The east face of White Chuck. The route I hoped to do is on the right skyline.
White Chuck Peak
Friday, Sept. 10, 2004, solo.
So I packed up, and headed out in the AM, stopping for gas and caffeine. I followed the map with no problem for the approach, up the Suiattle River road, until I got to the turnoff across the river (the south Suiattle river road) where the road was barricaded with a really big concrete block. The bridge looked okay to me, but it was clear I wasn't going to drive past that. Apparently you need to bring a mountain bike to get up the last few miles. It's too bad, too, because the Suiattle River road is paved, and in pretty good condition.
So I turned around. At this point (after 8:00) it seemed like my options were pretty limited, since I had to be back in daylight. So, I figured it was as good a time as any to bag the dog route (the west side.) I turned around, and felt my way along the roads to the trailhead, with the help of Smoot's book.
Lee and I had tried this back in March or so, but we had to hike along the road the last couple of miles, and so we turned around. The advantage was, I had been up there, and new the approach.
This is another climb where the crux is finding the trailhead. Smoot's Climbing Washington's Mountains has a very good drawing of the roads you need to know about for the approach. I took the Dan Creek road, and was at the trailhead and climbing by about 9:35.
At the trailhead, there was a white USFS pickup truck. There was an article in the local paper a day or two ago about how the mountain goats have declined in number around here over the last few years, my suspicion is that these guys were here to look into that. While I was up there, a helicopter buzzed around below the peak; I'm guessing it was there about the same thing.
In addition to the USFS truck, there was a local guy came up behind me. He's retired, and is into hunting and just spending time in the hills. He said he'd been up on this road about 60 times this year. Talking to him was pretty interesting; he was in Search and Rescue for years, and said he'd taken nine dead people from White Chuck. There are plenty of bears up there; he said his nephew had seen nine(?) black bears on the ridge just north of the trailhead while watching it one day.
The first hundred yards of the trail are a bit hard to follow, overgrown by huckleberry bushes and stuff. The hucklebrries were big and ripe -- those bears aren't doing their job!
The further you go, the easier the trail gets to follow, though even without a trail, you couldn't get lost, you just follow the ridge south to the scree bowl below the east side of the mountain (when in doubt, keep to the right.) The trail does help in speeding things up a bit, and keeping from trampling foliage unnecessarily. Still, my feet and shorts got soaked from the wet brush.
The hike in went very quickly. I got to the scree slopes below the face in about 45 minutes, and headed up the face as far to the left as possible, where the face joins the NW peak in a sort of a chimney. The rock was wet in places, but the climb went pretty quickly, it was a stiff Class 4 scramble up to the top of the ridge.
Mount Shuksan, from its least flattering angle.
Glacier Peak.
Close to the ridgetop, I began to move to the right, and eventually joined the "climbers trail" through the heather, which I was able to follow pretty easily to the summit. The trail was pretty well established; below the summit, there were actually stairsteps kicked into the heather. Time to the summit, one hour and 40 minutes. A VERY short climb.
Got back to the car right around 1:15, and headed out.
I'm not trying to brag about my speed climbing (a motivated individual could probably get up and down in well under an hour) just to point out that it's not at all a long climb. It might be a good climb for kids, or at least for people who are more interested in altitude and views than in long approach slogs.
