Elain on the summit of Mount Pugh
The forecast for Sat. looked a decent "mostly
cloudy" in the Mountain Loop area so we settled on a scramble of Mount
Pugh. We started hiking the trail at 9:45 AM (from Darrington 12.5
miles on the Mountain Loop Highway, then left onto an unsigned road for
a little over 1 mile to the Mount Pugh trailhead). We followed the
trail as it meandered up through lush forest for 1.5 miles to little
Lake Metan. We then took the left branch of the trail around the lake
and up switchbacks for 2 miles to a basin below Stujack Pass. We
stopped there to change into boots and stashed our trailshoes in some
trees. We then headed straight up soft snow in the lower half of the
basin
and eventually intersected the trail that switchbacked up to
Stujack Pass (and encountered 2 parties on their way down from the
pass). We
took a quick break at the pass and then started up the trail again. We
didn't get very far before we encountered snow on the trail. We broke
out the crampons and ice axes to traverse or climb steepish stretches
of
snow up to a north-south running ridge. Then we shadowed the ridge on
snow, skirting a small glacier below. We eventually got onto melted out
trail on the ridge and followed it until the ridge
turned westerly. The trail seemed to stop at a large rock face. (At
this point my lemming urges led us on an hour-long detour. I spotted a
faint path to the edge of the snow and tracks in the snow traversing to
rock slabs and more steepish snow on the northwest face and convinced
Steve that we should investigate. The northwest face has some steep
snow climbing in several gullies that looked like they would lead to
the ridge on the north side of the Pugh summit, but the terrain was a
bit too steep for
me in my current condition and was obviously not our intended route. We
then backtracked to the rock face in question.) Steve got a closer look
and found
a somewhat hidden step up to the continuation of the scramble trail,
complete with old pin up higher (we supposed for an optional safety
handline on the descent). We got onto the trail again and
scrambled onto the upper part of the ridge. The trail was generally
very established with only a bit of class 2 scrambling. It wound around
to
the south side where we again encounted steepish snow that we climbed
to connect back to melted out trail. We finally reached the summit at
just after 4:30 PM. The weather had held for us and we had some good
views of the other Mountain Loop peaks. We knew we would be
getting down near dusk, so we quickly took some photos and headed back
down. The descent went slowly with all the putting on and taking off of
crampons for Steve and just slow downclimbing of the snow sections for
me (alternating harder snow and soft sticky snow that resulted
in the balling of crampons almost every step). We were happy to
arrive at Stujack Pass and even happier to change into trailshoes in
the basin below. It started to sprinkle lightly on the final hike
out. We arrived at the car at 9:45 PM. With all the snow crossings, it
was a longer day than we expected, but a fun and worthwhile scramble.
The total distance was 11 miles
and the elevation gain was 5500'.
Elain on the summit of Mount Pugh
Steve on the summit of Mount Pugh with Sloan Peak in the background
USGS marker on the summit of Mount Pugh
Elain descending the trail
Steve on the snow-covered lower ridge
Elain on the snow-covered lower ridge
Looking back at two of the sub-peaks of Pugh (true summit is not
visible)
Pugh summit in the clouds