Background
My collective friend group spends so much time staring at the high peaks of Snoqualmie: the Lemahs, Chimney Rock, etc. They are truly stunning.
A few years back, Kyle McCrohan popularized a route across the high terrain from Snoqualmie Pass to Mt. Daniel which he dubbed the ‘Alpine Lakes Crest Traverse’. While it’s probably a stretch to call the route a ‘first’ (La Bohn Gap and Williams Lake have old mining prospects), he was the first one I know of to popularize the idea of crossing that terrain in a day as a ‘trail run’. Since then, a growing number of friends in my circle have done the route and had excellent things to say about it. I’ve wanted to do it for a while but there’s been a variety of excuses to why I hadn’t done it yet.
The route is best done when there is still snow on the north facing descents to boot ski, avoiding chossy/scree descents. Most of the terrain is post-glacial and involves some amount of crappy rock and dirt on slab. There are two ‘cruxes’ that have been noted on the route:
- Getting onto the Overcoat Glacier, where there’s a steep snow ramp leading to a ledge system
- Getting across a series of ledges between Overcoat and Summit Chief
Going into this summer, I wanted to not set any overly consuming goals that would dominate my entire summer. Last year, I got really psyched on trying to run the Wonderland in under 24 hours and got COVID the week before, which was quite the buzzkill. On a trail run Nick had mentioned he was really motivate to do the ALCT this summer and that was all I needed to hear; I was psyched to follow his stoke on a route that had been on my ‘list’ for a minute.
Trip Report
Leading up to the day, Thomas gave me a call:
‘dude, I heard you are doing the crest traverse. I’m planning to go from i90 to US2 on Monday too.’
It’s always funny when your friends plan similar adventures in the mountains alongside you, but independently. I find that I rarely feel that the mountains feel overly ‘crowded’. . . more-so crowded with people that are friends.
Thomas and Manny were planning to go along the crest traverse to La Bohn and then duck off out the Necklace Valley. They’d crash at my place the night before but roll on their own on ‘the day’.
Nick and I invited Ely a few days before and made it a round team of 3. Ely had done the route beforehand and we were psyched to have his knowledge, as well as his sillyness, along for the journey.
Nick and I made the long car shuttle the day before, on July 4 weekend. A stupid decision to drive back over i90 midday on July 4 weekend? Maybe. . . but it had to be done. We laughed at the weird feeling of leaving his truck at the other end. ‘Well, we better do this thing now.’
We agreed on starting at 5AM or thereabouts, starting just after sunrise. We figured it’d take us 16-18 hours so we’d have some headlamp time, but limiting it to one-sided headlamp time sounded ideal. Plus, we’d be able to sleep in our beds at home. We all opted to carry full crampons and an ice axe. We had consulted with our friends that had done the route before and the consensus was that they were nice to have, ‘you might not need them’. . . but cheap insurance nonetheless.
We met up at my house just before 430AM and began our drive up to the Pass before. . . a double take. ‘Shit, I forgot the key to my camper’, Nick realized in the car. We’d not quite reached exit 34 yet; we waffled on whether it was worth it to burn the 30 minutes it would take to return back to Snoqualmie, grab the key, and then get driving again. ‘What’s in the camper?’, Ely and I asked. ‘Cold drinks. . .’ Enough said, we were going back.
Double take over with, we got up to the Pass and started moving by 530AM. We took an easy pace up to the Katwalk, chatting about mountain trip reporting and other meanderings. Our plan was to keep heart rates chill all day, never too high, and that the ‘all day pace’ would pay off in the long run. We caught up with Manny and Thomas just below Alaska Mountain and leapfrogged with them a bit. Once we reached Chikamin shoulder we all grouped up and shared the off-trail climb together.
Getting up the Chikamin shoulder wasn’t too bad, there was a bit of loose scrambling getting out of the gully and onto the heather slopes to finally traverse right but overall it was smooth. Atop the Chikamin shoulder we got our first real view of the route of the day. We could see over to Iceberg Lake, with snowfields below us beckoning for boot skiing. Time to start sliding!
The descent off Chikamin shoulder over towards the outlet of Chikamin shoulder went smoothly. We boot skied, boulder hopped, then grabbed some water at the outlet. We traversed some boulders to get over towards Iceberg Lake, before boot skiing down to the lake inlet. We made a dumb mistake of traversing a few hundred feet above Iceberg Lake on annoyingly loose choss to get onto the snow ramp leading up to the Overcoat. In hindsight, we should have just boot skied all the way down to the lake, walked along the shore, then climbed straight up. Oh well.
We started to find our groove on the climb up towards the Overcoat; looking back we could see Snoqualmie Mountain, the north side of Chair, and other familiar peaks that we regularly ski tour. Looking at it from this vantage felt exotically backwards. Normally we’re staring at the Lemah group, now we’re right under them! We reveled at the huge rock walls of the Lemahs and the beautiful off-color green they were.
