Search results for: “mt. rainier”

On July 27, 2017, Odette and Jerry rode around Mt. Rainier in one day.

Here’s the RAMROD site from the Redmond Cycling Club

Here’s the RAMROD Training Series site – we did all but #14.

We signed up for the lottery and it said that results would be announced in early April.  On April 1 we got emails saying, sorry, you weren’t selected.  Two days later we got this email saying “oops, everybody in the lottery got that notice.”  Eventually we got notified that we were in.  (We’d signed up as a team to improve our chances, here’s the email saying that after the drawing teams don’t matter.)

I paid the registration fee and told Odette that she could always withdraw, but we had other stuff going on and it wasn’t until we got back from France that the impending ride dawned on her.  We started riding two RTS rides every weekend, but that didn’t last too long.  We substituted an out-and back from Colonial Creek Campground to Mazama (over Washington Pass on the North Cascades Highway) for one of their events.  I ramped up my daily rides to something closer to 50 miles a day.

After returning from France (and after recovering the half of the tandem that got lost by Iceland Air) we had trouble with the way the tandem shifted.  I blamed it on the broken rear shifter cable I’d replaced in Besancon, but no matter how much I fiddled with it I couldn’t get it to quit skipping when we loaded it.  I finally took it in to R+E and they lubed the cable and twisted the barrel adjuster and it seemed to solve the problem.   On the Sunday before the event we rode out to Redmond and picked up our packets.

We got up at 3:00 the morning of the ride and drove down to Enumclaw.  We ate way too much pastry in the car.  We expected to have to look for parking in the dark but we missed the turn and ended up at the elementary school where the ride started and there was plenty of (carpool) parking available.  We used the bathrooms in the school but didn’t avail ourselves of the breakfast we’d paid for back in April.  We queued up at the start line and were in the first dozen riders through the gate.  It was cool and misty all the way to Ashford.

The sun came out for the climb to Paradise, but we were mainly in the shade.  The climb wasn’t bad.  We swooped down the Stevens Canyon Rd. and then climbed up to backbone ridge – hotter and harder than the first climb.  (On the way down I amused myself by pointing out to everyone we passed that “she’s not pedaling back there.”)

The climb up Cayuse Pass started out strong but by the time we got to the water stop (with five miles to go) I was hot and starting to feel dizzy.  I blamed it on the pastry I’d eaten too much of, but in reality it was probably related to the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything but melon slices since the start of the ride.  We got as far as the tunnel and I bonked – too dizzy to ride I sat in the shade and poured a water bottle on my head.  Luckily Odette had squirreled away a chocolate croissant which I ate and with that I recovered enough to ride up the last three miles to the pass.

We rode down from the pass fast, passing several cars, and had a proper lunch at the Crystal Mountain turnoff.  The remainder of the ride was less exciting – hot, ups and downs, but nothing very strenuous.  the route to the elementary school took the bypass to SR169 on the East side of Enumclaw – which I hadn’t appreciated from the map.

Our elapsed time was pretty much exactly 13 hours – an hour less than when I rode with Mako and Mika, but an hour longer than when I did it in 2009 with Alex.  Still, pretty good for old people on a tandem.

Here’s the map

Here are the photos.

Objective:

Back-up tandem that I can use on unpaved routes. Not likely to ride technical descents or difficult single track but interested in “gravel grinding”. Rides on my list include:

• Snoqualmie Valley Trail
• John Wayne trail
• Cedar River / Lake Wilderness trail
• Eastside Rail Corridor in Kirkland
• East Lake Sammamish trail
• Issaquah / Preston / Snoqualmie trail
• Tolt pipeline trail
• West Side Road – Mt. Rainier NP
• Galloping Goose – Vancouver Island
• Cascade Trail – Sedro-Wooly
• Olympic Discovery Trail
• Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes 

The Kirkendal mountain bike books have a bunch of “easy” rides that look to be unpaved roads. The Wert Rail Trail book also has some unpaved routes that are not full of ballast. I think a bike with 26 inch off-road tires would expand our repertoire and would be a lot of fun.

I also am interested in being able to use this bike to travel on tours that involve unpaved sections and I’d like to be able to lend it to other teams or to invite people along for rides with us.

A secondary objective is to get the experience building up a bike. I would rather make some mistakes and spend some extra money than simply have my LBS do the upgrades for me.

Where I am at the beginning of 2014:

I’ve had R+E build new wheels with Velocity rims on White Industries “Daisy” hubs I already had, and I’ve put 1.5″ Continental Sport Contact road tires (that I already had) on them. I’ve put 1.95″ Serfas Drifter tires (probably 10 years old but almost unused) on the Hugi wheelset. I installed and adjusted Rodriguez big squeeze cantilevers. I put the Maddox brake on the White Industries wheelset. I installed a bar-end shifter (used Shimano friction type) and the related cabling from the stoker bars for the drum brake and re-wrapped the stoker handlebars with the existing bar-tape. I installed a pully where the brake cable bends 80 degrees down by the front bottom bracket. I bought and installed a second maddox drum brake on the Hugi wheelset. I fabricated spacers for the drum brakes so that they don’t leave as much of a gap behind the outer plate (basically I used a dremel tool to grind out the hole in a thick steel washer so that it would fit over the brake threads.) I installed a thud buster for the stoker. I bought & Installed Terry saddles for both riders. I bought a Zefal frame pump and a strap to secure it.  I bought an 8-speed cassette with 11-30 cogs and installed it on the White Industries wheelset. Will gave me an  8-speed cassette with 11-34 cogs and I installed that on the Hugi wheelset. I bought a pair of Salsa skewers. I bought a wedge bag for the back saddle and stuffed it with tubes, CO2 cartridges, tire tools, head & tail-light, etc.  In the process of getting to know this bike, Odette and I put about 150 miles on it.

Considerations:

– New drive train. I’d like a lower bottom-end for the chain rings (but I’d rather not loose the 54-T big ring.) I’d like them to be ramped and pinned so that they shift more smoothly.

– If I’m going to fiddle with chain rings I probably ought to change out the cranks & spider and bottom bracket. I was looking at the FSA gossamer (or even one of the carbon alternatives) because they come as a complete tandem package but I’ve read about the need to replace bearings after less than 1,000 miles and that doesn’t work for me. (I’m not sure that I ought to attempt press-fit bearings if the tolerances are that close and I don’t know if external cups will work on this bike.) The conventional wisdom seems to be Phil Wood bearings – so why not a Phil bottom bracket? Then I could go with any spider & cranks… (Tandems East quoted me about $650 for a full set with Phil BBs and daVinci spider and cranks…)

– I think that I’d be happier with a 9-speed rear derailleur and if I’m thinking about new rings/cranks I probably ought to think about new derailleurs front and back – and new shifters & cogs to match. That would give me a reason to replace all of the cabling, too, and to retape the bars, but it would mean replacing two virtually unused 8-speed casettes.

– If I’m going to have to retape the bars because of new shifters I should replace the brake levers too and that would be the time to make the switch to carbon bars (like I have on the other tandem and on my touring bike.)

– I’d need new stems (both front and back) to hold larger bars – and to give me a more upright position in the front. That would also allow me to go with a threadless adapter in the front so that I can get the extra flexibility and the more modern look.

– Instead of an adapter maybe I should get a new headset and really go threadless. I expect that would require a new fork but it would make the bike a lot easier to break down for travel and on a new fork I could get braze-ons for a front rack. What I’d really like would be to weld on an un-threaded extension to the steerer….

– I’ve probably got $1,500 in the Ibis now. The list of things I’d like to do might add another $1,500 and I’m good with that. One concern is the report that some older Ibis frames don’t have vent holes and thus a lot of internal rust. If the frame is compromised I’d rather not put so much money into it. I’m thinking that one way to find out would be to cut the frame up and look inside – kind of what you’d have to do to install S&S couplers. I’d have to spend some time researching, but I expect that it would take six couplers and probably cost another $3,500 (assuming a repaint at the same time.) If I amortize this cost over 10 years it would be acceptable and then I’d have two travel bikes to choose between…

I scheduled a conversation with John Lehman at R+E the first day they were open in January to figure out:

1. drivetrain – what advice do they have about the bottom brackets & cranksets? is there any reason to change from 8-speed to 9-speed? if 10-speed becomes standard on tandems will 9-speed go away? what about doing the cranksets now and waiting a year or two on the shifters, derailleurs & casettes?
2. headset & handlebars – is there any argument for the carbon bars that I have on the other bikes? can I get the fit I want with a threadless adapter and an extender? is a steerer extension safe if they put the joint in the middle of the head tube and reinforced it with an interior support? could I use a Rodriguez stoker stem?  what do they recommend for brake levers?
3. frame – what about the vent holes? (I found a couple of teaspoons of clear water when I pulled the screw to install the drum brake pully.) Would couplers give me the opportunity to fix the concern about rust from sealed tubes? would they do the steering tube extension for me as part of that project?

Rodriguez conversation results:

So I hauled the Ibis over to R+E and told John  what I wanted to do with it.  Dan Towle, the owner, ended up joining in.  They were both impressed by the bike and thought it was in good condition.  (They both agreed that it was built before 1997, based on the components John guessed ’95-’96 and Dan ’93-’94.)  They didn’t see any of the signs that would indicate internal rust, but they can’t be sure until they get it open.  They told me that I wouldn’t be saving any money compared to what a new frame would cost but that I wouldn’t be paying a big premium to keep the Ibis frame either, and that was what I needed to know.  It turns out that the second chainring I noticed is for a child-back.  So here’s the plan:

1. I will strip it down to the bare frame in the next week and take that in to R+E
2. They will do a coupler conversion, adding S&S couplers and outriggers and drilling vent holes as needed.
3. They will install a threadless headset and a Rodriguez tandem fork with low-rider braze-ons and FSA aluminum wing-pro handlebars
4. I will order decals
5. They will repaint the bike with a grey-to-silver top-to-bottom fade and with rust inhibiter on the inside
6. I will build it back up
7. I will bring it in for a post-build fitting and tune

They were really interested in the Maddox brake, saying that they had ordered one a year ago and never heard back from the maker.  They would not consider the idea of welding on an extension to the steerer, saying that while that might work for a single, the forces were too great in a tandem.  They liked the Specialized cranksets and thought I should keep those.  They didn’t see any reason to replace bottom brackets if the old ones were not crunchy but they said I should think about upgrading the eccentric. They said that my Hugi hubs were keepers.  We didn’t talk about changing derailleurs or shifters.  They thought I should be able to use the Ibis stoker stem with a shim and just change the clamp.  We talked about brake lever options and didn’t resolve anything.  John says self extracting crank bolts are part of the conversion but evidently there is a fitting you install with a “red pin spanner”.

 

I’m not sure how the build up will work – I expect that they are going to need to install derailleurs and brakes in order to do the outriggers, but maybe not.  If they are going to put in the headset they will likely want to install the handlebars – I expect that we’ll work it out and that I’ll end up doing somewhat less than the whole build.  They are supposed to call me to talk about specific colors before it gets painted so we’ll have an opportunity to talk then.

I ordered the decals as soon as I got home.  (The “made in Sebastapol by cyclists” for the chain stay was out of stock.)

When I stripped the frame down (here are the pics,) I found that the inside of the back part of the frame was wet.  I’m not sure how much was from the last few rides we did, but I don’t know where else it would have come from.  The back bottom bracket shell had some oily black stuff and the bottom bracket was covered with it.  The front one was totally clean both inside and outside of the eccentric.   John didn’t seem worried but it gives me more reason to upgrade the bottom brackets.

Here’s my current list of open items:

1. stoker stem – I decided that I wanted to go  with a Rodriguez stem and avoid the shim (I arranged that with John before they got to the paint stage and followed up to make sure he knew the Ibis had a 28.6mm seat post.)
2. brake levers / stoker pegs / bar-end shifters – will need need brake levers that fit a larger handlebar – don’t know if that means a new strap to bolt to or if it means whole new levers, but I’d prefer new levers.  I need to figure out if the existing shifters will fit in the ends of a larger bar.
3. cables –  I’ll need new cables all around because of the new outriggers and splitters.  I’ll also need a new straddle cable on the front and either a set-screw or a whole new straddle saddle.
4. bottom brackets / eccentric – I’ve decided I want to upgrade to the Bushnell eccentric and I think I want to go with Phil BBs (I arranged with John to upgrade to the featherweight Bushnell – didn’t talk through BB options.)
5. fit appointment / rebuild coordination / padding

I took the kid-back chain ring off and had to buy new chain ring bolts to work with the single ring.  Origin8 single speed bolts worked just fine.  I spent a couple of hours cleaning the cranks and chain rings and had to buy a wrench to get the chain ring bolts tightened down properly.  Cleaned the bottom brackets and chains (with gasoline) while I was at it.  Two weeks after PayPal I’m beginning to worry about the decals.

