The Chronicles of Gnarnia: Glacier Peak attempt May 24-25th 2014

Welcome to the North Cascades!

It was the best of plans, it was the dumbest of ideas. Memorial day means a three day weekend, AN EXTRA DAY TO SUFFER! So we set out to ski Glacier Peak. At 10,525 feet it is the 4th tallest mountain in Washington it also holds the distinction of being the most remote stratovolcano in the state. In 2003 the access roads to White Chuck and Suiattle River trails were washed out. Now the only feasible approach is the North Fork Sauk trail, which makes around 30 mile round trip to the summit. A nice little day hike! (thanks for that Miles)

Green is our route, blue was our intended summit line

Some perspective on location and size, Lake Washington and Seattle are lower left, Lake Chelan to the right

The idea was originally hatched much earlier in the winter by Theresa and Kristina, who have already had their fair share of volcano summit ski trips, clearly the others don't approach having a long enough approach to approach having a challenging approach. Knowing that I had climbed Glacier last August they convinced me that it would be a good idea to go back. Luckily for them I forget pain quickly and somehow actually believed it was a good idea. Finding other interested parties was not so easy, but Theresa did manage to rope her friend Erik in to discovering just how wet one can get their feet.

We got off to a great start on Friday night. I went to Feathered Friends to rent their uber-light vireo bag, with no hood and light insulation on the upper it's designed to wear with a down jacket and weighs a whopping pound. One snag, FF doesn't take deposits on debit cards and I don't trust myself with a credit card. So in the nice humid evening I RAN up the hill to the ATM at the Pemco building and ran back down with cash in hand. I went to pay the actual rental fee with my card, only to realize that I had left my card in the ATM. Shit. Thankfully Todd was great and cut down the deposit substantially so that I would still have cash for the weekend, Feathered Friends rocks.

I met up with the group a few minutes late from the debacle and we proceeded to play tetris in the back of a Saturn.

Beware, those are load bearing beer cans
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

From here it was on North to the promised land of Everett where we were shut down at one pub due to a massive line and ended up eating at the strangest classic movie themed restaurant imaginable. Once filled on half pound cheeseburgers we set out for the Mountain Loop highway. We set up our "car camping" tents in the empty parking lot with a light drizzle in the dark. Part way through pitching them headlights appeared, a couple who also had questionable wisdom were going to snowshoe the approach. I think our mutual reaction to each other was, "wow you guys are dumb too!"

The next morning we broke down camp and packed rather slowly, getting started around 8am.

Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Before we started to realize how heavy our packs were
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Registration for suffering!

Fern Gulley

After a few miles of un-eventful trail we arrived at our first crux. A wet slide avalanche had come from thousands of feet above and taken out the trail. It was quite recent as the area stunk of pine.

We have found the pine sol factory.

Warning, your pack is not a flotation device

Slide ran all the way to the river

We all managed to make it safely across without so much as dunking a foot in the water, you might think we had done this before. Further down the trail we found that a new bridge had been constructed since my last visit, quite nice.

THANK YOU!

Blow downs

After 5-5.5 miles (or way more then that in many people's opinion) we reached Mackinaw Shelter and took a short break to argue about who was getting the most sore shoulders. From here the trail takes steep switch backs with quite a few creeks running through the middle of the trail.

Trail navigation
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

At around 4,600 feet, after around 7 miles of hiking, we finally arrived at continual snow and stashed our delightful smelling trail shoes in a bag strung up a tree.

HEY THAT LOOKS LIKE SNOW

I was quite happy to be touring, until the slope steepened. Some recent amount of light snow, rain, and mush had turned the slopes in to a treacherous matter for touring. After numerous washout kick turns on steeper slopes I gave up, throwing boot crampons on and just kicked steps.

It's about to get dicey

Further up slope everyone else agreed with boot crampons. Erik took charge of breaking a boot pack up trending NE toward where the map told us White Mountain would be.

Gorillas in the mist

After minor debate about the best approach we had decided to ascend White Mountain and then traverse it's ridge to the east and ride toward the White Chuck glacier for camp. On paper this looked great. The snow was being quite difficult though, with randomly placed isothermal mush, plunge steps to thigh level, and some occasional ice under slush.

The sun came out as we ascended the ridge east

I am le tired, I think I'll take a nap
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Group shot with Red Pass in the background

After a brief break for food on some rocks we continued on to the summit of White Mountain with some delightful "mixed trekking". If you have never crossed rocks with board/ski boots and crampons on I highly recommend it, no really it's great, trust me.

Once we got up to the summit and looked east it was clear that this plan was not nearly as brilliant in real life. It appears that sometimes the westerly winds end up being whipped around north and other times south, forming a narrow ridge and cornices with steep slopes and large exposure below to either side. Considering the mushy snow, tired legs, and awkward carry of heavy packs we deemed this too dumb to attempt.
We pondered a descent to the north and then climbing slopes back to the east to attain White Chuck "glacier". With the mushy, impossible to tour snow, a thousand feet of vertical sounded like as much fun as running across a sea of tacks while being hit in the thighs with a lead sledge hammer and listening to Celine Dion. I was fine with the rest of this, but dear god I hate Celine Dion. Thankfully so does everyone else, we looked back to the south toward White Pass, a great camp site.

The promised land of White Pass

As we knew the weather forecast was bad, clouds had moving through, and everyone felt as though they had been carrying Andre the giant on their shoulders all day it seemed best to go make camp and just forget the summit attempt. WE ALREADY SUMMITED WHITE MOUNTAIN WITH ANGRY MIDGETS ON OUR BACKS, WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR!?

Onward to camp!

We descended the ridge with some crazy wet roller balls and slough in areas followed by a steeper rollover that was becoming a glide crack. Once at camp we consumed copious amounts of the finest freeze dried culinary delights that mountain house has to offer before crashing in our tents. No alarms. No alpine start. Pure bliss.

Home sweet home
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Sunday morning we awoke in a haze of a cloud. After briefly eating it was decided that naps were in order. I went back to bed hoping to at least warm up my impossibly soaked boot liners (wet from the outside FTW). Camp was broken down at around 10am and we AGAIN climbed White Mountain.

Kristina really wants to put her pack on
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Clearly excited
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Climbing in Scotland
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Some surprisingly good turns were made back toward the summer trail at 4,600 where our soggy shoes awaited us.

Much happier to be sliding
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

Theresa ripping the glop
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

While sloshing our feet in to the trail runners another great miracle happened, it started to RAIN! YEAH THIS IS THE NORTH CASCADES NOW!

We have clearly forgot that it's time to hike 7 miles
Photo provided by Kristina Ciari

The hike out was non-eventful, aside from getting soaking wet and me nearly falling off a bridge when my boot/binding caught on the hand railing.

While we did not succeed in summiting Glacier Peak we fully accomplished what every BC skier or climber strives to do in the North Cascades, suffer profusely. A trip well done!

On this note I leave you with some pictures of Glacier in another season, with more cooperative weather.