After a hot sunny day in Seattle, things were looking good for the evening (20% chance of rain at night? that’s practically 0). We did made the mistake of taking the ’summer’ trail on the way in. I guess it’s not summer for another 4 days or so. Switchbacking along the Snow Lake trail on the ‘wrong’ side of Source Lake probably cost us about half an hour, but it did make it easier to find the nice uphill boot track (climber’s right side of the gully from Source Lake) instead of thrashing around in the stomped out downhill side of the gully.

It was sunset as we started ascending out of Source Lake (just missing three descending climbers who were probably wondering what we were doing), and just about headlamp time when we got to the start of the traverse around to Pineapple Pass. I was glad to have made the last minute decision to bring a larger pack to accommodate the rope and rack, which left plenty of room to throw in my puffy. My thermometer read 41 degrees, my usual summer climbing outfit would not have worked!

The View

The ‘full moon’ idea didn’t quite work out as planned, as after about half an hour of seeing it rising orange on the horizon, the moon was well hidden behind a thick cloud layer. The views of the snowy surrounding peaks when I turned off my headlamp at the belay were still pretty amazing! Not at all capturable with my point and shoot camera though, even though it’s got some mode with an icon with mountains and stars.

Despite the clouds and 41 degrees the weather was pretty much perfect (ie. it was not raining and it was not windy). The Tooth is well suited for antics such as night climbing with straightforward routefinding, easy climbing, obvious webbing encrusted 3-rap-ring fixed belay/rappel stations (with fresh webbing from the WAC Basic Class about a month ago) on nice ledges. I was actually surprised that I remembered some of the route from 4 years ago as a student in said Basic Class, but it’s not that difficult: go up, follow the incut jugs and flakes, traverse a bit if it looks like it’s harder than 5.4…

Summit

About an hour and a half after tying in we were at the top. I know I should be working on moving faster if I want to climb stuff that’s more than 2 pitches this summer, but it was just so beautiful, and this was the first time I’ve climbed in the dark on purpose, so I wanted to enjoy it. And Paulina is Russian so she was not complaining about freezing at the belay. After looking around for the summit register (is there one? I remember there not being one, and Paulina remembers that there was one, and we were both last up there 4 years ago).

Descent

Another thing that makes the Tooth conducive to night climbing is that the descent is relatively easy. Well-situated rappels to get back to the snow, and then from that point there’s only one narrow drainage out of there (which contains a cat track, ski resort, road, condos, etc), so even if we lost the trail in the dark it would take an extreme amount of effort to actually get lost (we did briefly wander in a circle looking for the exit from the upper Alpental parking lot, but that doesn’t even count as off route). We did take the winter trail down, which worked much better.

A nice conclusion to the night was that the WAC cabin at the pass was open for a work party the next day, so there was no 3 am drive back to Seattle or bivy in the rain (it started drizzling on the way down), we got to descend to warm beds, real bathrooms, and coffee makers! (and then wake up 6 hours later and help install a door in the room that we were sleeping in… the womens’ dorm is going to be nice this winter).

• The Tooth (5604ft), South Face, 5.easy 2p

Guye Shoulder

When we were almost at the Guye/Cave Ridge saddle we met a descending group. “Great weather,” we said sincerely. “Great weather,” they said ironically, and described 50 mph gusts. After getting on the other side of the saddle and getting a hazy view of Snoqualmie Mountain itself, we experienced this firsthand.

Our Objective

The wind wasn’t really dangerous — I only got knocked over once, and anyway it was blowing towards the gentle slope side of the ridge and away from the cliff side. It was certainly annoying, with the flapping my hood off, icing up my glasses (as if it wasn’t hard enough to see through the horizontal snow), and blowing my ice axe at my shin. I’ve been in higher wind before but the amount of snow carried made it seem worse.

Denny wisely decided to stop at a tree and dig a hole to hide from the wind while Megan and I went towards the summit. Eventually Megan, who was a few yards ahead, reached some sort of local maxima and stopped, so we turned around. Usually when I’m outside I’m a little disappointed to be going back, but this time I was looking forward to getting out of the wind (and hoping that facing the other way would help the glasses situation).

