Kimtah Peak Winter Ascent

Kimtah Peak First Winter Ascent

March 7-9, 2025

Eric and Nick

27 miles biking, 22 miles skiing

My list of remaining Winter Bulgers is getting smaller, and it’s getting harder to find peaks on the list that are in condition on a given winter weekend. This weekend it looked like the Ragged Ridge peaks might be doable. Nick and I decided to try to squeeze in as many as possible during a break in weathe systemst Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning.

In the summer these four peaks (Mesahchie, Katsuk, Kimtah, and Cosho) are generally approached from Easy Pass. The most common ascent routes are class 3/4 scrambles up the rocky south faces, potentially with some ridge traversing to connect them. In July 2018 I climbed all four in a day, traversing from Easy Pass west to Cosho along the south faces. In spring time a few groups have climbed Cosho from the north side, starting near the Easy Pass trailhead and traversing the north side glaciers to the summits.

Winter ascents are complicated because Highway 20 is gated at Ross Dam on the west side, about 17 miles from the Easy Pass trailhead, and gated at Mazama on the west side, about 27 miles from the trailhead. We decided the best winter routes were likely the north side glaciers, because they mostly avoided avy terrrain. We considered multiple options how to access and climb the peaks this weekend via the north sides.

1. Hike in from the Colonial Creek campground up Thunder creek and Panther Creek. This was around 16 miles one way and involved lots of bushwhacking and transitioning from melted out lowlands to deep snow up higher. The Thunder Creek trail was likely full of blowdowns, based on my previous winter trips in this area.

2. Snowmobile from Mazama to Kitling Creek area (near Easy Pass), then ascend Kitling Creek or follow the Volken guide and ski over Ragged View peak and into the north faces. The road would definitely be completely snow for the approach and easy to snowmobile. One potential problem was sometimes the Liberty Bell avy slides near Washington Pass cover the road and are tough to get through with a snowmobile. Also, it’s a long drive to Mazama.

3. Snowmobile from Ross Dam on the west side to the Kitling Creek area. This is a shorter drive and a shorter snowmobile approach. However, based on recent satellite images it looked like the first 10 miles were melted out to pavement. I’ve snomobiled up to 5 miles on pavement before, and I have retractable wheels for this purpose. But the engine overheats easily, and I have to ride really slow and dump water on it often to cool it down. I think it’s also not great for the engine to do this.

4. Bike and e-bike in from Ross Dam to the edge of snow, then skin the rest of the way to the start. Nick has an e-bike and he’s towed me before in the past. We could make fast time the first 10 miles if he towed me uphill. Then we could both bike downhill getting out.

It seemed like the option of biking from Ross Dam would likely be slightly faster than snowmobiling in from Mazama, perhaps saving an hour or two round trip. This also sounded a bit more interesting to me, since I do a lot of snowmobile-approach trips but not many bike-approach winter bulgers. So we settled on that option.

To sneak all four peaks in the window we planned to get as far in as possible Friday eve, then summit two peaks Saturday afternoon and two Sunday morning. Kimtah would be the crux, so we’d start with that one. It was the farthest in and required the longest scramble section to the summit. Then we’d hopefully tag on Cosho afterwards. Then climb Mesahchie and Katsuk Sunday morning before the storm hit.

Friday afternoon we got to the Ross Dam trailhead and started loading up. As we were strapping our skis to our bikes two National Park rangers pulled up in their truck and got out to talk to us. Interestingly, they said they recognized my truck, and they knew we must be the crazy guys that boat up Ross Lake in the winter. I don’t think the park sees too many visitors in winter, and we always fill out the official permit forms, so maybe we are easy to recognize.

We chatted for a while, then loaded up and got moving around 4pm. Nick towed me from the start so we could make a fast progress as possible. I’ve done a handful of e-bike-towing trips over the years, and the best strategy is for me to just hold a loop of the end of the rope in my hand and get towed by that. If I try to tie the rope to the bike it risks flipping the bike over, and there’s no way for me to bail.

We made excellent time, hitting 30mph at some points on the downs and closer to 10mph on the ups. We still had to pedal a bit to help the battery last longer, but it was still super helpful. By the 8-mile mark we started seeing snow on the side of the road, but none in the road. It was very clearly freshly plowed. This was surprising and very good news for us on the bikes. Usually the road clearing crew makes trips in from Ross Dam sometime in late March to assess conditions and get an estimated start date for clearing. This is usually announced in advance (I’m on the email list). There was no announcement this time for this plowing, so I’m not sure what happened.

The snow got deeper and deeper until 13.5 miles in, around MP 148, the plowing stopped when the snow was about knee-deep. That was quite a bit farther in than I’d expected to get on the bikes! There were old sled tracks going to the pavement, but no new tracks turning around at the pavement. So it appears the plowing likely happened within the past week.

We hid the bikes in the woods, then started skinning up around 5pm. Progress was fast, and just before sunset we reached the Kitling Creek turnoff. We had considered following the Volken guidebook for a spring ski tour going up and over Ragged View Peak. However, this added a lot of elevation gain. So we decided to instead go up Kitling Creek. After a short but tricky descent south we had a tricky crossing of Granite Creek. We found a good log crossing, and Nick went over first with a shovel digging out several feet of snow on top. This is referred to as au-shovel crossing (not to be confused with au-chaval).

