RT Length: 10.2 miles
Elevation Gain: 3140’
I parked at 10800’, at the junction for 344/349 (Grassy Gulch Road). It’s an easy 4WD road to get there. I have a stock Tacoma, and while the clearance was nice, I never needed to put it into 4WD to make it up the road. There’s an upper trailhead as well, on a more intense 4WD road, with a nice dispersed campsite just before it at 11950’. If you drive to the upper trailhead, the RT Length is approximately 5.8 miles, with 1890’ of elevation gain.
I was on the trail at 6am, following Grassy Gulch Road.
I followed this road to treeline
Here’s a picture of the dispersed campsite at 11950 (to the left):
I followed the road up to 12130’
I was headed here
The road continues on, but here trail 1444 picks up. I followed the trail to the saddle. Here’s an overview of the route:
As you can see in the picture below, from the saddle there’s a trail here to the left. I couldn’t tell if it was a game trail or an actual trail, as it was covered in snow, but I followed it to the ridge
This is the only point on the rest of the ridge I diverged from the ridge. I skirted these rocks to the right to stay on easy terrain, then re-gained the ridge
I now had my first view of Gladstone Ridge
However, it would be a long walk to get there, first traversing over PT 12962, then PT 13038.
Here’s the route over to PT 12962
I then descended about 200’ to the 12961/13038 saddle. The terrain here was rocky, and a bit tricky since the rocks were slightly filled in with snow. I had trouble figuring out where the voids in the snow were, so I did my best to rock-hop and avoid the ice on the rocks while doing so.
At the saddle of 12961/13038, looking up at my route to 13038, where it’s 240’ up to 13038. In dry conditions, this is a ridge hike, but today I found myself dipping down to the right a bit to avoid the narrow, icy rocks that made the ridge direct.
From the top of PT 13038, looking east I could see Gladstone Ridge.
This was a simple ridge hike to the summit.
I summited Gladstone Ridge at 8:45am
Gladstone Ridge:
This was an out and back hike for me, so I re-traced my steps, following the ridge back to PT 13038
Then back down the ridge, and up to PT 12962
I then followed the ridge west back to trail 1444
Back on the trail, I turned left and headed towards the 4WD road
I then followed the road back to the lower trailhead
I made it back to the lower trailhead at 11:15am, making this a 10.2 mile hike with 3140’ of elevation gain in 5 hours, 15 minutes.
On to the next trailhead!
Wild Wanderer 