Bryant Peak Scramble

Kicked off the month of May with a fun scramble of Bryant Peak with a Mountaineers group. The weather was perfect and there were good folks in the group, and it made for a really cool day in the mountains.

Going in up the Denny Creek trail was relatively straightforward except for a pretty hairy river crossing — we all brought an extra pair of shoes to get wet in going back and forth across.

Once past the creek, the snow started quickly and got pretty deep. The route didn’t get too steep until the peak itself but I was glad to have the big boots and not running shoes or something.

The trail was entirely covered by snow but it was still easy to navigate to Hemlock Pass, from just below the pass we turned east and kicked steps up a gully, and from there shifted up and onto the east ridge that took us to the summit. The snow was steep at times but felt safe and comfortable the whole way (except a few snow bridges over water, which I crossed hastily). A little bit of rock scrambling at the summit block and we were there!

We lounged on the summit for a while and had fantastic glissading back down. The hike back out felt so long (hiking is much slower when you’re used to trail running!) but the high from the glissades stuck around enough to get us to the trail head. A really cool day in the mountains on a fun peak!