Alpine Scramble - Bryant Peak

The new parking lot is huge and there was plenty of parking at 7:30am on a sunny Saturday. The parking lot is so large (and with several different levels), that it’s advisable to pre-arrange a meeting place. Our 3 cars all ended up in the upper lot so finding each other wasn’t a problem.

We made quick work of the hike to Hemlock Pass and turned off the trail following a faint boot path NE up a ridge.  Fritz had been kind enough to let me know that by heading right at the flat spot just below 4,800’ we would find a dry streambed that we could ascend to avoid much of the bushwhack. Kurt and I had studied satellite images ahead of time and identified the gully. We were further aided by an excellent trip report that included a photo of a decoy cairn that should be ignored, and by having as part of our group, Rob, who had been on a previous Bryant trip with Fritz. After some light bushwhacking we found the dry streambed, donned helmets, and started heading up.

While generally easy travel, there was a fair amount of wet moss in the streambed and a few big steps that made things interesting. After about 120’ of gain, we climbed out of the gully to the right and ascended just to the right of the gully through light brush (blueberries!) until we reached the talus field.

From there we headed west across talus towards the ridge, picking the easiest terrain. There was the occasional cairn, but for most part, we only noticed them when we ended up next to them; we didn’t use them for navigation. Once on the edge of the ridge we followed a boot path on and off to the summit block.

At the summit block we poked around looking for the best place to ascend. We encountered a pair of scramblers descending from the peak who suggested going around to the left to find an easier spot to ascend. We took their advice and the climbing was indeed easy, although where we topped out was not the tallest point and we then had to traverse over to the true summit. We reached the summit just before noon.

The view from the summit is top-notch, and we enjoyed a well-deserved rest while identifying the many peaks surrounding us, signing the register, and taking a summit selfie.

We descended from the summit block by a different route without incident and retraced our steps to the dry streambed. Partway down we got off-route, missing the spot to re-enter the gully and ended up cliffed out. In retrospect, we should have re-traced our steps and found the way back into the gully, but you know what they say about hindsight. Instead, we forged ahead, traversing a very sketchy dirt slope making heavy use of veggie belays. To add insult to injury, this is also where we stirred up some bees/wasps(?) who inflicted several stings while we were trapped moving slowly.  After this exciting stretch, we found our way back to the bootpath and then the trail and hiked 4 hot miles back to the cars for just under 9 hours C2C.

Despite our little misadventure on the descent, this was a great trip with a strong group of scramblers. We got lucky with the weather, as the forecast earlier in the week threatened afternoon thunderstorms. It was a graduation scramble for our one student – yay!