Wallowas backpacking loop

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Becky and I had been planning to take a week off around Labor Day weekend for the whole summer. All summer the weather just seemed to be one perfect week of weather after the next...our plans to spend a week hiking the Bailey Range traverse and climb Mt.Olympus seemed like a sure thing.  But....as luck would have it, we ended up with one of the worst weeks of weather coming in for our vacation.
We scrapped our Bailey range plans...we thought briefly about just climbing Olympus, but in the end we tossed the backpacks in the car and headed for eastern Oregon, hoping to squeeze an extra day of sunshine out of a forecast that looked rather wet after Labor Day.
The Wallowa River loop is a rather popular 40-ish mile hike up one fork of the Wallowa River and out the other, starting/ending at the Wallowa Lake trailhead just outside of Joseph, OR.  We'd pass by a bunch of lakes, cross over a couple 9000ft passes and hopefully hike up Eagle Cap and the Matterhorn along the way.
Day one was a short hike, with the majority of the day traversing Washington State and arriving at the trailhead by early afternoon.  We hiked about six miles up the East fork of the Wallowa River to Aneroid Lake and settled in for the night.
 Day two, we left the lake, passing by a large compound of cabins...not sure how they're allowed to be maintained in a wilderness area...there were marks on the USGS map for mines at the head of the lake...could be that the structures were grandfathered in as previously private land under an old mining claim?
We climbed out of the trees into arid sub-alpine terrain and were at Polaris Pass (9,000ish ft) by mid-morning. The view across to the heart of the Eagle Cap Wilderness definitely reminded us of the Sierras or the Enchantments...not so sure about the Wilderness' nickname of 'Oregon's Swiss Alps' but it definitely is different than the heaps of volcanic rock in the Oregon Cascades.

The trail down from Polaris tests the patience of anyone who typically refuses to cut switchbacks. Its only about 2000ft down, but your legs barely feel like they're going downhill because the gradient is so gentle.  Finally we hit the valley bottom, refilled our water bottles and continued on to Frazier Lakes.
Despite the scorching afternoon heat we hiked another hour to Glacier Lake and it was well worth it.. This place reminded us of Virginia Lake in the Sierras...one of our favorite places on the John Muir Trail.   We quickly found a little lakeside campsite and spent the rest of the afternoon reading, lounging, and attempting to swim in the frigid water.
Our plan for the next day was to hike from Glacier Lake directly to the saddle between Glacier Peak and Eagle Cap, which would be miles shorter than hiking over Glacier Pass, down into Lakes Basin and then back up via the trail on the other side of the mountain.   The only bit we weren't sure about was a small section of hiking to gain the ridge...from our vantage point we couldn't tell if it was an easy hike or a loose scramble up a bunch of stacked choss.

Day 3- we left camp and instead of the directissima to the saddle between Glacier Peak and Eagle Cap we hiked up to about 8,600ft and traveled west cross-country around to the usual climbers path to the top, still miles shorter than the all-trail option, but a little longer that making a bee-line to the ridge.   Once on top it was obvious that the route from the Glacier Peak saddle would've been a cake-walk.....next time!
We had the top of Eagle Cap all to ourselves....nice views in all directions, but we didn't spend too much time on top as a line of cauliflowery clouds were marching our way.   By the time we reached Lakes Basin the sky was mostly overcast...changing weather definitely on the way.
By mid-afternoon we'd reached Horseshoe Lake.  Took a bit of time to find a campsite as we were now dealing with labor day crowds, but eventually we found solitude on the far side across from the trail.

