Summer Season Opener

After an interesting experience with wet slides and pollen on the Isolation Traverse, I felt ready to hang up the skis and transition to the summer season. I hit up Jack and Daniel for a weekend run. Early season options can be a bit limiting. While scrolling maps, I remembered about a ridge traverse in the William O Douglas Wilderness that I had been eyeing for a few years. I first checked out this more mysterious part of the Cascades five years ago, making a note to someday return.

My goal was to do a complete traverse of Nelson Ridge, the spine of the small sub-range. This required a 5.5 mile car shuttle, so we decided to utilize my new E-bike, which I got for commuting to Seattle. We stashed the bike at the north end of the ridge and drove up to the Aix trailhead.

We began by following the Pear Butte Trail south along a dry ridge. The trail felt like a Teanaway hunter’s trail, with steep ups and downs, and plenty of blowdowns. We encountered some awakward bits of steep, firm snow, but were able to navigate around them.

We took another ridge, branching east towards Bismarck Peak.

Although probably similar climatically, the Nelson Range is very different geologically than the Teanaway. Whereas the Teanaway has bomber serpentinite, making for great scrambling, the Nelson Range is pretty crumbly. Fortunately, the scrambling up Bismarck was easy enough – mostly class 1 and 2 with a tiny bit of class 3.

Bismarck Peak was the southern end of our planned traverse. According to the summit register, it only sees a few ascents per year. To the south, we could see Helens, Adams, and the Goat Rocks, where Logan and I did a fun high route last year. Looking north, we could see the huge extent of our ridge traverse. We already felt like we had been on ridges for a few hours, but we had a long way to go!

The descent off the north ridge of Bismarck was simple, and then we began a long series of ups and downs. For much of the time, you could “pick your poison” – dry rock on the left, or snow on the right. The snowy ridges made for pleasant descending.

With the constant ridge travel, running water is non-existent. We periodically stuffed snow in our soft flasks, melting the snow against our bodies. I would not attempt this route once snow sources are gone from the ridge line, unless you are willing to carry a few liters of water.

After a few miles, we joined up with the Nelson Ridge “trail”. It is more a primitive footpath through the rocky, dry ridge, but it did make travel a little bit faster. Some of the north facing descents in this section had excellent boot skiing.

If you gazed to the east to the desert plateaus, burned forests, and colorful rock, you might think you are in the mountains of Nevada or Utah. But if you looked west to the glaciated Tahoma and lush forests, there was no mistake this was the PNW. It is a pretty unique feeling part of the Cascades!

We finally dropped briefly off the ridge, quickly finding running water in a basin. It was our first running water source all day! The we climbed back up to the ridge one last time.

At the north end of the range, we had an unobstructed view to the Alpine Lakes Crest and Stuart Range.

Just before Mt. Baldy, we left the ridge for good, descending to the NE into Thunder Creek. With good snow coverage, we were able to take a direct descent all the way to the valley bottom. With less snow, I’d recommend descending to the pass to the east and picking up the trail from there.

Down in this steep north facing valley, there was actually an annoying amount of snow until about 5000 ft. Below that, there were a few river crossings where we got our feet wet, but generally the trail was in pretty good shape, thanks to volunteers who have been putting in a lot of effort here in the aftermath of the 2021 Schneider Springs Fire.

I found my E-bike and began the short shuttle. Initially, I was ripping at 30 mph up the gentle paved incline. But the unpaved section was quite rough, with sharp rocks and sand in places. My bike has a light suspension, but it struggled through the rocks. My tires were probably over inflated. By the time I reached my car, my upper body was pretty tired.

The Nelson Ridge Traverse was an excellent early season outing. This area is reminiscent of the Teanaway, but with different views and far less people. While the views were not amazing, they were consistently good. This is likely one of the longest continuous non-technical ridge traverses in Washington. This was a great way to kick off the summer season!

Notes:

• The route was 20 miles and 9k ft gain. It took us about 9.5 hours.
• I think we had near perfect timing. Maybe one week later for less snow in the trees would be nice. I would not want to do this route mid summer when the ridges are completely dry because there would be no water sources.
• While you could go the other direction, I think our direction made more sense because it gave us water sources later in the day, when they were more needed. We also had a lot of descending on snow, which was nice.
• We did not use crampons or ice ax. The snow had softened enough in most places. A few spots were firm in the trees in the morning, but we managed with just running shoes.
• Very little of this route is actual scrambling (class 2-3). Most is just ridge walking. But very little is “runnable”.
• The best part of the route could be accessed in a shorter traverse by starting up the Aix trail, and going north.