While looking up something else I came across this page on the R+E website.  The illustration of a single mitre design they provide is an older Ibis frame – looking at the photo I wonder if it is mine?

Three weeks to the day from my initial conversation with John, he called to say they had put the color on the frame and needed decals before they did clear coat.  I had expected a conversation before they painted.  They had Ibis down tube decals that they could provide, so I told them to go ahead – I’ll survive without the rest.  Still need to talk about bottom brackets and brake levers, and I need to make an appointment for a fitting.  Stay tuned.

 

 

CBS News

Avalanche Buries Hiker; Cell Phone Saves Him
Took Ian Rogers 45 Minutes to Dig It Out of His Pocket on Washington State Mountain, but He Got Through to 911 Right Away
 

Ian Rogers was rescued from Granite Mountain (CBS)
 
(CBS) Quick thinking and lots of good fortune saved a hiker in Washington State after he was buried alive in an avalanche.

Ian Rogers, 23, from Britain, set out on a simple practice hike on Granite Mountain to train for a planned climb up Mt. Rainier.

Suddenly, he was knocked down by two waves of snow. He was able to stand up after the first wave, but the second one buried him.

Somehow, Rogers was able to dig down to the cell phone in his pants pocket and call 911 for help. It took him 45 minutes to dig it out.

Six rescue teams searched for him. The force of the avalanche had thrown him 100 feet off the trail in the Snoqualmie Pass. After five hours, Rogers was rescued.

From Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Wash., he told "The Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez Monday he came through it all in relatively good shape.

Rogers also told her which cell phone provider he uses!:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6387746n&tag=api 

January 23, 2001
 
Mr. Kurt Miller
Warren Miller Entertainment
2540 Frontier Avenue
Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301
 
Dear Kurt:
 
With your father living in the San Juans and you being around Seattle off and on for a long time, you must have heard about The Mountaineers – those guys with the long lines of climbers going up Mt. Rainier in the early days. Have you ever heard about Meany Lodge, the Mountaineers’ ski hut at Stampede Pass?  Meany is a remarkable place in a lot of ways and if you haven’t seen it you should check it out.
 
A couple of years ago in your movie you featured a guy who ran a rope tow for his own kids. Meany has sort of that kind of feel about it – only with a lot more people and sort of a time warp aspect to it.  In the issue of Ski magazine where your dad’s column first appeared this year, there was an article about a guy skiing one of Colorado’s lost ski areas. The folks he interviewed reminisced about dads running the rope tow and kids learning to ski in a non-commercial environment.  Then he found the old runs and realized that they were pretty sweet.  Meany is real close to that.
 
Meany is about three miles in from the road.  You ride in to the lodge on a 1950s vintage snow cat (a Bombardier "muskeg ox" that has been stretched and had its tracks widened by the guys at the Lodge).  If there are too many of you some tow behind.
 
The Lodge interior looks like it was frozen in the 50s – and many of the Meany regulars were obviously skiers then. There are Tyrolian style wall paintings and lots of little kids running around. Everything looks like it has been improvised by guys who tend to over-engineer.  Everything is done by volunteers and their priority is obviously skiing, not fashion.
 
So here is the first pitch – family scenes, old guys (some in their 90s!), teenage boarders with bleached hair, everybody in ski wear with lots of duct tape, a bunch of odd contraptions including ancient snow cats and a rope tow of almost Rube Goldberg complexity – and everybody having a great time. Could come close to the snow-making scenes of those two guys with the ski jump on the farm.  Film in the summer and you’ll get footage of people brushing the slopes by hand, digging ditches, remodeling buildings, cutting firewood, overhauling snow cats, erecting towers, etc. In the winter there is a PSIA ski school affording pictures of cute kids snowplowing, going off jumps, falling down, etc.
 
On one wall of the main room in the Lodge is a rack full of tow grippers.  Kurt, you may not have grown up skiing with tow grippers, but I’ll bet your dad can tell you stories about them.  Can you think of another place in the US where they are still in use? (They are prohibited by the ANSI lift codes now, but Meany was using them when the Washington regulations were adopted and it was grandfathered in.)  The style used at Meany is what the Kiwis call "nutcrackers".  They are metal pliers that cam on the rope, but they also hang from a belt at about crotch level. The Meany tow is about 1,200 feet long with a 500 ft. elevation gain. The upper part of it is real steep. They used to run it fast, but in this age of softies they keep it down to about 19 mph (know how fast a high speed quad goes?).  Here is the second pitch – imagine people being pulled up this hill with rollers and bumps and drifted ungroomed snow on either side of the track. Imagine them getting air off the bumps and flying when they crest over the edge onto the platform at the top of the tow.  Now imagine that these folks include boarders, skiers with funny old gear and hand knitted hats, telemarkers, little kids with aggressive attitudes – all with lots of duct tape.  Now imagine the footage of the newbies!  Kurt, guess what happens when you clamp down with a tow gripper before you are up to speed?  At the beginning of the season they station a guy at the bottom of the tow with a shovel to fill in the faceplants.  The steep part with the rollers causes spectacular flailing falls with even more spectacular slides.  When someone falls at the top everyone in line behind him either bails or falls and the pile-ups of people unloading from the tow would get as many laughs as those vintage scenes of people unloading from chairlifts.  For most people skiing in America nowadays it will also seem pretty damn exotic (or at least anachronistic for those old enough to remember when rope tows were high tech).  It may not be India and skiing with bandsaw blade edges, but the skiing at Meany isn’t like anywhere else.
 
Now, here comes the clincher – the skiing itself is good and photogenic.  Because the hill doesn’t get skied during the week it usually has untracked snow on the weekends. Because it is on the east side of the crest it gets snow which is a whole lot lighter and drier than that at Snoqualmie just up the road. (Listen, there is an outfit called Cascade Powder Cats that is running a snow cat skiing operation just a little way down the ridge from Meany.)  Imagine these folks with the old gear and the funny hats (and the boarders and the little kids with helmets and attitudes) skiing open pitches of deep untracked powder.  If you learn to ski at a place like Meany where only a little of the snow gets groomed, you learn to ski really well, so these guys look smooth.  Then they drop into the trees.  Or they plunge down a really steep bank into a gully with a hot-tub sized hole full of water at the bottom.  Or they launch off a cornice or a cliff.  Or they hit a kicker.  There are something like 30 named runs from the top of that tow (most of the names are from the Al Capp cartoon strip which kind of reinforces the time warp aspect of the whole scene.)  There is enough variety to keep the crowd happy for the weekend, which also means that there is enough to give you decent shots of a lot of interesting terrain. The view from the top of the lift is pretty neat with all of the peaks in the central part of the Cascade crest visible on a clear day.  On one side of the lift the hill is exceptionally steep with widely spaced trees.  This slope gives some of the sweetest short powder shots you can imagine.  The get-back ("psychopath") is at the top of a cliff and protected with rotten climbing ropes.  The pool in the stream at the bottom of the cliff is named for Ferguson, a guy who fell in sometime in the late 50s.  Kurt, you could complement the humorous footage of the rope tow with shots of folks skiing some really good stuff.  The same folks who run the chain saws and welders in the summer are out there cutting smooth arcs in the powder during the winter. Or, send up a few of your big-name skiers or snowboarders and we’ll show them backcountry snow where it is as exciting going up as down.
 
You can pretty well imagine the scenes in the interior of the lodge after a day of skiing.  You’ve got about a hundred folks (who’ve shed the ski wear with the duct tape for polypro long johns) sitting around waiting for dinner in a sort of museum / rec room environment.  You’ve got old guys snoozing.  You’ve got a bunch of kids running around in and out of the snow.  You’ve got teenagers trying to claim a spot for themselves where nobody can see what they’re up to.  The energy level gets higher and higher as dinner approaches.  The place must look pretty much like it has for the last 70 plus years.  Then the whole crowd gets fed – a spectacle in itself.  Periodically they try to revive the tradition of folk dancing after dinner.  Kurt, it’s what ski lodges were like forty years ago!
 
The final pitch is the scene at the end of the weekend.  Three o’clock, the lessons are over, the lift ropes get hung so they won’t be buried before the next weekend, and everybody gets ready to head down.  Now, over the weekend there have been four or five cat loads of skiers coming to the lodge but everybody goes home at the same time.  Imagine 30 plus people loaded into this old snow cat. Imagine the packs and stuff piled high on top.  Imagine that forty or fifty more people have skied or snowboarded down to the spot where the trail flattens out and lined up on either side.  Image the loaded, topheavy-looking snow cat lumbering up between these two lines trailing a couple of ropes. Then imagine the footage of the snow cat towing all those skiers and snowboarders, in their funny hats and duct tape, as they whiz down a logging road throwing snowballs, playing crack-the-whip, knocking snow off the overhanging branches and generally celebrating another weekend.  Imagine the look on the face of the snowmobiler coming the other way who cuts around the snow cat only to find fifty skiers trailing behind.  Imagine the scene when the cat stops at a snow park dominated by RVs with snowmobile trailers.  Imagine skiers inching past mud puddles big enough to hide a car so that they don’t have to take off their skis.  Imagine snowmobiles whizzing everywhere, dozens of cars covered with snow, and this ancient snow cat with the packs on top whipping around in the middle of it.  Imagine those folks with the funny hats and duct tape unloading skis and boards and kids and gear in the middle of the mud and trucks and confusion.  Imagine them saying goodbye to each other and then getting in their fancy SUVs and Subarus.  The images of towing out behind the cat and the scene at the parking lot would be compelling even without the shots of the rope tow and the skiing!
 
 
Now here is the thing. If you want to capture the Meany scene you’re going to have to act now because they are talking about building themselves a chair lift!  It is true that they’ve talked about a chair lift for the last ten or twenty years, but this time they’re serious. They have a couple of schemes, but it looks like they can get most of the parts of an old double chair for free and they’re able to scare up a lot of volunteer labor.  It would be a sad thing if this uniquely Northwest ski experience vanished before you got your chance.  I don’t know what role you have in the films after having sold your company, but filming at Meany would give scenes that aren’t going to show up in any of the new-school videos and would provide a glimpse into a vanished era.  Kurt, even if this isn’t your job anymore, do your fans in Seattle a favor and pass the idea on to whoever does look at this kind of stuff.
 
 
So, anyway, let me know if I’ve sold you.  There is a Meany website with some pictures and a trail map at http://www.obatik.com/meany/.   I’d love to host some of your guys if they want to check the Lodge out some weekend, winter or summer.  I’ll even show them my favorite runs.  I’ll lend them a chainsaw.  Just let me know – and remember, if you don’t do it now you’ll be another year older when you do.
 
Yours truly,
 
 
Jerry Scott

The Foothills Trail is a work in progress that will eventually go from Puyallup to Carbanado (up by the Carbon River entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park) as well as going to Buckley and maybe Enumclaw. Here is a link to the foothills trail website.  At this point they only have something like 15 miles paved and it doesn’t connect with the Interurban trail yet.  In 2010 it also doesn’t connect to the four bridges they have build in the gap between South Prairie and Buckley or the mile or so of paved trail near Wilkerson.

Here’s an article in the Tacoma News Tribune about the Foothills trail and an update from June 2007.

here’s a link to the Foothills Trail Coalition website.

There was almost a 10-year dispute between Pierce County and the owner of an RV park that blocked the right-of-way immediately east of South Prairie.  For a couple of years there was a section of trail with four bridge that couldn’t be accessed because of a quarter-mile gap resulting from the dispute.  The county eventually even voted to exercise its right of eminent domaine to force the owner to sell and eventually was able to buy the trail corridor – but they gave the seller two years to relocate the RV pads that would otherwise be cut off.  Here’s an article from the Tacoma News Tribune about the 2013 land purchase.  Here’s an article about a Supreme Court ruling related to rail-banking.

here’s a link to the Coalition’s newsletters. (The section reporting on the status of neighboring rail-trail projects is really informative.)

here is the 2006 trail brochure with its optimistic estimates on completion of the segments between South Prairie and Buckley and the connection to the Puyallup river walk.