Summit

As we headed back to the shelter of the big trees, the wind calmed down, and the snow really started settling. The track that we followed and pounded in was starting to fill in, and by the time we got on the snowshoe highway in Commonwealth Basin there was almost a foot of new snow on the ground.

See also my photos, Denny’s photos.

• Snoqualmie Mountain, 6,278 ft

The rope is moving slowly but steadily. My partner, Sketchy, hasn’t placed a single piece of gear yet, and I’ve just fed the middle marks on our 60 meter through my belay device. The Northeast buttress of Chair Peak doesn’t match the gear-catalog representation of ice climbing: no sun glittering on thick, glassy ice, no plunging frozen waterfalls, no place to put ice screws. So far it’s been one mixed pitch of ice-cemented rocks, two of steep snow with occasional rocks and bushes. One of the steep snow pitches happened to have about 15 feet of ice that could be recognized as a frozen waterfall. We’re now on another snow pitch, which should be the last (supposedly, not that we’ve got a route description with is).

The climbing has felt easy to me, but I haven’t been leading. The protection is what’s sparse, and Sketchy’s a little stressed out, judging by the grumbling and ranting coming from above.

The snow is dust over a styrofoam-like crust over sugar. The crust holds together adequately, but occasionally a large chunk breaks off and dissolves into a bucket load of sugar while it slides down the slope. A chunk comes down following the rope line and I duck left behind the medium sized rock that’s both anchor and shelter. The leader of a party of 3 behind us has climbed past me and is now enthusiastically cursing and digging around in the snow for his own anchor. I hear another large chunk of styrofoam snow sliding down the slope from his position and duck to the right around the rock.

Feed rope out. Duck behind rock. Knock snow off my boots. Repeat.

The rope stops, with just a few feet left. My turn to follow. The biggest challenge has been trying to reach the gear loops on my harness around my puffy down jacket and the waistbelt of my pack. On this pitch I don’t have to worry about that. The single piece of protection is a girth hitched sling that I don’t even have to loosen to pull over its rock, so it doesn’t take long to reach the belay. Actually, I reach Sketchy sitting down in the snow, running the rope around a ridge as the belay.

We’re done with the technical climbing, and the summit is just a scramble away (supposedly, not that we can see it). The last time I climbed Chair it was early summer, and we sunbathed on the summit block while admiring the view. Today, no sun, no views, and, so close to solstice, no daylight, so no summit.

The first rap station is barely visible below, a rainbow of frozen webbing around a very gnarled small tree. Not the best anchor ever, but it’s good enough to be our ticket down the gully-slash-wind-tunnel to a hopefully uneventful walk out in the dark.

Descending

• Chair Peak, Northeast Buttress

The Cathedral Rock Trail is wide and horse-friendly, and the 2200 ft up to the PCT through shady forest and meadows carpeted with evergreen shrubs and autumn-red huckleberry bushes goes quickly. The dotted line Peggy’s Pond trail around Cathedral Rock is a bit more difficult, but not much a problem with the cool breeze and my light pack.

Fall Colors, Vegetable Department

From Peggy’s Pond there is a maze of twisty little climber’s trails, all alike, heading up the basin towards the Southeast Ridge. I ended up following some cairns on the south side of the ridge and ended up almost at Circle Lake before I headed straight up 1000 ft on loose scree to get back on the ridge. So, don’t trust the cairns, and when in doubt, go up. Once you are on the pointy part of the ridge, it is pretty obvious where to go (photo is looking down on the SE Ridge from the East Peak):

Looking SE on the SE Ridge

The ridge looks pretty pointy from this side, is actually pretty wide and easy to follow. I like ridge hikes in general since you can see in all directions (including where you are going and where you came from). Also, some of my nemeses like devils club and slide alder do not grow on ridges. The only thing that is sometimes unpleasant is weather, of which there was a bit of the wind-type. It was mostly not so bad, until I got to the East summit. I happened to be wearing wool so I was only having problems with my hair (and occasionally with my pack, since it was almost empty of water), but two other people wearing shells were having some luffing issues.

