The upper mountain at the end of the horizontal ridge
The climb started out was well as I could have hoped for. I left the house by about 6:00, stopped for gas on the way up, and was on the trail by 8:00. I packed my ice tool along for no better reason than I own it, so I might as well. It took a half hour to get up the road to the trailhead, and another 40 minutes to Lake Metan. I was at the bottom of the first snow field by about 10:00. As I got up to the bowl, there were two guys just descending the bowl, the people who's footprints I'd followed up to the snow. Turns out they’d spent the night, and got an early start. They turned back, they said, about 50 feet below the summit because the conditions were so poor. So, I was going to get the mountain to myself today. There’s a thrill of selfishness when that happens, combined with some fear of consequences: if I have to blow my whistle, no one’s going to hear me.
I put on my crampons, gaiters and sunglasses, and headed up the bowl with my ice axe. In previous attempts (this was my third) this has been pretty obnoxious, with soft snow, but it was quite nice; the snow was very firm and stable. Towards the top at the pass, it got so steep and the snow so hard that I pulled out the ice tool, and double tooled all the way up. It made the ascent a lot easier, though the shape of the head makes it a little uncomfortable to hold onto in the piolet position.
I basically slogged on almost nonstop most of the day. Up onto the pass, then up the steep face, a hundred feet or so (much higher than I remembered last time with Max) at about a 70 degree slope, then you see the ridge leading to the upper mountain.
It looked to me like the simplest route would be to go to the end of the ridge, then cut across the snow face up and to the left, and through that thin diagonal couloir, then diagonal back to the right, which should put you right about on the summit. In retrospect, that might have been a more practical plan, but it seemed prudent to follow the footprints of those who’d gone before me, and who, presumably, knew more about the route and the shape of the mountain.
Turns out that the view of Pugh you see from the highway is from the west (of course) but the normal route goes up the north side. That’s good because the steep parts are mostly shaded, but it also means that a lot of them on the upper mountain are just unconsolidated powder snow, and scary as hell.
I followed the footprints of the guys I met below, the only footprints I saw on the mountain. I guess it snowed a fair amount earlier in the week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a walk along a ridge, as I’d hoped, it was constant up and down, and really slow going. No walking along with a water bottle in one hand and ice axe in the other. There was an interesting wooden construction about halfway along the ridge, what looked like a windlass left over from the days that there was a fire lookout up here. Really weatherbeaten.
I stood there for a few minutes, afraid to continue and afraid to go back, and unwilling to just give up. They’d said that they stopped 50 feet below the summit; it looked to me like this tough spot might be only another 20-30 feet long, then I’d be to an easy section that might lead me to the summit, and I hated to give up.
Finally it occurred to me to see what happened if I just cut away the crust. I hacked away with my ice axe, off to the left, and dug myself a trench to climb up. I was pleased to discover that I was able to make progress, climbing up at about a 45 degree angle up the slope. The crust was hard enough that I was able to chop handholds for myself as well. There was a dicey spot where I had to switchback and cut my trench with my other hand. I got off the slope, feeling pretty gratified with myself, but dreading the descent. Unfortunately, I was nowhere near the summit; there was still a good ways to go. There was bare rock here, a fair amount of it, and I was able to follow what looked like bits of the summer hiking trail, scrambling up rock gullies and up more steep powder snow slopes. Each time I came to what looked like the last bit below the summit, there was more rock above me. Scratching around on the rock with my crampons was pretty unpleasant; it was hard to say whether it would be easier to take them off for this section or not.
Finally I came to what looked like the final crux. Going around the west face looked untenable, nothing but steep rock, and to the north, a very steep snow slope. There was no evidence of avalanching, it looked really smooth, and it was in the shade, so I thought that I might be able to make a go of it. Again, it was really deep powder snow, but with what felt like better snow a couple of feet down. Each time I looked down, there was a rock overhang below me. No question but that a fall would be fatal, and I’d be just a notation in the inside of the local section of the Times, "Climber killed on avalanche in Snohomish County." Envisioning the fall really unnerved me each time, so I forced myself to focus on going up, not going down. There was a notch in the rock ridge above the snow slope, through with the sun was shining, and I figured I could make it through there, then how much further could it be? When I got to it, though, it turned out that I couldn’t; the power was too shallow, and there was nothing but rocks and holes below it. The only way to continue was to keep going along the snow slope, where it looked like the rock ridge ended another 20 feet or so further along.
At this point I just lost my nerve. Something inside me said "turn around," I don’t know if it was because I was tired (I didn’t feel particularly tired) or spooked, or if it was just a wise response to an objective danger. More likely, it was an accumulation of worry over the difficulty of the descent still ahead of me. Ten minutes before, as I headed out onto the snow slope, I felt good about continuing, now it just felt wrong. I turned around with no hesitation, back the way I’d come.
The descent was difficult, and as slow as the climb. I really worried about the steep snow slopes I’d come up, and some of them were pretty scary. In particular, my carved traverse above where the two guys had stopped took a lot of nerve to descend. I stood above there and looked at it, and thought, I can’t do this. But I’d forgotten the cellular phone (it was in the car) so I couldn’t have called for the helicopters even if I’d wanted to. With yet another look at the rocky dropoff below my traverse, I set out down it. The descent went without a problem, really, and didn’t really take all that long, but I was asking God for help out loud. At the bottom of it, I was gratified to know that I’d reached the end of the really difficult part, and I’d be able to descend from here out with no real objective hazard.
All the kicking into the soft powder was really hard on my feet; I felt like the balls of my feet were becoming bruised. My hands and shoulders were getting sore too, from jamming my tools into the snow slope, looking for anchors.
Falling from the ridge, though it would have been hazardous, would have meant falling down a gentle powder bowl (at least on the east side!) A fall might have triggered an avalanche, but from above the ridge there was no question but that I’d have died.
On the ridge, I looked back up at the upper mountain, and was both dismayed and gratified to see how close I’d been. I was probably 20 vertical feet from the summit; the notch where I’d stopped was obvious on the ridgeline. My trail up the mountain was obvious too; I took some pictures to memorialize it.
Descending down the bowl below the pass, I heard a rock fall, and watched what looked like a pool-ball sized rock roll down past me and stop. I considered grabbing it for a souvenir, but when I got to it, it was much bigger than it’d looked, as big as my open hand. That insignificant bit of rockfall would have killed me if it’d hit me. On the descent down the bowl, I was sinking down into the snow knee-deep, and then my leg would get stuck. Made for a fairly slow descent. The snow was too wet and not steep enough for glissading to be an option. It reminded me of that time Fred and I were on Mt. Snoqualmie, shortly before Heidi and I were married, and the descending there was made hazardous by slipping into deep postholes of previous descenders, but the snow was so hard that I feared breaking my leg. Up above the ridge I was pining for the solid trail; on the trail, I was just wishing for the car.
I stopped at the lake, and looked up at the mountain, and was surprised to see that up there, near the summit on whatever side the lake is, there appears to be a cave up there. Pretty intriguing.
The drive home was uneventful, if a little long.