Horsemans Pack

Horsemans Pack (8,152ft)

Looking across the Neve Glacier towards the summit

May 2, 2021, 4:30am – 7:30pm, 19 miles, 7700ft gain

Eric and Andrew

Horsemans Pack is an 8,000ft peak sticking out of the Neve Glacier in the North Cascades. I’d been near it several times climbing Snowfield Peak, but hadn’t yet made the sidetrip to climb it. Now I’m working on top 200 peaks so decided to make a special trip just for Horsemans Pack. There’s a lot of good skiable terrain on the surrounding glaciers, but unfortunately I’d busted my ski binding on Mt Adams last weekend and it was in the shop getting repaired. I kind of needed to test out a new pair of Olympus Mons 8000m boots anyways for an upcoming expedition, and this sounded like a good trip to do that. So we planned to snowshoe up and back.

The route

We camped out at Colonial Creek Saturday night then Sunday morning started up the Pyramid Lake trail at 4:30am. There were a half dozen other cars in the lot, so I expected perhaps at least one other party up on the icefield (turns out we were the only ones). We made quick time to Pyramid Lake, then followed the climbers trail from there to snowline at around 3200ft. I switched into my 8000m boots there and we booted up the firm snow.

We followed the northeast ridge of Pyramid Peak to about 4200ft, where we got a good view. The ridge was narrow enough at that spot that we figured we would definitely pass back that way on the return, so we tied our trail runners in a tree there to retrieve later. After the ridge reached the northeast face of Pyramid Peak we started traversing around 5,500ft. The slope was steep but it was early enough in the day that the snow was still firm. I noticed faint ski tracks and suspected it was a party that skied the Isolation Traverse two weeks earlier.

The traverse below Pyramid Peak

Once past the northeast face we switched to snowshoes and soon roped up at the edge of the Colonial Glacier. The meltwater lake at the base was still frozen, so we marched straight across and up to the Neve – Colonial col. From there an impressive view opened up across to Snowfield Peak and surrounding peaks. Patchy clouds rolled through but in general visibility was good. This was important for crossing such a large, flat icefield.

We dropped down onto the Neve Glacier and broke trail straight across. I wished I was wearing skis to increase speed, but I realized it was useful to be testing out my new boots. By 1pm we reached the base of the Horsemans Pack summit pyramid on the steep north face. Based on Fletcher’s trip report we knew to wrap around to the SE face to find easier terrain. We ditched the glacier gear then cramponed up firm snice traversing up and left to the east ridge. We then continued traversing around to reach the snow gully going up the SE face.

Climbing the southeast face

I kicked steps steeply up the face, until reaching a point about 30ft below the summit. Here the snow got very slushy and thin. I cut right and scrambled up steep 3rd class rock to gain the northern peak of the summit. It was unclear if this was taller than the southern peak, though. Unfortunately traversing between them looked like it would require tricky au cheval moves on rime ice. So I instead downclimbed and gave Andrew a turn to climb up to the north summit. Meanwhile, I delicately climbed up the thin snow section to tag the south summit. I think they were basically the same height anyways, but it felt good to tag them both to be certain.

We were in and out of the clouds on the summit, with impressive views west to the very steep Horeseman summit (a 2-pitch 5.7 spire sticking up nearby). After waiting in vain for the clouds to clear we started downclimbing back. It was steep enough we downclimbed facing in, each using two tools. Back at the glacier we roped up again and retraced our route. We climbed back up and over the Colonial – Neve col, then descended off the Colonial Glacier.

Hiking back down the Colonial Glacier

As planned, we reached the northeast face of Pyramid Peak just after it had gone into the shade. The snow was beginning to ice up on top, which was good to firm it up before we crossed. We retraced our route back to the ridge, then back down to our shoes in the trees.

I recalled that morning hearing what sounded like a person yelling at about the location of our shoes. But we hadn’t seen anyone all day. We later saw some fresh tracks lower on the ridge, so I think someone must have hiked up to about where our shoes were (which happened to be a good view), then must have turned around.

We soon made it back to Pyramid Lake, transitioned back to trail runners, and were back to the car by 7:30pm, a bit ahead of schedule.