The East summit is where the “Mount Daniels” USGS benchmark is, but it’s not the true summit. In fact, the Beckey guide suggests that you bypass the East summit altogether to traverse to the Middle and West summits. I only had about 9 hours for the round trip and had already used 5 (the pothole dodging on the drive in took more time than I thought), so I didn’t think I had time to go to the other two summits. I still started poking around to see if there was an easy way down to the East/Middle saddle instead of backtracking and taking the loose-looking trail traversing below the East summit. When the wind picked up some small rocks and threw them at me, though, it confirmed my inclination to turn back. Sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to return, too.

One of the things I like about hiking by myself is that I don’t have to worry about the pace. I can go as fast or slow as I want, I can run down the trail just because it happens to be flat and not have a bunch of roots in it, I can stop for half an hour and look at ptarmigans.

Fall Colors, Ptarmigan Department

Aside from their names starting with the enticing silent p (which, according to wikipedia, is entirely decorative — the word comes from Gaelic, not Greek), ptarmigans have some of the most perfect camouflage for the high alpine meadow environment. I am convinced that there are different ptarmigan feather patterns for different kinds of rocks, and that if not for their red eyebrows, they would be invisible even to other ptarmigans. Also, since they are not often eaten by large creatures that walk on the ground, they do not mind you sitting and watching them peck at heather berries.

Of course, spending half an hour looking at birds (and, um, some more time eating tasty huckleberries) meant that I had to hurry down the trail to make it back to Cle Elum by dinner time (with a stop in Roslyn for some afternoon coffee).

• Mt Daniel, SE Ridge

The forecast for the Darrington area was for rain on Saturday morning and high pressure building on Sunday. It was a little vague about what was supposed to happen between Saturday morning and during the day Sunday. On the theory that a rainy day outside is better than a sunny day sitting at home, we headed to Sloan Peak.

Sloan Peak is somewhat excessively pointy and features a wide, exposed west face with cracks, dihedrals, roofs, and blocks all over it. The aesthetics and relatively short approach make it popular with climbers, with a variety of routes including the third class Corkscrew Route first done in 1921 by miners Harry Bedal and Nels Skaar and a new “5.10++” route put up just a few weeks ago by Blake Herrington and Rad Roberts. We were aiming for something in between, the 5.8 Northwest Buttress.

On the drive up the weather was starting to look promising (or at least promising enough to give us a bit of hope). On the Mountain Loop Highway a few patches of blue sky opened up and we convinced ourselves that the water on the windshield was just splashing from the road. On the drive up the rattly logging road and the hike up the quiet, overgrown trail we convinced ourselves the rain was just dripping from the trees. One benefit of the dampness is the array of mushrooms of all shapes and colors.

Amanita

When we emerged into the final clearing in the basin and had our first fog-veiled glimpse of the West Face we did have to admit it was actually raining. Fortunately we found a giant boulder to use as an awning. It even had a couple of metal rods pounded in it to hang our climbing gear on.

At least we had a nice camp

After some recreational eating in the dry spot under our boulder, we settled in early for the night. Rain dripped, dropped, and sprinkled on the unsheltered back end of the tent all night and into the early morning. There might have been hope for the rock to dry out if the sun came out, but when we peeked out, we saw this:

Good Morning, Sloan

Heavy fog didn’t look good for dry rock, and neither did the snow on the upper half of the mountain that we saw when the fog blew away for a second. Sometimes the weather wins, but at least we could distract ourselves with snacking on our way out:

Huckleberries!

Links: Bedal Creek Trail description, more photos

Most of the elevation gain is on the scenic drive up the good gravel forest service roads (use the Green Trails map or the thicker Washington Road atlas), so White Chuck is easy to fit in a short afternoon.

The trail is mostly flat and easy to follow until a bit of loose talus/heather gully scrambling. There are multiple climbers’ trails and the gentle slope on this side makes getting off route not a big deal (we went a “different” way coming down). The crux was the yellow jacket nest in the woods. I recommend the run and yell technique. Just like you can yell “rock” for any dropped object, you can yell “bees” for any variety of stinging insect.

Cairn

But of course, just because a hike is short it doesn’t mean it’s not rewarding. When we got to the top we were rewarded by emerging above the clouds to blue skies and magnificent views.

