[TR] Mt. Maude - North Face (w/Carne - Leroy High Route) 7/30/2011

[SmilingWhiteKnuckles]

Trip: Mt. Maude - North Face (w/Carne - Leroy High Route)

 

Date: 7/30/2011

 

Trip Report:

Forgot how long the Chiwawa River Road drive is! 3.5 hours after leaving the house I was at the Phelps Creek trailhead.

 

So Saturday at 10am, I hiked up the Carne Mtn. trail and climbed the peak with the old fire lookout on it before realizing Carne Mtn. was the one just to the north. Climbed Carne then headed north on the Carne - Leroy High Route.

 

Neglecting to bring a USGS map or in fact any map that showed the route, I was left to guess and second guess the route northward. After hours of doubt and questioning and arduous cross-country travel sprinkled with occasional trail sightings, I was deep in the willage wondering if I had bitten off too large of a chunk from my cushioned swivel chair at work.

 

I sat down, ate some food, treated some water and gave a long look at the maps I had (a Green Trails, and two printed screenshots from Google maps). Can't recall where I was at this point--one of the several upper basins on the high route: Box Creek or Chipmunk Creek...but I reasoned that traversing at the 6300 - 6400' level would take forever as the mileage racked up considerably traversing forested and steep ground around each ridge. The more arduous but more direct route would basically stay on snow, ascending each basin up its north branch. And these were similar in that there was a little shelf or saddle at the top of each of these basins from which one could descend a bit before traversing or going up again.

 

So finally from around 6300' below (and north of) Carne Mtn, I reached a high point of 7200' and could see that I was now just below the south shoulder of Maude. Boot-skiing down from here and crossing another basin, I reached a 6700' shelf from which I could see the 6100' flat meadow/camping area at the top of the Leroy Creek trail. Phew.

 

It was 6pm and I felt pretty battered. It was an easy decision to retrace my steps a few hundred yards to a little copse of larch trees around which the snow had melted within 40 feet of a snowmelt water source. If the mosquitoes down at 6100' feet were as voracious and agile as they were near Carne, staying high might be a pretty good call.

 

In summation, the Carne-Leroy High Route kicked my ass. It was one of those good and necessary ass-kickings with my desk chair hubris clanking and skidding down the street like a dented aluminum can. I couldn't even stay awake for the new moon star display, falling into a VERY deep and pleasant sleep from 9pm to 6pm.

 

IMG_9819 by j4cooper. Carne Mountain in the center of the frame.

 

IMG_9830 by j4cooper. Bivy site w/Buck Mountain in the background.

 

After a bar and some tea, I packed up and head for the 6100' meadow and meeting spot with Jeremy. I figured he wouldn't be there for awhile since I'd underestimated the travel time by an hour, but I wanted to be there around 8am to wait for him.

 

After a brief good-morning schwack, I entered the clearing and saw this guy right in the middle taking off his pack. "Jeremy!" I hollered. "Yes, Yes, Yes!" I couldn't believe it. He had preceded me to the clearing by an incredibly serendipitous 3 minutes! So so good to see him and have our crazy meeting plan work out so well.

 

We hiked out of the basin at 9am and got to the 7-Fingered Jack/Maude col at 9am. We roped up and traversed steep snow above big cliffs until arriving at a big rocky cleft. We unroped and scrambled across class 3 ledges until reaching the north face route proper at 7600'. We followed bucket steps from the day prior--Jorad M. (thanks!), simul-soloing up predominantly soft, 40 to 50 degree snow to the summit at 9,082' and 2:30pm.

 

The weather had gone from cloudy in the morning to beautiful and clearing skies and we kicked it on the summit just as Jeremy had hoped for about an hour and a half. Glorious! Descended an amazing display of low growing alpine flowers on the barren south shoulder, around a spine of rock on some snow and hooked a hard skiers right to traverse on snow all the way back to the basin and the Leroy Creek trail.

 

After a couple cool deer encounters on the trail, we got back to the car around 9pm as darkness fell, very glad for jogging shoes. An amazing trip! Thank you Jeremy!

 

IMG_9855 by j4cooper. Incredible "Y" moraine in the upper Entiat Valley.

 

IMG_9861 by j4cooper. Jeremy climbing the steepest section as we near the summit. The route is nearly visible to the 7-Fingered Jack/Maude col here.

 

IMG_9867 by j4cooper. On top!

 

More photos here: Mt. Maude (Flickr)

 

Gear Notes:

Ice axe, crampons.

 

Approach Notes:

Snow level roughly 6300'.

[Alex]

Nice go.

 

I've attempted this once, and completed it twice now. My first experience was similar to yours, but the second I've linked here to encourage you to go back this Fall....(http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=505607) It's a bit easier to follow the other direction, from Leroy Basin to Maude then towards Carne Mnt, because at every high point you are looking down at the next portion of the "trail" - or terrain anyway. Its also super fun as a lightweight overnight including tagging summit of Maude: day 1 - Leroy Basin to Maude summit, bivy at Maude, day 2 hike out the high route to Carne Mnt and down.

 

 

[SmilingWhiteKnuckles]

Thanks for the link, Alex. Looks gorgeous in fall. The larches up there are something to behold for sure!

 

It definitely makes more sense to go from Leroy Creek to Carne, losing elevation rather than gaining it...but I was meeting my buddy Jeremy on Sunday for the Maude climb. Beautiful area.

 

I liked reading about your owl encounter. We had a pretty funny interaction with a deer returning on the Phelps Creek trail, who even as we got to within 20 feet, just kept eating like we were all at the zoo...