It was hard to decide what to do this sunny weekend. Robert and I eventually decided on the Glacier Basin area above Monte Cristo. I was actually a little skeptical about the prospects; I’d been wanting to get into the North Cascades for a while. The best way to get to the urban ghost town sprawl of Monte Cristo is by bike and we made quick time down the road, which was bumpy in a couple of spots. We stashed the bikes, crossed the creek, and made our way through the ghost town. Apparently, there was a population of some thousands back in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. There wasn’t much left of many of the buildings. Some of the markers stood over naught but ruins or even less. Up the trail, I was pleased to see that we’d be passing by a large set of falls. Being a big fan of waterfalls, I wasn’t dissappointed at all at how many cascades there were.
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.