I then took over for the last clearing, and used my ice tool to hack off a few pesky branches. We made it across with no wet feet, then skinned up the woods on the other side. The trees were mostly open, but blowdowns down low slowed us down, and we had a few thickets to navigate through. By around 4400ft the forest got easier, and we made good time to camp at Kitling Lake by 10:30pm. There was a melted-out hole of liquid water at the lake outflow, and this saved us some time from melting snow. By midnight we had the mega mid set up and went to bed.

Saturday we were moving by 6am, with the plan to drop overnight gear near the Katsuk Glacier, before tagging Kimtah and Cosho and returning to the new camp. We made a short climb to the pass above the lake, then skied fun turns down Panther Creek at 5000ft in light snow showers. We traversed below a cliff band on the north side of the Katsuk Glacier, then ascended to a bench at 6000ft. We dropped overnight gear there and proceeded west.

By late morning the snow eased up and there were even a few breaks of sun, giving us great views of the north faces of Mesahchie and Katsuk.  We crested a pass at 7100ft, then started a long traverse along the Kimtah Glacier. Snow was soft and powdery, and I looked forward to a fun ski down. We tried to stick to the low-angle slopes shown on the caltopo shaded relief map, but they didn’t always match reality. I’ve found this is kind of common on glaciers. I think the shaded relief maps are based on the quads, but glaciers in WA have melted down significantly since the quads were made, so slopes have changed a lot.

In general we kept the slope angle low, and traversed under the north face of Kimtah all the way to the Kimtah-Cosho col. The very top was steep enough that we took skis off and booted up. We reached the col by 12:30pm and ditched skis there. There was a strong southerly wind once we crossed the ridge, and we suited up in all our layers and goggles. I recalled Kimtah being mostly class 3 in the summer, but the winter route might be slightly different. So we brought a rope, rock pro, and two tools each just in case.

In general the south face was scoured to rock up near the ridge, but snowy farther down on the south side. Much of the snow was firm and easy cramponing, but we traversed a few pockets of wind slab. We had to scramble over some rock sections that required hooking ledges with our tools, and there were a few steep hogsback sections of snow formationg that were steep to climb up. It was great having two tools for this.

In general we followed the summer route, staying close to the west ridge at the beginning, then traversing south around the false summit, before climbing snow slopes directly up to the summit. The last rock section required a bit of mixed scrambling hooking ledges, but it wasn’t really long enough to warrant the rope. By 3:30pm we topped out, and luckily the highest patch of snow was not a cornice. It was windy and visibity was low, but we got some glimpses of the Fisher Creek valley below to our south.

We didn’t hang out too long, and soon downclimbed. Rappelling might have made sense, but there were no obvious solid anchor points, and the downclimb wasn’t too bad. Our tracks had already blown over with fresh snow, but we managed to follow our route back. We reached our skis at 5pm, and visibility had dropped very low. We could see maybe 40ft, definitly not enough to see Cosho. I was a little nervous about navigating down the glacier in a whiteout if our tracks had been blown over. It might be tricky to avoid the steep sections, and our maps weren’t accurate anyway to show us where the steep sections were. If we tagged on Cosho we’d definitely obligate ourselve to navigating back at night in a whiteout.

So we decided to skip Cosho. We’d already gotten the crux peak of Ragged Ridge, so that was still a major win. We skied back down, and were able to follow our tracks in the waning light. By sunset we reached our stashed gear, and it was starting to snow/rain. That was not in the forecast. Indeed, it seemed like the weather all day was worse than forecast.

It didn’t seem wise to be camping up on the glacier in the storm, and then try to climb two more peaks in the pre-dawn whiteout trying to beat the next storm coming in Sunday mid day. So we decided to skip the other objectives and get back down into the trees. Just climbing Kimtah had been a significant-enough achievement and a solid first winter ascent.

We skied back down towards Panther Creek, then traverse a little higher below some cliff bands to intersect our previous tracks. The snow was very slushy then, so it had warmed up a lot over the day. By 9pm we reached Kitling Lake again, and set up camp in the exact same spot. It was great to have a source of liquid water there, and to be high enough that the precipitation was snow instead of rain.

I checked my inreach for an updated weather forecast, and now the Sunday storm was expected to start around 11am. That was a lot earlier than had been forecast previously! It was definitely a good call to not try to beat that storm tagging summits Sunday morning, especially summits that might require roped climbing.

Sunday morning we were moving by 7am, and had a fun ski down icy slopes along the north side of Kitling Creek. We made fast progress down to the creek, then skinned a traverse before hitting dense trees. At 4100ft it made most sense to just boot down to avoid the blowdowns in the thinner snow coverage. We took turns breaking trail down the slope, then reached our log across Granite Creek and were soon back to the road.

By 11:15am we were skinning back west down highway 20 and there were even occasional sun breaks from the East. But we knew we were racing the clock against the incoming storm. There weren’t any fresh snowmobile tracks, so we had been the only ones out there all weekend. It was fastest to take the skins off and either skate ski down or push with the poles. Skate skiing was a bit more energy intensive but got us moving pretty fast.

By 12pm we reached the bikes, and quickly loaded up. Most of the return was downhill and there was no need to tow. We cruised down at 30mph to the East Bank trailhead, then Nick gave me a final tow up the last few miles of uphill. Just as the rain picked up at 12:30pm up we crossed through the gate and were safely back at the truck.

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