Mount Lago Winter Ascent

Mount Lago (8,748ft)

First Winter Ascent

Jan 3-5, 2025

32 miles skiing, 24 miles snowmobiling

Eric and Peter

Mount Lago is one of the hundred highest peaks in Washington and is located deep in the Pasayten Wilderness. The peak is typically accessed in the summer and fall from the Slate Pass trailhead or from the Monument Creek trailhead. I’d previously climbed Lago in July 2018 from Monument Creek, which is a slightly longer approach.

There were no records of previous winter ascents of Lago, so it wasn’t obvious what the best approach would be. There is a road to Slate Pass, but it becomes very challenging and potentially impassable to snowmobiles in winter. The road goes around Deadhorse Point which is subject to frequent avalanches that bury the road between an upper and lower cliff. Close to Harts Pass the road generally gets too filled in with snow in winter to proceed without tricky sidehilling. But, if one can snowmobile to near Slate Pass, that provides the shortest ski approach.

Last year in late January Ryan and I successfully snowmobiled to within a mile of Harts Pass, and skied in to climb Blackcap Peak, a bit farther in than Lago. I decided to try the same approach this year. The best recipe for success for winter Bulgers is to generally do the exact same approach that has worked before in winter. The goal this time would be to climb my remaining Bulger peaks in the area – Lago, Carru, and Osceola. Lago was the farthest in, so that would be the top priority. Then if there was time and good weather we would also tag on Carru and Osceola.

The snow was forecast to be stable and the weather generally good for the weekend in the east north zone. My classes hadn’t started yet, so I could take a long weekend. Peter and I left Seattle Friday morning, but the travel was slower than hoped for with fresh snow blanketing the passes and no plowing yet happening east of the crest. It took 6.5 hours to get to Mazama. By 3pm we had the sled loaded up and headed out of Yellowjacket sno park.

We made fast progress to Deadhorse Point, and I was delighted to find only a few avy slides, all dug out by previous sledders. They were mellow enough for us both to ride over together, instead of me making Peter walk (like I would usually do with a rider at

Deadhorse). We continued up the road to the edge of treeline. This is the area where, at some point every winter, the road gets too filled in and requires sidehilling. Generally sledders leave the road here to descend into the valley, and go up the valley off-road to access Harts Pass. That has a high risk of getting stuck with two riders on a sled loaded down with overnight gear going through fresh powder. That’s the spot Ryan and I stopped last year.

This time the road was not yet filled in, and I saw faint evidence of tracks ahead of me. I proceeded cautiously another half mile, but visibility was tough in the flat light and I wasn’t sure if the route would turn into tricky sidehilling. At one wide spot we got stuck in the deep powder. I made the call to park the sled there. It was only 1.0 miles from the upper Harts Pass parking lot anyway, and that’s as far as we could reasonably expect to make it in winter. So we dug out the sled, turned it around, and moved it off to the side so other sledders could easily pass by.

We started skinning up the road at 4:30pm, just at sunset. Of course it would have been passable with the sled beyond there, but I was still glad to have parked and not risk rolling the sled over the side of the hill. Within 30 minutes we got to the upper parking lot, and that’s where all evidence of old sled tracks ended. We followed the road up to Slate Pass in the dark, then crested the ridge and took skins off.

On the north side we took turns making a big traversing descent. We tried to keep the tracks low enough angle to re-use on the deproach. At the bottom we hit the trees, and got some good turns descending down the Middle Fork Pasayten drainage. We kept to skiers right of the creek, and the trees were nice and open. Eventually we reached the trail at the intersection with the Robinson Creek trail. We continued following the trail until 12:30am, when we finally got tired enough to pitch camp about 1.5 miles from the Freds Lake turnoff.

We found a small water source and pitched the mega mid tent in the trail. There were snow showers during the night and we got to bed by 1:30am.

Saturday we were moving by 6:30am and planned to move camp. Last time with Ryan we’d tried to cut the corner of the trail up to Freds Lake to save distance, but that resulted in dense bushwhacking. This time we just stayed on the trail. We followed nice switchbacks up to Freds Lake, then crossed the lake and ascended the steep slope on the other side. By 10:30am we reached Lake Doris and dropped our overnight gear. The skies had cleared and we had great views of Osceola, Carru, Lago, Blackcap, Monument, and Rolo.

With lighter packs we skied down the Eureka Creek trail to around 6400ft, then traversed across the south face of Carru. I used the shaded relief maps on caltopo to avoid cliffs and steep slopes, and the trees were generally nice and open. Once we got near the Carru-Lago drainage we started ascending and reached the Carru-Lago col around 1:30pm. From there we zig zagged up the thinly-treed slope and hit the rocky south ridge at 8000ft.

We ditched skis there and switched to crampons. From there it was a fun scramble up to the main ridge, then east to the main summit. I reached the summit at 4:15pm, just before sunset. There was a small cornince on the north face and I had intermittent views of Blackcap passing in and out of the clouds. The wind started picking up, and I quickly took a few pictures as Peter topped out.

I then descended back to the skis in the dark, and we skied back to the col. By then the wind had picked up and it started snowing, creating whiteout conditions. I recalled the route up Carru was a bit more complex, and I really wanted daylight to help navigate. The whiteout at night sounded like a recipe for getting turned around up there and easily getting cliffed out on the climb. We decided it was too sketchy to tag on any more summits that night. So we followed our tracks back to Lake Doris by 9:30pm.

There were some ski skin sticking issues that made us estimate the deproach would take longer than anticipated, so that we needed to leave camp at 5am the next morning. That meant, unfortunately, there was no time to hit either Osceola or Carru in the daylight when the whiteout might clear. So we settled for just Lago that trip. It was the farthest one in, at least, so a future trip could just target Carru and Osceola.

We got a few hours of sleep, then were moving by 5am Sunday morning. We made fun turns down to Freds Lake, and had a good ski down the switchbacks back to the Middle Fork Pasayten. The skin out was easy, following our approach tracks.

By 2pm we topped out at Slate Pass, which was stuck in the clouds. We skied back down to Harts Pass, and luckily there were fresh sled tracks. That meant Deadhorse Point was likely still passable. (Last year avy slides had come down while we were in there and we had to dig a fresh passage through some of them).

We loaded up the sled by 3pm and soon headed out. Peter did a combination of skiing out and getting towed with a rope. Deadhorse Point was mellow as before, and shortly after the avy slides we both loaded onto the sled. By 4:30pm we made it back to Yellowjacket sno park, a rare instance of sledding back in the daylight.

 

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