Mt. Buckindy

[Dulton]

I was surfing around on the internet... looking at Topo maps (the weather has been horrible so cut me some slack!) and I came across Mt. Buckindy in the Glacier Peak area. I have asked around and researched the area a bit and was wondering if anyone here on CC had climbed it or knew anything about it. Its been pretty hard to find any information on the area (which is part of its intrigue). I was thinking about camping down in the basin for a couple days and climbing around there, so any beta would be great! Thnx.

 

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Dulton

[plexus]

Do the traverse from Green Mountain and hit Misch, Buckindy Mutchler and Snowking. From Snowking to Mutchler, it;s not bad of a traverse. From friends that have done it, they say its a great trip with good weather.

 

An area that doesn't get much visitors, the rock on Chaval is pretty solid.

[klar404]

Another option is to come in via Boulder lake and top out over hurricane go to lake Kaw Kaw Ack and Toketie and the head on up to Chaval. Crater lake is fucked and the fish are 1 inch long.Some crystals to squeeze on ridge below Hurricane. A cool tower that looks like George Washington can be seen/scrambled from camp at Kaw Kaw Ack.And you could also come in via Enjer lake.... or from Bench?

[dberdinka]

plexus said:An area that doesn't get much visitors, the rock on Chaval is pretty solid.

 

He lies! He lies!

 

After looking at the photo of Chaval's North Buttress in the Beckey Guide, a buddy and I hauled our asses in there via Jug Lake. After a couple pitches of "3rd class" dirt, heather and friable crap-rock we bailed. My ego is still bruised. Anyone ever complete this route?

[klar404]

I met Greg Markoff (sp) on Sloan about 5 years ago. Het put the line up. He said step heather scrambling with a couple of steper steps. Never bother checking it out. It sound pretty typical for a north facing lower traffic climb. if you REALLY wanna get bummed by a climb try "howling wolf ridge".This gem is on the north ridge of the peak between Vesper and Sperry. Rave reviews in green guide. Moss death fest.

[chucK]

I've been to Bench Lake a couple of times and Buckindy looks cool from there. We missed the trail to Bench Lake and climbed partway up the spine headed to Misch. There was a faint climbers trail. Taking off on the traverse from Green Mountain looks like it'd be the cool way to go.

 

Hurricane Peak above Boulder Lake is a cool day scramble. Boulder Lake has some OK fishing too.

 

Climbed Chaval via the Bluff Lake way. Didn't do the North Butt though. Looked alright (we were looking down on it). It looked like some flawless rock (looked harder than 5.7). I don't remember it looking that bushy.

 

It's a long ways in there to carry rock gear. The middle peak looks like a fun catwalk-in-the-sky scramble up the West ridge.

[Off_White]

N Ridge of Cheval has been on my "Hmmmmm, might be fun list" for awhile. How was the Jug Lake approach? I'm not opposed to a little alpine humiliation and grovelling.

[dberdinka]

Off_White said:

N Ridge of Cheval has been on my "Hmmmmm, might be fun list" for awhile. How was the Jug Lake approach? I'm not opposed to a little alpine humiliation and grovelling.

 

IT IS DEFINITELY NOT FUN!......(Particularly if you bail 20% of the way up on "3rd" class terrain ). We stopped below a runout vertical moss chimney. Have a good time!

 

Jug Lake approach was entertaining in a "life is suffering" sort of sense. The logging road is pretty overgrown with Alder so bring your buddies car. Where the trail leaves the road is pretty well marked. We got stung by lots of wasps on the way in because a bear had come through and ripped up all their nests not to long before.

 

Eventually lost the trail and bushwacked through avi-paths for a long time to get to the lake. Better to cross to east side of drainage when the trail disappears.

 

At the lake we met a crazy, drunk red neck fisherman who thought we were crazy for going further on. Last thing he was yelling was .."WATCH ME, I'll catch one on the first cast. YEAHAWW!"

 

Stumble up a steep gully to another lake then do a long foot sore traverse across heather forever to get up on the side of Chaval. It was real pretty up here, and not a sign of anyone else ever having been there.

 

Wake up, drop down 1500' to the base of the ridge. Climb for 30 minutes. Bail. Reverse approach. Fun!

[chucK]

I went into Jug Lake for camping and an attempt at Chaval. We did the Beckey approach to Jug Lake which was up a ridge to the East of Arrow Creek. It was not that bad, but not great either. Good fishing in upper Jug Lake (caught a fish FIRST CAST!!! and second cast too ). Deceptively long way from Chaval still.

