hillman1
07-17-2005, 07:55 PM
I saw AlG's post over on vftt for a saturday hike, and hadn't had any hits on my sun-mon hiking post, so I ended up hiking with Alg for his first day back into the mountains for a while. We were tossing hiking ideas around when we met at south meadows, including a possible camera recovery from up on the back of Iroquois. We ended up doing Pitchoff. I have to say--this 100 highest is a good deal, because of all the times I've been near that trailhead, not once have I said to myself"how about Pitchoff". I have to say, this is a geat hike. We did a traverse, spotting a car down near owls head, and starting near the cascade trailhead. The trail is in good shape, and we took the first turn off path towards what we figured was the first of a few summits.(we didn't know the trail went there anyway)--We headed up, and got a little bit of rock climbing in, similar to saddleback, but no paint blazes for help. This first summit was a charmer, big rocks, a mini-gorge to explore, and incredible views. Anyway, the next few peaks were very so-so, and one of them is the high point of the ridge. The last bump before the descent though was incredible. Tons of open rock, and killer views. It was a bit of a steep descent for a while, but soon changed to mostly level, and then we were at the road. A great hike.