Mazamas — For the Love of Mountains
Activity Notes
For the first day climb of our Mountain Loop Highway adventure, we'll do a long scramble to a North Cascades lookout before returning to Squire Creek camp. It's a 100 minute drive, and the last half hour is on one of the worst roads you've ever seen, so we will carpool to/from Squire Creek in our highest clearance vehicles.
From the Bear Creek trailhead we will hike an easy trail to Bear Lake and a rocky trail to Pinnacle Lake. From there our scramble route will be off-trail, with two steep sections, gaining the Bathtub Lakes from Pinnacle Lake and reaching Mt Pilchuck from an overlook above the Bathtub Lakes. At the summit we will be joined by hoards who came up on the easier trail, and then we will return the same way we came.
We will leave Squire Creek at 06:00 and start the climb around 08:00. We will turn around if we haven't reached the summit by 14:00.
