Cayoosh is a popular winter ski touring destination but it is equally nice as a hiking destination.
ACCESS: You can park your car at the normal Cayoosh pull out near the gravel pit and weather station or if you have a 4x4 vehicle you can drive the logging road to the end. It is getting a little bushy so be prepared to have your car kissed by alder.
ASCENT TIME: 5-7hrs, Difficult
Once parked there is a pink starting flag that leads you into a cut block. The cut block is horrible. It's uneven, there's a lot of places to twist an ankle, the trail gets lost in places and you just have to suffer it for a 1km before you get to the big obvious boulder field.
The boulder field is huge and it's best to ascent on the right hand side almost to the top. There you'll see a cairn leading into the woods. Here you can sort of see a trail but it too often goes missing. Keep going forward until you're into the valley basin. It will open up into boulder fields. Take a deep breath cause it's allllll boulders and talus from here on. Move your way across past the lake and past the stream. There is no path, you just boulder hop and keep moving up until you see Cayoosh on your left.
What you see at first is the false summit. Move up the basin (we did not go as far as the small lakes) we cut in for a direct approach as soon as we could. Looking at the guide book, we chose Option 1 (a dirty red colored gully that swings to the right around a dark buttress). It's rather lose in here and a helmet is a good idea. Depending on what time of the year you go this is definitely a crampons and ice axe section. In July, we managed to skirt the snow on the edge and didn't need any of our extra gear.
Once on the false summit you'll be forced to drop down a bit and make the final approach to the true summit. There is some route finding required and black lichen rock would make everything very slippery if there is any chance of rain. The summit views are fantastic with 360 degree views of the surrounding mountains.
We got caught in rain on the descent and it was pretty awful and slow going. Black lichen, steep heather slopes, lose red dirt all complicate the terrain. It was a suffer fest trying not to slip on talus and boulders for hours on end.
When you're finally back to the valley you'll notice this a frequent avalanche zone. Broken trees and debris litter the stream below.