Rattlesnake - McLeod to Stuart

The past month or so has been busy for me.  Due to a combination of school, weather, more structured training for skimo season, and life in general, I haven’t gotten in any real full day outings.

view of the rattlesnake range from atop mcleod

However back in early October, Jeffrey and I were able to get out together for a McLeod to Stuart peak traverse in the Rattlesnake.  Bria was able and willing to drop us at the Finley TH (thanks!) and shortly after she drove away, it dawned on us that we were now committed to making it to our vehicle at the main rattlesnake TH. 

lower finley lake

We ran up the trail in intermittent rain and past where the drainage splits and I was planning on leaving the trail to the north.   Immersed in conversation, I didn’t realize my mistake til we arrived at lower Finley lake.  Rather than backtrack, we decided just to gain the ridge NE above the lake.  Once up high, the terrain was loose, scrappy class 3 to the north but soon eased and we continued up and down a few bumps in the ridge before stumbling across a faint trail up the broad S ridge of McLeod.  This was Jeffrey’s first time on McLeod and my first time without skis so we hung out for a few minutes, taking in the views. 

mcleod is the broad "hill" in the distance - not a very striking peak

nearing the end of the scrappy terrain

After bombing down the S ridge’s talus (reminiscent of the Rut’s technical terrain on lone peak), we decided to forgo the scrappy section of ridgeline from earlier and just bowl bounce our way south to sanders peak instead.  Once we were down in the basin, we climbed a would-be aesthetic ski run before dropping S into the next basin.  We then cut SW to a small lake for a water refill before re-gaining the ridge near Sander’s peak and scrambling up the fun 3^rd & 4^th class NW ridge to the summit.

up this N-facing run where the conversation naturally turned to skiing

scrambling up the NW ridge of sanders peak
(these difficulties can easily be bypassed on climber's R for those inclined)

From there the route was familiar to us both from prior iterations of the rattlesnake traverse as we trended S to Mosquito.  On the summit we bumped into two gals on a bike/run outing and chatted for a few minutes before continuing S to Stuart.   On top of Stuart we divided the last of our water before heading down.  The last few miles felt a little long but soon enough we were down at the car, remarking at how lucky we are to have this wilderness area in our backyard. 

our route from the start, to mcleod, to mosquito

About 24mi/7500 vert in 8:20 TH-to-TH

Approx. splits: 3:10 mcleod, 5:20 sanders, 6:50 stuart, 8:20 TH

Thoughts: this route was mainly easy ridge cruising with very little bushwhacking considering we crossed multiple trail-less basins.  The roughest sections of ridge line are near pt 8291 and the short NW ridge of sanders.  A logical extension for next time is to start at snowbowl, up to point six, N to murphy, descend to finley lakes, then out to mcleod before looping to sanders, mosquito, stuart and down.