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Gilbert Peak 8201ft (2485m)
Northwest Gully via Snowgrass Flats
September 15, 2004
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Jake, Marek and I made the long day trip into the Goat Rocks area and climbed Gilbert Peak. Poor
weather forecasts for other parts of the Cascades forced us to head south and east to drier areas. As it
was we were sprinkled on a few times but otherwise enjoyed good weather locally.
Since we had a long day ahead of us, Jake picked me up a little after 2am and we met Marek 20 minutes later. Soon we
were driving the dark roads of highway 410 around the north and east side of Mt Rainier on our way to Packwood. We made good time
and arrived at the Chambers Lake trailhead around 4:30am. A crescent moon along with Venus and Saturn were still shining brightly
in the cold, still air as we put on our packs and started hiking. Marek and I had headlamps so we took the ends and let Jake hike
in the middle. There was frost on the leaves.
We made good time hiking as there was nothing to see but the illuminated cone from our headlmamps focused on the trail ahead of us.
The brisk pace warmed us up as the miles piled up behind us. Eventually the eastern sky brightened and we were treated to great
views of Mt Adams and Mt St Helens.
Following the instructions in Climbing Washington's Mountains, we took the right fork (trail 97) at Snowgrass Flats and followed
it up to where it met the PCT. Once on the PCT we cruised up through the forest and arrived at an overlook of Cispus Basin as the
morning sun rose over the nearby peaks.
