[TR] Desperate Country: Seven Days On The Fence

[JensHolsten]

Trip: North Cascades - Desperate Country: Seven Days On The Fence

 

Date: 7/7/2013

 

Trip Report:

To see this same trip report with a bunch of great photos, check out Always Upwards .

 

Warm air rushed through the windows as my beater Subaru huffed and puffed towards Newhalem. In the trunk was kit for the mission. The stereo pumped out slamming techno and I gorged on pastries from the Sultan Bakery. Psyche was high. The following day, with Chad Kellogg, the gun went off and our dash through the Pickets began.

 

On July seventh at 3:30 AM we left the car with 35 pound packs stuffed with climbing gear, seven (to ten if you really pushed it!) days of food, a light jacket or two, sleeping bags, fuel, a stove, and a sill nylon tarp. We sweated buckets climbing out of Goodell Creek, but the way was clear and easy. Arriving in Terror Basin we re-hydrated and made good time on easy snow slopes to the base of the McMillan Spires. With knowledge from my 2011 Pickets enchainment and fresh bodies, we raced over all three summits and arrived at our bivy 12 hours after leaving the car. I felt really good about our day and enjoyed resting through the afternoon.

 

Day two started with a taxing traverse of some small towers in between our bivy and Inspiration Peak. In 2011, Sol had navigated this section with relative ease, but I still struggled to find the way. When I did find the path I idiotically chose to make a long simul-climbing traverse with all 80 meters of our rope out. A bunch of drag later and some sketchy 5.10 moves in my boots and I finally arrived at the base of Inspiration's East Ridge. With a clean hand crack ahead we soared up and over both summits, descended, shot up the fantastic East Face of Pyramid, and scrambled Deganhardt to end our day. Tom Sjolseth spotted us on the ridge from his bivy in the Crescent Creek Basin and ascended to our camp to chat and take pictures of the beautiful sunset. It was great to have this unexpected encounter with a friend in such a spectacular place. After Tom began his descent, Chad and I settled in for a brisk night.

 

Since we had failed to stick our plan on day two (we had hoped to make the summit of the Rake), we began early on day three. To regain our pace, we put the hammer down and climbed the East Ridge of Terror, The Rake, wound through numerous smaller towers, cranked out the 5.10 on East Twin Needle, scrambled terrifying rock on West Twin Needle, and then completed the technical crux our journey, monkeying up the mighty blade that is the Himmelhorn. By the time we rapped into the Ottohorn-Himmelhorn Col we had been on the move for 17 hours. I was astounded at how long we took to complete this section even though we were climbing well and I had traveled the terrain before. It was 1:00 AM before we curled up in the dirt. Dehydration dried out my tongue and torqued on my muscles. We were afraid to burn excess amounts of fuel to rehydrate properly at the windy and exposed col. In hindsight, we did have enough fuel to rehydrate here and it was this crucial mistake that cost us the final two summits in the southern portion of our enchainment. A cold and windy dawn had us struggling to stay warm in the early hours of day four and with a primal focus on getting more water in our systems, we descended the Mustard Glacier via a snow couloir on the col's north side and arrived at Picket Pass where we sat by a tarn and drank to our heart's content. The past three days of leading had me a bit frazzled and fried. A few times I questioned my sanity. Was I really putting myself in this position again? Why yes, yes I was.

 

We left Picket Pass intend on using the latter half of day four to transition into the northern section of our journey. We hoped to climb Outrigger Peak, East Fury, and West Fury before lying down for the night. We ran into Tom and his partner Matt on top of Outrigger and enjoyed a social session on the summit. After a refreshing break, all four of us descended and then climbed to the summit of East Fury together in a thick fog that made navigation difficult. Never the less, we employed good beta from Tom and worked our way through worsening weather to a very cold and windy bivy below the summit of West Fury. The night passed somewhat excruciatingly as tough winds and moisture-laden clouds swept over the peak. The morning of day five brought some clearing, but rime ice lingered on the rock, as temps were slow to raise enough to melt the slippery nuisance. Finally, at 11 AM, we left the summit of West Fury and began moving down heads up terrain towards Swiss Peak. We both felt the loose down climbing and committing rappels in this section demanded much respect. The weather continued to be cold and unsettled. Chad had to encourage me through building doubt about our position. Our clothing was very minimal. If it started to rain or snow, hypothermia would come quickly on the exposed ridge. As on any grand adventure we were toeing the line of control.

 

The remainder of day five was spent climbing around many pointy spires, summiting Swiss Peak, and climbing up and over Spectre Peak. Again, like on West Fury, getting off of Spectre was a dangerous exercise in uber-choss down climbing. We also made one rappel in this section. This terrain, though technically easy, was the most serious I've ever encountered in the Cascades. In very cold, windy, and foggy weather we climbed up towards the summit of Phantom Peak until we hit our wall for the day. Our camp that night was an exposed perch overhanging Phantom's north face. It was hard to keep our minds off the weather, but we managed to make it through another cold and hungry bivy.

