With the unusually warm winter and lack of snowfall, peaks and highways usually inaccessible until late spring were accessible much sooner in the season. Mount Pugh along the Mountain Loops Highway is one such otherwise dormant destination. It was an early start as Jason and I left Tacoma around 6 a.m. Our plan was to meet up with Conor at a Park and Ride before driving to the Mount Pugh Trailhead. We feared that the Forest Service road would be gated blocking us over 3 miles. We were quickly relieved to drive all the way to the parking lot. It felt like spring as we packed our gear onto our backs and climbed miles of dirt trail under a blazing hot sun. Soon enough the snow pack went from nonexistent to three feet deep as we entered Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Climbing up Mount Pugh on the Mountain Loops Highway

We carefully put in steep switchbacks in the low alpine as the scenery of the North Central Cascades opened. Up close views of Whitehorse Mountain and 3 Fingers loomed only a valley away. Clouds would come in and obscure the view for a moment, and then the next disappear completely. Before long we climbed up to Stujack Pass which would grant us access to the summit’s headwall.

We packed our skis onto our backs and put on our crampons. Carefully we put our steps in over the exposed face making our way towards the upper slopes of Mount Pugh. It was a slow process as a slip could leave you tumbling for well over 1000 feet.

Once gaining the high ridge we finally got our first view of the summit proper. It was basking in the early afternoon sun and glistening with a fresh new coat of powder. To get to the headwall we would be forced to traverse around a stagnant Glacier and some steep convex rollers. We climbed directly up a consistently 45 degree face, with 200 foot cliffs below:

As we traversed along the ridge we started setting off slab fractures left and right. Quickly we realized that the summit headwall was unsafe and would easily slab. After a brief discussion we chose to take the safer route and ride the mellow-angled glacier. Thenwe would skin back out to Stujack Pass for one last run before hiking back to the car.

Snowboarding down to the Straight Glacier

As we dropped in, the snow was inconsistent– deep powder and wind-scoured ice within feet of each other. — until we hit the mellow Glacier. There is just something about ripping down a low angled powder slope without a care in the world. We hooted and hollered in part just to hear the echos bounce off the massive rock walls.

We quickly skinned back to Stujack Pass for one last run. We skied down the final thousand feet under the late afternoon sun before hiking on the deserted trail all the way back to the car.

Thank you for reading this trip on Mount Pugh near the Mountain Loop Highway. If you want to see more ski tours within the Stevens Pass Backcountry check out this link.