Due to very slick snow, we had to park about two miles below the usual trailhead.  We brought snowshoes along for the basin below Headless Pass.  Our intention was to climb the south ridge.  We were hoping it would be dry from all the warm, clear weather that the mountains had been exposed to for the previous five days.

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There were a few tricky stream crossings before breaking out of the trees.  We picked a turn around time of two o’clock so we wouldn’t have to deal with the crossings in the pitch black.  Basically the entire theme of the trip was “step on the snow and fall in the hole!”  We must have punched through the snow a hundred times between the two of us.  Robert, I have to confess, did a much better job of preserving his dignity than I did.  Somewhere in the basin, I punched through to my chest.  It took me five minutes to dig my left foot out.  Landmarks slowly passed by.  I recall looking back on a small waterfall that I swore we’d passed about an hour before, yet it still looked within two minutes of me.  The frustration continued as we persevered up the slope to Headlee Pass.

I wanted to turn around numerous times, but I did manage to stay focused and trudge my way up.  The holes continued to suck me in and often I had to escape by simply rolling out and sliding off the slick lip of the cavity.  A small bergeshrund had formed near the top of the pass.  About 5 feet above the ’shrund, the slick snow caused me to skid again and I slowly and pathetically slid back down to the ’shrund, erasing my past few minutes progress.  As I began the ascent again, a hole claimed one of my trekking poles – the bottom third of the retractable pole pulled out leaving the locking mechanism behind.  It was now useless.  So, leaving both poles behind for the return trip, I pulled out my ice axe for a relative increase in stability.

At the top of the pass, the sun greeted us.  After a short drop to the other side, we were drenched in sunlight and the snow became even wetter.  By this time, our feet were sloshing inside our boots.  A few more tedious slopes saw us at the base of the second half of the route.  We’d skipped the lower part of the climb by not climbing directly from Headlee Pass.

We decided to drop everything and blast up to the top.  I was surprised at how big the rack was the Robert brought.  He headed up in one long simul pitch to the summit.  The beginning featured a short near vertical step, probably the crux of the route.  Higher on the ridge was some playful exposure over the east slopes, but for the most part, the route was 3rd class.  A little after 2pm, our turn around time, we were on the top.

I was actually surprised that we made it, given how many times I’d wanted to turn around and how painfully slow we were in approaching the peak.  I credit Robert with the tenacity to keep going.  We had about two hours to get down before the sun went down.  We decided to descend straight down the east face and traverse back across to the lower part of the south ridge where we’d rappel down to our packs.  We plunged stepped down steep snow, grabbing on to trees for leverage.  Sometimes we sped the descent by grabbing trees and swinging down, sometimes we slowed ourselves by catching the trees before tumbling down.  We descended quickly to a bench of snow where we’d begin traversing.  Right before we got there, I fell into another hole up to my shoulders this time.  The traverse, however, was relatively easy.  I almost could see us eating up time by wading through deep snow, but thankfully, we only had to deal with knee deep slow for the most part.  Our snowshoes were with our packs back at the spot where we roped up too.  Throwing the rope around a stunted pine, we rappelled back to the packs and began the frustrating slog out.

If I was frustrated on the way up, I was agitated and irrational on the way down.  I descended into hollering and cursing the snow and the holes, vowing not to come out again until May or June (OK, at least until the snow is well consolidated).  We ended up crossing the stream crossings in near dark, but the crossings were easy.  Robert lost a pole that he threw across the creek.  We arrived back at the car around 6:30PM in total darkness.  As I write this and reflect back on the day, I’m shocked to find myself thinking it was pretty fun.  Thanks for the suggestion, Robert.

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Our orignal plan was a little vague but consisted of something like Monte Cristo to Cadet to Foggy.  However, with my question of “Is East Wilmans really worth the climb”?  That started a new idea germinating.  “Yes!” retorted Robert.  We slowly started concocting the plan to climb all three of the spires and then move on to Wilmans Peak and then perhaps Monte Cristo and beyond.  OK, so we started up the pleasant snowfield to reach the base of the spire.  I’d imagine this would be much more tedious in the late summer when the snow was melted and the climber would have to negotiate talus and scree.

When we arrived at the top, we noticed other climbers on East Wilmans Spire.  So, we decided to tackle the other two spires first.  We had to do a good bit of ’shwacking through thick evergreens to get on to a rough ledge system that led around the back side of the other spires.  At one point, we had to downclimb loose terrain under a wet roof.  The base featured a gully that reminded me of the “Paths of the Dead” in Lord of the Rings.  This certainly couldn’t be the 3rd class section that Beckey described.  At any rate, it looked way to steep to try.  Turns out this would take you directly to the notch between the two, but we pressed on – probably the smart thing to do.  Still, on the other side of a buttress we encountered more bushwacking and steep 4th and 5th class climbing.  At one point, because of the steep and loose rock, we backed down and went around another small outcropping to more manageable 5th class soloing.  However, at one section, I had Robert put me on belay.  As I climbed passed him, I found a short passage through brush to snow that revealed that we were on the opposite side of the spires.  Soon enough, we were at the base of the north spire and I lobbied to climb the south buttress (a new route?) instead of from the notch that Beckey mentions in his book.  It turned out this route was a lot of fun:  mostly 3rd class with some fun and easy bouldering problems near the top.

