Climbing the Matternhorn and Sacajawea Peak - Wallowa Mountains, Oregon

After hiking to Ice Lake and spending Saturday night, Matt and I woke up at 3 AM Sunday to climb the Matterhorn and Sacajawea Peak. The Matterhorn is the second tallest peak in the Wallowa Mountains at 9,826 feet. Sacajawea Peak is the tallest at 9,838 feet. The West face of the Matterhorn (not the side we climbed) rises steeply about 3,200 feet above Hurricane Creek. The easiest route (and our chosen route) starts from Ice Lake. There is a climbers trail that skirts the North side of Ice Lake and then heads about 2,000 vertical feet up the East ridge of the Matterhorn over about 1.7 miles. This non-technical route is marked by cairns and there is a light trail visible much of the way. Sacajawea Peak is reached by traversing the ridge (about 1.5 miles) between the two peaks. There are a handful of gendarmes that must be navigated around in order to get to Sacajawea after reaching the unnamed peak at 9,775 feet in elevation. Scrambling is required in order to climb to Sacajawea Peak from the Matterhorn. Our route (shown in the map below) was approximately 5.5 miles round-trip.

Download route (round-trip) as shown in map above in Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format for use with GPS units and mapping programs. Disclaimer.

We left our camp in the dark on the South side of Ice Lake at around 3:45 AM and walked to reach the climber's trail to the Northwest. The full moon we had seen before going to bed was now out of sight to the West. Aided by our headlamps, we made our way up the trail. What little I could see in the dark was gorgeous. We only encountered one patch of snow that we had to walk over.

   

As we neared the summit of the Matterhorn, the sun began to rise. It was a real treat to be up this early and enjoy an amazing sunrise on the Matterhorn.

On the way up we noticed tons of game prints in the sand. They looked like deer prints, but there would be no reason for a deer to be this high. Right about the time we noticed fresh urine on the trail, Matt spotted three mountain goats quickly walking away from us on the rocks above. I should have known the prints were from goats. They were probably ahead of us the whole time.

   

The views from the Matterhorn were phenomenal. There was still plenty of snow on the surrounding peaks, including Eagle Cap. It reminded me of being on top of Half Dome in Yosemite earlier this year.

There is a sturdy ammo box that houses the summit register on the Matterhorn. We found three notebooks, each of which was full. I found a small blank area on a page and wrote in our names. I'll have to remember to start carrying a couple small notebooks in the future.

   

   

While milling around the top of the Matterhorn, Matt again spotted the mountain goats. This time there was enough light to capture a couple photos before they disappeared from view.

   

   

   

Since it only took us about two hours to reach the summit, we still had plenty of time to traverse the ridge to Sacajawea Peak. Our goal was to get back to camp, pack up, and leave by noon, so that we would be back at the car around 3 PM to drive back to Portland on Sunday night. From the Matterhorn the ridge to Sacajawea doesn't look that bad. In reailty there are a bunch of gendarmes that have to be scrambled around or over.

   

   

   

About half way between the Matterhorn and Sacajawea Peak, there is an unnamed peak at 9,775 feet in elevation. Jokingly, I suggested to Matt we name it MaJa Peak or JaMa Peak (first two letters of our names). Before reaching the unnamed peak, we came across a fairly deep cave that appears to go straight down. I was just barely able to make out snow on the bottom approximately 30 feet down. It looked like a fun place to explore, but I didn't see any good spots to anchor a rope (and we didn't have rope or harnesses with us).

   

   

After hiking down from the unnamed peak, we came across the gendarmes along the ridge before Sacajawea Peak. While a fun scramble, there were a few sketchy spots, especially with Matt only having use of one hand (injured at trailhead on way to Ice Lake). We followed the advice we had read and climbed around most of the gendarmes on the West side. Some of the larger ones looked like more fun to climb up and over, but we didn't know what was on the other side, so we played it safe and climbed around them.

   

   

We made it to the summit of Sacajawea Peak in about 1.5 hours. The summit is a lot smaller than the wide open, rounded summit of the Matterhorn. The summit register is also much smaller, but again was full except for half of the last page. Time for someone to bring a new one up. It is currently stored in a broken glass jar inside a tin can. It could probably use an upgrade.

   

On the way back, we decided to scramble up and over a couple gendarmes since we now knew what was on the other side. Instead of heading all the way back to the Matterhorn and then down the same way we came up, we chose a different route. From the unnamed peak, we headed a short distance West on the Hurwall Divide before heading Southeast down a scree and sand slope. It saved lots of time and was a fun alternate way down. There is a well established goat trail that I followed, while Matt simply charged straight down as though he was downhill ski racing.

   

   

About half way down, we came across an area that had a few obvious mountain goat beds complete with goat hair.

   

   

We had a great climb and made it back to camp around 11 AM, giving us plenty of time to pack up and head the 7 miles back to the Wallow Lake trailhead.