Eagle Peak

Route: Road past Lutheran Camp
Posted On: 4/4/2026, By: Outbounder
Info: The road is almost completely dry. A few ATVs and a truck made it to the lake. Once you turn off from the lake you'll see our tracks through the trees. No bushwacking necessary. There are a few small sections where the snow will come up mid shin, snowshoes are absolutely not helpful. We didn't use spikes but the section through the trees above the lake was slippery when descending. Above treeline is mostly dry with a few small snow patches between the rocks. 

Route: NE ridge
Posted On: 3/28/2026, By: MMAfightingClimber
Info: Wore trail runners. There’s one short deep snow section right at treeline. But it was doable in waterproof trail runners. Totally dry above treeline. Decent amount of bushwhacking. Coverdale basin did have a fair amount of snow still. 

Route: CR 198 Rainbow Lutheran Camp
Posted On: 3/15/2026, By: piper14er
Info: Drove past the Rainbow Lutheran Camp about 1.5 miles. After walking up the road it looked like I could have driven another 1 to 1.5 miles farther on mostly dry roads. A truck made it up about 4 miles and an ATV/Side by Side tore it up while I was up on the peak a little farther. Still not to Rainbow Lake.

Left the road at Rainbow Lake and proceeded towards the ridge. Not a lot of snow to start with and then a little more as I gained the ridge. Found a trench/track (by Fall?) and followed it through the last band of trees. Went over to the north side of the ridge as soon as possible where there was not any snow. Followed a mostly dry and grassy ridge to the narrow rocky final section. Headwind around 30-35 mph.

The last section was partially snow covered and despite the increased wind which I am guessing was between 40 and 50 mph.

Headed back down with an extremely high tailwind which was constantly trying to push me over and down the hill.

Back in the trees was good despite the wind howling in the treetops.

11.3 miles and 4400 feet. 

Route: Rainbow Lake
Posted On: 12/15/2025, By: angry
Info: Posting an alternative update as I did not follow the route indicated in the last two CRs.
Parked at ~9100 in my Tacoma. Snowshoed the road all the way to rainbow lake and left them on until gaining the ridge. Summit register is impossible to miss. 

Route: from lutheran camp
Posted On: 12/13/2025, By: Laxer04
Info: Pretty much the same conditions from bigfoot1's on 12/10. I put snowshoes on about 2 miles up the road and built on his existing trench. When you leave the road there are two trenches - take the one to the left, it's much easier terrain. The trench continues to treeline and then it's basically summer conditions until the final summit ridge.

I made the mistake of ditching my snowshoes the moment I found dry land coming out of the trees - do not do this. Keep them on until you see a clear dry path to the summit. I postholed a ton...

Summit register is in good shape with plenty of working pens and paper

If you lost a hunting knife on the road let me know and I can work on getting that back to you... 

Route: From rainbow lutheran camp
Posted On: 12/10/2025, By: bigfoot1
Info: The snow on the road is melting pretty quickly. There are some bare spots. Tire tracks didn't make it up very far, maybe 0.2 miles from the camp. Broke out a rough trench to treeline, and the ridge itself is basically bare and in summer conditions. Snow depth is about 2 ft. NWS forecasted patchy blowing snow all day, but it ended up being a very nice and clear day! Wind was standard winter conditions, with gusts up to 45-50mph. The wind was coming up from the valley to the north of the peak, so I was able to be somewhat sheltered when staying just a bit southeast of ridge direct.

Dropped snowshoes at 11.4k ft. Spikes might be helpful for the rocky bit of the descent from eagle peak, but I didn't use them.

Follow the first tracks that veer off on the left side of the road, not the ones that go straight at the curve. It is very fallen tree-ey. 

Route: loop with Cottonwood from Cloverdale
Posted On: 8/12/2025, By: 9patrickmurphy
Info: I decided to try out Chipmunk's route that she posted to the GPX library. After driving up to Rainbow Lake and deciding the road wasn't too bad, I continued to the end of the road at 11,500 (modified offroad vehicle encouraged/required). Very straightforward up to Cottonwood, over 13,128, and up to Thirsty. The ridge from Thirsty to Eagle has some loose class 3 but the route was obvious. Eagle itself is a grassy ridge walk.

Now, if I had started from Rainbow Lake I could have just descended Eagle's standard East ridge, complete with a trail down to the lake. But since I had driven all the way to the end of the road I had to get down another way. Chipmunk's GPS shows a direct descent off the ridge in a talus gully and then through the basin back to the trailhead. The gully actually went great - sticking to the side I found pretty solid rock and sections of grass. The talus in the basin sucked though, and the willowbashing to get back to the trailhead was also quite bad. I'd recommend just starting from Rainbow Lake, even if your vehicle can get to the end of the road. 

Route: Eagle > Thirsty > Lakes > Cottonwood from Rainbow
Posted On: 6/29/2025, By: Dayute
Info: Went up Eagle from Rainbow Lake and around to Cottonwood. Found a nice social trail down from the saddle between Thirsty and UN 13128 that I thought would be quicker than taking the Cottonwood NE ridge down. I was wrong. Trail fizzles out in the basin in a fresh hell of willows and deadfall. Road to Rainbow Lake is dry and in not terrible condition for the sangres. Rocky and HC required but some great campsites near the lake made it worth the bumps. 