Day 4- Overnight it had rained pretty consistently and we had some thunderstorms in the distance, and it was still showery in the morning.   We got enough sunshine in the late morning to dry everything out and get packed up, heading down the West Fork Wallowa River trail.   Waves of drizzle came through but we had enough sucker holes of blue sky that we went ahead and took the fork on up towards Ice Lake instead of staying in the valley bottom and hiking out to the trailhead.
1500ft of climbing later, and only about 500 vertical feet to go, the sky just opened up..rain jackets on and time to decide whether we really want to camp in the pouring rain or not.  Surprisingly, none of the day hikers we'd ran into had looked at a recent forecast so our four-day old weather forecast left us wondering if our chance of showers/thunderstorms was now solidly a bad forecast.  
So, we wussed out....we knew we were less than three hours of hiking from the car, and a motel, and the Terminal Gravity Brewery so we started down.  We'll hike the Matternhorn another time...and given that the Wallowas are a pretty decent backpackers alternative to the Sierras with a much shorter drive, we'll probably be back one of these days.

Tuck & Robin Lakes backpacking trip

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Left all the heavy climbing gear and ski gear behind and opted for a nice mellow backpacking trip this weekend.   About eight miles from the Deception Pass TH up the Cle Elum valley brought us to Robin Lakes.   Nice views all up and down the Cascades and some wonderful scenery of exposed granite, subalpine trees, and clear water.
I guess we've been spending more time than we realized in National Parks (camping limitations and no puppies on trail) this summer because we were a little taken aback at the number of hikers with dogs and there were certainly quite a few campers up at the lakes, but most folks were quiet and were in search of their own little chunk of solitude.
Sunday morning we hiked up near the top of Granite Mountain to get some more nice views north to Glacier Peak and east to Mt.Stuart, then we packed up camp and headed on down.   Sure is nice to just carry the backpacking gear sometimes and leave the heavy stuff back at home.

Mt.Adams with uncle John

Becky and I have been wanting to get out on a climb with my uncle John for a while, but last summer came and went without us coordinating for a trip, but this summer we all made it out for a climb of Mt.Adams.
John just started climbing a couple summers ago and he hadn't been to Adams before, we figure it would be a good intro to volcanoes that are taller than his previous highpoint of Middle Sister.
We all met up in Portland and carpooled to Adams.   A crack of noon departure from the car got us to the 9000ft bench called 'the lunch counter' by late afternoon.  Fortunately, we'd had cloud cover during the entire hike up so we weren't nearly as dehydrated and cooked as I thought we might be.   John sacked out early and Becky and I watched the sun set and had a late dinner.
Up around 5am the next morning, the weather was perfect.  We left camp around 6:30 and joined the conga line of hikers already heading up the mountain.   We made good time and were at the false summit earlier than expected.   A short break for some water and food, and then on to the top.  We reached the summit by late morning and enjoyed the party like atmosphere with about a fifty other climbers.
Right from the summit there was a well established glissade path, and aside from a short walk across the flats to the false summit, almost the entire descent was done sliding on our cabooses :)

By early afternoon we had camp all packed up and were on our way back to the car.  A couple more short glissades and a hot dusty trail and we were on our way home.    And just like every trip to the southern Cascades, Becky and I stopped at the Woodland Burgerville for cheeseburgers.

Great to get out with you John!   congrats on your first Adams climb!

 

 

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Mt.Baker Squak glacier ski

 

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Took the skis out one last time this summer... Becky and I joined Amar for a climb/ski of Mt.Baker via the Squak glacier.   Good one to end the ski season with!

Snowfield Peak, North Cascades

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The forecast for the long 4th of July weekend was hard to believe...looked like pretty nice weather in the mountains all four days. I'd already gotten the Mt.Rainier monkey off my back the weekend before, and Becky was interested in something other than Rainier, so we figured we'd go check out somewhere new.

The Isolation ski traverse (from Cascade Pass Rd north to Hwy 20)  has long been on our to-do list. We knew the snow coverage was already gone for this season, so no ski traverse, but we could go head to the Neve glacier and check the area out on foot so we have a better idea of the terrain if we ever get to ski the Isolation and finish it via the Neve and Colonial glaciers.

So we found ourselves at the Pyramid Lake trailhead alongside Highway 20 at the depressingly low starting elevation of 1100ft.  I think Becky had carried a mountaineering pack out of a lower trailhead, at Whitehorse Mountain, but this was plenty low.

