Tiffany, Middle Tiffany, Rock Mountains

Tiffany Mountain (8,245ft), Middle Tiffany Mountain (7,967ft), Rock Mountain (7,971 ft)

Approaching Tiffany Mountain

November 17, 2019

Eric and Katie

Saturday afternoon after I got done with a quick hike up Granite and Tusk O’Granite Mountains we loaded up the car and drove out east in search of dry weather. The snow and rain storm of Saturday night was supposed to let up in eastern washington around 8am Sunday.

On the drive over, Washington Pass was snowy and treacherous. We had dinner in Winthrop then drove up to the Freezeout Ridge trailhead. This is one of the highest trailheads in Washington at 6,600ft, and was icy and snowy but no problem for the forester.

The quadruple snowbow on the summit

We slept in the car as it snowed and turned to freezing rain at night. But as expected it let up in the morning and the sun popped out. The road was a sheet of ice, but we expected this to melt before we needed to drive out, or worst case we’d just put the chains on.

We started up the snowy trail in microspikes around 8am. Patchy ice led to deeper snow and we saw what looked like recent ski tracks. As we crested treeline it got very windy. We postholed directly up Tiffany mountain and were treated to a quadruple snowbow! I’d never seen this before. From the summit it actually made a 270 degree arc over the steep northeast face.

From the top we plunge stepped down the southeast ridge to Whistler Pass, then hiked down the trail and postholed up to Honeymoon Pass. From here we left the trail and hiked cross country through intermittent snow up to Rock Mountain. The wind grew fierce, almost knocking us over, but luckily the air temperature was warm, close to freezing. We took pictures at the big summit cairn and solar-powered weather station on top.

Panorama from Rock Mountain

Next we descended to near Honeymoon Pass, then postholed up Middle Tiffany around noon. We quickly retreated back to the trees to get out of the wind, then hiked back to the car by mid afternoon. Luckily the ice had melted out from the road so we didn’t need the chains to drive back out.