 

After buying the section in the RV park there were a couple miles of rail-bed still in private hands.  In the fall of 2014 Pierce County voted to condemn those properties after they were unable to negotiate purchase agreements.  Here’s the story in the News Tribune.  If past acquisitions are any indication this will still take years.  One interesting item in this story that I haven’t heard before is the justification for using eminent domaine because this section is a link in a larger project.  They quote the Bukley mayor as saying “…Buckley is working with the City of Enumclaw and King and Pierce counties to add a pedestrian bridge across the White River to connect with the Foothills Trail in Enumclaw.  King County already owns the right of way to continue the trail on to the Maple Valley area.”  That is a dream that would certainly be worth some money and political chips.

 

someday the foothills trail will connect to the interurban and will allow you to ride to Enumclaw and Mt. Rainier.

I started off in the spring of 2005 thinking about doing a backpack into the Dutch Miller peaks. My plan was to hike the East Fork Foss trail through the Necklace Valley, scramble up to La Bohn lakes and then walk over to Williams Lake and Dutch Miller Gap, exit to Waptus Lake and go around Mt. Daniel and up to Deception Pass via the PCT, ending up hiking out to the Tonga Ridge road where I’d have stashed a bike to get back to the car. It would have been a serious nine day trip – but I had done various parts of it and the only piece that was a stretch was the scramble up to La Bohn Gap. I had done that years ago on the way to climb Hinman and I figured that if I scheduled it for a really short day I could do it and then come back down and carry Odette’s pack up. I remembered it as steep but not scary.

Will and I did a TOPO! route and profile and figured out where the camps would be, but then I kind of backed off because of scheduling confusion and the potential to team up with Art on a trip to the Pasayten. We ended up cutting a couple of days off the front end of our trip because Will wasn’t getting back from China until that Saturday and said he had a school meeting on Sunday. Odette booked a flight to Denver for 6:00 in the morning the Monday after the trip was supposed to end and I felt like she was hoping that we’d cut back on that end, too.

I toyed with going up the Middle Fork Snoqualmie to the gap and back via the PCT and Red Mountain pass. It would have been within our abilities, but with only one layover day and no margin of error on the final day over Red Mountain pass and down to the hot springs it seemed like it might be a lot of trail walking and not enough high-country exploring. I finally settled on going in from Cooper Lake, hiking to Spectacle Lake for the first night, then to Escondido ridge for the second night, followed by three nights at Lake Ivanhoe and then a night at Waptus Lake and out up Quick Creek and down Tired Creek. The first three days (and the last one) were a little bit long at 10 – 12 miles, but it was mainly on the PCT so it seemed like we’d be able to handle it. I didn’t exactly focus on elevation gain.

We didn’t really pack until that Sunday and then it was just the usual – Odette took too much clothing and we had more food and fuel than we needed. Odette made up three big first aid kits and we ended up taking two of them. I threw in full rain gear for all of us and a tarp that I could rig as a kitchen fly, because we were supposed to get drizzle Monday night. I took an ice axe because I planned to scramble Little Big Chief and La Bohn if I couldn’t get Will to do stuff with me. I lent Will a leatherman after he told me that he’d lost his swiss army knife to the TSA when he flew to Chicago the previous spring. It turned out that Will didn’t really have a meeting on Sunday. Odette wasn’t happy with my usual trail mix for lunch so I told her that she was in charge of snacks and lunches. We went to three or four different stores Sunday afternoon to get stuff and ended up with a different mix for each day. (We also ended up with a bunch of new clothes for Odette.)

Lunches on a couple of the days were to include chocolate covered cherries but we ended up with chocolate raisins and didn’t think about melting temperatures. Odette swore that she was getting me a fruit/nut bar that I’d like in lieu of candy, but I discovered that they tasted like cardboard and ended up returning with all but one of them. Will wanted something other than trail mix so we let him get jalapeno tortillas, brie and mango chutney with the idea that he would put together a wrap each day. We put the chutney in a tube. Will had trouble getting all of his stuff in his pack and asked me for help. I stowed his tent in the outside compartment and then put his camera case on a side strap. All of the packs ended up too heavy – mine weighed 65 lbs, Will’s was 55 lbs and Odette’s was 35lbs.

On Monday morning we got up early and had large breakfasts at Beth’s Cafe on Aurora. We drove over the pass on I-90 (listening to Will’s music on his iPod shuffle.) We took the bullfrog cutoff and the Salmon La Sac road out to the Cooper Lake turnoff. We parked at the Pete Lake trailhead and put our packs on. The first few miles were flat and easy. We had lunch at Pete Lake. Odette objected to leaving the trail to get to the shore of the lake. The crossing of Lemah creek was cold but the water was low. Odette objected to that, too. I took my pack across, then came back and escorted Will while carrying Odette’s pack. Then I came back and walked across with Odette. She screamed. A little later, just after picking up the PCT in dense brush, she scared up a couple of yellowjackets that got me twice on my right shin. The switchbacks at the end of the day up to Spectacle Lake were brutal with our heavy day-one packs. We missed the unmarked “staircase” and took the main trail up to the lake. The map said it was an extra half-mile but it felt longer than that. Will’s GPS told us how close we were – as the crow flies. Odette and Will decided that ten-mile days were too hard and that it was my fault. That kind of became their mantra as we plodded along. Every time we stopped I hoisted Odette’s pack for her, Will’s pack for him and then my own pack. I ate a lot of huckleberries at the end of the line. The waytrail down to the lake was long and rocky but we found a spot near the water with views of Lemah, Chikamin and Three Queens. We set up camp as we watched clouds building over the crest of the range. We had dinner (but we were all too worn out to want ramen) and went right to bed. Will struggled with a broken zipper on his tent. It had been a 1,500 foot day.

In the morning clouds were still boiling over the crest. I shifted some stuff from Odette’s pack to mine but Will didn’t think he had room to take any more. He did after I put the tent on the side and put the camera on the front using the pack’s elastic cord. We hiked back up to the PCT and then down the switchbacks losing 1,000 of the 1,500 feet we climbed the previous day. We seemed to spend a long time in the bottoms of Lemah Creek. Eventually we came to an old burn that permitted views up to the glaciers on Chimney Rock. The sun was in and out of the clouds all day and occasionally those clouds spit on us. The switchbacks up from Lemah Meadows to Escondido Ridge weren’t steep but they seemed very long. I brought up the rear and once again had a lot of time for huckleberries. Every time we stopped and put our packs down Will had to be careful that he didn’t crush his camera and having it on the front of the pack meant he couldn’t flop his pack down and sit on it. We topped out on the ridge at about 5:00 and hiked a little way to a pretty little lake, but people had already taken the camp site there. We went on a quarter of a mile and camped in a spot where a trail party had evidently abandoned a tarp. It was an okay site with a view down to the lake but with a walk for water. Will took one of the summit packs and a pot and bag to haul water for us. Odette set up the kitchen on a slanted rock while claiming ignorance about how to set up the stove. I set up both tents, trying not to hurt the heather. I messed up the zipper on our tent. I broke the head of off one stake. We had climbed about 2,000 feet from the Lemah Creek crossing and we wanted the ramen with dinner that night. I read enough of the route descriptions to decide that the little lake was probably one of the Vista Lakes on the approach to Summit Chief. Even at that elevation Odette couldn’t get a cell signal.

It was cold overnight and we woke to frost on our stuff. There were no longer any clouds, though, so we had clear views of Three Queens, Lemah, Chimney Rock, Summit Chief and Bear’s Breast. Mt. Rainier was visible if you walked up the hill a little. We filtered water from a pot and packed up, with Will putting his stuff in Odette’s pack since it had more room. We hiked a couple miles on the ridge winding through the tarns and traversing above Escondido Lake. Mt. Stuart came into view as we rounded the ridge. Then we descended a bunch of annoying switchbacks to get down to the Waptus River – giving up all 2,000 feet we climbed the previous day and then some. Odette fell off the trail and ripped her pants while picking a huckleberry. I gave her a bad time for poor technique. After a short flat jungle section on the Dutch Miller Gap trail, we started climbing up to the Gap. Big creeks seemed to disappear in boulder fields and reappear on the wrong side of the trail. Odette began to slow way down so I pulled the sleeping bag (damn near all that was left) out of her pack and strapped it on top of mine. It was 5:00 again (after another 1,500 feet of climbing and plenty of huckleberries for me) when we finally found a camp site we liked on the east side of Lake Ivanhoe. We couldn’t figure out how to fit two tents on the dirt next to the water so we snuggled them together in the gap between a rock outcropping and the cliff below the trail. I ran a line from the top of the rock to a tree below the trail to hang the food bags. The sun went down early since the lake was in a hole, but it was warmer than it had been the previous night. Odette managed to break the zippers on both tents.

We slept in the next morning and didn’t get out of camp until about 10:00. We hiked on around the lake (looking for the shelter that was supposed to be at the head of the lake) and climbed through the waterfall to the gap. We stopped and rested at the gap and admired the scenery. We hiked down from the gap to the Williams Lake junction and then up to that lake. We headed around the right-hand side of the lake and stopped for lunch when the path petered out in boulders. Will and I hiked up to a tailing pile and looked into a mine there. The stuff in the tunnel was from relatively recent mining activity. The huckleberries from the last couple of days caught up with me and and I decided that abstinence was a virtue. Afterwards we went on around the lake and then hiked back up to the gap and down to Ivanhoe. We continued our circumnavigation of the lake still looking for the shelter. We found a set of nice campsites across the lake from our camp, but no shelter. We crossed the broken bridge at the outlet and got back to camp early in the afternoon and relaxed with tea and books.

The next day we got up early and hiked to Williams Lake again. Will and I left Odette there and climbed back up to the mine where we picked up the old miners trail to the Chain Lakes basin. We had to poke around a little to find the route in the trees, and then in the boulders we followed an abundance of cairns up to the basin. As we topped out on the lip of the basin we found a roofless stone shelter with lots of mining artifacts. We walked over to a flat spot above a smaller lake where lots of thick weathered planks were stockpiled. We walked from there to the main lake where tailings indicating a mine. The rocks at the outlet were stained red from the minerals in the tailings. The adits and shafts were fascinating – but not solid enough to make you think about entering. The rock was really interesting with many little crystals and colors ranging from red to purple and blue. A lot of it was really oxidized and there were metallic looking pebbles scattered around. We traced the vein over to another lake and located another open vertical shaft in the process. There were lots of artifacts scattered around.

We walked across immense slabs and then climbed the gentle ridge next to La Bohn Peak so that we could look down into La Bohn Gap. We walked around the wooded knob on the ridge until we could look down at the Necklace Lakes and Lake Angeline. We rested by a pretty little tarn at 6,000 feet. We had a 360 degree view and the Dutch Miller peaks were most impressive. There was a small sharp peak almost due north of us that I couldn’t identify – maybe Bald Eagle Peak. Mt. Baker was visible in the background. We continued to the La Bohn Lakes and then returned on the other side of the knob to the Chain Lakes basin. We picked our way around a couple of the other lakes, recrossed the slabs and went around another lake to the final adit. This one was solid but only went back a few feet. Then we walked back to the roofless shelter and started following cairns back down the boulder field to Williams Lake. We collected Odette there and hiked back to Dutch Miller Gap. On the way down to Lake Ivanhoe we stopped at the plunge pool of the waterfall and I jumped in – losing my bandana in the process. We turned left on the Ivanhoe Loop – still not having found the shelter. We had dinner early (including ramen) and afterwards I walked around the outlet end of the lake to the campsites we’d seen to explore them and see if there was a shelter on that point. There wasn’t.