The first couple miles clicked by quickly. Up to Pyramid Lake, and the end of the maintained trail.  From there the 'climbers path' bashes its way through the forest at an amusingly steep pitch.  The path was fairly easy to follow and after several hours of climbing up small rock bluffs, hanging off of roots and branches, we hit snowline and got some nice views.  

Foreshortening is a funny thing. From the highway below, the snow traverse below Pyramid Peak to the Colonial glacier looks very steep. In reality, it was a mellow, scenic, straightforward hike on snow.    Up onto the flats of the Colonial glacier, past a few folks camped out for the weekend and on up to the col between the Colonial and Neve glaciers. Clouds came and went and largely obscured our view. We had dinner, read our books and went to sleep early hoping for clear weather Friday.

Friday morning we had even more clouds, but we packed up and headed across the Neve glacier towards Snowfield. Several groups had gotten a much earlier start and as we passed them by on the way down, they told us they'd topped out in a whiteout and had zero views. Fortunately the weather started to clear a bit as we got off the glacier and started up the climbers path to the top.  

The trail wrapped into a chimney with easy scrambling up to a prominent notch on the west ridge.  From there it was a short down-climb and 200ft of more scrambling up to the summit. We were joined by a couple of friendly climbing rangers who showed up a little while after us and we enjoyed a sunny, windless summit.  We got some occasional views out towards the McAllister glacier and over towards Colonial, but not the sweeping panorama that we'd hoped for.  

Back down to the glacier for some lunch and then we slowly descended back into the clouds. Camp was a socked-in mess, so it was back to the tent for another twelve hour nap.  

Saturday morning had the best weather so far, but we were on our way out. We caught some nice views of the Southern Pickets before descending into the forest and bashing our way through the brush to Pyramid Lake and the car. Didn't quite get the views and warm, alpine lounging that we'd hoped for, but it was fun to see a new part of the North Cascades.

Mt.Rainier, climb & ski of the Emmons glacier route

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Dulera, Asmanex, Singulair, Fluticasone, Albuterol...somehow, for some reason, my lungs over the past few years went from having a minor issue with exercise induced asthma, to being... well... damaged goods. I used to be able to knock off Rainier and if I forgot my inhaler...no big deal.  Nowadays, I feel like I'm carrying a small pharmacy in my first-aid kit. After experiencing some rather bad altitude sickness for the first time ever in Nepal this fall, I really wasn't sure what a Rainier climb was going to feel like.

I took a shot at the Fuhrer Finger route in March...conditions were beyond perfect, but I was feeling maxed out trying to keep up... so one of the climbers who wasn't feeling so hot and I skied down a couple hours short of the summit.

Since then, we've had plenty of nice weekends to play in the Cascades and Becky and I have skied a lot but conditions never seemed quite good enough for another Rainier attempt, at least when I had the free time.  Its been a monkey on my back to take another shot at it.

This weekend the upcoming heat wave meant the freezing level would be above the top of Rainier, but the forecasted 50mph wind on the summit meant there probably wasn't going to be soft snow up high. Ross was game for taking a shot at it, so Saturday morning we headed on down to Rainier.  We'd changed our previous climbing reservation a couple weeks back to the 29th and 30th so no problemo getting a camping permit at Camp Schurman for the night.

Saturday we put-putted our way up the trail into Glacier Basin, up the Inter Glacier, and over onto the Emmons Glacier.  Spent the rest of the afternoon melting snow, re-hydrating, and resting our legs.  There were maybe four parties of skiers and a dozen or so groups of climbers...the climbers would all be leaving around midnight, the skiers anywhere between 4am and 6am to catch softer snow in the afternoon up high.

Sunday morning dawned warm, calm, and clear...we loaded our packs, I took my assorted asthma meds and away we went. A slow and steady grind over the next 6 hours up a never-ending bootpack with the occasional crevasse to step over and we were nearing the top. We'd stop from time to time to let a descending party of climbers scoot by on the cattle path, and we'd grab some Gu packets and water.   The wind continued to get worse and as we climbed it went from t-shirt weather, to windbreakers, hats, then winter gloves and goretex.

