I climbed Sunshine and Red Cloud via the 13er Sun Dog to make for a lovely cirque. To go up Sun Dog I cut off the standard route trail about 1.4 miles in and had to navigate across the raging creek. I made my way through the trees to Sun Dogs ridge, summited, and headed over to Sunshine. The snow up until Sunshine was firm and actually helped me move quickly. In between Sunshine to Red Cloud there is a large section of nasty steep snow. I could not see from the Sunshine side if I could safely crawl on the ridge next to it, so I chose to cross the entire thing. It was rotting, super slick, and about 20 feet before the end I punched through to my shoulders. Extracting myself was fun. You do not need to traverse this section of snow, the ridge above does go but I could not see that because I did not take the standard route up. From Red Cloud down it is smooth sailing. I glissaded about 1000 feet of really soft wet snow right to the trail! The Red Cloud basin is a sight to be seen!
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