TR: The sleeping Giant of the Central Cascades Mt Aix
Mt Aix is the sleeping Giant of the Central Cascades relatively unknown but rivaled in size only by the massive Goat Rocks. Mt Aix is in what you would consider the middle of nowhere from Washington standards. The 90 mile summer drive is more then doubled when 410 closes down for winter leaving the area isolated and unused. From Crystal Mountain you can get a distant view of the massive alpine bowls of Aix and the Nelson Range that rise over 800 feet higher then the top of Crystal. Aix had become somewhat of an obsession for me over the years as I studied approaches and access issues of the mountain. Trying to get beta was all but impossible as trying to get any skiing info was dead end after dead end, The question kept coming up in my head “why isn’t anybody heading out to the Nelson Range”.
View of the Nelson range and Mt Aix from the top of the Silver King at Crystal Mountain. We skied the high point on the left side of the pic and the huge alpine bowl to its right
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Thanks to Boot from Turns all year for the photo
The forecast was looking good with Mostly sunny skies on the Eastern side of the Cascades and according to the Forest service the road was plowed all the way to the Mt Aix trailhead Saturday was going to be the day. Friday night I met up with Ian and Jeff at the North Bend Safeway and made the 190 mile drive all the way around the Eastern side of the cascades then back into the Central cascades and camped a few miles from the trail head. The next morning we woke up under the early morning sun, stuffed our sleeping bags into the car and drove up towards the trailhead. The forest Service was wrong the road was not plowed to the Aix trailhead it was only plowed to Bumping Lake there were two options 1. Abort or 2 go for it but to me number one was not an option. The slog fest up the road was an uneventful 4 and a half miles getting deeper into the Nelson range before finally hitting the Mt Aix trailhead. Once we reached the trail we lost it within the first 5 minutes and proceeded to bushwhack up the semi densely forested slopes. The bushwhacking proceeded for a couple of brutal hours until we decided to make a downhill traverse into the beginning of the alpine.
Our first real view of point 7495 during the bush whacking
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Photo by Jeff
Finally breaking into alpine terrain
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photo by Jeff
Ian skinning with Rainier in the background
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Photo by Jeff
Once in alpine travel was so much faster and efficient as the terrain mellowed out and you could actually the best areas to put in a skin track. We skinned up to a low saddle and finally got our first view of Mt Aix and the huge alpine bowls that surrounded it.
Our first view of Mt Aix
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Photo by Ian
Looking South at Bismark peak, the goat rocks and Mt Adams
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Photo by Ian
The whole area was a corn skiing heaven with enough room to fit all of the Ski resorts in Washington in the three alpine bowls surrounding Mt Aix.
Only one of the three massive bowls (looking North)
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Photo by Ian
During the ridge scramble to the summit I had spotted a skiable line off the NW face of Mt Aix it was sketchy and looked like it was close to melting out but at the moment it was skiable.
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Photo by Ian
