Dome and Sinister Winter Attempt

Dome and Sinister Peaks

Winter attempt to 6300ft

Feb 28 – March 2, 2025

Eric and Ryan

The weekend looked like favorable conditions west of the Cascade crest, and Ryan and I decided to go for Dome and Sinister peaks.I’m trying to be strategic with my 18 remaining Winter Bulgers peaks, and western zone are generally in condition less than eastern zones. So these peaks made logistical sense.

I’d previously climbed both in May 2018 using the standard Downey Creek and Bachelor Creek approach. I attempted to climb them again in winter 2023, but Suiattle River Road was unexpectedly still closed from an old forest fire. I’d never heard of a forest fire closure extending into winter, but we balked at the $5k per person fine on the sign at the road turnoff, so bailed to a backup objective.

Now in 2025 the fire closure has finally been lifted. We decided to go for the same standard approach and standard routes, since we had each done them previously. The NWAC avalanche outlook was for a “green brick” on Saturday (low danger at all elevations), and it was also supposed to be clear weather. So the plan was approach Friday evening to the upper Bachelor Creek drainage, then Saturday climb Sinister and camp at Dome Col, then Sunday climb Dome and ski out.

Friday afternoon we drove up Suiattle River road, and I brought my big chainsaw just in case there were fresh blowdowns. There had been a major wind event just the Monday of that week, and power outages had occurred in the greater Seattle area. That usually means fresh blowdowns on forest service roads. Indeed, there were a handful of fresh trees down, but they had all already been logged out! I’ve encountered this before looking for trees to clear on Suiattle River Road, and I think it is close enough to the logging community of Darrington that locals frequently clear it out for fun. (Note: Cascade River Road, in the next major valley north, does not see such regular clearing I’ve found).

The road and lower valleys were snow free and we started up at 3pm in trail runners. The first half mile of trail had some blowdowns, but it cleared out soon after the wilderness boundary and was then smooth sailing. We hit snow at mile 4, and then a major blowdown area at mile 5. By the Bachelor Creek turnoff at mile 6 I switched to ski boots and hung my hiking boots on a tree.

From there the Bachelor Creek trail was surprisingly easy to follow (for an officially-unmaintained climbers trail in wilderness). It was bare ground until 3100ft, then quickly changed to skinnable snow. We put skins on there and followed fresh bear tracks through the woods until 10pm. There we reached the edge of a clearing and set up camp for the night.

We got an inreach avy forecast update that evening that the Saturday forecast had been upgraded to Considerable at upper elevations. It appeared the predicted overnight refreeze was not going to happen, and the sun Saturday would instead contribute to loose wet avy risk. That was not good news for our planned route, which crossed under some overhead hazard. Our options were to bail, or shift everything to a big push Saturday night after the danger eased.

We decided to go for a compressed Saturday night schedule. The plan was to move camp to Cub Lake Pass just before the danger zone, then nap during the day. Then we’d start up Saturday evening for a ~24hr push out and back to get both peaks by Sunday night.

Saturday morning we slept in, then skinned up in the sunny weather. It felt weird having a relaxed schedule on a winter bulgers trip. There was intermittent flagging along the route, but the trees were open enough to make progress easy even not following the flagging. We took a direct line up the head of the valley through old growth trees to gain the Cub Lake Pass around 1pm, about 2 hours after leaving camp.

The view across to Dome Peak was great, with the Dome Glacier in between. We noticed a lot of fresh loose wet activity and some glide avalanches near Cub Lake. It would be a good day to wait for all that to settle down.

We pitched the mega mid tent on the ridge in the sun and set out gear to dry. I actually managed to doze off for a few hours. In the evening we cooked dinner, and the updated NWAC forecast looked acceptable. We took another short nap, then were up and moving by 10:30pm.

The ski down to Cub Lake was a bit tricky, with mushy snow in the trees that had never refrozen, breakable crust in the open, and an icy surface on an avy slide that had likely run Saturday afternoon. At Cub Lake we put skins on and skinned up the crusty surface to Iswoot Ridge, sometimes using ski crampons. We then skied down the icy surface on the east. When the slope got a bit steeper we switched to crampons to traverse around 6200ft.

Conditions were very challenging. It was too steep and icy to want to ski traverse, even with ski crampons. But the crust was so thin that we would sink into our knees at times. This was unpredicatable, though, making progress even more challening. (Polar explorers call this pie-crust snow). We had ascent plates, but they aren’t great for traversing. At one point when we were taking a break around 1:30am we heard something big fall behind us. It was probably a chunk of cornice or a random piece cleaving off a cliff. But we got a little spooked since we thought there was supposed to be a solid refreeze.

The forecast avy risk was low in our area, but I don’t think the refreeze was as solid as expected. This made us susicious that it would be safe to ski out in the heat of the afternoon, with only the light refreeze. Another complicating factor was the breakable crust conditions. Our plan required descending the Chikamin Glacier in the dark, and that would likely have to be done in crampons since skiing down would be too fast in the complex crevassed terrain. But cramponing in that breakable crust would be very tedious. And the ascent plates don’t really work going downhill.

Based on those conditions we decided to bail and return when conditions were better. This is not uncommon for Winter Bulgers, and is one reason I would vote for the Winter Bulgers as the most difficult peakbagging list in the lower 48 states. While I’ve climbed the Bulgers in summer and only had to bail a few times, I’ve found in winter I bail on approximately 1/4 of peaks attempted (30 bails out of 112 Winter Bulgers attempted, with 82 successes so far).

We followed our posthole tracks back across, then skinned back up to Iswoot Ridge and skied back down. The skiing was a bit tricky (for me) since it was so icy. Back at Cub Lake we put on our ascent plates and marched up the steep face back into the trees. (Both sets of ascent plates were custom CNC’d by Nick out of carbon fiber). We then skinned back to camp by 3:3oam and went back to sleep.

By sunrise we were socked in the clouds as forecast. We packed up and started skiing out by 8:30am. There were actually some fun turns to be had in the soft snow up high. The snow got mushy in the trees but we found some pseudo-corn in an old avy path in the open. We managed to ski all the way back to 3100ft, then skinned a short distance before booting back down to Downey Creek. From there it was a smooth hike back out to the trailhead by 2pm.

© 2025, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.