Slab City

As I transition out of ski season, the Teanaway is often a launching point for the summer season. I actually intended to chase powder this weekend, but upon driving to Enumclaw Saturday night, a friend texted us that it had unexpectedly snowed down to the gate on Highway 169, foiling my plan of electric unicycling to the White River to ski the Interglacier in powder. So Sunday morning, I linked up with Chris and his friend Peter to go for a run on the east side. It was so last minute that we were route planning as we were driving. With the fire closure ruling out the classics in the North Fork Teanaway and not enough time to repeat my big Middle Fork Teanaway Orbit, we had to improvise something else along the West Fork.

The Teanaway Community Forest is state land between the West Fork Teanaway River and Cle Elum Ridge, which backs up Roslyn. The terrain is all below 4k, but there are some interesting rock features and plenty of wildflowers at this time of year. We started with a fun ramble up Cheese Rock, a cool sandstone slab very close to the parking lot.

The actual Cheese Rock itself is a pretty cool 25 ft high boulder. With a flat sandy landing, it would make an excellent outdoor bouldering spot. Peter spent a few minutes trying to figure out the steep, overhung moves.

From there, we continued on mountain bike trails and old roads up to Cle Elum Ridge. There were nice wildflowers along the way.

Once on Cle Elum Ridge, we followed a super runnable mountain bike trail westward, briefly encountering my friend Porter on his bike. There weren’t great views on this section, but some nice meadows and wildflowers.

Going in, we did not really have a clear plan for our return route. Through the trees, we caught glimpses of some cool slabs on a distant ridge. Looking at the map, we identified a feature called the Roslyn Slickrock. We noticed that we could run that ridge on our return route, while crossing a stream for water just before.

With a wall of clouds just on the other side of Cle Elum Lake, there was a cool breeze all day. I would not recommend this area on a warm spring day, but it was perfect for us.

Dingbat Creek was fortunately flowing just enough to refresh our water supply. A steep climb brought us back to the ridge, where we followed steep single track up and down until breaking out into the open at the Roslyn Slickrock.

Right after the open section, we encountered the biggest surprise of the trip – a 50 ft tall overhung sandstone tower in the forest. It is really incredible how such a tall, overhung feature has resisted weathering for millions of years to remain.

We still had miles to go, but it was mostly downhill with minor uphills. Chris kept repeating “fatigue resistance” as he egged us to run all the uphills. In the last few miles, we got on a lovely trail that paralleled the West Fork Teanaway Road, passing through a lovely meadow with grass blowing silently in the breeze.

My legs were thoroughly cooked at the end, despite less than 4k elevation gain. And despite never going above 4k in elevation, we all agreed this was a pretty fun run! It is great to have an unscripted adventure like this from time to time, discovering new places as we go.

Notes

• Our route was 19 miles and 3600 ft gain.
• There are just about infinite options in this area. I think we hit two of the biggest slab features, but there are many more! Satellite imagery layers are helpful for finding them.
• Dingbat Creek was just barely flowing, so I wouldn’t rely on it later in the season. The West Fork Teanaway had plenty of water though.
• There are bikes and horses on the trails, but the trails are not very rocky and mostly very runnable.