I don’t recall if we rappelled or downclimbed the route back to the notch, but the route on the south spire, the north arete, I suppose, looked spectacular from here.  The first pitch was a broken 4th class (actually 5th) section on the edge of the face that led to an obvious belay stance.  The second and last pitch was 5th class and featured “a hard move”.  Hmm.  We roped up at the notch and Robert headed off.  At the belay ledge, I heard him yell, “I’m going to continue up!”  Later, when I heard, “On belay!”, I started up and found that the first section, while still easy, was the toughest.  The second pitch was fantastic:  easy and solid cruising on low 5th class rock.  If there were like seven or eight pitches like this, the south spire would be super popular.  There was no “hard move” that either of us could find.  The top, unfortunately was quite loose and we delicately climbed to the highest point.  With a mix of rappelling and downclimbing we made it down to the belay ledge where rappel anchors were.  Apparently, they were designed to rappel of the west side.  We moved it a little so that we could avoid all the ugly scrambling and bushwacking to get up here; we opted to rappel the east.  This would put us right at the base of East Wilmans Spire.  We had to rebuild the anchor at one point in order to pull the rope.  After two more rappels on loose terrain, we were back at the packs.

We waited for quite a while at the base of East Wilmans Spire for another party to descend.  After about an hour, at 7pm, we decided to quit patiently waiting and head up.  Because we still weren’t sure about camp, we decided to climb fast.  We did the climb in two pitches and were back down in 30 minutes.  East Wilmans was a fun climb, very easy but worth it.  Our next job, however, was to get to campsites somewhere up on the ridge leading to Wilmans Peak.  We wanted to get up on the ridge but were stymied by difficult rock (”snookered” as Robert would say).  At one point, Robert considered roping up for a short but scary section that could put us up on the ridge.  It was a lot harder looking than anything we’d done today and also we had full packs so we smartly decided to go back and walk down to the little glacier.  Sure enough, beyond the glacier, we were able to get up on the ridge, but not after a long section of tough 4th and 5th class climbing.  At one point, I requested another belay.  Beyond that, I scrambled through some more scrub trees to a snowfield that led to perfect campsites.  We were done for the day, no arguments!

We enjoyed an excellent sunset.  There were rain clouds beyond Columbia Peak to the south (where Michael was earlier this day on Merchant Peak) but they appeared that they would not interfere with our plans.  I fell in to a long uninterrupted sleep within minutes of turning in.

We awoke to a brilliant cloudless day.  We set off for Wilmans Peak.  I expected us to at least have to traverse a few gendarmes, but it turned out we slept right under the main summit of Wilmans Peak.  However, beyond that, we were indeed “snookered”.  Traversing over to Monte Cristo directly was out of the question; we were separated by large and steep gendarmes.  So, the trip now transmuted into a climb of Columbia Peak from the 76 glacier.  OK, so now we only had to get to the 76 glacier which lay directly below us, with nasty cliffs and gullies between us and it.

We started looking for a good place to start the descent.  Apparently, there was this “Broadway Ledge” which is ostensibly used for such purposes.  But, I don’t believe it after seeing it:  a narrow and exposed ledge that is covered in loose scree.  No thanks.  We found an old rappel station and used that to make our first rappel into a scary and loose gully.  At this point, I took very few pictures and video footage since I was most concerned with getting out.  The stressful gully featured steep snow, loose steep rocks, and a few rappels, some of them overhanging.  “Enough of this!”, I thought.  “How much would I pay right now to be magically teleported out of here?” is a game that I sometimes play when the situation turns exhausting or stressful.  It at least passed the time.

On the glacier, life became simple again.  We trudged up the glacier with the intent on climbing Columbia Peak.  Our plans, however, changed to abandon aspirations of a link-up with Monte Cristo but instead a loop hike out over Poodle Dog Pass and out the Silver Lake trail.  This sounded pretty good to me, always a fan of the loop hike.  We got to a high point on the glacier and stashed our packs.  The climb up was always interesting:  mostly 3rd class with a little 4th class and one short section of 5th class thrown in.  Near the top, we had an exposed loose dirt traverse to get to some steep snow with deep ice axe placements that finally got us to the top.

The hike out via Poodle Dog Pass was pleasant, as I recall, though I was a bit tired.  I didn’t bring a sun hat or anything so I had to wear my clunky helmet the entire day to prevent my head from being baked in the unrelenting sun.  Moving towards Poodle Dog Pass, the views of the 76 basin started opening up.  This valley is full of waterfalls all over.  We actually took a water break at the top of one of the falls that fed directly in to the glaciel valley below.  This was one of the most scenic rest stops I’d ever been at, I’d thought.  We drank our fill from the melting snow water then headed back up, looking for the trail that would send us on our way down past Silver Lake.

