Gunn Peak, try #1

Carla, Laurie, Tom and I parked on the Barclay Creek Road and followed a slightly involved but well-flagged system of logging roads, trail, and creek crossings to the Gunn Peak climber's trail. There is a really good hand-drawn map of the way from Barclay Creek Road to the start of the Gunn Peak trail at http://cascadeclimbers.com/thr.... After leaving the logging road, the trail up to the basin is steep, steep, steep and sometimes a scramble, but it is easy to follow and cleared of brush.

After breaking out into the basin around 4,200 the trail becomes less distinct (and often dissappears) and the flagging is bleached and hard to spot. We followed the flagging up the west side of the basin as it goes through sporadic brush and some small, scrambleable cliff bands and eventually emerges into wonderful granite and heather slopes below point 5,842 (Gunn Peak, SW Peak).

At the top of the basin there are three peaks, point 5,842, point 5,760+ (elevation not marked on the map), and point 5,760 (elevation marked on map). The two 5,760's confused me, I thought the route in Climbing Washington's Mountains was directing us to go over the pass between 5,842 and 5,760+ (the unmarked one). We took a look at the frozen slopes on the other side of the pass and decided Gunn Peak was out for today and we'd take the nearby SW Peak as our consolation peak.

Gunn Peak, SW Peak was an easy scramble except for a short section of frozen snow. There was a cairn and a summit register at the top, the register needs some new paper, it looked like the last party (March 6) tore off a corner of their map to use in the register.

Tom's TR for this trip can be found at http://www.nwhikers.net/forums....

  • Date:
    2005/03/13
    Elevation gain:
    3,660 feet
    Trip type:
    scramble
    USGS quad:
    Baring
    In:
    Highway 2 Corridor
    Car-to-car:
    8 hours 50 minutes
    • 4 hours 55 minutes ascending from Barclay Creek Road to Gunn Peak, SW Peak summit
    • 3 hours 2 minutes descending from Gunn Peak, SW Peak summit to Barclay Creek Road

    References

  • North side of Baring Mountain
    North side of Baring Mountain
  • Gunn Peak, SE Peak
    Gunn Peak, SE Peak
  • Gunn Peak from pass between Gunn Peak, SW Peak and point 5,760+
    Gunn Peak from pass between Gunn Peak, SW Peak and point 5,760+
    • Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Deal.