Eldorado Pale

Summit of Eldorado as seen from the inspiration glacier

The name. The mountain. Eldorado is a majestic mountain and stands at8,869′, the 25th tallest peak in the state.  Many hikers will be intimately familiar with cascade pass trail at the end of the Cascade River road.  The commonly used climbers path leaves the road about 4 miles short of the cascade pass trail head.  The relative burly trail climbs several thousand feet through forest, talus, and rock leading to the Eldorado glacier with great views of the summit and the rest of the cascade river basin.  While these views are excellent the real treats come at the top of the eldorado glacier where you get views of the Klawatti-Inspiration-Mcallister icecap and is knife-edge summit ridge.  While I have done the standard approach/route, the second time I climbed Eldorado we took the “alternative approach” from Pyramid Lake trailhead.  On this trip, Eldorado’s mountainBeer partner was the first peak we climbed, Eldorado was the last peak 5 days later, ending one of my favorite trips to the backcountry.

The Beer. In this part of the country, pale ales and IPAs don’t need any introduction.  There are so many examples of the style, which run the gamut from being nicely balanced to overly hop forward.  We made a pale ale with a light malt backbone and nice bitterness that would support and balance an unmistakably emphasized hop aroma and flavor.  We used a few more common varieties of hops so that none would dominate and would blend together to give a nice citrusy and floral aroma.

Malts: Pale, ESB, Wheat.  Hops: Apollo, cascade, chinook, centennial ABV: ~5.25%

Eldorado (from the North; back and center) with a cloak of snow on its rocky NW face. From the summit of Snowfield peak – our “alternate” approach.