My second trip as a mountaineers scramble leader was up Snoqualmie mountain. I prefer smaller groups especially as I am just gaining experience as a leader and set the limit at 8. After several late notice cancellations I ended up with a group of 5 including myself.
We met at the Snow Lake trail head at 8:15 in a steady rain. I told the group we could give it a go but if it got to the point where the rain became too miserable we could call it quits.
We started out and the summer tread that I remembered being so easy to follow was soon lost in the snow and avalanche debris. Luckily one of out group had been on a Guye peak scramble 4 days prior and remembered that we needed to go left to get on the standard climbers route. Well I was definitely not too proud to take his advice and soon we were on terrain that I remembered from prior ascents of Guye, Lundeen and a winter ascent of Snoqualmie back in 2004.
The going was pretty straight forward but not too easy. We hit fairly steep snow early on and had to bust out our ice axes for safe travel. We also encountered a lot of slide alder partially covered with snow that was fun to get through. As we climbed we made our way to an open area where the route trends toward Guye peak and one of our party punched through a snow bridge and had a but of a struggle getting out of his predicament.
The rain continued the entire ascent until about the 5000 foot level where it changed to snow. Visibility was pretty good however and at one point we were able to get a good look at the final 1800 feet of the route and figure out which way to go.
One of our team was having some knee issues on the climb and at about 1000 feet below the summit they wanted to wait for us on the route while we continued on to the summit. I made it clear that I did not intend to split the party up.We were all soaking wet and if the wind picked up one could get hypodermic quickly. If for some reason we lost the route on the way down and missed them it could become a very bad situation. Eventually it was decided that we would all continue on towards the summit.
Our team took turns kicking steps up snow that was pretty deep and heavy and we reached the summit at 12:30. It was snowing hard but and we were all soaking wet, but luckily it was not
windy or too cold. We spent a few minutes at the summit eating and layering up. The party was
in good spirits having succesfully reaced a summit.
The descent did not lend itself well to glissading so other than a few short glissades it was plunge step city. For a brief period it actually stopped raining and I contemplated sunglasses. However they were soaking wet and i didn't have a dry piece of anything to clean them up with. Just as well we got hit by another downpour moments later.
We followed our tracks back down the mountain and carefully descended the steep areas of snow. There were sections where it was steep and the snow was quite firm. It was in an area with many trees and it was apparent that a slip would most likely end in a quick and painful collision. Thankfully we didn't get to test my theory!
At 4:15 5 very wet and tired scramblers made it back to the trail head. It was truly a group effort that had led to our success. I was amazed and elated that we had made our summit on what was one of the rainiest days I had ever spent in the mountains.
