Bandera Mountain is a one of the many peaks in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness off of I-90. It’s a pretty quick drive from Seattle to the trailhead so I decided to drive over after work and try to catch a sunset near the summit. The trail is a little under 8 miles and gains about 3000ft of elevation, which is fairly standard for the peaks in the area. The start is at the Ira Springs Trailhead, which is also the starting point for several other hikes in the area including Mason Lake, Mount Defiance, and Putrid Pete’s Peak.
The trail is well maintained and starts fairly forgiving, with a relatively low grade. About halfway to the Mason Lake junction (maybe 1 to 1.5 miles in) it gets steeper and stays that way until you make it out of the trees and into a talus field (which has an easy enough path going through it, no scrambling required). Shortly after you’ll arrive at the Mason Lake / Bandera Mountain junction, about 2.5 miles and 2000ft of eleveation into the trail.
After turning off onto the Bandera Mountain route the trail gets pretty steep, still nothing requiring scrambling, but definitely will put your legs to work. This lasts for a bit under 1000ft of elevation until you gain the ridge that leads to Little Bandera and Bandera Mountain. Once the ridge is gained the going is easy. You’ll also get some nice North facing views, as well as views of Mason Lake and Mount Defiance to the West.
The weather wasn’t quite playing along on the way up with clouds obscuring the view and making a sunset unlikely. I stopped on top of Little Bandera and decided not to traverse the ridge to Bandera Mountain (probably another <0.5 miles) since the views were not going to be much different and I was running out of daylight for the descent. Of course, once I started descending the clouds broke and I got some great rays breaking through from the West.
While descending through the trees on the way down, as dusk was falling, there was also quite a nice view of McClellan Butte, directly South across I-90, looking quite imposing with it’s distinct summit block.
All in all, trip was 3 hours car to car, 1.5 hours up, half an hour hanging out on the ridge, and another hour descending.