Completed an excellent C2C of Colchuck and Dragontail on Saturday. Got our start at about 4:30am and finished just after 6pm, 13.5 hours in total. The whole trail to Colchuck Lake is well maintained and signed as usual, and popular for day hikers. We missed most of the rush while we were up top.
Colchuck Lake to Colchuck Col: We headed around the lake and then started heading up on the rocks to the moraine before encountering the large patch of side alder. We preferred rock hopping instead of fighting with trees. There’s a nice boot path leading up the edge of the moraine, which we followed to the base of consistent snow. Ended up using boots/crampons, but some may prefer just spikes and trail runners. We discussed this but didn’t know what we were going to encounter and figured it was just training weight in the end. Not much of a boot pack up the glacier so we hiked in switchbacks to preserve energy rather than just front-pointing up the whole thing. The snow is starting to get quite thin in some areas and turning to ice in others, I’m not sure if the route will be good after the next couple weeks.
Colchuck Col to Colchuck Peak: Took off the crampons and headed up the peak. Pretty easy scramble and then a walk out to the true summit on the westernmost peak with a small, non-exposed scramble to the top. We looked for a summit register but didn’t find one.
Colchuck Peak to Dragontail Peak via Pandora’s Box Notch: Traced our steps back to the Col and then headed up to the notch. The first couple hundred feet was snow free and garbage loose sand/rock, with one step forward and sliding half back. It was definitely an energy sap. Once we reached the snow we put crampons back on to head up. Pretty steep but good snow with the weather we had. It was getting thin in some areas where it was easy to punch through or hit ice. Currently the snow is consistent enough to keep traction on. We topped out on the notch and there was a nice steep down climb waiting for us. The snow was good and there were excellent kick steps, so it was a fairly easy go with crampons/ice axe. Easy walk across the snow to Dragontail. We took our crampons off and scrambled up to the true summit. Once again it was an easy scramble.
Dragontail to Colchuck Lake: Headed down to the east slopes standard route. The snow climb has an excellent bootpack and was easy to follow. At this hour some people weren’t even using foot traction because the snow was so soft. We headed straight for Mist Pond where the snow stopped and it met with the Aasgard Pass route. Easy hike out on the trail, though our knees were feeling all of the impact from the day on our way down the pass.
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