Marikos

Thinking about doing the same trip next year. I did the Redoubt High Route some time back (traverses the east side of the Chiliwack valley around Nodoubt peak to Bear Lake) and we returned to our car via the Chilliwack river and it was nasty business. How did you manage the border business since you went out Hanegan?

Trip: North Cascades - Spectacular ridge-Mt Logan Date: 7/8/2011 Trip Report: Spectacular Ridge-Mt. Logan Traverse; July 8-16, 2011 We had planned for this week knowing snowy conditions would exist almost 6 months ago, and given the inflexible schedules of modern age adults with families had to go or stay home. We went and had a very interesting trip. The original plan was to traverse from Easy pass trailhead to Park Creek pass and onto the Cascade River road and mostly accomplished our objective despite all sorts of weather fun. Here is the blow by blow. Day one: Set out from the Easy Pass trailhead and had 2-3 miles of relatively easy travel before hitting continuous snow around 4000 feet; sidetracked into the forest and eventually made our way back into the big cirque below the pass and kick stepped our way to the snow bound pass. The weather was cool and cloudy with a few sprinkles. We arrived late and decided to camp there and descend in the Am. Had a great unobstructed view of Logan distantly. Day two: Dropped down the trail mostly snowfree to the Fisher Cirque below and eventually turned Left (west) into the snow filled basin and made our way to the gully up to Silent Lakes. It was snowbound and relatively easy travel. The snow was nice consolidated and step kicking was easy. The lake basin was beautiful and Silent Lakes just beginning to thaw. Found a nice dry area (which were just about always available the entire route) to rest and stare at the marvelous views of peaks (Black, Fisher and Arriva). After a nice break, we made our way west to the cirque around the bend; dropped down about 200-300 feet to avoid cliffs and made our way w/o difficulties to “Spectacular pass”. Once there the view was great toward Logan and Ragged ridge; the wind was pretty stiff and we thought about camping but the cirque west and down looked inviting. Scouting the route showed a steep icy gully mostly in snow. I scouted a class 2 route down the rocks/heather to the right (North) which was easily navigable and lead to the bottom of the icy chute. It required a somewhat difficult traverse to the other side requiring 20-30 feet of slow downward frontpointing and I suspect wouldn`t be much fun w/o a snow base. Once to the other side it was easy going to a nice beautiful basin below the sharp peaks of Spectacular Ridge. The weather had begun to change in earnest and rain ensued so we put our tarp up and relaxed. Day Three: Slept to the rhythm of rain and woke to nearly white out fog. Decided to head out anyway as the way was obvious and we had got a good look the night before. Went straight up the valley/ridge to an easy entry onto spectacular ridge south around point 7135. The weather briefly broke but rain soon followed and we set up our tarp for an extended period, eventually leaving to find a more suitable campsite. W/o getting a look down toward Fisher Pass we were all reluctant to go down blindly into likely cliffy territory in the thick fog. Fortunately, 1/4 mile later a very nice knob afforded a great dry campsite with periodic views and a beautiful cornice in view. Spent a enjoyable but cold camp on the ridge. Day Four: Woke to breaking skies and periodic breaks in the clouds and got an inkling as to why Spectacular Ridge is thus named. A nice not so step snow finger headed down through cliffs and we headed down eventually zig zagging down through snow and avoiding cliffs to Fisher Pass not surprisingly buried in snow. Headed up a shortcut (better to travel the obvious ramp heading SE) and got into some pretty steep snow and brush wacking before getting on to the long ridge extending off of the Logan Massif. Breaking clouds, sun and beautiful views ensued and we could have moved on but couldn`t resist the glorious views and found a great dry patch of ground for rest and camping. Spirits were high and the Irish Whiskey especially fine that night….. Day Five: Not surprisingly woke to clouds and threatening skies and opted to head out to the broad basin below the long ridge leading to the Douglas Glacier. Went beneath a line of cliffs and then headed to a pass between the Douglas and the North Fork Bridge Creek drainage. On