Big Snagtooth and The Craggies in a Day

Big Snagtooth (8,330ft), Big Craggy (8,470ft) and West Craggy (8,366ft)

Steven on Big Snagtooth

June 27, 2018, 6:30am – 8:15pm

~25 miles, 10,000ft gain

Eric Gilbertson and Steven Song (for Big Snagtooth)

We originally planned to climb Forbidden Peak, but the weather looked iffy so switched to Big Snagtooth at the last minute out east where it would be drier. I’d heard this one required a shoulder stand on the summit block, so sounded like a good one not to solo. We met up at the roadside pullout Tuesday night and slept in the cars, then started hiking Wednesday morning at 6:30am.

We dropped down to cross the Early Winters Creek following the climbers trail to Silverstar, then diverged after the creek and turned right. Big Snagtooth isn’t popular enough to have a climbers trail, but the bushwhacking is surprisingly easy. We just stayed to climbers left of Willow Creek and cut up and left until we reached a big basin below Big Snagtooth.

Entering the snowy basin

The snow was melted out enough here that it would have been possible to avoid snow on the ascent, but we opted to instead avoid the choss and scree as much as possible. So we donned crampons and ascended almost to the ridge, then ditched the crampons and went up a little bit of choss. Once on the ridge we hiked easily to the base of the summit pyramid.

We’d brought a 30m rope and a little bit of rock gear, not knowing exactly how hard the climbing would be. It turns out climbing the rappel route was short and easy 4th class. I put one cam in in the middle since I’d brought it anyways. Above the rap route we hiked over to the infamous summit block. This is the part that supposedly requires a shoulder stand for most parties. Someone had left a wooden plank with notches in it, apparently to aid up the block, though we didn’t use this.

The block looked easy enough, though, so I just soloed up it trailing the rope. No need for a shoulder stand. I then

Steven climbing the summit block

belayed Steven up, and we reached the summit at 9:30am, about 3 hours from the car. We hung out on the summit for about an hour admiring the views. To rappel down, the existing anchor consists of one huge slung boulder and several other loose ones. I backed it up with a cam for Steven to rappel, and it held fine, so then I removed the cam and rapped down.

Before descending we tagged the little bump next to Big Snagtooth, which I think is called Willow’s Tooth, though both appear to be mislabelled on peakbagger. We scree surfed, glissaded, and bushwhacked back to the car for 2 hours, arriving around 12:45pm.

Somehow we’d finished the mountain much earlier than expected, and there was plenty of daylight left. Steven headed back to Vancouver, but I decided to take advantage of the daylight and good weather to hit a few more Bulgers. The Craggies were pretty close by and not too long of a hike, so I drove down to Winthrop, bought some snacks, and made it to the Craggies trailhead by 2:15pm.

Me on the summit of West Craggy that afternoon

I quickly packed up and started moving. I wanted to go fast and light so I could still get back to Seattle that night, but threw the crampons in just in case. It took about an hour up the trail to the start of the bushwhack. I then cut through woods, then scrambled up the scree and talus of the southwest face of Big Craggy. Amazingly, the pesky mosquitoes followed me almost all the way up to the summit! I topped out around 4pm, and hit every bump along the ridge that might possibly be the summit.

From here I descended to the west ridge, and traversed the class 2/3 terrain over to West Craggy. I ascended another scree gully, and reached the top around 6pm. No need for crampons anywhere on the mountain. It looked like the bad weather we’d feared for Forbidden had come in, and I could see rain to the west. I’d already climbed the Craggies back in October 2015, but for some reason couldn’t find my sign in. It had been very snowy then, so the register had probably been buried in the snow, so I added my entry from 2015 for completeness.

I soon descended, and got in a lot of scree surfing and glissading down to a small tarn, then hiked back to the car by 8:15pm. Unfortunately on the drive back every gas station or restaurant was closed until I got back to Darrington, so had to go without dinner, but I got back to Seattle before too long.