The moon over the mountains -- Cashmere, perhaps? From right outside Leavenworth.
Cannon Mountain, NW Ridge attempt
solo, February 19, 2006
I haven't been doing much climbing over the last year, because of family priorities. The fact that there's been two uninterrupted months of rain has kept me (and most everyone else) out of the mountains as well. So with good weather returning, when I got an email from Aaron suggesting a climb for the weekend, I was pretty jazzed.
Unfortunately, by the time I got back to him, and he got my message, he'd made other arrangements. So I went ahead myself. I'd seen the North Couloir route in Jeff Smoot's book "Climbing Washington's Peaks" and thought it looked pretty interesting, and might make a good solo outing.
Cannon Mountain is near Leavenworth, part of the mass of big mountains around Cashmere Mtn, Colchuck, Dragontail, etc. It doesn't stand out at all, because it's not very steep, and is pretty much invisible from the road. But it's on the 'top 100' and it seemed like worth at least taking a look at.
I woke up at 4:00 AM (it was way too cold to go the night before and bivvy at the trailhead!) and headed out after a couple of stops, and got to the trailhead and was heading up the road at around 7:45. The road was closed, of course, snowed in heavily. I'd considered bringing my mountain bike to ride up the road. I don't have much experience riding on snow, but it was pretty well packed down by snowmobiles, and I expect it would have gone okay.
I got to the Stuart Lake trailhead a little after 9:00, and put on snowshoes to continue up. There's a gated fire road that is on the north side of the parking lot (I'd noticed the gate in the past, but never knew where it went.)
Snowshoes were essential; the snow was powdery and not at all consolidated, which I guess is what you'd expect, being so cold. There were some ski tracks going up the road.
The road is easy to follow for a while, aside from a washout and patches of slide alder. You head up the road for a mile or more, heading east, then the road switches back west. From here, the slide alder is much worse.
At some point (a bit like Sulphide Glacier on Schuksan) you leave the road and head off up the hill. I wasn't clear on where exactly that would be; the route description mentioned a washout, it was hard to see one. The ski tracks headed off up the hill into the trees at one point where the slide alder on the road was really thick, so I decided to follow them, wading into the snow. It was completely unpleasant, slow, arduous work, made more so by the fact that I'm not in that great of shape these days.
Eventually I got far enough up to see that I was on the wrong side of the couloir; I was supposed to be on the west side of it. So, I slogged back down the deep powder, back to the road, and thrashed my way through the slide alder desparately wishing for a machete.
At what appeared to be more like the proper location to leave the road, I headed back up the hill. An ice axe, and in fact ski poles, were completely unnecessary here, My hands were busy pulling on tree branches, to suppliment the lack of traction in the snow.
I managed to get up to the open slopes of the Northwest Ridge. It was clear that the North Couloir was going to be a waste of effort; it wasn't going to be at all consolidated or climbable, it would be a bottomless snow bath. So, I adjusted my goal to the NW ridge.
It was a gorgeous day, a crystal blue sky, not a cloud in sight. I got some good views of the east face of Stuart and finally got a good view of Cashmere peak, which Alex and I climbed last summer.
Between the thrashing around in the slide alder and the misbegotten first attempt up the hill, I had used up a lot of time, and would still have several more hours to go. It was quite nice walking in the sun, up the 20 degree slope, but at 1:00, I was only at 5500', which meant I had another 3+ hours, more or less, before I'd get to the summit. I didn't feel strongly about this summit, and I was kind of low energy anyhow, so I turned around and followed my tracks back down to the road.
After the switchback, I looked down the hillside, and could see the approach road down at the bottom of the valley, and it seemed pretty clear that just dropping down the hill made a lot more sense than hiking another mile west, then a mile back east. the catch is that for most of the way, the road is on the other (north) side of the creek from me, and this was not what you'd call wading weather. But I imagined I could see that the bridge was right down there, pretty much below me.
So, I headed down the hillside, negotiating down a gully to avoid getting cliffed out. And, ended up in the valley by the creek, the road ten feet on the other side of it. I had to go east for fifty yards or so before I found I tree I could cross. It was interesting down in the river bottom, though; there were all sorts of animal footprints -- what looked like mice, and groundsquirrels, and a coyote, and prints that looked like a domestic cat.
Back on the road, I took off my snowshoes and gaiters, and headed down the road back to the car. Out of the shade, it got cold enough that I needed to stop and put on a coat. There were a surprising number of people there, both heading up (at 3:00 in the afternoon?) and down, and even some dogs. Dogs, I though, were not allowed on these trails, but I certainly don't mind them.
Back in the car for the long drive home -- made longer by stop-and-go traffic for several miles around Goldbar -- and pizza with my family.
Equipment notes: It's nice to have a car that gets good mileage. That old Escort wagon isn't the most comfortable vehicle for long trips, but it's nice to be able to drive to Leavenworth and home, and still have 1/3 tank of gas to go to work the next morning.