2 day / 1 night / double summit of Snowking. Camped on Kindy Ridge.
Southside Cascade road is suitable for essentially all vehicles until the bridge crossing the cascade river. Past that, I'd recommend a high clearance vehicle to get across about 4 streams. Though this only adds 0.4 miles parking at the river each way if your car has insufficient clearance. No fallen trees on the road.
On foot following the old Cascade River Road for an additional 2.7 miles to 2270' is fairly trivial other than one washed out bridge that requires either very carful crossing of the one remaining support log, or a 15' descent and crossing of the creek.
Once on the climbers trail the trail was well marked (by climbing trail standards) until about 3600' where multiple paths intertwined unfortunately right at the snowline. But above 3600' the forest is more open and travel is fairly straightforward. Adding the summit of Found Peak is easy to tack on the standard ascent route, only requiring an extra 100' gain. Though the summit is more easily accessed on the west since there are a series of cliffs guarding the south aspect.
Above 3800' we used snowshoes. Open travel along the ridge is pretty straightforward after Found Peak with only a couple small steps to navigate. We setup camp atop snow covered Kindy Ridge.
After setting up camp we ascended Snowking via the ridge just south of Cyclone Lake. One set of tracks opted to save 20' of gain by contouring a bump at 6330' but for snow stability sake I'd recommend going over the top. As we neared the summit pyramid we opted to try a slightly different approach than most parties and circled to gain the SSE ridge at 7180'. This didn't appear to make much difference in spring conditions, but is a viable option. The final 100' scramble necessitated crampons and a single ice axe for security.
We reversed the route back to Kindy ridge, slept, woke up, and summitted again in the morning under deteriorating conditions to ensure all members of our party got to summit. The only difference on this second ascent is we did the more standard route up to 7300' via east face of the summit block on low angle snow.
Conditions changing rapidly up there; One hour you can be cold with freezing rain, and the next you will be stripping all your layers in the heat of direct sun.
Avalanche danger is real this time of year. Don't discredit the power of wet/glide slides. We saw big ones popping off northeaster aspects as late as 5:45pm. Make safe informed decisions.
Comments
GoodKarma on Snowking Mountain
Beautiful pictures, and inspiring. Looks like you hit the jackpot with conditions. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by:
GoodKarma on Apr 09, 2025 10:10 PM