I was planning to rest the labor day weekend after the spectacular but laborious Ptarmigan Traverse the week before, but Aidan invited me to go climbing with him and Colin. So, I naturally couldn’t turn that down. After various suggestions, we finally settled on the north face Vesper Peak. We left from my house at five in the morning and had a strangely hard time of finding the correct turns to make. We were at the trailhead soon enough though and were underway. Colin set quite the aerobic pace and we made great time up the trail, though Aidan and I were breathing really hard. We took our first break in the talus beneath Headlee Pass.
There’s a great trail the whole way and Headlee Pass is actually off to the right in the valley, not at the head of it. The steep switchbacks led us to the pass where we had our first views of the golden slopes of Vesper, though the slabs of the north face were out of view. We played around up here for a while on various ridges and then headed out. We traversed over to another basin below Vesper with a small alpine lake in it that still contained large chunks of ice in the water. Off to the left up more talus led to the notch were we would descend to start the north face climb. The notch is to the left of an unnamed point between Vesper and Sperry.
We stashed our trekking poles at this small pass and then scrambled down to the base of the snow where we put on our crampons and got out our ice axes. The snow is actually pretty steep here and there are indeed crevasses but the snow featured sun-molded cups that made for easy walking. Once on the other side, all we had to do was find a place to exit the glacier on to the north face (Colin was turned around at this point for that very reason a couple of years earlier). After shunning a very thin snow bridge, we opted for a very reasonable step over the moat to a small ledge on the face. Then we had to downclimb in to the moat and back up on to the face where we put up our crampons and got ready for the rock climbing part.
The climbing at the base of the snow near the gullies is low 5th class, mostly 4th class I guess. We started out on a small buttress and ended up in one of the gullies though I think it would have been better to stay on the buttress the entire way since the upper portion of the gullies is a bit loose. On exiting the gully, we were on grassy, blocky, 3rd class terrain. We followed this for about a hundred or more feet to the base of the giant slabs of the north face.
We couldn’t decide who would lead. “I don’t care.” “Do you want to?” and so on. Eventually, Colin headed out. We were simul-climbing the route so it was almost as if we were all leading it anyway. The first part of the slabs was the most challenging, I thought. There was one fairly steep section with small holds…maybe a short 5.7 move. The rest was delightful and sustained 5.0-5.4 climbing up to the dihedral the marked the final pitch to the summit. We had spotted another group from before we had even crossed the snow who were on the north face and we’d caught up to them by now. Aidan wanted to lead the last pitch but wanted to wait until the others finished their climb. Spurred on by Colin and I, he headed up and quickly made his way up the dihedral, which is indeed mostly 4th class and low 5th class. It was much fun. At the top of the slabs, we were but a short stroll to the true summit where we hung out for a while and enjoyed the views. The other party we’d seen in the parking lot who also wanted to do the north face showed up on top but had gotten turned around somehow and ended up on the standard route. All in all, there were probably about 4 other parties. We beat it down the trail and were indeed back in time to watch the Simpsons!
Posted 6 years, 6 months ago at 9:24 pm. Add a comment
The morning was another cloudy one but dry. We headed up the steep slopes to the ridge at the head of Bachelor Creek. We were anxious to see the avalanche devastation. After wending around a bit at the top of the basin, we came to our first scramble and slide through fallen trees. It wasn’t until we got into the forests though that the really thick avalanche debris appeared. We actually dealt with it pretty well, following a faint path here and there through sections of the mess. We did plenty of crawling under and over fallen trees and eventually ended up getting in the old growth forest on the right until we got beyond the debris. Then, we hiked down to the creek and spied the trail on the other side of the creek. Feeling proud and relieved, we continued our march out. We passed a party camping nearby who, I thought, said we were mostly done with the difficulties. This certainly wasn’t true. Though there is a trail the whole way, there’s plenty of invasive brush and log crawling and hopping. The descent out Bachelor Creek felt really long; I’d imagine the ascent would be quite taxing. Finally, we started switchbacking steeply down, a sure sign that we were entering the glacier valley of Downey Creek.
We rested at Downey Creek and finished up all of our food and prepared for the final trek out. Michael prepared an ugly brew of iodine water and gatorade that had the appearance of mud. He grimaced sourly when tasting it. I didn’t fill up my water here. I had a reasonable amount left and didn’t trust the water here. The Ptarmigan is so high and goes through so many glaciers that we filled our water directly from glacier streams which are pretty safe.
The hike out Downey was uneventful. We were back in deep dark forests winding in and out of smaller stream gullies feeding the larger creek. When we saw the signs announcing the wilderness boundary, we got really excited that we were finishing the climb. Then there was the road and the car. Man, it hit us suddenly – six days, six glaciers, five major passes, and five peaks later, we were done!
