Sasse Mountain

Sasse Mountain (5,730ft)

Descending from the summit

Eric and Katie

June 6, 2020

We headed east of the crest Saturday morning in search of dry weather. We left the car in the late morning to head up the Howson Creek trail from the west. The trail started as an old road, then turned into an overgrown trail, which we followed to Howson Creek. After we crossed the creek the trail quality deteriorated enough that we basically just started bushwhacking up. A few people were following us and I think they gave up.

Alaska mountain in the distance

I noticed on my map there was a forest road nearby, and we bushwhacked to that. We followed the road up to 4,800ft, then stopped to admire the view with a guy who drove up in his jeep. From there a faint trail continued up into a burn zone. It soon disappeared and we bushwhacked up to the ridge, then hiked south to the summit of Sasse Mountain.

Just below the summit we found an unburned clearing to take a break and do some bird watching. We soon descended to a col where a trail was supposed to be according to the quad, but there was no trail. So we bushwhacked north traversing below Sasse Mountain until we picked up a trail in the talus below Not so Sasse Peak. From there it was a mostly easy hike back down. The trail disappeared around 3,000ft, which was about where we’d lost it in the morning, but we found it again near the creek crossing and made it back to the car before too late.

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