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Two peaks for the price of one! Hope and Quail from Cache Creek
Hope and Quail can be an imposing day grinding up to Hope Pass from the CT up Sheep Gulch for about 8 miles and 5,000 feet of gain for both peaks. Instead, we took a moderate 4x4 road to about 12,500 feet near the Columbine Mine accessed from Cache creek. An old ATV road leads up to some radio towers at point 13,130. It's then an easy and wonderful tundra walk to Quail, followed by a somewhat steep and loose dirt/scree descent 900 feet down to Hope Pass. If you stay left off the west ridge of Quail there's a social trail paralleling the ridge that avoids most of the loose-ness. Then you join the standard route up Hope which similarly has a social trail about 50-100 feet below the ridge crest to avoid the rocks at the ridge crest. At about 13,400 the easiest path seems to join the ridge at a tiny saddle just below the start of the gullies and then follows the ridge crest to the summit plateau. We avoided the 3 gullies mentioned in other route descriptions and found the ridge crest to be easy class 3/hard class 2 in spots. Trip states were about 8 miles and 4,000 feet - or similar to just doing Hope alone from Sheep Gulch.
The Columbine mine "trailhead" is really just some flattened tundra at forest service signs on the Columbine mine road stating no motor vehicle access above a point at about 12.5k. A ballsey driver could get a Subaru there but I would recommend a reasonably high clearance 4x4 for several patches of big rocks above about 11,800. There are also a lot of campsites below treeline on the way up on FR 398 and the area seemed relatively quiet as far as campers and ATV'ers go given the proximity to BV. You could get a prius to 11,800 and there is a pull off or two to park there.
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Nice! Good to see this is a viable route. I contemplated this once as a winter route to Quail.
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