A little more tree scrambling and ’shwacking finally got us up on the ridge framing the southwestern section of the valley.  Not soon after, we’d found the trail.  It was sometimes a challenge keeping up with the trail in and out of the snow, but we managed.  The remainder of the hike out featured a brand new trail, so said Robert who’d taken the older trail some years ago.  This one ended up leading us past Sunday Falls, a fantastic way to cap the hiking part of the trip.  What remained was the enjoyable 4-mile coast back to the car.

The beginning of Del Campo Peak and other Monte Cristo Peaks involves a hike down a level road to various trailheads.  Many people like to bike this.  But for this trip, a bike wasn’t necessary because the hike in is only 1.5 miles.  When I arrived there were some others getting their bikes ready.  I was able to head out first and I moved quickly.  Within 15 minutes, the cyclists passed me, but in 5 minutes, I was at the trailhead!  Easy hike.  The trail up to Gothic Basin starts out nice and mellow but becomes, surprise surprised, very steep with lots of switchbacks within a mile.  I continued to move fast and passed two parties.  Soon after, I arrived at the first open space high up at a set of falls.  There’s a whole lot of falls on this hike!  I suspected I was pretty close to the basin but checking my altimeter brought me back to reality.  Ug, another 1500 feet to go.  I didn’t keep up with the number of creeks and falls that I passed but it was a lot.  There’s one set of falls pretty close to the trail called “The Shower of Mighty Kong” or something like that.  I took a break here to put on sunscreen.  It’s also nice to stand close to the falls and let the cool mist massage your tired and hot body.

More falls, more falls until I finally arrived at a steep snow slope that apparently led to the base of the basin.  Sure enough, I was at the snow-filled basin and there was a small lake below me.  But, I didn’t recognize any of the features.  Nothing from what I recalled from the pictures and nothing on the map.  A little more study of the map revealed that the trail had deposited me well to the south of the lake and peaks.  So, I headed north.  Soon enough, Del Campo started to make an appearance.  However, within a few minutes, I realized this was Gothic Peak since a much bigger peak was coming into view on the right.  Then I saw the lake:  Foggy Lake, or, as Beckey’s book calls it, Crater Lake.  Hmmm…what to do first.  I started to head over to Gothic but then decided to head for Del Campo since it was the major peak and probably had better views.  Also, I wasn’t sure how tired I’d be on the way down too.  There was still lots of snow up here.  The topology really undulates up here…hills and little frozen pools everywhere.  There was too much snow though, really, to appreciate what it probably is like in late fall.

I crossed near the lake and started heading up heather slopes mixed with snow.  I’d been hearing voices in front of me and finally spotted an army of hikers heading up Del Campo.  Must be Mountaineers.  Studying their tracks revealed the pack mentality:  all using ice axes and holding them in their left hand, now the right hand.  I decided to get some food and let them get a little further in front of me.  I started back up maybe 10 or 15 minutes.  I ascended the standard route, following the boot path in the sloppy snow.  Within minutes, I was in sight of the Mountaineers again.  They took a break at the base of the snow where a 3rd class gully leads northward and up to a notch.  They were indeed a Mountaineers party and were nice enough to let me head out first.  I resolved to climb quickly and not knock any rocks down on them.  At the notch, there’s a small trail that heads up another 50 feet.  At this point, though I didn’t feel it, I knocked a small rock down!  Arr!  It missed them easily but smacked other small rocks and sent 3 or 4 down.  Man, I felt bad and careless.  My quick apology was accepted and I resolved to stay off the trail and on the very solid rock on the lefthand side, which was pushing 4th class with some fun exposure.  Soon enough, I was on top.  It was 1:10pm, 3 hours and 40 minutes after setting out.

Looking to the west revealed nothing but fog!  I guess this is why they call it “Foggy Pass” (the pass between Gothic and Del Campo).  There were zero views west but plenty of excellent views to the west.  The tops of Glacier, Pugh, and Sloan were capped with clouds.  I still haven’t gotten a good look at Sloan.  Keyes (which they pronounced “Kies” rhyming with “Fries”??  Is that right??), Columbia, and Monte Cristo were easily visible.  I was also able to pick out Mount Forgotten to the north.  The top was a little noisy with all of us up here but I couldn’t complain.  After about 50 minutes on top, I bade the Mountaineers farewell and headed down.  I thought they would start down about 10 minutes after me but after getting down the gully and boot glissading nearly all the way to the lake, I looked back and saw that they were still on top!  I continued down and took a slightly different route back over the knoll that blocks the lake from the valley.  The sun was quite intense as I hiked and I went to get my hat out of my pack and I realized I left it on top!  Arr!  I am so forgetful sometimes.  Ah well, it was a rather heavy hat and I didn’t feel like waiting on the off chance that one of the Mountaineers would have picked it up.  So, I put on my bandana and headed down.  The steep trail forced me to move quickly.  I took an Aleve to keep my knees happy and marched on.  No time for breaks!  I was back at the car at 4:45.  The drive out was pleasant enough as I got more views of Big Four Mountain.

One annoying feature of the drive back was a goofy camper that kept everyone (at least 10 cars) at about 40 mph.  Did the driver realize he was breaking the goofy Washington Five Car Stack law?  I guess not.  We passed a cop on the side of the road.  He just sat there…hey go study the books, Officer Doughnut!