Route: Rainbow Lake
Posted On: 6/13/2025, By: malogos
Info: Summer conditions and no snow. Remarkably good track from the lake up to treeline. Road is particularly horrendous, even in a Jeep. 

Route: NE Ridge
Posted On: 2/22/2025, By: madmattd
Info: Yet another Eagle Peak CR. I parked at the lower Rainbow Trail junction, which is ~3/4mi above the Rainbow Camp - I could have probably made the upper Rainbow junction, but I'd had enough of that road! The road is mostly snow covered above the upper Rainbow junction, but generally only a few inches other than a couple spots up above the reservoir. Lots of ice under a thin layer of snow, and likely to get worse with the coming week of warm, sunny weather. Snowmos have traveled above the 9800' switchback - I'm guessing at least to Rainbow Lake.


I freshened up the trench starting at the 9800' switchback - there were 2 skiers that recently skinned to treeline, I'm assuming they are the 2-19 party in the register. Generally a trace to an inch or two in their trench, and most of it was pretty solid. I suspect they were able to mostly follow Daway/Cloudkicker's trench based on that (no recorded visits between 2-8 and 2-19). Their ski down looked interesting - the woods are kinda tight in there. The couple of times I deviated from the broken track was knee-deep or more even in snowshoes! Some chucklehead postholed the hell out of the skiers' trench from the road turnoff to 10.2k (ankle to knee deep depending on the spot), before they randomly veered off to points unknown. I cleaned up what I could, but one set of snowshoes can only do so much. From treeline to ~12.7k is pretty dry - early fall-like spotty coverage that doesn't even slow one down. The upper 500' talus field has a fair bit of snow in among it, but generally shallow except along the final ridge - I used spikes in that section as there was a lot of wind-packed sloped snow in there. Best to stick to ridge proper there imo.


Overall a tougher day than planned, but that might just be my conditioning. Gorgeous out - upper 20s on the summit with just a light breath of wind, and not a cloud in sight. Props to all the trench-layers on this one! 

Route: NE Ridge
Posted On: 2/8/2025, By: daway8
Info: Trio went up Eagle Peak NE Ridge - cloudkicker, myself and Herman the Screaming Goat. Me and Herman made it up to Balman Reservoir in the 4Runner while cloudkicker got bonus points by hiking up later from a lower parking spot. Hiked up the road from Balman (would need a snowmobile to drive much further). Intended to turn off the road where Will_E and various others put in a track earlier in the winter but accidently overshot. Doubted the trench would still be there anyways so went ahead and turned off the road at the next switchback at about 9,816ft. Cloudkicker and I traded trenching duty at the start (Herman was no help), but I eventually led the charge up the steeper sections. Trenching provided a robust workout. Not too terrible overall but did occasionally get a bit vigorous. Occasional trap door issues but not too bad. At 10,856ft finally saw visual signs of an old trench. Soon lost all visual signs but was able to use the blind man approach of poking trekking poles into the snow to find the firm spots hidden below. This worked pretty well and really eased the effort from there up. Above treeline almost totally windswept so we stashed snowshoes there. Summit was fairly breezy but not as bad as OpenSnow predicted. Followed our tracks back down so there's now a pretty good trench once again. 

Route: NE ridge
Posted On: 1/5/2025, By: yaktoleft13
Info: Fought a cold to chase Brandon up Eagle. Able to boot the entire route with no gaiters. The trench through trees once we left the road meanders a lot, but eventually gets to the right spot. Once above treeline, almost everything is windblown. Some snow to navigate between false and real summit, but was easy. Near bluebird day, chilly but wind was very manageable. 8.5 miles, 4k very from our parking spot 

Route: Rainbow Lutheran Camp
Posted On: 1/2/2025, By: sarahmariekirk
Info: Conditions are still similar to when Will climbed on 12/23; snowshoes required after the turn off from the road, and then able to stash them right above tree-line. No traction needed from treeline to summit. Extremely windy today. 

Route: From Lutheran Camp
Posted On: 12/23/2024, By: Will_E
Info: Good conditions on Eagle today. I started at the Lutheran Camp, there were vehicle tracks up to around 9300', then ATV tracks a little further. I broke off the road at 9700', used snowshoes from this point to treeline. The trenching was tougher than average, seems like a lot of the rocks and logs that are normally buried are just shallow enough to create trap doors and tripping hazards. From treeline to summit is windblown, no traction needed. Nice day. 

Route: FS 198 - Rainbow Lake
Posted On: 10/23/2023, By: B_2
Info: In case you were planning an approach from the East:

FS 198 is a literal nightmare for any form of human travel. It is reminiscent of Lake Como Rd. You need high clearance and tolerance for being shaken not stirred just to get to Rainbow Lake.

Please refer to my Cottonwood A conditions report from 10/21/23 for more detail on the road above Rainbow Lake to Silver Lake. If I did this again (I wont, lol), I would have camped and walked from Rainbow Lake, there are many nice camp spots on the north side.

There is a trail to gain the ridge for Eagle from Rainbow Lake that I did not find on a map. Look for cairns on the right a couple hundred feet beyond the lake, then follow blue paint blazes to tree line. The trail is steeper than bushwhacking the ridge-proper as we did on the way up. Its debatable which way was more enjoyable, but the trail was very nice for about a mile through the forest once we came across it up on the shoulder.