Basic Alpine Climb - Silver Star Mountain/Silver Star Creek

The climb was on June 5th.

I had Sean Albert's track from Peakbaggers on my GAIA and we were armed with Shawna and Rhonda's beta from the Saturday before.

Some spent the night before at Lone Fir CG and some at the Mazama Inn. The 8 of us were on the trail by 5:15am on a lovely Tuesday morning.

The trail starts right next to Silver Star Creek and goes for about 2 miles.  There are many logs to step across so sometimes a little searching for the trail is needed, but the main thing is to make sure you remain fairly near the east side of Silver Star Creek.

Once you're out of the trees and come to the first boulderfield, don't go into the field but stay near the tip of the field.  If you stray too far from the tip, you may encounter too much marshy terrain.  

You will then come to the headwall as shown below.  Turn left and start up a rocky gully.  If you go too far climber's right, you may get cliffed out.   Do not be drawn into one of the gullies shown.  

The rocky gully will end with a hundred feet or so of bushwacking.  You may have more or less depending on the time of the year.  Most of the bushes we went through had buds, but not a lot of leaves yet.

Once on top of the headwall we encountered another boulderfield.  Stay on snow if possible.  We ended up putting on our crampons which made it easier at this time of the morning. 

From here, it was snow all the way, aiming for the saddle to the west of Silver Star Mtn.

Another few thousand feet to go and we will be there.  Looking back.  We decide not to rope up as Silver Star Glacier looks benign.Looking forward.

At the saddle and looking at our route to the summit.  The first to arrive at the saddle at 12:30pm and last at 1pm.  We eat lunch, gear up and start up at 1:20pm.It took us some time to find the exposed step around/ramp to the summit because I should have reviewed my notes before departing.   But we finally make it and each had to touch the top, one by one which took some time.A couple did not bring crampons up so we decided they should use a handline down.The others down climbed.We finally all leave the saddle around 3:30pm.  A few glissades takes us down a couple thousand feet.  Back at our cars right near dark at 9pm.  Long day, but wonderful day with a great team.