Went up to Oakes Peak this past Saturday with my other two buddies.
Started at around 8:20 AM and parked the car about 0.1 mi from the Oakes creek crossing. There's a blowdown blocking the road from the creek crossing, although someone did cut the blowdown after we came back.
The crossing was littered with debris as mentioned on previous PB trip report. Carried sandals and street shoes as we expected a more raging creek after a flood warning. As we got to the creek, it was evident that rock hopping was not possible. Crossed the creek with sandals / street shoes (brrr) and switched to our boots afterwards.
As expected, it's a steep, off-trail, and not-too-bad-bushwhacking kind of trip. Patchy snow started at 3,500ft and we put on snowshoes at around 3,600ft.
As mentioned on many trip reports, although it's not technical, the ascent was pretty sustained and calf burning haha. Navigation was a little tricky at times, although we were able to find faint boot paths here and there.
There were also a couple of cliff bands as we were above 5,000ft that we had to go around. Took a little over 6 hours to reach the summit with a slower pace.
Views were gorgeous as expected. There were low clouds covering most of North Cascade and Picket Range, but overall we were able to see The Triumph, Thornton, Bacon Peak, Big Devil, etc.
Had a quick lunch and left the summit at around 3 PM. Snowshoes were more like a hindrance on the descent so we switched to spikes after descending for about 100ft.
Lots of postholing on that steep slope but it felt way more secure. We thrashed through the salal brushes and made it back to the car by 6:20 PM, just before it got dark.
Stats: 6.8mi RT, Over 5,000ft gain, 10 hours total time including breaks, with slow pace.
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