We stuffed snow in our hats and continued on up as the day started to heat up. We never really got too hot, the breeze in the alpine was pleasant. There was a brief steep snow ramp leading up to the Overcoat, one of the first cruxes of the day. We managed easily, with the snow being soft. There was one cruxy spot getting over off the snow onto the rock slabs where we had a small mandatory jump move over the moat; a brief ‘huck and pray’ I guess.
Ely led us through the slabs easily, taking us on the traverse lower down that he had taken. We briefly walked over some wet slabs underneath a waterfall coming off the Overcoat but it was easy enough. Nothing more than some Class 2/3 scrambling.
Atop the Overcoat now, my mind exploded for a brief moment. Here I was, finally perched on this remarkable hanging glacier, high above the low elevation Snoqualmie Peaks. I looked over at Finger of Fate, admiring the ski line that Trevor and Scott had skied this past Spring (and shocked that it still looked in good shape!). Nick and I had always dreamed of getting up onto the Overcoat. . .and here we were, finally.
We jogged across the Overcoat towards the Summit Chief ledges, the next crux of the day. There was some steep snow downclimbing / glissading to manage, but nothing too spicy. I but scooted at one point after botching a boot ski and got some road rash on my bum. Womp.
We were easily able to get onto the Summit Chief ledges with the amount of snow that we had. It was pretty ideal: snow where you wanted it, none where you didn’t. I could see this section being much cruxier if there was more snow. You definitely want to wait for it to melt out. We got axes out briefly for the snow downclimb to the ledges but it wasn’t ‘necessary’ perse, just nice to have added security. This was one of the lone sections where we could see remnants of the bootpack from groups prior.
From the saddle south of Bears Breast we boot skied down hundreds of feet towards Williams Lake. We were amazed at how efficient the travel was turning out to be; our knees were very thankful for the low impact descent miles.
The lone ‘bushwhacky’ section of the day was down to Williams Lake and it honestly wasn’t that bad. We had a few old gpx tracks downloaded on our phones but for the most part you can just follow your nose down, using the creek as a handrail. We pretty quickly were down at the trail, about to begin what we knew would be the ‘mental crux’ of the day. The climb from Williams Lake up towards La Bohn Gap was certainly a hot grind; we dunked our hats in the creeks and tried to stay as cool as possible. The ‘trail’ above Williams Lake towards La Bohn is faint, steep, and quite bouldery. It’s only a few hundred feet of steep, high steps but it certainly packs a punch.
Once above the treeline we got a breeze again and re-found our groove. We were amazed at the solitude we experienced; there was nobody around at La Bohn Gap or around the lakes. It was a Monday, granted. Our progress slowed a bit at La Bohn as we began to climb towards Hinman, as brief bonks and some fatigue started to set in amongst the group.
The climb towards Hinman is an amazing collection of hollow rocks stacked on top of one another. At one plate I stepped on a dinner plate, which slide on top of another dinner plate, and went to my knees and got a nice little scrape. The lone ‘war wound’ of the day. . . womp. I somehow always seem to come away from trail runs with a little bit of blood to show.
After boulder hopping for a while, we reached the shoulder of Hinman. We looked up at the choss pile above us and opted to not tag the true summit. Wasn’t quite worth the squeeze for us. We stopped for a snack then boot skied down towards the gully separating Hinman and Daniel. A brief climb up the Foss River outflow to Pea Soup Lake started the final climb of the day towards Daniel. We opted to put on ‘pons for the final climb up the Lynch to Daniel. They wouldn’t have been necessary but they certainly made the snow climbing mindless on fatigued legs.
We opted to tag the Daniel summit; Daniel the ‘long way’ I guess. Nick tried to take us on a snow sneak down the winter route but we bailed on it after finding it was pretty firm and steep. We got back on the descent route on the ridge, mosied down, and upon reaching Peggie’s realized there was a real chance we’d get this thing done with no headlamps! A little more motivation to move. We reached the cars with maybe 45 minutes of daylight. We were very thankful for the camper key, as the mosquitoes were hungry. We drove home, stoked on the day and with high vibes.
A few notes, just to keep it simple:
- For single push, I’d recommend bringing an axe and pons. It’s cheap insurance but will guarantee you can manage the Lynch and the summit chief ledge down snow ramp easily. If you’re going for FKT style, obviously pick yourself.
- The route is best done from Snoqualmie Pass to Daniel for multiple reasons:
- descents on snow
- more sensible return car shuttle (yes, dropping your car at Daniel sucks)
- There’s plenty of water on the route
- I have a Strava file and comprehensive Caltopo I am willing to share but please don’t just blindy follow .gpx tracks (mild rant). If you want the caltopo file, just reach out. . . happy to share!