On the summit
Colfax Peak Survey
Aug 18, 2026
Eric, Olly, Joshua
Results: Summit melted down 2.6ft since last summer measurement in 2024. Current elevation 9441.8ft +/-0.2ft NAVD88. Still an icecapped peak, but ice summit only 3.3ft higher than nearby rock summit.
The route
Colfax Peak is one of only two remaining icecapped peaks in the contiguous US, along with Liberty Cap. Since 2024 I’ve been surveying it twice a year, at min snow depth time in late summer and max snow depth time in mid spring. My target date to survey is between mid August to mid September. In 2024 I made it up in early September. In 2025 I gave my equipment to Olly, Branden, and Matthew and they attempted to summit in late August. However, the bergschrund on the standard East Ridge route was too melted out to proceed and they weren’t able to reach the summit.
This year I planned to go in late August also and hoped the route would be less melted out. The standard approach is from the north via heliotrope ridge. However, the approach road FS 39 was washed out 9 miles from the trailhead in the winter, adding a significant approach. As of mid August it was still undergoing repairs. [Update – as of Aug 20 repairs were completed and the road opened.] The alternative approach is from the south, via the Easton and Deming glaciers. We planned to do that approach.
Crossing the Deming Glacier
Monday night we met up at the Park Butte Lookout trailhead on the south side of Mt Baker. Tuesday morning we got moving at 4am. We made good progress up the trail to the railroad grade, and followed it up as high as possible to about 6800ft along the edge of the Easton glacier. There we roped up and followed the boot track from the guided groups climbing Mt Baker. Snow coverage was good and the only part melted to glacier ice was at the very start.
Impassable schrund on normal route
We hiked up to about 8800ft, then diverged left off the main route and hiked to the Colfax-Baker saddle. The crevasses were well filled in and we had no problem navigating. This approach was fortuitous because it gave us a good view of the southeast face of East Colfax. Interestingly, this face had a big snow slope the connected almost all the way from the Deming glacier to the east ridge. I kept that in mind as a possible alternative to the normal east ridge.
Hiking to the summit
Once at the col we hiked up to the bergschrund on the normal east ridge route. Like 2025, it was again melted out with no snow bridges. I don’t know how it would be possible to cross that without a few ladders strapped together. We looked around to the left, though, and the snow slope on the SE face looked doable. I led the way and put a few pickets in for running protection, since the face was steep and the bottom was melted out to rock and cliffy. The snow almost reached the ridge crest, and we just had to scramble up a 20ft section of steep hard-packed mud/rock to reach the crest. That got us above the bergschrund. If that face had been melted out, I think it would be too sketchy to climb up, so we got lucky.
Tagging east summit on way down
From there we unroped and followed the east ridge over the east peak, then up to the summit by 10:30am. I mounted one DA2 on the ice summit and another on the rock summit. I then took measurements with my Abney level. Based on those the ice summit was around 3ft taller than the rock summit. They were a lot closer than I remembered from 2024. Interestingly, I noticed a monument located a few feet from the rock summit. It said “US Department of Interior National Center for Earthquake Research, Menlo Park, Calif Geological Survey B3”
Diagram of measured elevations and locatoins of rock and ice summits
After logging data for one hour we headed down. We made sure to tag the summit of the east peak, then downclimbed the snow face with running pro. We then hiked down the Deming Glacier and caught up to a few groups descending from Mt Baker. Back on the railroad grade we switched to trail runners and hiked out by 4pm.
I processed the data and the ice summit is 9441.8ft +/-0.2ft NAVD88. This is 2.6ft lower than in late summer 2024. The ice summit is 3.3ft taller than the rock summit. So, at current melt rates (1.3ft/year) I expect the ice summit will melt lower than the rock summit within the next 3 years. That will mean Colfax will no longer be an icecapped peak, and Liberty Cap will become the only remaining icecapped peak in the contiguous US.
© 2026, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
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