View from Summit

And of course almost any hike in the Cascades in the fall comes with edible rewards too.

Huckleberries!

Some of the most prolific bushes were the dark purple huckleberries growing around stumps in the cleared area by the parking lot (Ben and Laura picked a helmet full — another reason to wear/bring your helmet), but the lowbush blueberries carpeting the heather gullies were not to be missed either.

Denny has some more pictures, and a video of us snarfing berries

After a very short bit of moss-trap bushwhacking (when you are looking at a low-elevation forest in western Washington, that is not the ground, it is a carpet of moss draped over sticks and hidden creeks), we reached the real trail. It starts out as gentle, sweeping switchbacks through the woods, but as the miles tick on it gets impatiently steep and rocky (the plentiful huckleberries and blueberries up higher are a nice consolation). As soon as we got to the notch peeking over into Gothic Basin I found out what the trail was in such a hurry to get to! From there, we wandered among the water-worn rock and calm ponds of the basin a bit further to camp by Foggy Lake (despite the crowds we passed on the trail and in the lower part of the basin, we only shared Foggy Lake with one other group). The sandstone (yes, sandstone) lumps we camped on provided excellent cooking and lounging furniture as the sun set and we settled in for a quiet night.

Foggy Lake

The next morning, Foggy Lake was definitely living up to it’s name. From camp we wandered around the lake on the sandstone slabs, a tiny bit of snow, and then started up the talus (which turned out to be the good kind, mostly staying in one spot). The final hundred feet or so to the summit is where the class 3 stuff begins, which turns out to be wide ledges stepped about at shoulder height (or waist height for a normal person). This didn’t seem to be any trouble for anyone except for a small excitable dog out on her first hiking trip.

Gothic Peak Summit

With sun on the summit and the fog hiding the green river valleys below, the views featured shades of black rock and gray fog with patches of green trees and blue sky. The neighboring peaks, including Del Campo, faded in and out as we waited for the clouds to completely blow away, but we descended before that happened.

• Gothic Peak, 6213 ft

more pictures

The original plan was a midweek bushwhacking/scrambling/peakbagging trip on the Alpine Lakes High Route with Jonathan P, Mike D, and Bob C from the WAC. Unfortunately, after a couple months of record heat and no rain, we’d picked the exact few days that the long range forecast put a big, wet storm. While I guess it would be classic Washington Cascades to be completely dripping wet while searching for the next devil’s club infested creekbed, I was glad that the plan moved east in search of drier weather. Between the various Plan B’s and Plan C’s, we decided to head to a cluster of peaks in the Sawtooth area outside of Twisp named Bigelow, Martin, and Switchback/Cooney (go ahead and find Twisp on your map, I didn’t know exactly where it was either).

The trail is 7 miles long, but it’s wide and not too steep to accommodate horses and motorcycles (it’s also been rerouted since the USGS map was published, but it ends up at the same place and there are ample signs so it would be difficult to get lost). We didn’t see any of either the gasoline- or grass-powered mounts on the way in on Thursday, but we did see a few on Friday and Saturday (including a whole herd of boy scouts on horses). But all in all, it was easy going over Horsehead Pass to our camp past Boiling Lake. This area has less of a “leave no trace” ethic than some others. Previous users have left traces both convenient (picnic tables, fire rings) and not (horse poop, garbage). We found a pretty well established horse camp off a side trail. Mike made the fanciest dinner I’ve ever had on a climbing trip (tilapia with white wine sauce and couscous with sauteed mushrooms and onions). I found a narrow nest in the soft ground between two trees to arrange my thin foam mat, bivy sack, and sleeping bag.

The big surprise came overnight — the drizzle started up again in the middle of the night, so I zipped up the bivy sack and was blind and deaf to the world until there was a minor fuss in the morning. When I groggily threw back the covers it seemed to be raining heavily, but somehow noisily, and not on me. When I located my glasses I discovered that the world beyond my sheltering tree was covered with a thin layer of snow, with more falling rather steadily. Quite a contrast from the 100F+ temperatures in Seattle just about 2 weeks before! We had a damp breakfast and decided to postpone our peakbagging at least until the peaks to be bagged were not hidden under clouds and slippery snow.

