Colfax Peak Spring Survey 2026
On the summit
April 26, 2026
Eric and Elijah
10 miles skiing, 4 miles snowmobiling. 4:30am – 2pm
I’m measuring seasonal snow accumulation on the remaining icecap peaks every spring, and had just finished measuring Eldorado a few days earlier. The timeframe late April to early May is the approximate time of max snow depth on the icecap peaks based on the nearest SNOTEL sites. The peaks of interest are the former and current icecap peaks of the contiguous US – Rainier, Liberty Cap, Eldorado, Colfax, and East Fury. East Fury lost its remnant ice summit last summer, so I no longer measure that one, but I try to measure the elevation of the ice summits of the other four at min and max snow depth times of year.
The route
For Colfax I usually approach it from the north on the Coleman-Deming route, but this year the approach road, Glacier Creek Road, is washed out about 9 miles before the trailhead. So that route is not quite as appealing. An alternative approach is to come from the south up the Easton Glacier. That is interesting because it can generally be snowmobiled into mid or late spring every year into the Mt Baker National Recreation Area. I’d never combined surveying and snowmobiling in the same trip, so that approach would be more interesting.
Ready to go Saturday night
Elijah was free to join and we decided to climb the south face route up Colfax, since neither of us had done that and it looked fun. I’d read the previous weekend people were still snowmobiling up to the Easton, but one creek crossing was getting pretty thin. So there was uncertainty in how far up we’d be able to get. We decided to give it a try with the sled, though, just in case it was passable.
Skinning up the Salad Bowl
Saturday evening I drove up National Forest road NF 13 to 0.7 miles before the Schreibers Meadow trailhead. There I found a long lineup of cars parked at the edge of snowline. I managed to get a good spot just at the edge of the snow, and quickly unloaded the sled. I decided to sled up a little ways to scout the creek crossing situation, and headed up just at dark. A little past the trailhead I encountered a big group of skiers coming down pulling an injured skier on a snowboard. I offered to help, and gave the injured skier a ride back to their car.
Approaching Colfax
I then went back up and rode to the first creek crossing a bit over a mile past the trailhead. It was melted out, so indeed we wouldn’t be getting too far the next day on the sled. That was good to know to calibrate our starting time. I sledded back, then slept in the truck overnight.
Sunday we started up at 4:30am and made quick progress sledding to the creek crossing. We then skinned up from there as the sun came up. The creek was very melted out, and I was surprised people sledded up it just a week earlier. We reached the salad bowl, and continued up the Easton Glacier. A few groups were cramponing down, having summitted very early. We traversed left around 8400ft, and made our way to the base of the south face of Colfax.
Climbing up the south face
The snow was nice and firm, and we cramponed up the face, avoiding one bergschrund at the bottom. I was happy to have both a whippet and a regular ice ax. The face was pretty steep down low, then eased as we got higher. We soon reached the col between Colfax and Colfax Peak East, then hiked the short remaining distance to the summit by 10:45am.
I mounted the DA2 GNSS device on the ice summit and then we admired the view for an hour. This year the summit was very icy, while last year in late April it had been kind of deep powder. After an hour we packed up and skied down directly from the summit. I don’t often get a complete ski descent like that, but Colfax is a good candidate since it’s an icecap peak. We skied the icy face down the the col, then the south face was a bit softer.
Skiing out
As the slope steepened near the bottom I side stepped down an icy section, then hopped the bergschrund and made it down to the base. We then made a long traverse across the Deming Glacier to meet back up with the Easton while staying in ski mode. We then made fast time back to the snowmobile, and had a fun ride back to the truck by 2pm. By then there were at least 25 cars lined up along the road, and I was happy to have snow leading right up to the truck.
I processed the data and found 16.2ft of snow had accumulated on Colfax since Sept 2025. That’s a bit less then last time I measured, when 17.4ft had accumulated between Sept 2024 and late April 2025. Hopefully if I get the remaining peaks surveyed this spring I can include the results in an upcoming scientific journal article.
© 2026, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
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