Trip Report
Alpine Scramble - Cowlitz Gap & Rocks (winter)
A bluebird day snow scramble of a popular and accessible Rainier 100.
Neal Stein
- Sun, Jun 8, 2025
- Alpine Scramble - Cowlitz Gap & Rocks (winter)
- Cowlitz Gap & Rocks (winter)
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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Snow is very soft and preexisting tracks are melting fast enough to blend into snowcups. Routes obtained via Peakbagger kept us true to the route but fast-melting snow due to warm temperatures left several rock faces that caused us pause en-route and this may have been the last good weekend for the scramble without significantly more routefinding considerations and risk. Consider crossing Stevens Creek as low as possible to avoid thinning snow bridges.
We started at 8am in weather already brightly sunny and in the mid-50’s. After a round of introductions and a starting plan we started up the still-closed Paradise Valley Road to the 4th Crossing Trailhead (I have also seen this called the Mazam Ridge Trailhead). We found no signage and so started up just over the bridge crossing the Paradise River.
[Photo: Neal Stein]
We kept close to the GPX tracks we had, staying roughly on the trail but on a straighter line to the intersection with the Mazama Ridge Trail. Once there we cut across snow to follow the Skyline Trail for a short stint and then an approximation of the Paradise Glacier Trail.
[Photo: Jacob Whitbeck]
This is where our routefinding got important, as we had to find a good path across Stevens Creek. We saw several suspended snow bridges with unclear thickness, and opted to backtrack downhill slightly to a much more filled-in area just under 6200’.
[Photo: Emma Meersman]
After working our way around some exposed rock faces we decided to head uphill to avoid a high slope traverse under more fragmenting rock or losing some altitude to work around it.
[Photo: Emma Meersman]
From here it was more traversing until we could see a mostly snow covered slope up to our objective. Our final hundred and fifty feet or so was all loose rock, possibly being the crux of the day, as it was very loose. The group did a good job managing care and we reached the summit at 11:22AM.
[Photo: Anuv Vaghul]
[Photo: Brian Lenz]
From there it was a nice lunch break and we headed down retracing our steps back to the lot. We found the snow even softer for the return, perfect for fast plunge stepping. A great day out and a round trip time of 6:30.