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One extra interesting tidbit of information is the effect that the Ptarmigan had on my hiking clothes! I抳e worn the same clothes for like the past 4 years, an REI pair of adjustable pants, a white North Face polypro long sleeve shirt, standard wool socks. Well, each one of these garments (including my backup pair of socks) pretty much disintegrated after getting back home. My pants randomly started forming holes (not rips)! Dirt was ground in sufficiently into my shirt such that nothing, save perhaps gasoline, would get it out. Of course, my socks had holes worn in them. So, I gave my great reliable apparel an honorable burial when I got home.
Posted 6 years, 6 months ago at 3:58 am. Add a comment
After another great night of sleep, we were ready to head out for Dome. Again, Michael and I set out first and made quick time across the glacial slabs towards Dome. There is a trail for a bit but of course it fades out fairly soon in the rock. We’d picked our route the day before and it called for heading straight across to a small buttress, then heading up and hitting the glacier where we could put on our crampons and rope up. The morning was unlike any of the others during our trip – quite cloudy. The clouds were hanging low, but still above the peaks. Clouds occasionally covered the summit of Dome Peak and Glacier Peak to the south was almost always obscured.
Traversing the Dome glacier was straightforward. We were aiming for a prominent notch to the north of the summit of Dome. The only crevasse crossing was traversing up to the notch and it was easy, especially after dealing with much bigger glaciers like the LeConte and the Dana glaciers.
At the base of the notch we climbed up with crampons still on thinking that we might have to climb up more snow that was visible above the notch. This snow was actually the top of the Chickamin glacier and we didn’t have to cross it. Instead we headed up the top of the notch and began scrambling up Dome Peak. The walls steepened dramatically in front of us and we moved left, almost in line with the tip of the Chickamin glacier. The rock on dome is an inviting off-white color but is mighty loose!
So we climbed carefully up and eventually arrived at what looked like the summit. At first, we thought this was a let down, but we needed to just turn hard right to see the true summit further up. More scrambling got us to the final pitch to the summit – a nice thrilling short step and then an exposed catwalk to the true summit.
We lounged around on the summit for a really long time, watching the clouds slowly lower on us. Below, we saw the other two parties approach the notch, climb up, and eventually arrive on top. So we had a 100% success rate on Dome Peak this day. Michael and I had ideas of traversing over to the southwest summit which is a really sharp point attained by an exposed ridge traverse. Due to the weather, we decided to descend instead and see if the weather improved along the way and, if so, try a climb of Dynaflow Tower.
At the last moment we decided to try it. We stashed our stuff at the lip of the glacier. Michael decided to lead this one and the opening pitch looked awesome – super solid granite. It was indeed a lot of fun, moderately easy, low fifth class climbing. The belay for pitch two was a really small ledge on the north ridge. Michael led out on the left side of the ridge and was gone. The clouds again had begun to sag down on us and the upper part of the climb became obscured. There were moments where Michael appeared to not be moving for long periods of time. I was getting pretty cold up here and got impatient to start moving. Michael had good reasons to move slowly though.
The second pitch transformed to quality and safe granite to this scary loose stuff. It looked solid enough but it wasn’t. On top of that, there were these lodged shards of sharp rock here and there just waiting to explode and come raining down. Michael had to be very careful in avoiding these mines. It was easier for me because he was able to point out these trouble spots from above. The last belay was about 30 feet below the summit.
The final pitch was even worse – super loose crap! So, in the end, Dynaflow Tower is not a recommended climb. We made delicate rappels and an odd self-belay scheme concocted by Michael got us back down to the glacier.
Back at Itswoot Ridge, everyone had packed up and headed down to Cub Lake. Actually, one of the parties actually made a push to get down to Downey Creek (that must have made for a long day!). The weather was still cloudy but pleasant. We decided to take a rest before packing up. Michael eventually grabbed his sleeping back to lay on. Thinking that looked pretty comfortable, I did the same. Soon enough, conversation started to dwindle and we fell asleep. A couple hours later we awoke and fearing that we’d get rained on with our stuff scattered here and there, we packed up really quick and headed down to Cub Lake.
It felt good to have all the glacier and rock climbing of the trip done. But we still had a big objective in mind that lay right before us: The climb up to the ridge at the head of Bachelor, then back down into the valley which was reputed to be full of downed trees from an avalanche. Then, it was the brushy trail down Bachelor Creek. After that, it was another six or seven miles out Downey Creek.
Posted 6 years, 6 months ago at 3:05 am. Add a comment