 

The next morning (day 6), like robots, we stuffed our sleeping bags and got down to business. Some morning clearing showed the long ridge ahead. Unfortunately, we knew the improved weather wouldn't last for long as a hazy ring cradled the sun and wispy clouds floated in the west. Knowing we had between 12 and 24 hours before the weather tanked, we climbed out of our bivy with focused determination. By the time we had summited Phantom and connected the ridge-line to Ghost Peak, clouds were bearing down on us. We were so intent on getting off the ridge that we chose to not scramble 20 feet of third class to the summit of Ghost. We just kept moving towards salvation.

 

Finally, as I was leading the last two pitches to the summit of Challenger, snow flakes started to fall. In the 10 minutes it took us to high five on the summit, make a short rap and walk over to our glacier descent, the weather gave out. We tried to make our way down the Challenger Glacier but were unable to see anything. A gentle ski run with easily passable cracks in good weather, we only found ourselves strung out over giant schrunds in a blowing mist. Our thin jackets began to get wet. I could feel my survival instinct telling me to abandon our descent before we were hopelessly lost and climb back to the rocks near the summit. Sure enough, just under the top of Challenger, Chad found a cave. It was a damn uncomfortable spot, but it was a key find for us. We huddled sleeplessly though the night, staying warm by fighting off the snafflehound from hell.

 

Day seven dawned beautifully, the breaking storm amplifying the magnificence of the sunrise. We quickly left our cave and descended down the glacier and onto Wiley Ridge. It felt wonderful to sit in the heather and not be exposed to the weather and other dangers that had mad the previous days so intense. All that remained between us and a bag of potato chips was a long, long walk home.

 

We spent the rest of day seven slogging out to Ross Lake Boat Camp. Even though only seven flat miles remained to our car, we had to stop. We shivered in the 70 degree weather and my stomach was twisted in pain. It had all caught up with us. I felt like I had predicted I would at this point. Utterly worked. Mosquitoes pestered us through our night in the dirt, but we were too exhausted to care. On the morning of day eight, after a couple hours of hiking, we stepped onto Highway 20.

 

 

 

Chad and I are absolutely stoked about or enchainment despite not summiting three of the peaks we had hoped to. We climbed nearly all day, every day, for seven days through demanding and serious terrain. We had minimal equipment, no cache, and no support. With the cold and unsettled weather in the latter half of the trip, it was a true challenge to keep the mind at bay (and get any sleep!). Looking back I see many mistakes and have learned many lessons that I hope to take with me to future objectives. As always, the path of growth continues. There is no crowning moment or pinnacle of achievement in this sport, but rather the continuing evolution of skills and consciousness.

 

I am so grateful for Chad as a partner. Only interested in the most outlandish ideas, I appreciate that our drive is to focus on objectives where success seems improbable. We always hope to travel the hardest, least traveled road we are able to.

 

I am also grateful to my incredible friends Sol Wertkin and Dan Hilden for our 2011 Pickets adventure. The beautiful moments from our enchainment have not been belittled in my mind. What a fantastic part of this journey! Dan's recent Alpinist article about our 2011 effort features more poignant thoughts about adventuring in the Pickets than I am able to come up with at the moment. It is a must read for sure!

 

And of course, a huge thanks to Wayne Wallace for not only being ok with me taking over his obsession with this objective, but encouraging me along the way. Thx Wayne!!!

 

Jens Holsten

 

Gear Notes:

Light as we felt was prudent...and even a bit lighter!

 

Approach Notes:

In via Goodell Creek, out via Wiley Ridge

Edited July 24, 2013 by JensHolsten

[Quarryographer]

Bad...Ass!!! Fawking Gettin it!!!

 

[hamballs]

Incredibly strong work Jens and Chad. The completion of this enchainment is truly a remarkable accomplishment. You just provided me with a very good stoke. Thanks for the write up.

[dougd]

Pure.

[ARBrandon]

so much envy.

[powderhound]

stout work

[dberdinka]

Difference between great climbers and the rest of us is they can stick to plan on committing routes even when the inevitable little hickups and unforeseen events start cropping up. If shit isn't going 100% perfect I always find myself back in the parking lot.

 

Nice work!

[wayne]

Hell yea, Jens and Chad!! What a tremendous effort. Thanks for believing it could be done, and doing it in such fine style.

[boadman]

Judging by the after picture, you might consider taking more food next time. :-)

 

That was a pretty amazing amount of moving!

[bedellympian]

Wow, that is inspiring and awesome. Way to go for it and get a ton done in one week!

[jeremyallyn]

Congratulations to you both! One of the most tremendous accomplishments in modern Cascadian climbing. The Pickets always deliver, in every respect, every time. Such an amazing corner of our great state!