Snow! (photo by Bob)

By early afternoon the snow stopped, and Mike was for a run at Bigelow despite the lingering clouds. This turned out to be an excellent decision, since the rock had melted and dried, precipitation held off and the only weather we had to deal with was a stiff breeze at Hoodoo Pass. Hoodoo Pass to Bigelow is mostly a talus hike. On the top of Bigelow we found the summit register dating from 1995 (which included Jonathan’s previous ascent a few years ago). There were only a handful of entries from this year, most complaining about “SKEETERS”. One good thing about the snow is that it seemed to have eliminated this problem! Jonathan’s early season glissade had disappeared (the morning slush dusting unfortunately didn’t put enough of it back), but we found a soft dust glissade to descend back to the flowery meadow next to Boiling Lake.

Mike and Jonathan on Bigelow

Somehow we had brought 3 group dinners for a 2 night trip, so Bob and I collaborated to make another relatively luxurious dinner of burritos (my dehydrated jar of salsa experiment was a success). The big topic of dinner discussion (besides some friendly political argument) was what to do the next day: whether the morning’s snow delay meant we’d have to abandon the rest of our objectives: Cheops, Martin, and Switchback/Cooney. Bob decided that he would sleep in and take a leisurely hike out the same way we came in, and the remaining 3 of us would try an abbreviated loop of just Cheops and Martin and then back to the car.

There were no precipitation surprises that night (despite some ominous clouds and heavy rain in the distance, we didn’t get any more precipitation to speak of on the rest of the trip). The morning’s scrambling even went shockingly according to plan. We went up a well beaten informal trail to the saddle between Cheops and a grassy bump (including a stop for Jonathan to chat with a ptarmigan family), wandered up black-lichened but acceptably attached talus to the Cheops summit, ran the ridge to Martin (where we shared the summit, some kipper snacks, and the almost full summit register with Heidi and Annika from Twisp). Jonathan and Mike spotted the Martin Lakes trail from the summit, and a possible way to get to it down a relatively mellow talus/tree slope, which we did with some dirt sliding and vegetable belays (I noticed that the bushwhacking is much more pleasant on the dry side than the wet side of the Cascades). We even made it back to the car at approximately the time we predicted and had time to stop on the way back at the Big Y Cafe in Peshastin (breakfast all day!).

All in all, it was a great trip. We got a bit of snow, lovely scenery, flora and fauna (I learned that Ponderosa pine smells like baking cake), three summits, and one of the best parts was that we were done on Saturday and still had a day of weekend left.

• Mt Bigelow, 8440 ft, #68/100 Friday from camp at Boiling Lake via Hoodoo Pass
• Cheops, 8270 ft Saturday from camp at Boiling Lake via an informal trail, then along the ridge to the Cheops/Martin saddle to…
• Martin Peak, 8375 ft, #83/100 then down the talus slopes to the East to pick up the trail near Martin Lakes and back out to the car.

Links: google map, my photos, Bob’s photos.

The first hours of the ascent were like nothing else. The glow of headlamps strung out along the route, neighboring peaks floating above pink clouds at dawn, seeing the moon set and sun rise. Though I was literally tied to four other people, my task as second on the rope was simple and constrained: keep walking, don’t fall, watch the rope in front of me. In the darkness and silence, separated by 10 meters or so of rope from anyone else, I knew nothing of their private struggles with cold, nausea, dying batteries, uncertainty, impatience, and they knew nothing of mine. I didn’t know if anyone else saw the same thin clouds drifting in front of the red setting moon, or the same drape of icicles off the edge of a crevasse.

Summit View

The climb was uneventful (which was a good thing – nobody wants an event). We reached the summit 5 or 6 hours after we started, spent some time taking pictures, and descended to camp before noon. All that was left was a mildly unpleasant walk through soupy slush and on melting gravel roads and we were in the car heading back to sea level and back to the city. We had glimpses of the mountain all the way home, but we were already in a different world of traffic, laundry, work, and hot showers.

(more of my pictures, other pictures from Kristin, John, Daniel, Cara, and Ben)

Official trip report on the WAC site