Why not hike Yale and Mascot together while there's still snow on the peaks and for good measure do it while wearing a full sized camping pack with way too much gear in it? Great conditioning hike for camping excursions to come later in the year right? Well it turned out to be one Yale of a loop. Looped Yale and Mascot beginning and ending at Denny Creek trailhead. From what I see posted this seems to be a less common way of doing this loop and perhaps not without reason. I'll share my tale along with some beta for this route, detailed conditions, my times, etc.

For reference, the Denny Creek trailhead is paved and has restrooms but on the trail side of the road there's no place really to pitch a tent since the trail immediately goes up at a pretty good angle. You'd have to hike in half a mile before getting to anywhere flat enough for a tent. But there are abundant campgrounds nearby and right across the street, down an embankment are some unofficial sites with fire rings between the road and the river.

It was just past 2am when I was awakened by some manner of noise. I listened carefully and first thought maybe it was a couple rain drops hitting the tent. Then I decided there was definitely some scratching going on. Was a branch rubbing up against the tent? (I didn't think I set the tent up close enough for anything to brush against it). Maybe some critter outside? I listened more carefully. Wait, it's not outside the tent, it's inside - and it's very loud now! With a start, I went thrashing around flailing ineffectively to try to get to the zipper on my mummy bag. I'm not sure who ended up being startled more - me or the mouse that had been scratching at my pillow. But I think it managed its escape from the sleeping bag quicker than I made mine.

After that I didn't sleep so well - I mean it was just a mouse but now my ears were tuned into every little noise and every twitch of a muscle. I've camped out a number of times but this was my first time having a critter visit me in my sleeping bag. At 3:32am I heard what sounded like rain. The forecast not only for Yale but all the surrounding towns in every direction said it would be a pristine Friday night and beautiful, sunny Saturday. So I was a little worried but the rain stopped almost as quick as it started. Maybe it was just dew falling off the trees? Or maybe that mouse scampered over top the tent?

At 4:12am there was unmistakably rain and a couple flashes I'm pretty sure were lightning (though I listened and never heard any thunder). This had me worried since I wasn't expecting storms at all, especially not this early in the morning. I had intended to hit the trail while it was still dark but waited out the brief rain and then waited a while longer to make sure it wouldn't start again. It wasn't until 5:38am that I finally hit the trail.

The trail was extremely easy to follow for the first mile or so except for having to improvise a bit on the second stream crossing. There were some log bridges for the first crossing but if any bridge existed for the second it was well hidden. Route description doesn't mention the second crossing - not sure if this is just from an unusually high amount of runoff or what but had to carefully pick a path over a snow bridge, some rocks and willows to keep my feet dry.

The first mile or so only had intermittent patches of snow - no traction was needed. By about 11k or so the snow became continuous among the trees but it was mostly pretty hard packed and with plenty of tracks to make it easy to follow. At first didn't really need traction but around 11,200 hit some really icy spots and so I put on microspikes - which I left on for most of the rest of the day and was extremely glad to have them. I carried snowshoes as well but never had a need for them (might have been a different story though if I had returned by the same route after things warmed up). After leaving the denser section of trees the trail was back to on/off snow.

Above treeline there were some regions melted out but still a fair amount of snow overall.

For the approach to the ridgeline we followed existing tracks that took a more or less straight line up. As others have noted, this section is LONG and grueling.

Did I mention this section is long and grueling?

Sam didn't bring any sort of traction and so was about ready to turn back a little shy of the ridgeline. My microspikes were giving me awesome grip and my trekking poles were providing extremely solid support so I offered to walk right behind him as he kicked stepped his way up the last bit to the ridgeline. I HIGHLY recommend anyone doing this over the next few weeks or so bring some microspikes. Snowshoes would be overkill but would work too. Sam proved it's doable but not fun getting up there without traction (at one point, when he was still ahead, he was using a pocket knife to cut steps in the snow - the guy has some serious grit!)

Did I mention this section is really long and grueling?

One thing to be very aware of on this trail is that there are false summits... and more false summits... and more...

We hit the summit at 9:30am and still feeling good and with beautiful weather I mentioned to Sam that I was thinking about trying to do the nearby 13er, Mascot Peak but I wasn't sure if we could get over there. He was game, and though this was only his second 14er he's done lots of 13ers where he honed his route finding abilities by doing peaks with no trails. So he set off in the lead to find us a path to Mascot.

There were a couple dicey looking sections of snow we had to cross but it all proved to be extremely solid (no guarantees what you'll find in coming days if you try to retrace this but for now it's good).

One point that I failed to really hone in on when looking at this in advance is that from Yale down to the saddle with Mascot there is a drop on the order of 1,150 ft or so. Then you must regain over 400 feet. Since I had the brilliant idea of carrying along a large pack for conditioning (I did at least leave out the tent and sleeping bag...) I was really feeling all that extra weight at this point in the hike. I took me about an hour to make the 0.82 mile journey down from Yale then back up to Mascot (Sam was already waiting there ahead of me - having packed a much more rationally sized pack - although I was able to share an extra pair of gloves and some handwarmers with him since I had so much freaking gear with me.

The wind was absolutely brutal going between the peaks. Prior to that it had merely been cold and sometimes a little annoying but when dropping down to the saddle there were several times that I stumbled because of an especially robust blast of wind.

One thing worth noting is that at one point just prior to the summit I made the mistake of trying to cross some of the snow instead of staying on the rocks. After sinking in well past my waist I decided not to do that anymore.

Having made it over to Mascot and taken a nice long break we then had decide what to do next. When I had skimmed over the route at home (without having paid adequate attention to the elevation numbers) I was just thinking 'well I go up Yale, hop over to Mascot and retrace my steps.' But neither one of us were crazy about retracing that path with all the elevation gain.

I had read some 13er reports prior to going about people doing a loop from the Avalanche trailhead but that was further down the road than we cared to go if we could avoid it. We also considered shortcutting underneath Yale but the were serious snowfields with significant snow cornices above them that we would have had to cross so we nixed that pretty quick. After studying my GPS a bit Sam finally decided he was confident we could get down by following the ridge off the SW side of Mascot - heading back in the direction of the Denny Creek trailhead.

The start of this descent did indeed look very easy and appealing. I was a little uneasy at how close the topo lines on the map looked after that section but Sam was certain we could do it. What followed was a long weaving and tiresome descent over all manner of different terrain.

We crossed over tundra, down a few section of scree, down some sections of steep, loose sand; along some ridges, over a stream or two and occasionally cut upwards a little ways to get past some less than pleasant looking sections.

Overall it really wasn't too bad in the end - it was all class 2 terrain, albeit sometimes very steep and loose class 2 but we never had to do any actually climbing and never got cliffed out - though there was once or twice when I was starting to wonder. I've included my GPX tracks in case anyone is curious. I can't say I would necessarily recommend this specific route but this shows that it is possible. Perhaps with a little additional planning one might make this into a less challenging loop but I for sure got in all the conditioning I wanted and then some.

Times/stats

Total distance: 7.81 miles (according to GPS - if right that's shorter than the standard route)

Total elevation gain: ~4,850 (estimated from one way plus gain from saddle to Mascot with some ups and downs on the way out)

Total time: 7h 27 min

5:38am start from Denny Creek trailhead

6:54am put on microspikes at ~11,200ft since trail was getting icy

9:30am Yale summit - stayed for a few minutes before heading off for Mascot

10:12am reach saddle between Yale and Mascot

10:41am summit Mascot

11:03am begin descent off SW ridge

12:23pm cross first stream

1:05pm back at Denny Creek trailhead after hiking up the road a little ways from where we popped out.