 

[JensHolsten]

Is anyone here good at crunching the statistics on this sorta stuff? All my simple minded brain can tell is that we climbed 20 (would have been 21 with Ghost, which we missed by few feet) major peaks and numerous smaller summits, but I was sort of wondering if there was a way to figure out how many miles we hiked, elevation lost and gained, that sort of stuff...

 

Also, I do hope to go into some gear analysis here and break down our systems a bit. We did some things right and other things wrong. Hopefully we can all learn from our silly mistakes!

[Dannible]

Hey Jens, I think some of those stats are in the Alpinist story unless they got cut at the last minute. When the sun was setting on the first night I said that we had gained 10,000 vert that day and still had however much to go (I don't have the magazine and don't remember the number we decided on, did that make it into the story?). I came up with those numbers on Google Earth by drawing a path over the approach, and then one over the ridge to Wiley Arm, and it saves the path on a list on the left side of the screen, where you can right click and see the elevation profile with all of the stats. I have the exact numbers on my computer if you want them, but don't have it with me now. Somewhere else in the story I wrote what the lengths of each section was. The walk out is not included in any of it. All of those numbers were fact checked, so they might be rounded but should be close.

 

See you tomorrow!

[Bronco]

Wow, that's a ton of amazing climbing. I'm kind of afraid to ask but what the heck did you guys carry for food?

[Stefan]

I shiver seeing what you two did.

[dberdinka]

I stopped by the top of Sauk Mountain this morning on the way to work and noticed that both the Northern and Southern Pickets were perfectly lined up on the horizon. Apologies for the low-quality image from my phone. Main Summit of Challenger is the 4th prominent bump from the left I believe. Mcmillans on the right flanked by Triumph. Fury just left of center.

 

[Rad]

Outstanding! Love the fact that you choose adventures where the outcome is uncertain and you're at your limit.

[wayne]

 

 

Looks like a pretty sturdy fence all right. Thanks of the great shot.

[Tom_Sjolseth]

What an amazing accomplishment.. one for the ages around the N Cascades. It was great seeing you guys up there and getting the opportunity to share in the stoke of the moment.

 

I don't know of any other achievement in N Cascades climbing that could rival this.

[JensHolsten]

Thanks for the cool shot Darrin...really neat. A bit torturous too, as out of all those peaks, my eyes are immediately drawn to the Ottohorn and Frenzilspits. They taunt me every day

 

A few people have asked about gear and food so here is the breakdown with a few thoughts.

 

Food:

 

We left the trailhead with 14 lbs of food each. We each ate around 3,000 calories a day. Of course that's not enough, but it seemed to be adequate in relation to weight we were willing to carry. I don't think I could have eaten more during the day...we were always on the move. We rarely rested more than five minutes, so any food we did put down was gu/energy gels or bars out of the pocket as we were on the move. At night, I ate a freeze dried meal and snacked on a bag of trail mix.

 

Fuel and Stove:

 

We had a 1 liter MSR Reactor and three fuel canisters. We kinda fucked up on this one...We were too conservative with our fuel early on (it lead us to skip the Ottohorn and Frenzilspitz), fearing that we would run out later in the trip as we expected the Northern section of the traverse to take much longer than it did. In retrospect, we had plenty of fuel. That said, with the bad weather in the latter days of the trip, we were glad to have a little extra as we thought it was possible we would be pinned down in a storm somewhere or have to drop into some god forsaken valley for a day or two if we became hypothermic in a rain storm on the ridge.

 

We didn't quite get the fuel thing right...how often do you pack for a 7-10 day climb? We just weren't sure how much to bring...

 

We each had 35 pound, 30 liter packs to start the trip with. In our packs we had food, a bit of clothing, a small butt pad (pad that slides into the back of the inside of the pack), a super light sleeping bag, and of course climbing gear. We had a small sill nylon tarp for protection from the weather.

 

For clothing, I had a wind jacket, a very light (not a puffy or anything) synthetic piece, a synthetic vest, sholar pants, and very light rain pants. Chad had less, but he is tougher than I am In retrospect, we should have each brought a sleeping pad and some long underwear. Both items would have been very helpful.

 

We left the car with a double set to a red Camelot and one yellow Camelot. We had a solid set of nuts, one knifeblade, 10 shoulder lengths, two double lengths, and 60 feet of 5 mil rap cord. We used an 8.9 80 meter rope. On several rappels it was crucial to have all 80 meters of rope. We each wore La Sportiva Boulder X hightops, a shoe/boot that is adequate for climbing rock and steep snow. We had light strap on crampons and one light axe each.

 

Sorry this breakdown isn't too technical or anything, but it should give you an idea...

[telemarker]

Cool! Thanks for the details and for posting your TR. Having never been back there, it was hard to wrap my mind around this, but Darin's photo puts it in impressive perspective.

[Summit_Rolos]

What a great adventure! strong, strong work guys.

[JasonG]

We had a solid set of nuts

 

No doubt!

[wayne]

Chads write-up