Mount Hardy

Mount Hardy (8,080ft)

Looking along the summit ridge

June 2020

Eric

I left town around 4:15am hoping get back early enough to get some work done. Mount Hardy is a top 200 peak that is very close to the road, so a good candidate for a quick climb. By 7:15am I left the car at the pullout near swamp creek. I walked down the road to the north side of the creek and then cut into the woods. There’s no trail up Hardy, but the bushwhacking isn’t too bad.

I roughly followed the south ridge through open forest, though it got a bit denser on the edge of treeline. Interestingly I saw a few sawed out tree stumps, though it’s not clear why they were cut. I soon broke out above the trees as the ridge angle eased, and hit continuous snow around 6,500ft. I put crampons on there and kicked steps up to the summit ridge. I then scrambled up the melted out third-class rock to the summit, avoiding some intimidating cornices hanging over the north face.

Looking down at the car

While I’d had great views on the way up, the clouds rolled in as I topped out and I was stuck with little visibility. I reached the top around 9:15am, hung out for half an hour, and then descended. I really wished I’d brought skis, since the snow was perfect corn, but they would have been annoying on the bushwhack so I left them at home. I followed the same route back, though managed to find some alders to thrash through near treeline. I made it back to the car by 11am and was back to Seattle soon after to get some work done.

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