Bandera Mountain

Dec 3, 2006

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The forecast looked pretty good for Sunday so we decided to snowshoe up Bandera Mountain. We exited at Exit 45 off I-90 and found FS Road 9030 blocked by snow about a quarter mile from the interchange. We scrapped our plans to climb the west ridge and decided to climb the south slope instead. We left the car at 10:50 AM and snowshoed uphill through the forest (stayed to the climber’s left of the stream after crossing it near the road). The first 1000’ were the brushiest, but the trees then thinned for the remainder of the way and eventually opened up onto a talus slope. After reaching a second talus slope, we could finally see the summit. We skirted the open slope to the climber’s right, staying near the trees, crested onto the east ridge, and followed the ridge a short ways to the summit. It had been very windy down lower, but was calm and quite warm on the summit, so we took a break and had a snack. We had a good view of Rainier (had forgotten the camera) and some interesting cloud patterns. Just after 2 PM we headed back down, alternating between snowshoes and boots. Time to ascend was just over 3 hours and time to descend was 2 hours. Round trip distance was approximately 7 miles with 3600‘ elevation gain. Bandera is not what I would call scenic (even for the I-90 area), but it is close to Seattle and makes for a decent snowshoe outing.