SWS20

[/img] Jan 14, 2013 Beautiful sunset over Mt. Shuksan and Koma Kulshan seen from Winchester Mountain Fire Lookout during a three night split-board mission with my brother T.J.

I forgot to mention that we were there for 6 days and we didn't make it even a fraction of the way thru the entire Picket Range. Granted we were stuck in our tent due to some intense rain/hail for 2 of these days. But even still, with all the weight from your food/gear/climbing gear it's going to take you a while. 8 days for the whole traverse may be cutting yourself short. Also if you do go in the way I went from Hannegan Pass and up to Perfect Pass to reach the Challenger Glacier, be ready for a lot of elevation gain and loss. Getting to perfect pass is a bitch. The gully that separates Easy peak area from the side with perfect pass is intense. You will die if you fall down there. There is apparently a ledge that you can cross the gully on up high so that you don't have to lose a shitload of elevation in order to reach the bottom of the gully and work your way back up the other side. However, with the shitty rainy weather we had our whole trip it was impossible to locate this ledge and likely would have been very slick and dangerous to cross. Also, just to inform you a lot of the approach to these peaks is off-trail through thick vegetation, and we spotted A LOT of bear shit everywhere. Kinda surprised we didn't walk straight into a bear while we bushwacked through chest high brush. You better be pretty comfortable with routefinding, have a good map and compass. We didn't ahve GPS or any of that shit, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt. And as you mentioned, if you break your leg, your acronym STOP or whatever it was won't do you shit. You will die, unless you have a satellite phone or somehing to call for a rescue, which may not even get a signal due to the rugged terrain. There is a backpacking trail that goes kinda around the entire Pickets that might be more suitable, or just do something a little less intense/committing if you are going by yourself. The North Cascades are beautiful. I have called them home my entire life and believe me you won't be disappointed climbing some other peaks in the area, it's all gorgeous.

My brother and I tried heading in from Hannegan Pass last september of 2010. We were planning on heading up easy peak over to perfect pass, climb Challenger, head over to Luna, climb Luna, then climb Fury and head back out the way we came in....Weather doesn't always work out the way you want in the PNW. We got rained on, hailed on, and snowed on. We made it just below perfect pass before getting totally white-out with rain/clouds & fog. Couldn't see shit for two days, as we sat in the tent waiting for the weather to clear. Didn't clear and we had to just head back out the way we came.