The knifeedge summit, the fantastic views, and the great skiing down the East Ridge and the glacier, versus the 7000 feet of elevation, the always shifting creek crossing, the neverending boulder field, the rotten snow after the waterfalls, and the treacherous climb down to the glacier.

We climbed Eldorado Peak on June 11th 12th. The rest of the crew didn't want to camp, so I drove up the day before, loaded up my split board and camping gear, and took a longtime hiking into camp at the notch.

Found a pretty big log crossing way upstream, but then had a lot of problems getting back onto the trail, would recommend the flagged crossing downstream, or just wading across in water shoes and leaving those until you get back.

Forest was long and slow, same with the boulder field, but the weather was a lot better than then predicted rain and snow, so I just took it nice and steady.

Snow after the waterfall got slushy and I lost the trail so had to do more bushwhacking and climbing through trees before I got to a flat part. I switched to boots and skinning here and that made things easier.

Camp was on top of the ridge before the drop down to the glacier. Couple of skiers doing the Isolation Traverse came up, scoped out the safe way down, and kept going. We saw them the next day camping low down on the glacier.

Snow the next morning, then the rest of the crew came up right at sunrise. The climb down wasn't too bad other than me not trusting my snowboard boots on wet slabs.

Climb up on glacier was slow, snow was frozen, and the skin tracks were a little too small for me, but eventually we made it into the sun on to the flatter part. Here we cached all of our crevasse gear since conditions were great.

At the base of the East Ridge, I switched to crampons and started the long, arduous hike up. Views were great and weather was sunny and perfect. Summit was great, with solid snow, so no problems making it up.

Snowboarded down from the last flat ledge. Upper slopes were pretty steep, but lower down was a lot of fun.

After the flat part, snow got really bad and slow. After camp, I ended up going skiers right and almost off a cliff. Everything was sliding so I went slowly and eventually made it back through the trees to the waterfall and the rock field. Here I switched back to trail runners and continued hiking down.

At the stream, we tried to find the way across that the oneday party found but ended up lost. Eventually I followed some pink flags close to the parking lot which took me to a wet log, then a dry creek bed, and another log.

Full trip report from one of the day hikers: https://www.wta.org/gohiking/tripre...