With another great September day on our hands, Fern, Isabel and I headed out in search of Gunn Peak (or the infinity tarn if we were being honest with our priorities) in the Wild Sky Wilderness. Gunn is one of the steep, pointy summits you can see on highway 2 driving into Sultan and is actually the high point of the wilderness, so I was very excited about this one.
The climbers path trailhead is very non-descript. We located a narrow gravel spur off the main road near the Barclay Lake trailhead and followed it north to its terminus a few hundred yards in. From here, we set out into the woods at around 9:30 am before immediately coming to a crossing of Barclay Creek. The crossing was easy, with a view towards Baring Mountain looming above us. After this, the fun began, with a STEEP climbers path up to a rocky outcropping a bit below 4000’. Here we followed the path to the right and continued to gain steeply up to the 5400’ saddle between Wing and Tailgunner. It was a hot day with a bit of haze from wildfire smoke and we were all feeling a bit gassed at this point. Isabel decided that she was perfectly content hanging out here as Fern and I dashed over to the summit, so we split up here.
To drop off the saddle requires some steep elevation loss, which would undoubtedly be a big pain to climb back up on the way out, then a flat traverse into the basin below Gunn. From here, we ascended a giant talus field that was surprisingly solid up towards the precipitous looking summit block.
The route up Gunn reminded me a lot of the corkscrew route on Sloan. It is very circuitous and basically takes a climber on a looping path around the entire summit area. The beginning part of this was the crux of the climb for me. It was a steep class 4 to gain a treed ridge. I was able to manage without much issue on the ascent, but it gave me slight pause for the way down. After this bit of excitement, we traversed the south side of the summit block on easy an easy ramp before turning north and gaining a sharp notch in the ridge. From here, we traversed on the north side of the summit block on a tenuous trail underneath a big cliff face. I thought this part of the climb was awesome and we were on top before I knew it! The views were great and offered a new perspective on some familiar sights. I hadn’t ever had this vantage point for viewing Baring, Index, Merchant, etc and the view back down the valley towards Sultan and Gold Bar. We also had an odd phenomenon on the summit – tons of flying ants. They were huge, and even though they seemed totally harmless, were kind of an annoyance. I wonder why I haven’t run into them more often in the mountains?
After a bit on top, we wanted to get back to Isabel as fast as possible, so we reversed our course past the steep cliff, through the notch and back to the class 4 downclimb. This ended up going fine with care and caution and we were soon picking our way back down the giant talus field. The climb back up to the Wing-Tailgunner saddle was as hard as we feared, but before long we were back together with Isabel and off to go check out the infinity tarn.
The tarn is located just a bit west and up from the saddle and wasn’t too hard to find. It was as beautiful as I thought it might be and was very worthy of a long break to rest our tired legs. The views across the water to Baring were awe-inspiring.
We didn’t want to leave, but eventually got ourselves moving knowing we had a long way to descend on steep trail ahead of us. The climber's path is punishing from start to finish and I was so thankful to hit the Barclay Creek crossing when we eventually did – seven hours and 40 minutes after we crossed it the first time. I was shocked that my GPS track only said we had covered 5.44 miles, I guess that’s what happens when you are in such steep, demanding terrain all day. Overall Gunn was a great peak with great company, and it stoked my interest in some of the other peaks in the area. Can’t wait to come back and check them out!
Final Stats: 5.44 miles / 4105 feet of gain
Comments