Eldorado Survey + Dorado Needle

Survey equipment on the summit

Sept 19, 2026

14 miles, 8300ft gain

Eldorado Peak is a former icecap peak that still has a remnant ice summit, so I’m surveying it twice a year in mid spring and late summer to track elevation change of the remnant ice summit. I’ve been surveying it since 2024, so this would be my fifth survey.

The route

We started from Cascade River Road at 5am Saturday and made good time up to the Eldorado Glacier. Two other fast solo climbers passed us on the way up. Surprisingly, they both knew me. We topped out around 9:30am and interestingly the remnant ice summit still existed. It had melted down over 6ft from late summer 2024 to late summer 2025, but that trend apparently did not continue.

I took a one hour measurement with the Trimble DA2 and backup abney level measurements to and from the rock summit. By 10:30am we packed up and decided to tag a bonus peak. I’m still missing Dorado Needle for my Winter Bulgers project, and I hadn’t climbed it since 2018. In the past few years I’d heard a critical rock had fallen off the route, making the climb harder. So I kind of wanted to scout that out before returning in the winter. I’ve learned from 83 successful winter bulger climbs and 37 failed winter bulger attempts that I need to have the route very dialed and fresh in my mind to increase chance of success.

Climbing Dorado Needle

We followed old tracks around Tepeh Towers and down the McAllister Glacier before they disappeared. We then ascended a steep snow slope to the base of the NW ridge. Conditions were much different than when I’d climbed it in early May 2018. At that time of year I could climb a snow slope up to within about 1 pitch of the summit. Now the snow was very melted out with a deep moat blocking access to the normal route.

Instead we wove around right to the col at the base of the NW ridge. There it appeared we could access rock inside the moat. We just had a 30m rope, so climbed two pitches to a big slung boulder on the ridge proper. Then we climbed one pitch up a squirmy chimney, another along a knife edge arete that I climbed au-cheval, then one more au cheval knife edge pitch to just below the summit. Here I noticed the place where the rock had fallen off. There was an angled crack that I got a 0.75″ cam in up high. I couldn’t quite jam my hiking boot in the base since the crack was too wide, but I bet a ski boot could jam in there.

Eldorado viewed from Dorado Needle. Remnant ice summit on left, and rock summit on right

Instead I did a slight layback then lunged up to the jug on the top. After that it was a third class scramble to the summit, where I found the Jake Robinson register Elijah had just placed this summer.

We rapped down, which included one short belayed pitch over the knife edge, then got to the base by 5:30pm. It was then an easy hike out, with a good sunset near Torado Needle, and back to the truck by 10pm.

Nice sunset

After processing the results I found the remnant ice summit of Eldorado gained 8.9ft between mid Sept 2025 to mid Sept 2026. I suspect this is due to higher snow accumulations over the winter and slightly cooler summer temperatures in 2026 compared to summer 2025. The winter/spring snow accumulation on the summit was 30.5 ft between 2025-2026, compared to 25.9ft between 2024-2025. I’m still working on seeing how modeled summer summit temperatures on Eldorado compared between 2025-2026.