Heading up the hill. So far, so good...
The weather looked okay, for at least a one-day climb, and I needed to get out. After a few e-mails back and forth (I remember reading in some climbing book years ago that British climbers arrange climbs in pubs, American climbers do it over the phone. I guess Northwest climbers do it via e-mail) we decided on Whitehorse peak. It’s a decent approach, the snow should make the bushwhacking manageable, and there just weren’t that many other options.
I picked up Lee and we drove up there. I was able to get my Escort station wagon all the way up the road, bouncing over chuckholes and rocks, and diving through a couple of rather deep puddles. At one point I panicked and stopped, and Lee had to get out and give me a push to get me going. Take a 4x4, or park below.
At the parking spot, to my surprise, was another vehicle, a truck. The first time I hadn’t been up there alone. So we went and looked over things, and discussed the route and options with the other two guys. I was for bailing and trying something else, since the approach looked so bare, but couldn’t think of anything. White Chuck would have been a good idea, but without the map book Lee didn’t think he could find the trailhead. So, we packed up and headed up.
The bushwhacking didn’t seem as bad as I remembered, there were more bits of survey tape, and there did actually seem to be a bit of a trail. Maybe because Nelson put it in his new book, and so more people are doing it, or maybe just because it’s a lot easier and less demoralizing when you’re not going solo.
Still, it took a solid two hours, to about 10:30, to get out of the brush and onto the snow, at around 2200 feet (we both had altimeters; I hadn’t set mine at the trailhead, or messed with it at all since North Twin back in December, so I was surprised that they agreed almost perfectly.)
The other two guys turned around at this point, since they figured they wouldn’t be able to summit anyhow. But we hadn’t slashed through all that garbage just to turn around and do it again, so we headed on up. The conditions were pretty good, hard snow, safe, lots of cool frozen waterfalls to look at. This is where I discovered I’d forgotten BOTH sets of gloves, my heavy glove shields that I was sure were in the pack, and my fleece gloves that were in the back of the car and I was going to stuff in my pack. Lee generously gave up his outer glove shields. I didn’t need them that much, but there were points where we were more or less frontpointing, with my ice axe hand buried in snow and my other hand holding on too, and that would have been pretty miserable with no hand protection at all.
At around 4800 feet, we stopped to evaluate conditions and have a snack. It was a beautiful sunny day; Baker and Shuksan and a hundred other peaks were visible to the north and east, but we were still a good two or three hours from the summit (it was about 1:00 now) and so it was clear we’d have to descend partly in the dark.
The Southern Pickets.
Our plan had been to descend the Neiderbrum trail route, which I’d descended last time I was up here six years back, and it still seemed like a sensible idea, to avoid the horrible bushwhacking, but I was pretty worried we’d get up to the summit plateau where you peel off to that side, and not be able to find the trail, and then end up having to descend our climbing route in the dark after all. The thing about the ascent route is, no matter how unpleasant or miserable a descent in the dark would be, we wouldn’t get lost. You just can’t; it’s like descending a funnel. Going the other way, though, we could get lost, and be lost for literally days.
I’d got the gloves good and wet, and we stood up there for ten minutes or so, eating and talking over things, and by the time we turned around, the gloves were frozen solid. So was my ice axe leash, and there were gobs of ice on my ice axe. It was pretty cold up there. We descended the left side of the bowl (climbers right) thinking that it looked less nasty from below. And for a while it did seem like a better idea, we were still in deep snow at a level when the other side was bare brush. From below, it looked like you could ascend a rather smooth, even slope of slide alder, and gain the snow directly, and so we figured we’d descend the same way.
But it got bad. And worse. And, even worse. We saw some animal footprints, they looked like a small dog or cat, but were high enough that they must have been something wild. A small coyote? Too small to be a cougar, I think.
We descended into the trees, for hours, it felt like, traversing to the left whenever we hit a rock overhang, slipping and sliding down the mucky streams. I was really hurting, grabbing all this crap with my bare hands. Devils club and wild rose thorns in my hands, scraping up the skin on the tree branches, it was a miserable time. I didn’t use Lee’s gloves because I didn’t want to rip them up, and by the time I figured I ought to use the gloves, my hands were already in pretty bad shape, so why bother.
The trees are thick, and the slope is steep, with plenty of small cliffs, 20-50 feet high. We spent a lot of time traversing to the left each time we cliffed out, and I was pretty sure by now that we were someplace over the approach road. It was miserable, stumbling and slipping and sliding, grabbing bramble bushes and devils club, and appreciating the slide alder for at least not being stickery. There were a couple of enormous cedars we passed by, one was easily more than twelve feet thick; not all that tall, broken off up above, but still alive.
Finally, finally, after getting smacked in the eye a couple of times by slide alder branches, we got down to right above a waterfall, just above the gravel beds. We were not yet to the trailhead (so much for my hope of intersecting the Neiderbrum trail) but we were actually able to get down from there, with a little bit of sliding and jumping. Man, did it feel good to be standing on flat ground!
I went in and tried to take a couple of photos of the mine shaft there at the base of the mountain, but I didn’t know how to manually focus my new camera, and it was too hazy in there for it to find something to focus on. I guess I have to read the manual better.
So we drove down the trail, carefully, and I was pretty pleased to get back on the blacktop. It was drizzling a bit on the drive home, and we shot straight home. Home by 7:00, with time for a shower and to hop into the hot tub with the family before bed.