I really wasn't sure about skiing the snow that we were passing by...the Emmons route isn't steep at all, but the wind was keeping things quite firm. About a thousand feet below the summit we saw the first group of skiers and snowboarders descending. The lead skier was going surprisingly fast given the conditions and just below us he crashed and started sliding. We later found out that both his bindings failed...the toe pieces ripped from his skis and left his skis without runaway leahes...which explains why his boards just kept skittering downhill and dropped into a crevasse below. He came to a stop...stood up, and began putting on his crampons and getting his ice axe out. His partners were transitioning from their skis and boards to crampons as we passed by...hopefully they were able to retrieve the skis.

As we neared the top, we ran into another group of skiers we'd met at Schurman the day before...they were skiing how I like to ski...nice and in control. Ross gave them a bit of advice about swinging out onto the Winthrop as he'd done last year to avoid the steepest bit of the upper Emmons where we'd seen that fellow take a spill.

Down jackets on and a quick scamper up to the crater rim and we'd made it! I was ready to get out of there.. my lungs were not happy with the thin air, but the Diamox I'd taken earlier kept the mountain sickness away.

The snow near the crater was reasonably soft, good enough to give it the ski descent a whirl, so crampons and rope were put away and we clicked in to our skis. A thousand feet of careful turns got us past the worst of it and we finally got to softening snow. We had one huge crevasse with a rolly-polly snowbridge that we couldn't easily ski across, so we roped up and belayed each other across it, then back on the skis for a long slide down to camp. Down jackets were stowed, then the windbreakers, then the wool hats. By the time we were on the last thousand feet to camp, we were back to t-shirts.

We melted a couple liters of water, packed up the overnight gear, and then slid out of camp towards the Inter glacier. Another few thousand feet of skiing and we were back in Glacier Basin...skis off, running shoes on and hiking the three miles back to the car.

 

Rainier- Summerland to Tamanos ski traverse via Cowlitz Chimneys

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write up by Becky-

Pete and I spent Saturday doing a delightful loop on Rainier up to Summerland, over Cowlitz Chimneys, and up and over Tamanos.

Left the Frying Pan Creek TH at 8:20 and started hiking up towards Summerland. The nice bridge across Frying Pan Creek is pretty trashed so we had to head quite a way upstream to find a suitable crossing. The crossing was suitable. The thinning snow along the edges was not. One fully submerged and drained ski boot later, we got back on our skis and continued on our way. After we left Summerland, we didn't see anyone else the rest of the day. The long gentle traverse east towards Cowlitz Chimneys held enough snow to just barely squeak through on skins. When we'd skied this traverse back in 2008, the last slope to the Chimneys was bare and we had to scramble up a slope of surprisingly compact scree/rubble...fortunately this time we had a tiny little patch of continuous snow that let us ski right up to the top of the saddle. The entrance to the Cowlitz Chimneys run was predictably blocked by big, saggy cornices, but luckily, up slope on the saddle, we were able to find a non-corniced spot to slide in. We'd carried a rope back in 2008 to rappel the cornice but didn't carry one this time, so we were happy to find a non-jump entrance, or an obstacle big enough that would force us to head back the way we came.  The snow was a little mushy and very bumpy from all the cornice-fall, but if you stuck to the margins on skiers left, it skied pretty well.

We skied and booted up continuous snow out of Needle Creek drainage and over towards Owyhigh Lake. We skirted around the bowl in Kotsuck Creek drainage and tried to retain as much vert as possible to assist us with our climb up Tamanos. The entrance to the main chute on the north side of Tamanos looked good, but we couldn’t see past a constriction about 100 feet downslope so we hemmed and hawed for quite a while about whether to go for it. Pete finally decided to slide in for a closer look and was pleased to discover continuous snow all the way down. There are two main constrictions and they are getting narrower, but it should be skiable for a little bit longer. With the exception of some rocks peppering the slope, that chute had the best snow of the day!

We veered right out the bottom of the chute and were able to slide and side step our way straight to the Owyhigh Lake trail where we racked the skis and boots and hiked the remaining few miles back to the road, emerging at 6:20. The trail we came out on put us about .6 miles from our car so Pete graciously offered to jog back to get it while I lounged on a rock, reflecting on a great day.

