North Fork Entiat River, Emerald Peak, Pinnacle Mountain & Saska Peak — Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023

Fantastic 3 day backpacking adventure hitting 3 of the Washington State Top 100 Peaks with Ngie.The North Fork Entiat River road is rough, but we made it up to the trailhead in a Subaru Crosstrek with no problem.

Friday 8/25- We got started at 11:20am. Trail has been logged out the whole way to Saska Pass, so we had only a couple of recently felled logs to hop over. There were also about 8-10 sources of water along the way. We got to the basin directly below Saska and Emerald Peaks, found a great spot to camp, set up our tents, and set off for Emerald Peak at 5:30pm. We got to the summit at 7:10pm. Having a previous GPS helped with finding the proper route up. Lots of good solid good rock to make the scrambling easier. After catching a great sunset, we headed down. We wanted to make sure we got down below the tricky scramble sections, before it got dark. We did, and only had about 20 minutes or so hiking back in the dark to camp with our headlamps, as we got back to camp at 8:46pm 11.4 miles with 5049 ft gain

Sat 8/26- We got started at 8am from our camp at 6900ft. The trail up to Saska Pass is in good shape. The trail trail heading down from Saska Pass disappears in the old fire burn. We then just headed straight down thru the burnt forest in the ashen sandy soil. Once down at Snow Brushy Creek, we filled up our water, and headed up thru the burn zone again to get up to Borialis Pass on our way to Pinnacle Peak. We ended up catching some of the old trail up in a beautiful larch forest that had not been burnt, but only for a short stretch. After this it was up a super steep couloir with some loose rocks up to Borealis Pass, and then up more rock and scree up to the summit block. There are some scramble moves here bit all are fairly easy and protected up to the summit. This was the easiest of the three peaks we did, but was the farthest away, and took the longest of time. It was also getting smoky when we were on the summit so our stay was not long.
Heading down to Snow Brushy Creek was no problem, but getting back up to Saska Pass was a chore. This 1400ft of gain was tiring, as it was getting quite warm out. Our packs were a little heavier, as we filled up with water. Once at the Saska Pass at 5:20pm we followed the trail for a bit, before leaving the trail and traversing over a large talus field to directly below an enormous super steep couloir up to the summit block of Saska Peak.It looked imposing for sure. I went up the far left, as to not kick down any loose rocks on ngie. Also it is extremely steep. It worked, thankfully, as I was able to get to a large saddle to the west of the summit at around 8150 ft. Here there was a protected class 3 scramble up to a short traverse, and then more class 3 scrambling to the ridge just west of the summit. Here it is a short walk up to the summit, finally, as this was one tough peak to climb . Weather had cleared , so we got some better views that from earlier in the day at Pinnacle Peak. Saska Peak, by far was the hardest of the three summits that we did. We really did not want to go down the super steep scree-loose rock-hard dirt section , so we decided to go down the south rib. This worked for a good bit, but the couloir we were on cliffed out, so we had to keep going left, to another couloir which again cliffed out. Veered left again, and at 7600ft we found a way down to the base of the large couloir. Here we traversed over to our gear that we had dropped, and hiked back out in the dark to camp, arriving there at 9:05pm 9.2 miles with 5531 ft gain.

Sun 8/27  After we both woke up very tired from the previous two days, we decided to hike out, instead of making an attempt for Cardinal Peak. It is a good thing we didn't try, as it was a very tough hike back to the car, as I was quite tired. Plus it was over 90 degrees when we got back to the car at 12:40pm. I ended up filling up with water 2-3 times.9.7  miles with 440 ft gain on the way out.

Awesome trip!! 30.1 miles with 11,020ft elevation gain. Such a great area 

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://caltopo.com/m/JEPC2