In the morning we packed up early and headed for Waptus Lake. Somehow I was still carrying the sleeping bag – but inside my pack now. We were happy to get the switchbacks down out of the way before it got hot. The creek bottom before we got to the lake was impenetrable jungle – but I decided that I wasn’t abstaining from raspberries. All of the campsites by the lake looked too horsy and it was too early to camp so we decided to continue, thinking we’d stop when we crossed the Waptus River at the outlet from the lake. We had lunch at Spinola Creek crossing. Will’s brie was starting to get pretty strong. We were taken by the sign for Trail 1337 to Spade Lake which Will and I, at least, adopted as our new mantra. We found a nice site at the bridge but it was hot and there were flies and it was still early afternoon, so we filtered water and then continued along the river looking for something that would make the last day short. The trail was exceptionally dusty and there was a lot of horse traffic. We found one site we liked but there were horses in it. We found an even better one but there were hikers already there. We continued hiking and hit the Salmon La Sac campground at about 6:00. Will and I left Odette there and ran the five miles up the Cooper River to our car. We’d done about 20 miles, 15 of it with packs, and we were feeling 1337 indeed. We were back to Odette by 7:30 and then cleaned up in the river.

We got to Rosalyn before the Rosalyn Cafe closed and had dinner there. We drove back to Seattle and got home before midnight – a day earlier than planned. There was enought battery life left in the iPod to get us music all the way home. We didn’t get out on the bike the next day but we had time to do laundry and catch up on email and stuff before getting up at 4:00 the next morning to take Odette to the airport.

Here’s a link to a book list.

Here’s a link to some photos from the trip.

Here’s a link to the TOPO! route of the planned trip (showing us coming out up Quick Creek and down Tired Creek instead of our actual route down the Waptus River and up the Cooper River.)

 

2004 did not start auspiciously.  PASC sold to ACS in January.  The euphoria and hard work of making the deal happen were quickly replaced by the struggle to adapt to big-company policies and loss of personal control.  I skipped the Phoenician in January to teach snowboarding to adolescents at Snoqualmie Pass.  It seemed like all of my backcountry ski trips got weathered out.  We finally realized that the PSIA seminar in Sun Valley during spring break just wasn’t going to work – so we went to Whistler for a long weekend instead.  I lost my iPod there.   I signed up to lead a couple of climbs and a couple of scrambles but my heart wasn’t in it.  I agreed to go on a trip to the Pickets that Jeff had been trying to sell for more than a year. Jeff rescheduled the Pickets trip to conflict with a climb and a scramble I’d just scheduled.  I rescheduled my trips.  By June I was in the middle of conversions, budgets, audits and take-aways.  I was five pounds overweight because I hadn’t been able to get out all spring.

Odette was not much better – she was struggling with parents and siblings and work issues and was cycling hard to get fit. She wanted to go to Colorado in August and take a trip with Will before school resumed in September.

Will was planning to take the second level Java class at the University of Washington, and we told him that he had to get his community service and outdoor requirements out of the way – so he signed up for a canoe trip in July.

Then things changed.

Will got invited to a Knowledge Bowl competition in Orlando that conflicted with his outdoor trip which he rescheduled to August thus nixing the trip to Colorado.  Then he got a summer job which nixed the Java class.  Odette gave up the trip before school, but decided that instead we should all three go on a backpack.  We settled on a week starting on a Tuesday in July and ending on the next Monday.  Will told his new employers in advance.  Odette scheduled the time off from her job.  ACS decided that they would have the kick-off meeting for the new fiscal year in Los Vegas right in the middle of that week.  I said I couldn’t go and they said – okay.

None of us really had time to to think about gear or packing until right before the trip. We went to REI and Will and I stuck a bunch of freeze dry into a basket. Later we realized that somehow we’d gotten a vegetarian rice pilaf so we substituted a chicken-with-rice left over from the previous year.

So the morning of Tuesday, July 20, 2004 found us sitting in an IHOP in the U district eating greasy half-cooked hash browns and limp bacon.  I didn’t leave a tip for the surly waitress.  We drove to White Pass under overcast skies with a little rain.  I got stopped for speeding but the trooper let me off with a warning (73 in a 55 zone).

We left the highway at Clear Lake, missed the turn and drove for a few miles on around the lake. Will’s GPS wasn’t too much help but we finally realized that we needed to go back, found our turn, drove to the end of the North Fork Tieton River road and parked.  I was nervous about the route we had planned.  We had seven days and I wanted to spend it in the Goat Rocks because I hadn’t been there, Odette liked the William O. Douglas Wilderness next door, and this seemed like a place where Will and I could scramble things and Odette could hang out with the mosquitoes. Plus she really wanted to see mountain goats in the wild.  The idea was to do a circumnavigation.  Manning’s book on the South Cascades had a whole bunch of hikes in the area but no seven-day loops.  The Trekking Washington book had a three day trek that fired my imagination – according to it, the highest and “most dangerous” stretch of the Washington PCT (pacific crest trail) runs through the Goat Rocks.  But they described a one-way trip and the crest section of it was only five or six miles long.  I studied all of the climbing books and hiking guides I could find for a loop or a base-camp that would keep us busy for a week.  Then in Beckey I saw a mention of a “faint trail” from Cispus Pass to Surprise Lake.  That was the missing link to a loop combining both the popular western approach through Snowgrass Flats and the eastern approach through Conrad Meadows.  The only question was whether Odette could handle a Beckey “faint trail”.  I outlined my thoughts to Jeff and he said “well I can see it on Beckey’s sketch map.”  The deciding point was when I looked at WTA trip report and found someone from a couple of years ago who reported that it was fairly easy to follow the trail except through high grass in the meadows. (After the trip I found that Bob Dreisbach described the faint trail in his book. Odette knew Dreisback as an old man from Meany and it would have calmed her to know that someone like him had hiked it.)

I didn’t tell Odette about the route until we were packing the night before the trip.  Then I showed her where it appeared on the sketch map and showed her the WTA trip report.  I also didn’t show her the “highest and most dangerous” description until we were in the car on the way south.

Despite a lack of planning, we went light – no tarp, no extra books, not a lot of fleece – just freeze dry and ten essentials.  My pack was about 65 pounds leaving home, Will’s was about 50 pounds and Odette’s was about 35 pounds.  About a third of our total weight was food and fuel.  We took a 40 oz. freeze dry and three servings of cup ‘o soup per day along with five oz. of trail mix, two cliff bars, a portion of oatmeal and two portions of candy for each of us.  (We actually had a little more trail mix than that since it consisted of two parts rice crackers to one part almonds and we filled four wide-mouthed plastic bottles that originally each held 40 oz. of Costco cashews). We took ice axes for Will and me and a ski pole for Odette.  Odette and I shared a tent and sleeping bag; Will carried his own.  Will and I both took digital cameras. Will had his GPS. We did take the thermorest chair kits.

Leaving the car with heavy packs we hiked a gentle trail to Tieton Pass and then took the PCT south to a junction with the old trail into McCall Basin.  It was hot and buggy but the trees shaded us.  The trail was really dry climbing to the pass. On the PCT we met a couple of guys heading for White Pass.  We descended slightly into the basin and dropped our packs in the first campsite to scout around and find a place to stay.  We settled on a site on the bank of the stream that wasn’t too horsy.  Odette stayed at the campsite while Will and I retrieved the packs. After a couple of attempts to just clip her pack onto the back of mine I strapped it under the top pocket and staggered back to set up camp.  We had soup and then lasagna and went to bed early and tired.

In the morning we went looking for the waterfall shown on the map and found it so far down in the gorge that we couldn’t approach it.  We hiked over the ridge into Glacier Basin and began looking for a way to cross the stream.  As we moved upstream we had to navigate several rocky benches that left Odette unhappy.  Then we climbed to the top of the upper falls in brush and rock and snow – which left her scared.  Then we traversed the top of the basin on snow and boulders which left her refusing to proceed.  So she sat and waited while Will and I climbed scree and snow to the top of point 6728.  (It looked like it should have been Tieton Peak to me on the way up, but Will’s GPS quickly informed us that there wasn’t anything that big anywhere near.)  We had a glorious view of  Rainier and the basin and we identified Curtis Gilbert, Goat Rocks, Ives, Old Snowy, Egg Butte, and the McCall glacier.  We descended quickly startling Odette with a yodeling glissade.  She got her feet wet when she broke through a snowbridge on her way back and we chided her for not following in our steps.  Then we walked in circles on the next snow patch we came to.  The cliffs were easier on the way down and we were back to camp by late afternoon. We found two young ladies and a dog in the stream by our camp.  They were surprised to hear that we were heading south on the PCT.  We ate beef stroganoff and went to bed early.

Packing up in the morning we found that the buckle to Odette’s hip band was missing, evidently lost when I was wrestling with the weight of our combined packs.  I jury rigged a replacement with cable-ties and we continued.  We hiked back up to the PCT and then headed for Elk Pass – a schlep with our still-heavy packs. There were a lot of blowdowns on the trail which surprised me.  The guides say that you want to hike this country before it dries out enough for horses – perhaps they don’t maintain the trails until the horses can get in, too. The trail climbed to the ridge giving views into McCall Basin and then over to the west side of the crest we had looked at the day before.  Finally we saw Rainier and then we crossed a ridge and dropped into a basin before climbing back up to Elk Pass.  Odette went slower and slower as we got higher.  I snapped at her and told her that I didn’t mind her stopping a lot and I didn’t mind her going slow but she couldn’t do both.  We came to a couple of small snow patches that she didn’t like and she declared that if she had to cross one more she was going to sit down and wait for a ranger.  I wished her good luck.  Will waited for us at the pass.

The next section of the trail was incredible – high traverses across scree fields, winding in and out among rock towers, keeping mainly to the ridge.  In places they’d leveled off the ridge top and we walked for long stretches next to the top of the glaciers on the eastern slope. In places we went up and down steep shattered rock to get around gendarmes.  As the book said, you wouldn’t have wanted to meet a horse party.  At the first resting place I ran the ridge out to the top of Egg Butte. We met a guy who bragged abut his speed and we recommended McCall Basin to him.  He said he had hiked the trail (instead of taking the shortcut across the Packwood Glacier) to see what it was like and that it was rocky.  We met a pair of guys going slowly who said that they had crossed the glacier and that it was frightening (“if you fall you die!”).

When we got to the shortcut I said that we should follow Harvey’s recommendation and climb above the glacier on the rocks.  Will and Odette were tired and insisted on the snow. I acquiesced. The first part wasn’t bad, but the second snowfield ended with a rising traverse on steep snow under a corniced ridge with no run-out. (At least I couldn’t see the run-out since it dropped too steeply, but it obviously ended in rocks since there was a boulderfield visible way below us.) I connected two fifteen-foot sections of webbing and tied myself to Odette. I figured that if she slipped I could probably hold her and with my ice axe. We crossed just fine but I was anxious all of the way, probably more anxious than Odette was.

A little way below the exit from the snow we found a rudimentary shelter and running water so we rested and I pumped. Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier were right THERE. I can’t remember if we could still see St. Helens. We could see a spectacular frozen lake across the valley (Mt. Johnson – where the goats are according to Beckey.) The crest of the Goat Rocks was just above us. I told Odette that I was disappointed that they hadn’t been willing to take the trail in the rocks since I would have climbed Old Snowy from the high-point and would have tried to talk her and Will into coming with me. I think that I said I felt “cheated” and I know that whatever the word was, she got offended . We saddled up again and continued toward Snowgrass Flats – past a closer frozen lake, past a collapsed shelter, over more snow and down into the greenery. It had been a long day when we finally came to the junction with the Snowgrass Flats trail and found tents pitched close by. With Will grumbling in the background we continued on the crest trail for a quarter of a mile until we found a very nice site out on a promontory under big trees with a view of Adams, the Goat Rocks crest, and the valley leading to Cispus Basin. There wasn’t a lot of water but there was a small deep pool to dip from a hundred yards away from the tents. We set up camp and hung the food bags. The meadows around and below us were full of beargrass and lupine and paintbrush and scarlet gillia and anemone. The sunset made the crags of the crest glow orange. It was pretty cool.

I got up at 6:00 the next morning, made tea, and at 6:30 I was hiking past the junction with the trail to Snowgrass Flats. I hiked to the high-point on the crest trail (which was adequately maintained and easy enough to follow) and then walked up the ridge to the top. There was a breeze on top but I stopped to put on sunscreen and dark glasses. I followed the ridge down to the saddle with Ives, detouring to the west around gendarmes and steps. Just after leaving the top of Old Snowy there is a peculiar arch made of crumbly, glassy, rock that is almost cobalt blue. From the saddle I walked up the ridge to the summit of Ives. The summit block was a hundred-foot cliff but it was obvious that if you could get up on the south slope it would be easy. I tried the first gully and quickly got into hard climbing so I backed off and walked on around until I could do it the easy way. The south slope was steep but made up mainly of small flat talus fragments. I walked easily to the top and spent a few minutes admiring the view and orienting the map and identifying the stuff we’d seen from Glacier Basin.

