Dog Mountain

Dog Mountain (5,408ft)

The view from the summit

Eric Gilbertson

January 21, 2019

I had been meaning to climb Dog Mountain for at least the past two years. In December 2016 on a snowy Saturday I’d tried to climb Dog Mountain. But snowline was down to sea level, and I ended up getting stuck in the snow en route to the trailhead an hour past North Bend on a remote logging road. Luckily some guys were passing by in trucks and helped me out, but after trying to dig myself out for 3 hours I had given up on climbing Dog Mountain.

Looking towards Mt Si on the drive out

This time snow line was supposed to be higher, and it was supposed to be sunny. It was still raining when I passed through North Bend, but at least the logging roads were snow free. The rain turned to wet snow, and the road was snow covered enough that I parked before the trailhead at a good place to turn around at 8:30am.

I continued on foot, passing through deep snow, then bare trail under dense tree cover. I hiked higher up the NW ridge of Dog Mountain until the trail disappeared under deep snow for good around 4,000ft. There I bushwhacked straight up, eventually changing to snowshoes. The snow had a breakable crust layer on top which was tricky to deal with. Eventually I reached the summit around 11:45am. I got some great views of nearby mountains, though the clouds started rolling in an out.

I switched to crampons for the way down, and was glad I hadn’t brought skis. It would have been very difficult skiing through the breakable crust. I made good time on the descent and was back to the car by 2pm for the drive home.

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