Trip Report
Paddy-Go-Easy North and South Peaks
A fun scramble with lots of variety in terrain, grippy rock, impressive views, and gorgeous fall color.
Rose Gear
- Mon, Oct 7, 2024
- Paddy-Go-Easy Peaks
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road rough but passable
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Gravel road leading to the trailhead was in good condition with few potholes. Scatter Creek was completely dry at the crossing. The trail to Paddy-Go-Easy Pass is eroded in places and had a few (less than 10) large blowdowns that were easily navigated. There was some frost and snow on the north and west faces of the peaks.
Our group of five Mounties arrived at the Paddy-Go-Easy Pass trailhead around 8 am. The air was crisp and cold as we set off up the trail. We expected a steep climb and many downed trees on the way to the pass, but only had to make our way around over about 10 down trees. Thankfully, it seems that crews have been at work to maintain this trail in the past year. We arrived at the pass after about 1 hour 50 minutes to sweeping views of The Cradle, Mount Daniel, Mount Rainier, Glacier Peak, Mount Adams, and Mount Baker as well as plentiful fall foliage and a few golden larches.
From the pass we made our way north to a saddle east of Paddy-Go-North, first following an unmaintained trail, then crossing a boulder field and ascending the heather-covered slopes, taking care not to all take the same path and create a new trail. We circumvented the summit in a counterclockwise direction to approach from the north with some fun rock moves on grippy rock with good handholds and footholds.
After admiring the views from the summit for a few moments, we followed our route back to Paddy-Go-Easy Pass.
At the pass, we headed towards Sprite lake.
We descended into the Sprite Lake bowl, then ascended a terraced slope to a ridge of orange-colored, grippy rock.
We followed the ridge up to a choss-filled gully, and used the gully to ascend to the saddle northwest of Paddy-Go-South summit. At times we split into two groups, one going left and the other right, to avoid being in each others' fall lines. There was risk of rock fall in this section, but thankfully none occurred. We traversed to the Paddy-Go-South summit, arriving at around 12:40 pm...just in time to have a 20-minute lunch and start back by our 1 pm turnaround time. Because we had hit our turnaround time, we decided not to try for Tucquala Peak.
We followed the same route down, which offered ample opportunities to practice friction-slapping on the grippy orange boulders.
Overall, a super enjoyable rock scramble aided by awesome company and wonderful weather.
Total time: 7 hours, Distance: 9 miles, Elevation Gain: ~4,000 feet