I descended from Ives following the ridge but staying further east. There were a couple of big snowfields that were gentle enough for standing glissades. There was a steep dirty red slope to traverse to get into the upper Cispus basin. I traversed around the head of the basin on dirt and snow and then climbed the ridge on the other side. I topped out on the ridge just below where it met the Goat Spires and maybe half-a-mile east of Cispus Pass. I read the descriptions in Beckey and Smoot and wasn’t sure how far over the “obvious gully” might be so I descended steep snow on the other side, then crossed the snow and contoured over to the first big gully after the ridge. As I was getting over to it I heard rockfall and saw a cloud of dust – and then realized that there were a bunch of goats going up the gully in front of me. I figured that the goats probably knew the best way up so I followed them, staying to the side of the gully to avoid the rocks they kicked down. I kept looking up and seeing goats perched improbably on the tips of slender spires. The gully got steep and crappy. I threaded my way back and forth picking the easiest ascent. The right side was wet and muddy from melt water. The middle was a bowling alley. I climbed a fourth class step, angled left at the top and found a cairn. I climbed some steep loose wet rock to another cairn. My mantra the whole way up was “a crappy pile of rock – with mountain goats on top.”

At a fork in the gully I could see at least a dozen goats kneeling on a big ledge a few hundred feet above me. I took the left-hand fork leading directly to the goats and presumably to a hidden snow basin. I quickly found that the gully was full of snow but I was able to climb in the moat on the left side. As I neared the top the goats started to spook and in small groups they bounded across the snow above me and disappeared up a ramp to the right. I got up to their crossing and realized that I didn’t want to be on that snow. As easy as the goats made it look, the snow was very hard under the top inch, very steep, and very rocky at the bottom. I realized that I was off route and I figured that I should probably head back down to the bottom of the snow and take the right fork of the gully. I couldn’t see if it really connected but it appeared as if it would put me on the ramp the goats took. It was a long way down and back up, though, and I couldn’t figure out where the top was. I thought about just giving up and returning to camp.

After considering things for a while I continued up to the goat ledge and found that there was a moat around the top of the snow – although I had to stem between the snow and the rock for maybe a hundred yards. Just below the most difficult part was the opening to a tunnel that cut across fifty feet and exited on the other side. The walls must have been very thin because it was bright blue inside. I thought about crawling through the tunnel (it was maybe five feet tall and perfectly circular,) but I was concerned that the walls were so thin that it might collapse sending me down the slope so I stuck to the moat. As I kicked steps for my right foot I was concerned that I was going to go through and break out the walls of the tunnel. After I got around the top the moat widened out and eventually I exited it to the goat ramp. The ramp topped out just to the north of a cliffy flat-topped block called Goat Citadel. The guides said to pass that on the south so I walked around just below it on easy ground and found that I needed to descend a hundred feet or so on talus to a saddle between Goat Citadel and the Curtis Gilbert summit block. First I walked up the easy side of the citadel to look at the slender stakes protruding from the top. They were county line markers.

I descended to the saddle and then climbed a sandy slope to the summit block. Despite what it says in the guide I had to traverse half way around to get to rock that looked like I could scramble. The last couple hundred feet were easy and the view was great. I ate my trail mix and a cliff bar. It was about 2:00. Although I knew it went, I wasn’t very interested in going down the way I had come up. I decided to head down to the saddle and then descend Beckey’s obvious gully.

Heading down from the summit block I followed boot tracks and cairns on the southwest corner. As the ridge leveled out below the summit block it seemed like a long ways around to get to the saddle and I kind of followed the track due west. When the climbers trail turned south to follow the ridge crest I continued west thinking that maybe I could just drop the four- or five- hundred feet to the valley bottom. As I headed down the talus slope I realized that I was eventually going to get cliffed out and that I either needed to head back over to the normal route or I needed to follow the track. I pulled out the route descriptions again and then decided to follow the ridge south until I could see a way down.

The ridge was broad and flat and easy going, with county line markers most of the way. Every time I looked into a west-facing gully I ended up deciding not to head down because of the visible profusion of spires and cliffs. I continued south on the ridge for a couple of miles (and a couple of hours) generally bypassing bumps on the left (east) side. As I got further and further from the summit I got more and more interested in seeing where Becky’s “faint trail” crossed the ridge. The east side of the ridge was steep and mainly snow-covered and I was concerned about how I was going to get Odette down it. I finally started to see gullys on the west that I thought I could get down but I decided to continue on the ridge until I found the trail. I scared out a couple of elk (I didn’t see them but I heard them take off down the right side of the ridge) and then, in a meadow full of lupine I found a pair of big cairns on the east side of the ridge. The descent here was short and snow-free. I could see a trail entering trees at the bottom, only a couple hundred feet below me. I could see a trail on the valley bottom beyond the trees. I walked part way down the slope and couldn’t see where the trail went down but I figured that it didn’t matter because Odette could just walk straight down. I had to poke around on the west side of the ridge for a while before I found the trail down hidden in the lupine and cedars. There weren’t any cairns but the tread was clear. Shortly after starting up the trail I ran out some more elk, again hearing but not seeing them. The trail dropped down through the cliffs and then leveled out. In the rocky sections it was well marked with red paint blazes on rocks. I tried to kick branches off as I went. It was obviously well traveled by game and there were well developed bypasses around the blowdowns. At one point I got off track and ended up going down through a thicket in a wet area. As I came out of the brush at the bottom I saw two bull elk just ahead of me, grazing in a meadow. They didn’t startle so I got the camera out and then had to whistle at them to get them to raise their heads for the photo. They both had huge racks. I continued on the trail, basically contouring along at the same elevation, generally loosing the trail when it crossed a meadow and picking it up when it entered the trees on the other side. I finally came to the basin below the gully where I’d headed up in the morning (the source of the Klickitat, in the Yakima Indian Reservation.). As I came out of the woods I realized that the basin was full of elk. I counted forty sleek, fat, horse-sized animals slowly moving downhill as I approached. At least that many more went up and around. The whole headwaters of the Klickitat smelled of musk and elk piss. I bashed through the trees, crossed the creek on snow and contoured around the other side of the basin. I scared out a couple of deer before starting the switchbacks up to the top of the ridge. The trail was hard to follow as it got nearer the ridge top but in the scree there were terraces visible and I followed them until I hit the abandoned trail again just before the top. I stuck an old signpost upright to mark where I’d left the trail and then hopped over the snowbank at Cispus Pass and onto the crest trail. It was about 6:00 when I hit the crest trail and I sat long enough to eat a cliff bar then headed back for camp as quickly as I could. I covered the three miles in a little over an hour, stopping at a waterfall to wash my head and face. Odette and Will had waited for me for dinner. They had walked to Snowgrass Flats and back – less than a mile – and then sat around and read all day.

In the morning we packed up and headed down the trail to Cispus Pass. We took the abandoned trail and worked our way down into the basin. We met three climbers in the basin who were backing off after attempting Curtis Gilbert. At one point we saw a couple of cow elk. We smelled the others. We had a game going about the red paint blazes. Odette found the trail steep where it climbed up through the cliffs. I dropped my pack and came back to carry hers. At the top of the steep part there is a section that looks like it could have once been a road – wide and flat and nestled between a boulder field and some big slabs. We had as much trouble getting through the cedars and onto the ridge top as I had experienced the previous day finding the start. We rested on the top of the ridge and Will and I replenished our water bottles with snow. We headed down to Surprise Lake and after we got down the slope we realized that the trail cunningly stayed right at the edge of a boulderfield. We connected scraps of trail until we came out on a dusty, heavily used trail which we followed to Surprise Lake. At the lake we passed two men with horses, one of which was down on its side with the guys pulling on a leg. Neither the guys nor the horse looked very happy. We decided to continue, intending to find the junction with the other branch of the Surprise Lake loop, and to camp there instead of at the lake. We never found the junction but continued on a horribly dusty horse trail all the way down to the bottom of the valley. (Harvey warned us.) It felt much longer than it appeared on the map and the trail never got close to the creek after the outlet from the lake. When the trail finally returned to the creek we crossed a bridge and followed a way path into the brush to a marginally acceptable clearing next to the water. I tied young cedars down to give a free-hanging space for our foodbags. The tents were almost touching each other but we slept well that night, too.

The next morning we discovered that we were very close to the Conrad Meadows trailhead. This is how I imagine William O. Douglas country – dry and high and open – made for horses and for exploring. The valley opened out as we approached Conrad Meadows with really nice campsites and the river looked inviting. We had a slight dispute about which Conrad Meadows trailhead we were at, but Will and his GPS proved correct as usual. After walking about a mile on the road we found the Bear Creek Mountain trailhead behind a gate. We headed up and it was hot and dry but not as dusty as the previous day. We drank all the water we had and at about noon we finally came to a meager creek (really more of a seep) and I filtered water for all of us and an extra liter for myself. Less than an hour later, after crossing several much better creeks, we came to a nice camp site at the junction with the trail to the lookout. We rested but didn’t head for the summit. We hiked on a couple of miles in gorgeous meadows looking for an established campsite with water. We finally found water but realized that we’d missed the junction with the trail to the North Fork Tieton. We retraced our steps to the junction and camped there in trees. The bugs were bad and we must have looked pretty funny with all of our fleece and headgear when a group of horsemen rode up doing trail maintenance.

The next day we headed down to the North Fork Tieton. The trail was good and most of the blowdowns had been cleared. Downhill and with light packs we made good time. Shortly before noon the trail deposited us on the bank of the river – maybe 100 feet wide and with strong current and a lot of water. We looked around and found debris from a bridge. I crossed on a logjam downstream where there were big logs twelve or fifteen feet in the air. Will followed me when I came back for Odette’s pack. She didn’t want to be up that high and scooted herself across on smaller logs just above the water. Will and I laughed as she struggled with branches and cross logs.

The cars were ten minutes from the other side of the river. We rinsed off and changed shoes and shirts and then headed for Yakima with one full jar of trail mix and a bunch of extra cliff bars. We stopped for milkshakes in Natches and then took I-90 to Seattle. We got back to town just before 5:00 and headed straight for Dave Page in Fremont where I dropped off my boots. (The liners had completely disintegrated in the heels and they kept balling up and bothering me.) I had a climb of Snowfield scheduled for that weekend and the cobbler said she would have my boots ready for me in three days.

During the trip I took well over 100 photos. Will took almost as many as I did. When I got home I downloaded them and Odette ordered a few prints for her father. A couple of weeks later, while I was on a trip in the Picket Range, our house was burglarized and both my computer and Will’s were stolen. All of our photos of the backpack were lost with those computers. At the end of the month Will and Odette visited her father in Colorado and Will photographed the prints she’d given him. Here are the only images we have.

Here’s a book list.

The Picket Range – August 6 – 13, 2004

The mountains in the Picket Range got good names. Luna. Fury. Phantom. Terror. Challenger. Everybody that writes about them seems to start out by commenting on that. The Picket that they’re named after was Captain George Pickett – a distant relative of mine who became famous for Pickett’s charge at the Civil War battle of Gettysburg. (At least that’s what Beckey said in 1961 – by 1981 he’d started talking about picket fences.) Beckey’s Challenge of the North Cascades has two chapters about climbing in the Pickets and some of the most memorable lines in the book come from those chapters. “Stock in our venture soared” he says when they top out on Crooked Thumb. The tangles of Luna Creek elicited “Helmy … had visions of cooking bear flesh in Assyrian fashion … but I pictured meeting a mother bear with cubs.” You get glimpses of the range from the North Cascades Highway – look up Goodell Creek as you drive into Newhalem and you see the Chopping Block; look back while driving the grade up from Thunder Arm and you see the Northern Pickets.