arrival the light rain had changed over to snow at around 7000 feet. We roped up and bundled up and headed out. The original plan (as inspired by Lowell Skoog`s Alpenglow site and ski trip over the same terrain) was to go to the Banded Douglas Col and try to climb over Logan`s summit and then down to the Fremont Glacier. The fog was thick, wind pretty steady and snow continuous. The terrain was pretty staightfoward however and the crevasses few so after awhile got to the col and felt pretty uninspired to proceed to the summit in lousy conditions and opted to head down the Banded Glacier and attain the Fremont Glacier down lower. In the way were two tall wind carved snow walls angling up about 30 and 10 feet each and required two steep snow climbing pitches. The weather was lousy but we managed over to the Banded Glacier proper, surprisingly full of crevasses. Zig zagged our way down to the moraine lake below and followed the shore to a beautiful larch rock dry camp next to the lake. Whew… fun but tiring day. After a rest, I scouted a route (now in breaking weather) around the buttress just SW of camp. Initially I stayed high over an unstable boulder field and looked at the lay of the land and the entry to the Fremont Glacier. It appeared as if several ways lead pretty easily to the Glacier proper and on return stumbled on a Goat/ animal (complete with Goat prints) path below the boulder field that was loads easier and I knew our party would appreciate tomorrow. Day Six: Breaking skies departure lead us around the buttress and with minimal recon and we crossed some steep snow chutes and got onto a fairly steep entry to the flat portion of the Fremont Glacier which made for a cool walk to the terminal moraine on the SW side of the glacier. Sat down to a nice lunch with stunning views to the Boston Glacier and surrounding peaks and after we made an easy side traverse (following a nice set of snow tracks) to Park Creek Pass. I had injured my knee 4 and 1/2 months ago pretty badly skiing and armed with a great brace was hesitant to overload myself (and everyone else for that matter); so Will, a frequent member of our traversing group kindly schlepped up two Bear canisters full of food (and some Tecquila!) and cached it near the pass. Supplies had been getting pretty low so it was great to dive into some new food. ¾ of a mile from the pass we camped on a huge boulder and put up our tarp and sprinkles ensued. We were all happy at making it this far and gobbled up lots of food and each had a nice cup of iced tecquila. (Iced drinks were not hard to manage anywhere en route!) Unfortunately, Jeff our elder member of the trip informed us his cold feet had taken a turn for the worse. Looking them over, they were swollen, painful and moderately numb. It was obviously a case of mild frostbite (aka chillbains). Tom and I headed over to get a good look at the big cirque beneath the Buckner Coloiur. The route was a long snow slog to a steep 400 foot coloiur leading to Horseshoe basin. The bailout was down the Thunder creek trail. Given the bad skies and concern about Jeff`s feet we decided the trail was the smart bet. Day Seven: Woke to steady rain and decided to chill out, eat and drink…. The skies never let up and we stayed on the rock all day. Day Eight: Cloudy/breaking skies and off we went from the pass down a steep snow slope to the upper reaches of Thunder creek basin. Full of snow with numerous avalanche chutes requiring crossing. Snow was fully present until 4800 feet and patchy until 4000 feet. The bridge at Thunder Camp is out but Bruce fording the creek easily and the rest of us crossed a snow bridge). Made our way down the trail and stayed at Junction camp with nice views across valley. The weather once again was turning sour and rainy but it was very nice to be into the warm zone and off the snow. Day Nine: Hiked the last 10 miles down valley w/o much ado. Managed to catch a ride to our car with some sweet ladies from the Sedro Wooley downtown café. Parting notes: Worst weather on a trip in a long while but still highly satisfying. Any body venturing out there should be ready for snow and cold (be sure to have dry boots if possible!). We especially want to acknowledge our collegue Jeff Newman, calling it quits this year, who at 68 proved to all of us the possibilities of traversing for a long, long time. His calm, steady presence will be missed after tripping with us these last 15 years….. Pictures: ________________________________

