pt 13038 – Wild Wanderer

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.