The participants on this trip were:

During the summer of 2003 JH began talking about a week-long climbing trip in the Picket Range. He was disappointed in that the people he approached had already formulated plans and weren’t able to arrange schedules to accommodate his availability. JH began recruiting participants for a 2004 trip in January of that year. After suggesting the first week of August and getting commitments at least from AF, CR and me he encountered conflicts with family plans and had to reschedule the trip for the following week. JH invested significant energy in planning the trip. He called and emailed each of the other participants several times to confirm continuing commitment. He attempted to arrange hikes or climbs with each of them to assess their conditioning. He discussed his plans with several notable climbers who were very familiar with the range including Silas Wild and John Roper. He studied maps and guides before deciding on a route up Wiley ridge from Beaver Pass, a traverse of Luna Cirque to Luna Col, and an exit via Access Creek. He wanted to climb both peaks of Fury since there is evidently some debate about which is higher. Roper told him not to worry, just to get the East one. AF pointed out that even Beckey said it was eight hours from the East to the West peak. At a party at AF’s house several weeks before the trip CR asked my opinion and then said not to worry – we’d get realistic when we got into the mountains. I told him that I was worried about being able to keep up on something as strenuous as doing both peaks of Fury in the same day. But, I said, it’s like running from a bear – all I have to do is move faster than JR so that I won’t be the one holding things up. CR laughed and indicated he shared my sentiments. In the end JH settled on a trip that he envisioned as requiring nine days with seven days of travel and two days without moving camp. He called the other participants to explain his plan and we each accepted it. He said he thought we ought to bring ten days food. We all concurred. As the date of the trip neared he began broaching the idea of leaving Friday afternoon instead of Saturday morning.

A couple of weeks before the trip JH called the Ross Lake Resort boat service to reserve a water taxi to the Big Beaver landing. He determined that the service wasn’t available after 8:00 PM and contacted the other participants to organize leaving Seattle by 3:00 Friday afternoon. Since CR, AF and JR were not working this did not pose a problem for half of the group. On the Monday prior to leaving JH held a meeting at his house (a day after returning from a family trip to Wyoming.) The evening of the meeting JR called with a family emergency so the group that met included only five of us. Plans were reviewed and reconfirmed. JH, DG and I arranged to meet at 3:00 at the Greenlake park & ride; the rest of the group would leave an hour or two earlier, obtain a permit in Marblemount, and rendezvous at the Ross Lake Resort landing. An equipment list prepared by JR was discussed (and critiqued) and assignments for group gear were made. JH and DG would share JH’s big old tent, CR and AF would share a new single walled tent AF had recently purchased, and JR and I would each carry a bivy sack. JH tried his best to sell everyone on the benefits of aquasox. DG was volunteered to carry the first aid kit and was provided with a harness and helmet belonging to JH’s wife. I wanted to make sure we didn’t all bring water filters. JH said that he planned to use iodine pills and the others agreed that pills were the lowest-weight alternative.

During the next several days phone calls and emails were exchanged with last minute adjustments to accommodate JR’s decision not to participate. At 2:00 on a rainy Friday afternoon I left work in Kent, filled the gas tank of the car, and drove approximately 30 miles north to the Greenlake park & ride. DG arrived at 3:00 and loaded his gear; JH was a little late and had not packed his gear. He loaded loose gear, muffins and doughnut holes into the car and the three of us departed Seattle at about 3:15. JH reported that the weather was supposed to get better the next day and that he had spoken to the resort personnel to see if it was feasible to either take a boat in the morning or to rent a room for Friday evening. The answer in each case was no, and he was also informed that the boat would not leave after 7:00. He did learn, however, that Silas Wild stored his snow cat in the barn of the guy at the resort. I asked about JR, and JH said that he didn’t know much. He said that JR had told him earlier that he didn’t want to push too hard which he interpreted as meaning that JR had second thoughts about the strenuousness of the trip.

Although traffic was very heavy the carpool lanes continued to move until somewhere south of Everett where the entire road became clogged because of heavy rain squalls with thunder and lightening. JH became agitated but he was distracted when I challenged his assertion that the route through Darrington was shorter and resorted to adding mileage figures on the map to prove his point. I ate some of his doughnut holes. JH kept urging me to pass slower cars although he was careful to hedge it by saying that he knew it wasn’t the way I liked to drive. Later, on Highway 20, I twice passed long strings of cars (probably more than six in each instance.) JH believed that the construction east of Newhalem on Highway 20 stopped at 6:00 so he was distressed when traffic came to a stop. He was more distressed when it became obvious that cars were being moved in alternating convoys and that the eastbound group had just departed. JH pointed out that he and I were still in work attire and indicated that it was time to change clothes. The car immediately behind us had been the head of a long string passed just before entering Newhalem and the occupants appeared relieved when we stopped short of completely disrobing. I retrieved my sandwich from the cargo area and was eating dinner when the convoy began to move. I drove to the Ross Dam trailhead in my hiking boots. It was still raining lightly at the trailhead and JH directed DG to run for the landing and summon the boat while JH packed his gear. I cut strap holes in a garbage bag to use as a pack cover. It was at this point that I determined that I had not received the emails circulated after JR’s withdrawal and that I had been expected to bring a picket in addition to the ice screws I was carrying. I had packed a water filter, though, and a bottle of white gas. I had a 9mm rope, three ice screws, three hexes, crampons and a harness with half a dozen carabineers and slings. I had ten freeze drys, ten oatmeal packets and a couple of cliff bars and five ounces of trail mix for each of ten days. I also had five Toblerone chocolate bars instead of my usual Mars bars because of unfortunate melting tendencies discovered in the Mars (“Snickers with Almonds”) bars while on a recent family trip. My pack felt about the same as it had leaving for seven days in the Goat Rocks.

JH and I hiked to the landing together and met DG, CR and AF there. The others reported that they had called the resort and were told that a boat would be dispatched when the entire party had arrived. Money was pooled and a few minutes later at almost exactly 7:00, an aluminum power boat dashed across to the landing and we loaded it with packs and poles. Will, the boat driver, lectured us about the deadline for departing and was emphatic that someone in the group had wrongly insisted over the phone that they had been told they could arrive as late as 8:00. JH did not identify himself as the culprit. Will drove the boat very fast and did not slow down when negotiating a small gap in the log boom. The trip to Big Beaver landing took perhaps ten minutes. AF paid Will and arranged for a pick-up at 7:00 the following Friday. JH explained that he and AF had discussed getting out as early as Friday night instead of Sunday if the weather did not necessitate any layover days. He explained that he wanted to reserve a spot on the boat for the earliest possible return and that he planned to call the resort from a summit to adjust plans as we got further into the trip. Will said that cell phones would only work from the west slopes and only above 7,000 feet.

We hiked through the boat camp at the landing, around the inlet at the mouth of Big Beaver Creek, over the bridge and up the hill to Pumpkin Hill camp. We inspected a campsite near the water before settling on a larger spot on high ground in trees. As we hung food JH expressed concern that my food bags were too small and wondered if I was going to be hungry. It was hard to distinguish between drips from the trees and rain during the night but the new day dawned dry.

Breakfast was quick – JH shared his muffins. We started up the Big Beaver trail looking for a convenient place to stash some extra gear. AF and DG were carrying ropes. The first stop was about a mile up the trail where a big tree marked the first glimpse of the stream. A tarp, a pack cover and the muffin container were concealed behind the tree. JH talked to DG as they walked in front. I hung back and AF and CR brought up the rear. The next stop was just after 10 mile camp, followed by a stop at the side trail to the Luna Creek horse camp. JH was carrying several pounds of individually wrapped candies and cookies and was happy to share them. During the Luna Creek stop JH and AF consulted the route descriptions concerning the exit from Access Creek. AF reported that the ranger in Marblemount said that there was a social trail leading to Big Beaver Creek about a mile after the Luna Creek camp and that it was possible to cross on a log. We resolved to look for the way but nothing was seen that resembled a trail. There was another stop at the creek crossing with a view up to Luna at the beginning of the switchbacks. I pumped at the creek and offered the filter to DG who pumped for himself and JH. I had begun to experience rubbing on my heels where new repairs to my boots were contacting soft tissue. I also noticed that the soft insoles covering my orthotics were working off to the side, something I hadn’t experienced previously even on steep trails with a heavy pack. When I applied athletic tape and moleskin I found that a chocolate bar had melted in the top pocket of my pack covering my moleskin and other personal gear with brown goo. After another stop at a creek crossing the Beaver Pass shelter appeared. I had dropped my bandana and had to hike a quarter of a mile back down the trail to retrieve it. We concluded that there were likely mice in the shelter and continued a few hundred yards to the camp. There we selected the largest of several campsites and erected our tents. I changed from boots to tevas and broke the rubber ring holding the dead velcro together. JH strung his food-bag cord across the middle of the campsite and filled it with wet laundry. I attempted to wipe the chocolate out of the top of my pack. AF organized a game of hearts and then JH wanted to play bridge – which meant that he had to teach it to me. DG napped in his tent.

After about an hour in camp another climber appeared who indicated that he and his partner were camping at the shelter. He was hiking to the actual pass looking for a faint trail to the east which he believed led to a repeater site and the easiest route to the ridge. JH told him that he had been warned against going all the way to the pass. The climber from the shelter explained that they planned to camp at Eiley lake the next evening and to climb Challenger and hike back out to the pass the next day. JH expressed disbelief that they could get out that quickly. At dinner JH announced that all his freeze drys were the 40 oz variety so that when he opened a bag he had two open pouches to deal with. He expected DG to eat one of his pouches and to let him eat one of DG’s the next night. I noticed that CR was eating freeze dry repackaged in a seal-a-meal bag. CR also announced that his helmet was missing, apparently lost from his pack on the hike in. As we were eating another group of three climbers appeared, greeted us and inquired for JR with whom they had been corresponding. They were planning to climb Challenger and the North Buttress route on Fury and to exit via Goodell Creek. They had not seen the missing helmet. JH amused them with descriptions of the rude surprise awaiting the pair camped at the shelter.

In the morning breakfast was quick. CR announced that he was heading back and I gave him my bivy sack and rope bag to carry out. JH worked hard to convince him to continue. AF took his GPS and DG his stove. AF was carrying the whole tent plus a stove, a big bottle of fuel and a rope but rather than rearrange loads we agreed that he and I would trade off on the rope. DG had the other rope. We worked our way east from camp through light wet brush until we reached the steep slope of the ridge. We climbed straight up in thicker brush and cedar thickets. JH lost his balance while walking a large log and fell into devil’s club. It took considerable time to find tweezers and to pick the spines out of his hands. I took the opportunity to refresh the athletic tape on my feet. JH eventually taped his fingers and we continued. JH indicated that he believed that this would be the hardest day of the trip. I thought about the various hike books which suggested climbing this slope for the views into Luna Cirque. Just below a steep rocky step we heard frantic loud screams below us. We gathered that someone was getting stung by bees and it seemed like the screaming continued for a long time. Before we cleared the step the three climbers we met at the camp caught up to us. The leader of their group, climbing second, had been stung half a dozen times. The three, who we now dubbed the three amigos, were moving quickly and seemed to have survived the bees. We rested above the step. They continued up the slope and we passed them again a little later while they were having lunch at a spot looking into Luna Cirque. They, in turn, passed us while we were stopped for lunch a little later.

We continued up the ridge with spectacular views of Redoubt and Spickard and the Mox peaks. In the middle of the afternoon we descended several hundred feet to a small pond where we pumped water. Despite his preference for iodine JH was happy when DG pumped him a bottle that didn’t require a ten minute wait. We then climbed boulders almost back to the ridge crest and continued along the ridge looking for Eiley lake. We eventually came to a mezzanine cirque that separated us from a bowl (at about our level) which we assumed contained the lake. We heard voices below us and chose to descend intending to traverse below the cliffs rather than try to find a route above them. After descending several hundred feet we decided to make sure that we could get around the cliffs without going all the way to the cirque floor another five hundred feet below us. AF scouted the route and we eventually concluded that we needed to climb back up. Somewhere in the process AF asked me to take the rope for the first time that day. As we neared the ridge crest we saw another party although we couldn’t tell where they went. We found a large cairn and assumed that it marked the gully for the descent to the lake. As we inspected a steep dirty gully we heard the three amigos shouting to us that we needed to go higher. We knocked down the cairn, continued up past another bump and descended a dirty loose slot that took us to the lake.