Trip: North Cascades - Blum lakes to Pioneer ridge via Mystery ridge Date: 7/6/2010 Trip Report: Mystery Ridge Traverse Just returned from a high traverse from Baker river to Pioneer ridge. Originally this was planned as part of a traverse we had done from Watson lakes to the Baker river in 2008; weather and minor delays kept this side trip from happening then but I remember staring up at the beginning of Mystery ridge telling myself I would be back. The plan was for an early July trip with a good snowpack for easy travel. And that we indeed had! Fortunately dry campsites were not too difficult to find as well. Here`s the blow by blow. Day One Jeff, Will, Tom, Bruce and I left the Baker river trailhead at noon and crossed the bridge and found the start of the Blum lakes path. This path turned out to be a real grunt. It is steep, hard to find and dry all the way. In retrospect we should have started super early to aid travel but instead started at mid day and suffered for it. Ran out of water about half way up and plodded on eventually breaking out of the woods with great views of Mt Hagan on a scree field as we traversed to the Blums. We arrived at dusk and found a flat snow patch near the lower Blum inlet stream ate, and collapsed in bed. Day Two Slept in and then headed up easily for a traverse to the Hagan col which we crossed easily and then headed down towards Berdeen Lake. It was totally snowed in so we headed up to the pass just prior to the entry point to Mystery ridge. A relaxing eve was had and the weather was warm and the stars fabulous. In mid eve, I woke up to a turbulent cramping stomach and diarrhea. What a bummer. In more than 30 years of cascade travel, this had only happened to me once. The next day I felt like I had Montezuma`s revenge and laid low. There was really no choice in the matter. The weather was fabulous I might add…… Day Three As above. Day Four I felt a hell of a lot better. Tom, unfortunately was the next victim, going through all the same fatigue, cramps and other fun that I had the day previous. We tried to figure out how we had managed this fate and could only come up with the snow patch we had devoured (out of water….) en route to Blum lakes which likely had fecal animal contamination. Our plans had to change now. 2 days of wiggle room were gone. We had hoped to run Mystery ridge to Pioneer ridge onto Pickel pass and onward to Picket pass and out the Otto/himmelhorn col. That seemed unrealistic so we decided that if Tom was better, we would head out for a 4 day trip to Pioneer ridge and back to our pass. Bruce and Jeff headed back to Blum lakes and they only had time for half the trip and all of us headed up the arm from the pass heading west and found a stupendous camp 400 feet up with flat camping, water, snow and tremendous views in all directions. Will and I did a recon trip onto Mystery ridge to see what tomorrow would hold. That was a great idea and we found the best way to traverse the ridge the next day. Came back to a recuperating Tom and all relaxed under the warm evening sky. Day Five Tom was better so we headed down to the pass and then traversed very steep solid snow to get onto to MR. Headed up snow (side stepping big cornices) and heather and then dropped to the east side of MR which was full of snow. Rather than running the ridge continuously we elected to drop down into the big cirque SE of the ridge and traverse over to a large rib which looked easily passable and then towards an obvious pass further on the ridge which should take us over to the other side of MR and then onto Jasper Pass/Pioneer ridge. After reaching the rib we crossed it and then passed over a steep cornice to the other side. Before us was a big complex cliffy basin that didn`t look easy. Fortunately, after some scouting we made our way high above to an obvious buttress and dropped down a finger of alpine trees/easy class 2 rock to below the buttress and back into the snow filled cirque. We then headed over to the pass anxious to see if it would go easy. Our binocular views didn`t allow a full view as to whether we could make it over. A steep snow finger led us up and up and finally we saw that an unpleasant heather/rock pitch would be negotiable up to trees and likely easy to the pass from there. The rock was really crumbly and we swore we would rap down on the way back. An easy game trail took us to the pass and then we glissaded easily down to a beautiful tree island camp just above Jasper pass with awesome views down lonesome creek, back towards Mt. Despair and the best was a beautiful display of the Northern/southern Pickets with Pioneer ridge in the foreground. Day six Woke up to cloudy skies and decided to forego the packs and head up to Pioneer ridge as a day hike. We then dropped down to Jasper Pass. Nice old growth Mountain hemlock forest and a great game path that bisected the cliffs on the other side of the pass. Eventually we got to the beginning of Pioneer ridge on easy travel and made it up to a pass of sorts after negotiating a cliff band with views to Mt Crowder and much closer views of the pickets. We had hoped to climb Crowder but the weather looked lousy so we headed back to camp. Day seven The weather got bad and rain wind and even snow and sleet peppered us for 24 hours. Set up a tarp and watched it all roll through….. Hoping for better weather the next day. Day eight The rain stopped upon waking and after a brief breakfast we headed out in the mist. Dropping down off the pass to the nasty terrain we had negotiated the day before we set up a rapel line and easily rapelled down the nasty stretch. We then retraced our path several days previous in the cloudy misty weather eventually making our way back to the camp we had stayed at 4 nights prior. The storm was clearing and everything looked amazingly cool with alpenglow to boot…. Day nine Clear skies again as we dropped down and took a side tour to see frozen Berdeen lake just beginning to come out of it`s winter thaw and then an easy trip to the Hagan Col and back down to the lower Blum lake and a dry camp under a grove of Mountain Hemlocks. Day ten Got up at first light with all the water we could carry to hopefully easily negotiate the Blum lakes path down. Having negogiated some pretty heavy brush 2 years prior on the west side of the ridge we unfortunately overcompensated heading east and ended up cliffed out on the way down. A series of gullies were a no go (after a painful try to get across) and so we headed back up 1000 feet headed back west and found the path and then carefully made our way down (losing it innumerable times along the way). Eventually we hit the Baker river, our waiting car and well deserved beer and a burger along Highway 20! All in all a great trip. The weather was generally good, the snow made for easy travel and the campsites were memorable. Will said we made lemonade out of lemons on this one and I would have to agree. Hopefully next post I will incorporate the photos into the post but these two sites will have to suffice:

We traversed from easy ridge to Big Beaver the opposite direction in early August and avoided most of the alder gully nastiness in Luna Cirque by staying low actually passing lousy lake (staying as close to the lake as possible to avoid the huge teetering boulders) and then headed up the main creek back the other direction without too much difficulty to Luna Lake. That is truely a magnificent sunset picture. Must have been a magnificent night.

I`ve done the Ptarmigan twice from Cascade pass to the Suiattle. I don`t see why the Bath lakes HR wouldn`t be a option to hiking out the long rather boring trail to the Suiattle trailhead. I`ve been on the bath lakes HR from the Sulfur Mt. trail, got almost to the lakes and was weathered out. Lots of ups and downs. Apparently, it gets more difficult beyond the Bath lakes, but I haven`t been.