Quien Sabe glacier, two tents about the center of the picture. Sahali Peak is the high point on the right.
My Mt. Buckner reconnaisance, which turned into a climb of Sahali Peak, via Boston Basin. But it was a revelation; seeing Forbidden Peak there, so close and so perfect, and getting to spend time in Boston Basin, which I’ve heard about for so long.
The ironic thing is that I was there by accident. I followed the "Selected Climbs" approach information for Cascade Pass, and ended up on the trail to Boston Basin. I was becoming aware that I was on the wrong route, and when I ran into three people coming down about 7:30, they confirmed it.
I got up around 3:00, and headed out. I hit the trailhead, with some delays for potty breaks, around 6:20, still dark enough to need my headlamp. The trail started out at a gentle grade, just as the book says Cascade Pass is supposed to. It got steeper, though, fairly soon. Not as steep as the Eldorado peak trail, and not for as long. It opened out into Boston Basin, which in fall is just beautiful, with the vegetation turning red.
The Quien Sabe glacier was very cool too, the covering of snow was gone, leaving the crevasses pretty well exposed. I considered just barreling straight down the middle, heading for the Boston-Sahale saddle, but ended up following some cairns and then footprints that lead up around the top of the glacier, which later study show the Selected Climbs brothers recommend. The snow was perfect, with crampons, I crossed over some hard glacial ice, but most of it was snow, very hard and not at all dangerous. The trail passed over a couple of crevasses, just cracks in the ice an inch wide and yards long. Straight down, so far as I could tell. It’d be really interesting to be able to study a glacier like that for a year or so, see how the crevasses form and spread and watch them move down the mountain.
As I moved up the glacier, I could see people on the ridge below Boston Peak, and then on the Peak. I took several pictures of them, hoping perhaps that one of them might turn out dramatic.
So, I got up to the saddle, and took off my crampons, since it looked like just bare rock up to Sahale Peak. (I was gratified to see a lot of crampon scratches on the rock where you exit the glacier. I’m not the only one.) And, almost immediately put them back on again, back on hard snow.
There were two guys on the summit, and I stayed there chatting with them for twenty minutes or so, while I decided not to even attempt Boston. I don’t quite know why; I seem to assume that every climber I meet is better and more accomplished than me, and I didn’t feel comfortable even mentioning Buckner. I guess I was tired, is the thing. (For the record, I got to the summit around 11:00, so the climb took about 4½ hours. The Selected Climbs brothers say 4-7 hours from Boston Basin, 1-2 hours from the saddle. If you’re crippled, maybe. Or, maybe in the summer the snow is slower going.) It probably took me twenty minutes from the saddle, and that wasn’t a particularly hard push.
So these guys (I never even got their names) are from Snohomish, and spend a lot more time on the Mountain Loop Highway climbs. They’ve done Whitehorse, and Glacier peak, Pugh. Hadn’t done Sloan Peak, though, or Big 4.
Mt. Buckner, the N. Face to the left. Not a great view of it from here.
The descent was a big yawn except for a mountain goat that showed up there, fairly tame. I took a lot of photos of him, and even tossed him an apple, but he didn’t seem interested. One of his horns was broken. I assume it was a he, since he had horns.
The Sahali glacier campsite area is littered with round rock walls, wind walls for campsites. They look like gun emplacements, like a battle was fought here a few months ago.
The rock on Sahale Arm is pretty interesting, at least to a novice like me; there’s granite and limestone and what looks like chunks of marble, and rocks so full of iron oxide they look like rusted pieces of some wrecked alien machine. There were outcropping sprinkled with sparkles, iron pyrite, I assume. And all the outcroppings scarred with glacier striations.
While I was wandering around taking pictures of that goat, a raven flew by, and around some. It appeared to be flying around the goat, but that may be my misinterpretation. The odd thing was how noisy its wing feathers were when it was flying. I was a good fifty feet or more away, and you could hear the wind through its wings really obviously. That was the primary reason I decided it was a raven and not a crow.
Sahale Arm/Cascade Pass has got to be the most overrated hike I know about. It’s just tedious. Maybe I was just spoiled by having been in Boston Basin. The trail is rocky and dusty, and goes on for ever. I am sure I’d have gotten down an hour sooner if I’d gone back the way I came. And there must have been a hundred people; it was like being on the trails above Paradise. Not that people are bad, I guess I’m just cranky. Or an elitist, or something.
On the other hand, you could say that Cascade Pass is the best trail in the state, since it keeps people out of Boston Basin, which would be ruined by the throngs that head up Cascade Pass.