We climbed out of the hole with the lake and contoured around on big boulders. It was late afternoon before we got to a still-frozen Wiley Lake. We still needed to climb and descend a ridge before arriving at Challenger Arm, the standard camp for climbing Challenger. We roped because the next slope was glaciated with bare ice at least at the bottom. AF and I were ready first and headed out tied in short with coils on our packs. It was getting late when we came to the crest of the ridge. The view was breathtaking – we looked across at Challenger and the wall of Luna Cirque. We were over 7,000 feet, higher than Luna Lake. The ridge seemed to drop a sheer thousand feet to the Challenger Glacier. We determined that there was no descent from our spot and AF pointed out that we evidently needed to climb another three hundred feet around a red bump and then descend on terrain of unknown difficulty before setting up camp. It was about 8:00 leaving us an hour of daylight. AF and I believed that if we continued we were likely to end up camping somewhere worse than where we were. JH arrived at our location after fifteen minutes and he did not want to hear our logic but wanted to push on. We argued for a while until DG indicated that he was exhausted and wanted to stop. JH acquiesced at that point and went to locate a tent site. The first order of business was to melt snow for water. AF got a stove going and I said I’d tend it. JH and DG set up CR’s stove but the seals on the fuel bottle were bad and when it was pressurized it sprayed gas all over the heather and a small fire ensued. I finished melting four liters of water then moved the stove to the burned patch. We ended up crowded into the narrow space between JH’s tent and a boulder where JH and DG were preparing to eat. AF had set up the tent and I moved my gear over to it. It was cold enough that the chocolate solidified and I was able to brush it out of the top pocket of my pack. We ate by headlight. AF installed a new o-ring in CR’s stove but when pressurized it sprayed again. JH carried on about the irresponsibility of not testing gear before leaving home. DG was chilled and moved into the tent. He said it was the wildest spot he had ever camped in. There were, in fact, a lot of stars out that night.

We were up at first light and left after a leisurely breakfast. It had not frozen during the night so the snow was soft and we did not use crampons. We roped for the climb to the notch and then descended unroped on slabs and snow to the right. We saw two rope teams climbing as we descended the ridge. We eventually came to the col at the base of Challenger Arm and found both flat tent spots and water. DG indicated that he did not want to climb so he and JH selected a tent site and JH scattered gear around. He instructed DG on how he wanted the camp arranged. I pumped water and left the filter with DG. I flaked out the rope and AF and I tied in and waited until JH got ready to go. AF led with JH in the middle of the rope. There were some spots where the snow was very hard but for most of the distance the slope was gradual, the snow was soft, and the scenery was incomparable. We passed some large crevasses and as we were approaching a steep slope below the upper section of the glacier we met the two guys from the shelter on their way down. They indicated that they had camped on the arm and that they intended to hike out to the pass that day. They seemed strong enough to pull it off. JH privately took back all of the things he said about them. They told us that they had found the bees’ nest on the way up the ridge from the pass and that they marked it with surveyors tape. The three amigos evidently saw the tape and hiked to it and got stung. We thought about the cairn marking the gully not to take above Eiley Lake. We continued toward the summit and stopped at the base of a steep knife-edged hogback to let the three amigos clear the slope. They indicated that they intended to descend into the cirque that afternoon. We climbed straight up the hogback and then balanced delicately on the edge as we walked over to the rock. The move down into the moat got my attention. There wasn’t much room at the base of the rock. I found a horn to hang my pack on and I belayed AF as he climbed to the summit. It looked to me like about three moves and AF made them look easy going around a bulge to the right and then up a chimney. When it was my turn I couldn’t see the sequence on the right so I found a hold and went over the bulge. It was really only one move. I climbed past AF to the other end of the summit rock so that there would be room for JH. We sunned ourselves for quite a while and AF called his wife for a weather report. I discovered that the antenna was broken off of my phone. We rappelled back into the moat and tied back in. I led the way back across the sharp edge and then down the hogback. I continued to lead the entire descent. Near the bottom I wanted to walk close enough to the rocks of the arm to see where the three amigos had camped and to see if there were better tent sites than the ones we had claimed. JH wanted to walk a more direct line and pulled on the rope and wouldn’t follow. We walked back to camp almost side by side dragging the rope sideways between us.

It must have been about 3:00 when we arrived at the camp. JH greeted DG by shouting “now that you’ve got camp set up we need to tear it down and get going.” I was astounded because I expected to spend the night on the arm and to move camp the next day. I challenged JH and we argued for half an hour about the futility of moving that day and about death marches. I reminded JH how late we’d gone the evening before and said that there was no way I wanted a repeat. I suggested that it was a safety issue if we pushed too hard. JH countered by saying that he wanted to climb past Luna Lake early in the morning before the sun hit the ice above it. I told him to look at the aspect of the slope – the only way we were going to get by the glaciers before the sun hit them would be to do it at midnight. AF said that he favored moving so I shut up. I was not physically tired. The climb of Challenger had been relatively easy. I was mystified by the need to move since it would not enable us to summit anything else earlier and since we had extra days. We had planned a day at Challenger Arm without moving camp and I hadn’t heard any reason to change. I felt like I had been left out when plans were changed.

Once the decision was made, though, I packed my gear quickly and pumped some water. I applied new athletic tape to my heels and used duct tape to secure the spenco to the orthotics. I used a couple of ice axes to lay out a rope in quarters, tied butterfly knots at the tie-in points, and then waited for JH to get organized and pack his gear. Rather than clip the butterfly JH had AF tie him in with a bowline. We hiked across the glacier, around a corner, over the rim of the cirque and then left the snow. We unroped and I put the rope in my pack. We started a long traverse on slabs and loose rock eventually descending into the upper fringes of brush and cedar. We weren’t sure where to head down but we knew that we would end up in cliffs if we turned too early so we kept traversing. JH kept asking what elevation we were at and repeatedly asked AF to get out the GPS and check elevation and position. Eventually AF and I realized that he simply didn’t know how to reset his altimeter and it must have been way off. As the sun went behind the cirque wall we were debating whether to climb up above a small set of cliffs or to pass below them. We climbed back up and then contoured around into a gully where we crossed a big stream at the base of a major waterfall. Descending on the other side of the falls JH slipped on loose rock and fell heavily. We rested a while in the gathering dusk and then picked our way down rocky stream beds between fingers of brush. The terrain was typical glacial moraine with piles of loose rock and rubble interspersed with slide alder. DG headed down a gully, the rest of us continued traversing in search of a more open route. AF eventually descended on a brushy rib. JH took the big gully and I took a smaller gully to his left. Eventually our gullies merged and I had to dodge his rocks so I moved over to the left again. Shortly after moving to the new gully I had to climb up to the bank to get around a drop off and I lost my footing and fell on my back. My pack hung into the gully with about ten feet of nothingness under it. I had grabbed an alder and found myself like an upended turtle, head down and without leverage to roll over. I finally swung my feet around and slid down into the gully landing right side up. My gully ended at the toe of the glacier and AF was there when I emerged. We walked down the snow noticing the rocks that had recently fallen on top of it. DG called to us saying that he had a tent site. We had been aiming for the trees beyond the moraine, but none of us really wanted to go any further than we had to. JH and DG kicked out a smooth spot in the larger flat area. AF and I did the same next door to them. We anchored the tent with large stones. DG walked half a mile to the stream and filled two water bags. I hung them on a big rock with a piece of webbing. We started the stove and JH put on his aquasox and walked to the stream to bathe. Once again we ate by headlight with AH and DG sharing one of the big pouches. I pumped water bottles from CR’s pot filled with water from the bag. All night long we listened to rock and ice-fall from the cirque walls.

Even though the sun did not penetrate to the floor of the cirque we woke early, had breakfast, packed and set out. We hiked to the trees and then up a raw moraine until we found a way to descend to the glacier. We hiked across the glacier on bare ice with a dusting of large and small rocks. As we got closer to the far side of the cirque it became impossible to stay out of boulders and we eventually found ourselves picking our way across the steep loose moraine above Lousy Lake. Underneath the rock was ice. The view of the snout of the glacier was fascinating. We put on helmets before climbing straight up the side moraine. I warned DG against following in my line, and then evidently almost clobbered him with a rock. The going was easier once we reached the ramp leading to the lake. We were in hot sun by the time we turned the corner of the ramp – the only spot with exposure to to the hanging ice. We rested at the lake and washed feet and heads. I applied new athletic tape to my heels. My feet were doing well even though we were going uphill again. I attributed it to the lighter pack – even though I was carrying the rope. We pumped water with DG once again pumping for JH. Leaving the lake for Luna Col we took a small rightward slanting ramp and then cut left up a narrow slot. This slot got steeper and headed in a waterfall, at which point AF bailed out to the right rather than lead up through the falling water. The heather he climbed next to the gully was steep enough that he rigged a hand line. I think we could have avoided it by continuing a little further on the ramp.

We reached the col about 3:00. JH suggested climbing Luna that afternoon. I told him that he didn’t know when to quit. He and DG claimed the primary tent site at the col – a sandy spot on which a floor of flat rocks had been placed as protection from a wet sandy puddle bottom. AF and I dropped our gear on slabs. I pointed out another spot to JH – a niche in the rock with just enough room for a tent and a floor similar to the site he’d claimed (only drier.) He said it was crappy. Between our tent sites there was a cleft in the rocks which contained a tarn with ice at one end and water at the other but JH scouted around the nearby snowbanks and found a spot where he could dig a hole and have a drip of water. He mobilized DG with a cup to fill the waterbags. We explored the col and relaxed before starting the stove and preparing dinner. We could see smoke from a fire to the east of us and discussed whether or not it was one of the fires near Chelan. It didn’t seem to be far enough away for that. We amused ourselves identifying peaks. I decided that I needed a day away from JH and announced that I wasn’t going to climb Fury. AF and JH didn’t try to talk me into joining them. We ate and JH broke out a one-pound bag of chocolate chip cookies that had been reduced to crumbs. AF and DG helped him finish them. After dinner AF and I pooled all of the climbing gear – runners, carabineers, ice screws, pickets, etc. AF was anticipating the steep snow and was worried about only having two pickets. He asked if he could take my ice axe as well. We decided that DG and I would climb Luna while AF and JH climbed Fury. I kept a rope, a couple of runners and a few carabineers. AF took the rest. As the sun was setting we reclined on the slabs by the tent and noticed a small rodent scurrying around. We decided that even in the absence of trees we needed to hang our food. AF secured one end of a parachute cord in the slab near our tent I strung the other end over the tarn and tied it to a rock on the other side. We clove-hitched a carabineer over the ice and hung all of the bags. The cord was right in the walkway but otherwise it was a good set up. In the dark we could see the glow of the forest fire.

I got up with AF and JH in the morning and had breakfast. AF was ready to go before JH got his stuff packed and JH went looking for something he thought was in DG’s pack. JH got impatient and pulled everything out of the pack and left it laying on the ground. He and AF hiked to a ledge on the knob next to our camp and then disappeared. Before they left I reminded them that we were way out in the woods and that DG and I didn’t have enough gear to come after them if they got into trouble. DG got up shortly after they left and had breakfast. He reassembled his pack and said that he’d been around JH before when he had summit fever, but never for a week straight. We hung out for a little while and then hiked off toward Luna. I carried the rope in my combination stuff-sack / summit-pack. The climb up Luna from the col is easy and we talked all the way up. I told my life story which I haven’t done in years. DG reciprocated (but showed a lot more restraint than I did.) We knew that we needed to drop to the west side of the peak a couple hundred feet below the summit but when we got to that point we were boxed in by a wall so we climbed on up to the false summit which we reached at about 9:00 in the morning. The views were glorious and we rested and looked for a while. Eventually we dropped perhaps 500 feet below a buttress and contoured around the peak on the west. We crossed a succession of ridges and gullies before we found a broad gray gully that led to the other end of the summit ridge. We climbed up the gully (which was loose and dirty) until it got seriously steep. At that point, maybe a hundred feet below the top, I headed for a ledge off to the left that looked like it would take me out of the gully and onto an arrete. Although the ledge was wide it was exposed and I asked DG if he was comfortable on it. He hesitated a little so I pulled out the rope and told him that I thought it would be best if we tied in. I did not ask for a belay but trailed the rope and protected the ledge against a pendulum with a couple of slings hung on horns. I belayed DG across and then assessed the pitch to the summit. I chose to climb straight up on a small face but quickly realized that I needed to be belayed to go that way. I backed off and we walked in coils up a ramp slanting steeply to the right which put us back in the original gully maybe a fifty feet below the summit. The final pitch to the top was a fun scramble with a couple of harder moves – mainly inside a chimney which felt very secure. I trailed the rope and belayed DG up after me. We were on top by noon, ate lunch, and admired the scenery. The smoke from the forest fire had been contained in the valleys in the morning but now it looked like a mushroom cloud. We were blown away by the view of the southern pickets and all of the cascade pass peaks. There was a big snow covered peak between us and Mt. Shuksan which I decided must be Bacon. We couldn’t see Ross Lake but we could see our descent route and the ponds in valley of Big Beaver Creek.

