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Alpine Scramble - Lynch Peak

This was a very enjoyable long scramble. Although clouds limited our views somewhat, what we could see was spectacular.

Placeholder Contact Profile Fritz Klein
July 08, 2018
  • Road rough but passable

  • The Scatter Creek ford is still running fairly high; probably not ideal for typical sedans.

    Parts of the trail to Peggy's Pond are indistinct; other parts are a bit of a scramble that is easy but exposed.

    We were prepared to camp on snow, but there were enough camping areas melted out at Peggy's Pond to accommodate us. 

    From camp, you can see an obvious ramp that gets you to the little saddle next to Point 6350, which is the beginning of the long traverse to Lynch Draw; that ramp works very well.  The long traverse was mostly on steep snow, hard enough that all but one of us used crampons.  From the draw, we started up a snow slope to the right of the southern buttress.  There are two reasonable places to cross above the buttress; we went up at the higher one and returned at the lower one; the lower one has less exposure.

Our group of 7 started this trip by meeting for lunch at Pioneer Park in Roslyn, then started our hike around 1:45.  The hike to Peggy's Pond was uneventful except for a brief thunderstorm complete with hail.  The majority of the surface of the Pond is still snow covered, but we found enough bare ground to camp on.  Bugs were pretty annoying except when occasional breezes kept them at bay.

We left camp at about 6:40 in cloudy weather.   The long traverse at around 6300' has lots of small ups and downs, but unlike some reports I've seen, we never went much below 6200', if at all.   We made a very short side trip to an early lunch spot overlooking the east end of Pea Soup Lake, an incredibly scenic spot even though clouds still obscured the tops of Daniel and Lynch.  As we then ascended the summit, the clouds drifted in and out -- we had good views periodically of Hinman, Dip Top, and down to Jade and No Name Lakes, but never were able to see farther north.  However, even partial views in a place like this are outstanding.  If we could have waited on top for a couple of hours, the views would have been much better, but we didn't have the time.  As it was, we didn't get back to the cars until after 8:00.

This is an excellent scramble of a rarely visited peak.  By the way, we did not find a summit register.