The Craggies

LEMKE CLIMBS

Big Craggy Peak - 8470' / West Craggy Peak - 8366'
October 2014

First views from the trail above the mine

Larches en-route to West Craggy

The Copper Glance Mine

Tarn below West Craggy

Joe, Fletcher, and I climbed the Craggies on Tuesday. After watching the Monday Night Seahawks game, we all met in Kirkland and Joe drove out to the trailhead arriving around 2am Tuesday morning. We all crashed in the car and were hiking up the Copper Glance Trail at 8am. We quickly came to the Copper Glance Mine and checked it out. We continued up the trail, once we got into the sun it felt like summer. We wanted to do West Craggy first, then traverse to Big Craggy and take Big Craggy's SE ridge back down to the trail. We followed the trail to the second creek crossing (the first is near the car) and hiked a short ways further before taking a right off trail. 15 minutes of bushwacking and we were hiking through talus up the valley south of our traverse. The larches were past prime but still great.

The route to the ledge was easy to figure out. The ledge is loose with a little exposure, and quickly brought us to a loose slope below the ridge. Once we gained the ridge, the views to the west were spectacular. We hiked the rest of the way to the summit, arriving around 11:30. We signed the register and ate, then decided to begin our traverse toward Big Craggy. West Craggy was my 32nd Bulger Peak. We went back the way we came for a short while until we saw a way which would go down toward the saddle between the Craggies. A little class 3 and some loose rock to look out for, but nothing too difficult. It wasn't too long until we reached the base of the final slog up to Big Craggy. Just straight up from here to the summit. There are numerous boot trails weaving up the mountain, allowing us to avoid the loose stuff here and there. We did not hang too long on Big Craggy and began our descent down the SE ridge. There was a lot of scree making for a quick descent. The ridge hike back down to the trail was scenic through all of the tall grass and fall colors and at 4:20 PM we reached the car, making the trip in roughly 8 hours and 20 minutes.