Trip: Appleton-Everett-Boulder Peaks-Plus Traverse -
Date: 6/13-6/14/2009
Trip Report:While scanning the weather forecasts last week Peter (Plaigar), Susan (leadmade) and I noticed the potential for showers and thunderstorms in the Cascades but better forecasts for the Olympic Range. So... we decided to hop on the ferry for a trip over there. Our plan was to do the Boulder-Everett-Appleton Traverse described in Peggy Goldman's 75 Scrambles in Washington.
The route is typically done as a two-day trip and usually starts by going to Boulder Lake, climbing Boulder Peak and then camping the night at the lake before finishing the route the next day. Finding crystal clear skies as we started the day and not knowing what Sunday might bring, we thought we'd do things differently and decided to head up towards Appleton Pass, knock off Appleton and Everett on the first day and leave a short trip up Boulder for on the second day.
The hike up towards Appleton Pass was uneventful. We ran into continuous snow around 3700-3800 feet. By the time we lost the trail, the route to the pass was obvious. Had we wanted to just climb Appleton we could have ascended the snow covered southeast slopes starting before the pass but we figured we would also tag what Peggy Goldman calls Cotleton (Peak 6100 on the topo) and headed towards the pass, planning to run the ridge from there to the summit.
Once at the saddle, we started along the ridge. What seemed from the map like it would be a simple ridge run, took a bit more time as we scooted around various obstacles, spending some time on the ridge proper and other times, traversing snow slopes to its east side.
After getting to the top of Cottleton and enjoying the first of 5 sets of summit treats, we followed a moderately steep snow slope down to the saddle with Appleton.
To avoid a big obstacle on the ridge, we dropped down to the east of the ridge traversing below it before climbing again to the summit ridge that led to the top of Appleton where we enjoyed summit treat #2.
From there, it was time to head towards Everett. We worked back a short way (southwest) along the ridge and found a nice snow slope that took us down to the basin north of Appleton where there appears to be a lake not on our topo map. From there, we traversed some snow slopes around to the basin with Blue Lake and saw the route up to Everett. We followed the snow slope (left side of the photo, to the left of the lake) up to the saddle between Everett (on the right) and the more prominent, unnamed peak on the left.
Once on the ridge, we climbed both the unnamed peak and Everett, enjoying summit treats on each. The unnamed peak was more interesting than Everett. Since the day was getting late and we still had a ways to go before Boulder Lake, we opted to camp near Everett Peak. We found a small dry spot on the saddle just south west of the peak big enough for our two tents that afforded great views to the east and west. The day ended with nary a rain drop. Things had clouded up but most of the weather stayed to our east and we had partly cloudy skies the entire day.
The next morning, we woke up to more blue bird skies. The standard route to-from Boulder is to go down to Three Horse Lake and then climb to a saddle at 4,800 feet before dropping into the Boulder Lake basin and then climbing the peak. From our camp, however, it looked like you could possibly run a ridge starting from a flat prominence at 5,200 feet west of our camp and decided to give that a shot. We traversed across the basin from our camp to the prominence (at the end of the snow finger leading to the top of the ridge). Nothing had frozen the previous night.
Once on that prominence, we had to drop down a few hundred feet on snow and small talus before going back and gaining the ridge. From our vantage point on the prominence, we could see several potential crux sections that might block the way along the ridge. At each point, however, we were able to find our way around the obstacle and keep moving.
The last obstacle looked to be the worst, particularly with the foreshortening of the slope from our vantage point, but Peter poked around and found moderate a class 3 scramble that got us to the last knob on the ridge before the summit.
From there, it took a little brush bashing along the ridge (pollen flying everywhere as we moved through) and then some downclimbing in the trees for a short 15 foot section before we got to the base of the last section to the Boulder Peak summit. It was easy the rest of the way to the top. Once there, it was time for summit treat #5 (Peter, finally ran out) and some rest. Great views of Olympus and lots of great wildflowers up there as well.
From there, we descended the standard route to Boulder Lake, finding a little bit of trouble with some snow bridges that gave way in a small creek but otherwise, no problems. We picked up the trail from there and headed on our way home.
Some more photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/plaigar/090612AppletonBoulderTraverse#Gear Notes:Axe, crampons
Approach Notes:Appleton Pass trail snow free until 3,800 feet
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