Finally up to the North Cascades Hwy for some skiing

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This spring has been a bit of a bust so far.... a few failed trips, a couple colds between Becky and me, and some weekends spent doing homework for various continuing education requirements and we pretty much wrote off the month of April.
Seeing that Saturday's forecast looked decent, and that it would be followed by a week of wet, cool weather in the Cascades we wanted to get out and ski something....anything...just so long as it wasn't skinning/skiing laps at a closed ski resort for a few hours of exercise (like we'd done the past couple weekends).
We barreled out of town Friday night and were snoozing in the back of the Subaru at Rainy Pass by midnight.  Up at 5am and heading towards Lake Ann by 6am, we figured we'd go check out Black Peak.  I don't think there'd been freezing temperatures at pass elevations for a couple weeks, so the snow was soft from the get-go...made for easy skinning but we wondered what the snow would be like once the sun peeked out from the clouds.
By late morning we'd done the two mile traverse from Heather Pass to Wing Lake and started climbing towards the south col. Skis on the backpacks and helmets and axes out at the col, the south chute that I'd booted up before unfortunately had a couple melted out spots, so we climbed a chute off the left that looked like continuous ski from up high.  It was reasonable calf-knee deep post holing up the slope with the occasional melted out hole that we'd find when we'd drop waist deep into the snow.
We reached the top of the continuous snow, about 200 vertical feet from the top, around noon.   Not wanting to stumble across the summit ridge to the top in our ski boots, and not wanting to delay out descent any further, we called it a day there....a few quick pictures of Goode, Logan, and the rest of the North Cascades panorama to our south and then it was time to go.   The snow was sloppy but a bed surface of perfectly skiable snow was only a foot or two below the glop.  We'd just traverse the slope, ski cut off all the loose snow and let it rumble downhill, then ski the firmer snow underneath.  
From the south col back to Heather Pass, it was herky-jerky moisture saturated snow...not particularly good skiing, but hey it was a sunny day in the North Cascades and the quality of skiing came a distance second to just being out.
We made quick work of the short climb from Lewis Lake back up to Heather Pass and then had a pretty quick descending traverse back around to Rainy Pass and the car.
As usual for any North Cascades trip, we finished the day in Marblemount at 'Good Food' eating burgers in the sunshine....I think Becky enjoyed that almost as much as the ski tour.

 

busy weekend... Alpental to Granite Mtn traverse

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Alpental to Granite traverse-
Becky and I had plans to do the traverse from Snoqualmie Pass to Granite Mtn a few days ago when Saturday's forecast looked a bit sunnier, but we figured we might as well give it a go today despite the less than sunny weather.

One of these days we'll try the traverse with Kaleetan Peak thrown in, but we figured the extra 1600 vertical feet to get it would make the day long enough we'd be getting out after dark, so we opted for a slightly tamer route.  From Alpental we skied over Bryant Col, down to Melakwa Lakes and then followed the Pratt River to about 3500ft.  From there we climbed a divide and descended to Tuscohatchie Lake and began a long, mellow climb towards Granite Peak.

Visibility on the top of Granite was awful, but we had a gps track to follow and snow conditions were quite safe...so we gingerly skied down the south side in mostly whiteout conditions and then began to find much nicer snow and better viz once back in the trees.  Eventually the open space between the trees changed to slide alder between the trees and the snowpack got thin enough that we racked our skis and hiked the remaining bit to the car via the hiking trail.

Fun tour, a good adventure...hopefully next time we'll have some views.  

Mt.Rainier, Nisqually chutes

We'd rather be skiing powder this time of year, but its hard to complain about a stable snowpack, a 9,000ft freezing level and sunny weather up on Mt.Rainier.  Becky and I toured up to Camp Muir and skied some rather variable snow down the first 1500ft to the entrance to the Nisqually chutes. As we hoped, the snow had softened nicely and made for fun turns back to a very crowded Paradise parking lot.

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