Goat Rocks Traverse

I had been wanting to do a complete traverse of Goat Rocks for quite some time, seemed like a great ridge traverse with several miles of trail running possibilities. I meet up with Jared at 5am in Morton, WA, from there we set up for the Snowgrass Flats TH. We were rolling by 6:45. The trail was in great shape – flat and soft. After 4 miles we made it up to the Flats. We saw a bunch of campers at the various campsites. The area was a big open meadow, very beautiful, with views of Adams on one side and Rainier on the other. From there we cruised up the PCT. We then turned off onto the Old Snowy trail and proceeded to go to the top of Old Snowy at 7900 and the start of the ridge. From the top there were some amazing views of the ridge that we were going to be traveling on and a great view of Goat Lake which looked spectacular. From there we left Old Snowy and proceeded to follow the ridgeline. From the start we knew that it was going to be a scree filled day. We put on the hard hats and began to roll. The traverse over to Ives peak was fun and took a relative short amount of time. The Ridge is made up of three main peaks: Old Snowy, Ives Peak and Mt. Curtis Gilbert. Going up Ives the scree turned evil. Sort of the one foot up three inches back. We traversed more to the back side of Ives and found some better rock conditions and then proceeded to the summit. From Ives we got a great view of the next goal – Mt. CG. The goal was to do the Tieton Glacier route on the North side of the Mt. We cruised down the East side of Ives and made our way to start of the Glacier – Lots of scree! We were continually stopping to empty out the shoes. Next was the Tieton Glacier. Initially I thought our goal was to attain a small saddle on the other side of the glacier. The route to the saddle was very straight forward on fairly level ground. However as we got across the glacier, I realized that our correct route was to go up the glacier, in between two rock formations. Sort of a large chute. The route got pretty steep in places and featured one large crevasse with a snow bridge running across. We decided that we didn’t want to go back and should at least check out the route. So we did. We had a rope (my new 30m shorty), ice axes and in-step crampons. We made our way up to the snow bridge. The snow conditions were great and if we would have had our full crampons things would have been very straightforward. However with only the in-steps it added some excitement to the route. I spent a lot of time trying to kick bomber steps. Crossing the snow bridge was relatively easy the bridge seemed to be quite solid. From there the slope became even steeper as it led us to the top of a small saddle. However, we came across a crevasse that ran the entire length of the slope. We were not able to see it from the lower portion of the climb, so it totally got me by surprise. I brought Jared up to the opening and we decided that a short down climb with a step over was in order. At that point the step across was the only way to go as we were not going to head back down from there. Jared was the brave soul to be the first to step over. We figured that I would have an easy time yanking Jared out of the crevasse than vice versa and once across a better anchor could be set up. Jared made the great step with no problems. I followed and we were on our way to the top of the saddle. From there after a quick stop to refuel. We traversed over to the top of Mt. CG. Really now the real adventure began: getting off the peak! We knew that there was a climbers trail that lead back towards the PCT and the Flats. What we did not know was that the rock was complete trash and the route featured a lot of 4th/5th class moves on horrible rock. The worst part was around the Goat Citadel. As we probably ended up down climbing some low low 5th class stuff. We just kept looking for goat tracks. I would not recommend this route to anyone without fully briefing them on how crappy the rock is. Our goal was a ridge line, which from there we could drop down to the PCT. It was fitting as we hit the ridgeline we saw a large group of Mt goats. It was fun to watch them. From there we dropped into the Cispus Basin area – which was amazing – tons of wildflowers, green and beautiful. This is the place to camp in the area for sure. From there we cruised back to our trail on the PCT and bombed our way back to our car. The traverse took 12 hours. Good times for sure!