Eldorado Peak

Eldorado Peak via the standard East Ridge is a classic North Cascades glacier climb. It’s also notable for being the highest point on top of the Inspiration-Klawatti-McAllister ice sheet, which is “the largest contiguous ice-sheet in the lower 48 states not connected to a volcano.” That’s a bit of a mouthful, but basically there would be a lot of glacier ice around which usually means good views.

Logan, Corey, and I drove to the Eldorado lot on Friday night ahead of a Saturday alpine start. This route is interesting in that the crux is likely the river crossing just a few dozen yards from the car. There’s no permanent bridge here and climbers either need to find a log crossing or wade across. We spent some time on Friday scouting the area but couldn’t find a trustworthy log crossing, so we decided that we would just wade the river. I had brought an extra pair of old sneakers just for this purpose.

We got a 2am start the next morning knowing we were in for a long day. The river crossing went smoothly and we bushwhacked a short distance to find the climbers’ trail. It pretty well maintained for a climbers’ trail, but relentlessly steep. The forest air was exceptionally muggy this morning and all of us were sweating like crazy.

Eventually we emerged from the forest into the infamous Eldorado boulder field - 1300 vertical feet of boulder hopping. Scrambling up the boulders was a fun change of pace at first but got tedious after a while. We tried to use the intermittent climbers’ trail on the right hand side of the boulders as much as possible to speed things up.

Things were much smoother sailing above the boulder field, again with a nice climbers’ trail to follow most of the time. Soon enough we hit consistent snow and it was time to change into mountaineering boots. Views were opening up over the North Fork Cascade River Valley, and Johannesburg Mountain with its hanging glaciers was looking awesome as usual.

The next tricky part of the route was crossing a north-south ridge separating our drainage from the one leading to the summit. There were two reasonable gullies to scramble down the other side. We chose to go down the south one since it wasn’t as steep. It worked, but was more slabby than I liked; on the return trip we scrambled up the north gully which is steeper but ledgier. I think the north gully was better.

Shortly after the ridge crossing we met another group that had camped there overnight. We all roped up and started slogging up the Eldorado Glacier. We had been approaching the low cloud ceiling all morning hoping for it to go away, but we had no such luck as we marched into the clouds. Too bad! This climb is known for its unique views of the northwest aspect of Forbidden Peak and Moraine Lake and it was a shame we’d miss it.

After another hour or so of whiteout hiking, we turned left to ascend the east ridge. At some point I looked back and saw the emerald green waters of Moraine Lake far below through a gap in the clouds! The lake wasn’t objectively that impressive by itself, but this was a clear improvement over a whiteout and we were all pretty happy. Views kept improving and we got a good luck at the huge cracks on the Inspiration Glacier to the north.

We easily steered clear of some gaping crevasses on the east ridge and made our way up to the famous “knife edge” summit ridge. Under the current conditions the knife was decidedly blunt, though, and shortly we were celebrating on the summit! Clouds came and went and we stayed a while to wait for good views in each direction before descending. We got our best views of Forbidden on the descent, although its signature summit horn never left the clouds.

Descending the boulder field was just as slow and tedious as ascending it, and we were all pretty over it by the time we re-entered the forest. I was a bit worried about the river crossing because the water volume is higher in the afternoon, but it went fine.

In the end it was a full 14 hour day. Eldorado was an interesting climb with great views that presented a variety of challenges, but still non-technical enough to be approachable by beginner-level mountaineers. Thanks to Logan and Corey for the great day out!