Drainage and to make camp below the Eldorado Glacier.  The crossing point was at 6,200 feet.  We again followed a climber’s trail to this point and descended a steep trail on the west face of the ridge.   Camp was on a snowfield at about 6200 feet.  It was 6:00 pm when we arrived and frankly I was done in by the hot 4,000-foot ascent. 

 

Fred, Randy and Joe pushing up through the boulder fields, steep and deep.

 

 

Doug and Joe above the last boulder field, ridge separating Eldorado Creek and Rousch Creek drainage in background (west)

 

  Next morning (July 31) we were up moderately early (6:30 am), had breakfast and headed up to the Eldorado Glacier.  We roped up when we got on the glacier at around 6,800 feet.   We continued up to the Inspiration Glacier, which begins at 7,500 feet.  We crossed a wide flat section of the Inspiration Glacier until we came to the ridge that runs directly east west from the summit of Eldorado.  We rounded the end of the ridge and started up heading west and following a pretty clear cow path.   We were enjoying great views to the east looking down into Moraine Lake, Forbidden Glacier and Forbidden Peak.  We continued up the east west ridge working around several large crevasses.  We threw in a couple of pickets at the steeper sections just above the open crevasse.  The ridge flattened out slightly just before the last steep spurt up to the famous knife-edge ridge that leads to the summit.  We had some exposed ice approaching this last ridge and had to work our way around to the left.  The ridge was exposed but the snow was stable.  We did place a picket when we reached it and left it in place for the trip down.  We reached the summit around 12:00 after leaving the rope up spot around 9:00 am.     The summit was tight, especially since we shared it with another team of 6 climbers that had come up that morning from the parking lot.  They were traveling light in very good weather, but it was still some 6.600 feet worth of up in one day.  Not bad. Everyone was feeling great and we spent about 20 to 25 minutes on the summit and headed down.

 

 

 

Joe, Doug and Fred Moving out across the Inspiration Glacier, Eldorado Peak in the background. 

 

Fred leading up the east west ridge of Eldorado

 

 

Joe and Randy with Moraine Lake, Forbidden Glacier and Forbidden Peak in the background to the east.

 

 

The team on the summit of Eldorado, from front to back: Fred, Doug, Joe and Randy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The trip back to camp was leisurely, with lots of sight seeing and photo opts.  We were pretty relaxed by the time we reached camp at around 3:00 pm.  We settled in for a quiet afternoon enjoying the view, eating dinner and yakking it up.  This was the most laid back part of the trip.  We really put the ease back into adventure.

 

View looking south from just above camp

 

 

Randy propping up boulders in camp

 

 

Fred and Joe with tents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Next morning (August 1rst) we packed up and followed our route back over the ridge out of the Rousch Creek drainage and back into the Eldorado Creek drainage.  We left camp at around 9:00 am.   I got us lost in the upper boulder field and we had a brief underbrush tour when we tried to exit the field too high.  The team wisely abandoned their leader at this point and we got back on track and followed the cairns carefully until we exited from the lower boulder field at the trail.   We could tell it was the exit since it was marked with orange flagging.  The rest was a very hot steep descent back to the parking lot, which we reached at around 12:30 pm.   It was great to reach the North Fork of the Cascade River and wash some of the heat and dust off in its icy water.  We headed back to Marble Mount and lunch at the “Good Food” drive-in.  I had the olive burger, which was cooked in garlic and featured copped green olives.  Doug had the salmon burger and it also looked pretty good.  Joe and Randy went for the “normal” burgers.  At any rate the food was good and really hit the spot.  After food we found I-5 and headed back to Seattle.  All in All a great trip.  We lived up to the Bushwhacker motto: “What the Mountaineers can do in two days, we can do in three.”  I might add we really know how to enjoy the extra day. 

 

 

 

Joe, Fred and Randy at the river after a hot dusty descent.

 

 

 

Fred celebrates the end of the trip

Fred  

Randy

Doug

Joe