I decided that we would be better off rappelling from the summit so I rigged an anchor and threw the rope. I checked out DG’s carabineer brake rig and sent him down first. I followed and pulled the rope. Then I rigged another anchor and we repeated the process. We came off the second rappel a ways below the ledge we had used to exit the gully. We down climbed from there trying not to kick rocks on each other. We were back to camp by mid afternoon.

We hung out in camp, lazing in the sun, for the rest of the afternoon. AF had left his CD player but I didn’t feel like listening to music. I had the words to a Grateful Dead song stuck in my head:

“Standing on the moon
With nothing else to do
A lovely view of heaven
But I’d rather be with you.”

I re-read Tabor & Crowder. I toyed with the idea of dropping down to the red fin above the lake where they said there were good quartz crystals. I re-rigged the food bag cord so that it wasn’t in the middle of the walkway. I walked up to the ledge that AF & JH had taken. I poked around a little looking at the way we would head out the next day. I got my thermorest out of the tent and took a nap in the alcove that JH thought was crappy. I pumped water from the tarn under the foodbags. The afternoon went slow. Beckey says Fury should take 10 – 12 hours and AF & JH left about 6:00 so I figured that the earliest they could get back was 5:00. I started keeping an eye on the ridge line about then. I began to understand the anxiety Odette says she feels when I’m due back from a climb. At 6:30 DG and I decided that we ought to fire up the stove and have dinner so that we would have ours out of the way when AF & AH returned. We guessed that they’d return at about 8:00 and right on the button they appeared on the ledge and fifteen minutes later they were back in camp. They said that their climb was uneventful – they avoided the steep snow entirely. They said they’d seen the three amigos descending really steep snow on the other side of Fury. JH bathed himself in the tarn under our foodbags as the sun set.

The next morning wasn’t quite as early but after breakfast I pointed out the base of the buttress on Luna that we had rounded and described the gray gully to the top. AF and JH were up and back by 10:30. They reported that they had called the resort and confirmed that we wanted a boat ride from Big Beaver Landing at 7:00 the next evening. AF said that his wife was thrilled that he was going to get home early and that she wanted to spend the unexpected weekend backpacking. We packed our stuff and headed down and across the slabs below the col. The going was easy getting over to the ridge leading down from Luna. At a shoulder on that ridge we needed to traverse around the top of a cirque to the divide between Access and Luna creeks and that was not as easy. I felt light and sure-footed on the steep huckleberry and got quite a ways out in front. We headed down the other ridge to a saddle at the head of our descent gully. I got there first and could see that there were two branches. The upper (nearer) one looked like it would be easy to hike down but I couldn’t see the bottom of it so I couldn’t tell if it cliffed out. The other branch looked steeper and dirtier but I could see the whole thing. We headed to the second one and regrouped there. On closer inspection the gully was, in fact, steep and dirty. We talked about a handline but JH didn’t think it was necessary and took off down the slope. He reported that it was softer than it looked but he let loose with a shower of dirt and gravel with each step. We tied the two ropes together and tossed them using a tree as an anchor. AF went first with a prussic, followed first by DG and then by me. As we descended it was obvious that the other branch of the gully would have been the better choice and that the better route for descending our branch would have been the switchbacking track on the other side.

JH had sheltered behind some rocks while he waited for us. We regrouped again and then had to work our way across a huge scree-filled bowl trying not to kick rocks on each other. As long as we moved in parallel it worked but JH seemed determined to cut across underneath us heading for the upper end of the band of trees at the far side of the bowl. AF was convinced that there were big cliffs there and warned JH not to head that way. We eventually all took a climbers trail that descended the fall line to the gully draining the bowl which we hoped would take us to the valley bottom. It did although we had to move one at a time most of the way down the gully. We cut right at the bottom of the trees to find a trickle of a stream where we could rest and pump water.

When we finally got to the valley flats we rested some more. AF wanted to camp there since it was a nice site and the Nelson book described camping at that elevation. JH felt it was way too early to stop and guessed that we could make Luna camp. I suggested we move down the valley at least a little way and stop when we found something we liked. I also said that I didn’t want another evening where we walked until dark. We kept to the boulder fields on the right side of the valley at first but soon found ourselves squeezed into brush. There seemed to be scattered cairns. After returning to the creek from high in the boulders JH thought he was being attacked by bees and started yelling. DG tried to run and fell in the rocks hitting his chin. He gashed his chin pretty badly and bled all over, but because of his beard all we could do was apply direct pressure until the bleeding stopped. We crossed the creek and continued in the brush until we got to the trees. The going got much more difficult as we lost all semblance of trail and found ourselves in thick alder and devil’s club. We beat the brush for a long time and finally at about 5:00 we were in a dreary clearing way above the creek with devil’s club all around us and a small silty seep of water. I got out the filter and AF pumped water for himself and DG. He suggested that we ought to camp there because of the water. When I tried to pump for myself the filter clogged and I got less than a cup. JH didn’t realize that and asked if I’d pump some for him. I told him he’d have to use iodine because the pump was broken. JH didn’t want to camp there and kept pushing to continue. I told him I’d go on if we set a firm stopping time. He agreed that we’d stop at 6:30 unless we found something we liked before then. AF really wanted to stop where we were but he was gracious.

We continued in thick brush and eventually the flat valley bottom began to drop steeply which we knew would take us down to Beaver Creek and the trail. At 6:30 JH said “okay, I don’t want anyone to think I don’t keep my word, we’ll stop here.” We were in a totally inappropriate spot with no clearing for tents and no water. We looked at him and kept going. I realized that I was humming a Frank Zappa song about assholes. A hour later we were below the steep drop and cut back over to the water. Just after we rejoined the creek we saw what we thought was a sandbar on the other side. JH suggested that we go on to Luna Camp but we ignored him and found a log to cross on. It was twilight in the thick brush. The sandbar turned out to be an expanse of river cobbles, but there was a small sandy bank under big trees with room for the tents after we broke off some branches. We erected tents under the tree boughs and hung sweaty shirts up to air out. I flushed out the filter and pumped water for myself. I washed my feet and realized that they were doing pretty well – downhill travel and the lighter pack agreed with me. AF got the stove going and cleared away the devil’s club from a log. I gathered flat rocks for food and seating. We ate by headlamp with JH and DG sharing one of AH’s big freeze drys. There were tons of bats swooping around us. There were clouds of mosquitoes, too. I hung the foodbags from a small limber tree – they were touching the ground by morning.

In the morning we were up early, ate and packed. We left the creek in some of the biggest devil’s club known to man, bearing more or less due East in the belief that we would have the shortest route through the brush that way. DG and I had the ropes. In a very short way we came to a river which we deduced was Big Beaver Creek. JH was out ahead and he walked a log jam to an island and then, before the rest of us caught up, put on his aquasox, waded through swift water and disappeared into the brush. AF, DG and I retreated back across the log jam and decided to wade upstream from the island where riffles suggested the water was shallower. I put on my Tevas and used duct tape to secure the loose strap. AF and DG used duct tape to bind their flip flops to their feet. The water didn’t go much above our knees. On the other side we bashed through the brush, fanning out as we each picked our own line. As we climbed away from the stream the forest became more open and in a quarter of a mile we were back on the trail.

We headed for the lake with JH in the lead. He talked to DG, I came third and AF with his CD player brought up the rear. We stopped and regrouped at Luna camp. I took the second position for the next stretch. After some conversation about kids and families JH confided to me that his ex-wife was enforcing the letter of their parenting agreement and that if he wasn’t home by noon on Saturday he had to let his son spend the weekend with her. I wondered who her lawyer was. We stopped again just before10 mile camp and I pumped water. I suggested that if we got to the Lake before 3:00 JH ought to hike to the resort and get us a boat. He declined. We spread out after that stop and eventually we started meeting other people on their way up the trail, including a crowd of boy scouts with fishing rods. I stopped at the cache tree and washed my face and hair. We were all at the landing before 4:00. We dropped our packs and went swimming amongst the kayaks. Then we hung out for three hours. A helicopter did laps back and forth over us. DG and AF and I pumped water. At about 6:00 AF fired up the stove and he and DG ate one of their extra freeze drys. I decided to hold out for good food. (I brought back three freeze drys, half the Toblerone, a bunch of trail mix and half a dozen cliff bars.) JH was still working on his candies. The boy scouts returned and swam before their leaders called them away for dinner. At 7:00 sharp Will appeared with the boat and we trooped on board.

Will told us that the helicopter was re-supplying a trail crew further up the lake. He explained that the fire we had seen from Luna Col was near the highway east of Ruby Arm. He said that it had exploded on Wednesday but that it was still relatively small and was now contained. AF asked if he knew a mutual friend and he did. The rest of the ride back was quite friendly and revolved around old cabins, upcoming trips and where to eat in Marblemount. He threaded the needle in the log boom at high speed on the way back, too.

We disembarked and hiked the three-quarters of a mile uphill to the parking lot. I found a stuffed animal in the door handle and a fundamentalist christian tract under the windshield wiper. I attributed the former to CR. We had taken off our boots and changed shirts when suddenly one of the three amigos appeared asking if we had jumper cables. They had successfully exited down Goodell creek, found the car they’d left there and driven back to the Ross Dam trailhead only to encounter a dead battery. I dug under the pile of packs to get my jumpers and then refrained from giving advice while they hooked it up differently than I would have. In the end they got their car started but only after a shower of sparks. We loaded up and headed for Marblemount, congratulating ourselves on being prepared even if we carried too much crap and were slower in our advanced age.

Good Food was still open when we got there at about 8:00 and we ordered burgers. The three amigos showed up and we compared notes while eating. We were in the car and on our way to Seattle by about 9:00. At some point before Darrington we got a cell phone signal and I called Odette on AF’s phone. She told me that on Monday while we were climbing Challenger our house had been burglarized and our computers and iPods stolen. Will was upset because she wouldn’t let him buy a new computer until she talked to me. It wasn’t clear what I could do about it from Darrington As we approached Seattle at 10:30 JH started calculating the most efficient sequence for dropping people off. I was tired and not very polite when I told him that I really wanted to get home and didn’t feel like driving all over town at midnight. He agreed to call his wife. She met us at the Greenlake park & ride and took DG and JH home.
As Becky observed in Challenge of the North Cascades, “loveliness is paid for partly in the currency of suffering.” He didn’t say that the suffering had to be physical. Here are some images of the loveliness, here is a booklist.

PEAK BAGGERS:

WASHINGTON’S HUNDRED HIGHEST

People obviously climb for a lot of different reasons. There is a special group of climbers who climb, at least in part, to check off items on a list. In the late eighties and early nineties there was a legendary group of climbers in Seattle called the “Bulgers”. The Bulgers climbed hard, had an every-man-for-himself style, and signed summit registers with animal names. Many of them ended up working on a list of the hundred highest peaks in the state. This project was good for a lot of debate concerning the criteria for drawing up the list (what constitutes a discrete mountain, anyway?) and in addition to the Bulger list a couple of other lists also circulated. Here is a link to the Bulger list as published on the Boealps website in 1999, including a write-up of John “Lizard” Lixvar’s hundred highest. (Peggy Goldman’s book based on the bulger list isn’t nearly as interesting as Lixvar’s write-up.) Here is a link to the Jeff Howbert lists (home court / back court) that build on the work of Lixvar, John Roper and Steve Fry. Here is a link to the seminal article by Steve Fry in the 1983-90 Mountaineer “Annual”.

The list below is Fry’s list which I got emailed to me in 1993 without attribution by a guy who worked at Microsoft. You’ll notice that once you get past the top twenty-five or thirty you’re into some pretty obscure mountains.