Steve and Curtis on the summit
A friend of Steve's from our years at Brown,
Curtis, was in town for a conference and interested in an overnight
trip on the weekend. However, the weather forecast did not look very
promising, and in the end we decided to do a day hike instead. The
Leavenworth area was looking the best in terms of a forecast for the
least chance of precipitation on Saturday, so we settled on Bootstrap
Mountain. We left the trailhead (accessed right off of Icicle Creek
Road, near its end) at a little after noon and started
hiking the trail. The trail switched backed through forest to Bootjack
Ridge. Once on the ridge we encounted snow and pulled out the ice axes
for security on the snow slopes, but never needed to put on crampons.
We reached a local high point, the summit of Bootstrap Mountain, at
about 3:30 PM. The rocky summit was socked in with clouds so we didn't
get the hoped for views of Mount Stuart. We started our descent and
reached the car a little after 6 PM. We were all quite wet from the
light rain and wet brush along the trail. After a quick change of
layers, we headed to Gustav's and had a greasy dinner of
burgers/sandwiches and fries. Even with the rain and without the
mountain views, it felt good to be out. The total distance was 8 miles
and the elevation gain was 3900'.
Steve and Curtis on the summit
Steve and Elain on the summit