The weather wasn’t terribly cooperative this weekend, but that may have been a good thing. I’d wanted to climb the north ridge of Forbidden Peak and so and planned to that this weekend. I know I would have come back from that trip utterly exhausted since I’ve grown soft living in China and wasn’t in good physical shape. Plus, the Cascade River Road was closed at Eldorado Creek – another 6 miles to hike! So, instead of jsut doing good ole Mount Si, we (Kevin, Ari, and me) opted to climb McClellan’s Butte, which was the very first climb I did with Michael at the end of 2002, man that seems like so long ago. I guess it was – 4.5 years.
Well, there’s not too much to report about this trip. I was slower than both Kevin and Ari and they enjoyed racing up ahead and taunting me as they’d wait for me, looking down the trail at my panting form doggedly plodding up the mountain. We made our way up to the final ridge and were greeted by a welcomed blast of cool air and a sweeping view down the valley. The final scramble lay in front of us which was an easy scamper. We lounged around on top for about an hour, nearly falling asleep on some smooth slabs down the ridge northeast from the summit. The hike out was pretty uneventful except that my new hiking boots were hinting that they were going to be pain to break in. This proved to be true the following week.
Daniel’s idea:
After work, drive up to Snoqualmie Pass, hike in to the Tooth, climb it, sleep on the summit, rappel down the following morning and go into work.
Dang that sounded cool to me. That’s almost like a free weekend. We headed out around 4:30 or 5:00 on Wednesday, stopped for some food at Subway in North Bend (saving part of the sandwich for the summit), and continued up to Snoqualmie Pass. From the parking lot, we hiked up the trail on snow. Well, I hiked; Daniel brought his skis and skinned up. Now, it was way back in November on Sperry Peak when I was last on snow and that was a postholing Hell. This Snoqualmie Spring snow was perfect, well-consolidated, and sturdy. I think I punched through once, and only then up to the thigh of one leg. Pshaw.
We made quick time up the valley, passed an open slope, where beyond we turned leftward past a waterfall and made a steep ascending and curving climb to Great Scott Basin. Within approximately an hour and a half we were near the Tooth. The snow climb beyond the small tower which Michael and I dubbed “Baby Tooth” was straight forward. At the very end, however, we did encounter a descent bergeschrund that required careful negotiation to safely squeak up and through in order to reach the small pass. A few minutes later we were at the base of the Tooth.
http://www.vimeo.com/6811948
I’d never led the Tooth before so Daniel gave me the first pitch. One long simul pitch later we were on the summit. The climb itself was good easy fun, solid the whole way, consisting of easy climbing with sprinkled 5.4ish cruxes here and there. The summit was surprisingly warm – mid to low 50’s, I suppose, with no wind. After enjoying the second half of our subway sandwiches and some evening photography, we bedded down on two good bivy ledges and stared up at the stars. Occasionally, I would turn my head slightly and look down on the cars travelling on I-90 far below.
I fell asleep fast and awoke sometime in the early morning hours to a bright three quarters moon hanging in the southern sky. Sometime later, at 5am I heard Daniel moving about. We lazed around and leisurely had a small breakfast and took more pictures and video.
We made one rappel off the summit and then decided to explore around the area. Daniel led back up looking around for the “Catwalk”. With no immediate pro available, we decided to just rappel all the way down and solo up “Baby Tooth” for some more photo opportunities.
Daniel skied out. I glissaded and plunge stepped my way out. We were back to work around 9:30.
The photos here were taken by Daniel.
Posted 4 years, 2 months ago. Add a comment
Robert and I made a climb of Sperry Peak in what I call “off season”. For some reason, I’ve lost some interest in mountaineering in the late Fall, Winter, and early Spring. Maybe that’s because I enjoy high summer so much more. There are more difficulties in the winter – wet, cold, less daylight, and so on. Basically, I catch up on my other activities in the winter and enjoy the outdoors when nature really intended it for us climbers to enjoy.
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.
http://www.vimeo.com/6791075
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.
Posted 4 years, 8 months ago. Add a comment
