I arose to brilliant morning – this one above treeline and in the sunshine! I quietly tiptoed past Michael and Aidan to get some fresh water and eat my cheery bar. A few minutes later, around 7:20 I remember, I saw the duo roped up and heading up the Challenger Glacier. I waved to them; we would see them a couple of hours later on the top.
Once we were all up and ready, we clipped into the rope and headed up. The Challenger Glacier was most pleasant. There were no steep sections on it and it required nothing more than roped glacier travel. This is a rarity on this trip! Near the top, the glacier forced us hard to the left up a 30 degree slope to a gentle snow ridge at the top of the glacier (this is where the photo on the cover of the Selected Climbs in the Cascades volume 1, 1st edition was taken.) Getting off the glacier and on to the rock was easy. There was no moat or bergeschrund to deal with. Thank you, Mount Challenger.
Since we brought rock shoes for the trip, I decided that I would definitely use mine for all rock climbing opportunities. We had to wait for the other climbers to rappel down the rock pitch; there’s not much room on the summit of Mount Challenger. I volunteered to lead the pitch which is rated 5.7. However, maybe that’s with boots. With shoes, the pitch was a walk in the park. The nice thing is that there are plenty of pitons that you don’t need any gear other than three or four slings. After a few minutes, we were all on the exposed summit. Actually, the belay left us about ten feet below the true summit. An exposed scramble got us to the tip top. One summit tagged, two more to go.
A rappel and scramble got us back to the glacier where we met the other party on the snow ridge. They were now down to three members as one of the climbers opted to skip the Challenger climb – a regrettable mistake! That would be the last people that we’d see until we passed the weird cult group down low in Goodell Creek some four full days later (actually we did see two members of this same party on the opposite side of Fury as we were descending). The trip now was about to take on a lot of unknowns. We were worried about the descent into remote Luna Cirque as the Beckey guide warned of cliffs, glacier ice, and brush. The trip down from the top of Challenger took no more than 45 minutes and we took a nice break before heading down Challenger Arm.
We had studied the route from as many vistas as possible and had a rough idea of what to do. We’d get onto glacial rock, follow it down for a few hundred feet, then begin a long, downtrending traverse. Other than that, there was not much to report – the route down was quite easy, completely devoid of any scary downclimbing. I suppose we picked a good line because it’s quite possible to get into trouble. But the route was there. The most challenging part was passing underneath a roaring waterfall. The only real danger, however, was getting your boots soaked. After the waterfall, we built a cairn which signified our hard turn to the left which led us straight down to the moraine.
From high above the cirque on the summit of Mount Challenger, I was able to see an odd anomaly in the moraine – what appeared to be a large flat area good for camping. We were making for that and it wasn’t too far from us now. Of course, distance perceptions are frequently wrong and I recall a few ups and downs among talus boulders before arriving at the spot. I threw down my pack and ran around looking for a water source. I was quite sure I wouldn’t find it due to the topography of the area but I made sure. There was no water but the area was very flat and sandy. At least it would be comfortable to sleep. As Aidan and Michael arrived, I gave them the news and we then spread out to look for water. Walking toward the glacier under Mount Fury, another super steep moraine wall dropped away. Too difficult to get water in that direction if there was any (there wasn’t). It appeared that we might have to go back for water or find another place to camp. I didn’t want to give up this spot and we fortunately found water within reasonable walking distance, maybe a quarter of a mile and 200 feet of elevation. We drank a lot of water here and filled up our bottles and headed back up.
There was a fair amount of deadwood lying around and the suggestion of a fire was met with enthusiasm. This was the first time I had a fire in quite a while (since Colorado) and it was certainly welcome. It helped to balance the apprehension from being camped at the base of the great north face of Mount Fury and hearing ice and rock tumbling down it periodically. We committed to getting up with the sun the following morning. We knew tomorrow would be the toughest day of the trip.
On to day 4.