 

Bluff Lake was much easier. Did it solo in a June with snow level at 4000' and summited in around 6 hours from the truck. Went back with climbing gear later in the year to attempt the North Butt route but the approach took a couple of hours longer due to uncovered brush and heavier packs. So, we bailed on the rock route and summited the easy way again .

 

Anyway, moral of this story, I recommend the approach via Bluff Lakes (unless you wanna go fishin' ).

[Off_White]

Hah, it sounds like the best plan may be to ditch the gear and just take the fishing pole. Funny how things look different in the guidebook.

[Dulton]

I've already got plenty secret fly spots, thanks tho! With that said, how is the traverse from Green Mt. over to Buckindy and would it be easier earlier in the season before the snow melts out? Edited March 13, 2003 by Dulton

[Mike]

We did a Green Mountain to Chaval Traverse, exiting via Bluff Lake. This was a great trip except for side-hilling on the succulent hellebore (very slick) on the first day from Green. The trail from Bluff Lake out to the road is pretty spotty. You don't see very many names in the summit register on Buckindy - the original register is up there from the 1960's.

[Dulton]

Mike said:

We did a Green Mountain to Chaval Traverse, exiting via Bluff Lake. This was a great trip except for side-hilling on the succulent hellebore (very slick) on the first day from Green. The trail from Bluff Lake out to the road is pretty spotty. You don't see very many names in the summit register on Buckindy - the original register is up there from the 1960's.

 

What was the climb like on the summit block (class)? What did you take for equipment?

[Stefan]

Here is a trip report of a friend of mine. Completed around 6/30/2001.

 

Buckindy. The group was five and we climbed the major peaks on the traverse. We were successful in accomplishing the goals. However I was very surprised how much effort it took to pull it off. We summited Misch, Buckindy and Mutchler plus I was able to get a couple of bumps enroute. I had hoped to get Chaval but slow travels prevented. After summited Buckindy we noticed the last entry in the register was 9/3/95, it pretty much told the story. During the trip we saw absolutely no sign of previous human travels. Few parties ever make it into this area. I am guessing most that set out following Beckey's route fail for various reasons (difficult terrain, routefinding problems, overall more difficult, under estimating the time, etc). I purposely led this trip early season hoping for good snow cover making travels much easier and that was the case. We had pretty much clear weather conditions but it was too hot for full day travels. The snows were pretty consolidated in the morning and very soft in the afternoon. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous and views were super except for the last coupe of hours when dropping to the car. Having such views made time pass so fast that 5 days seem much less. After the trip was over, I felt very relieved to have completed.

 

A couple of us shuttled a car to the Slide Lake (Otter Cr.) on the illabot road Friday evening. It took us about 45 minutes to drive the illabot road the 20.5 miles each way. The road was in excellent condition. We reached the Green Mtn TH near 11pm where we quickly set up a tent and fell fast asleep. We awoke at 6:30am Saturday morning. The others arrived at ~7:30am. After distributing the group gear and going through the route, we hit the trail at 8am. One party member was not feeling well and within the first hour had fallen 15+ minutes behind. The rest and I were a little concern but that never happen again. We reached the shoulder of Green Mtn at 10:30am. We took a nice break and studied our route. The first leg has us getting to Lake 5371. The first and last 1/4 was snow covered. The other half was bare steep slopes which were slow traveling. The hellebore was just coming out and we did find some faint track to follow at times. Dropping to the lake was much steeper than I expected and treed. From the lake we dropped down to the trees (5200') before making the cut over the next rib. The trees are old growth and this went well. For the next leg we were not clear where to go. Nothing looked good. We had a couple of choices. Go around Pt 5890 on the north or south. We ended up going around to the south but it was very brushy go down to the basin at ~5000' and climbing an open slope back up to 5400'+. It may have been better to cut through the 5760'+ gap and going snow-covered ground to the 5360'+ col. However we managed to get to the 5360'+ col from the east. We reached this point at 5:30pm and decided we were too tired to continue to the 5200' camp (estimated it would take us 2+ hours to reach). We found a nice place to camp on snow. As we were turning in around 9pm, we got the only rain of the trip, which were a few drops. Thunderstorms just missed us.

 

The second day brought us overcast skies in the morning. This made for nice traveling. We headed up the difficult looking north ridge from the 5360'+ col. There was a game track that were well and we quickly reached the point where we left the ridge (6400'). We scramble snowfree slope to the next rib. We dropped on a completely snow-covered slope to the 5200' basin reaching at 10:25am. This leg went fast and easy. Next we headed up to a high moraine below Misch peak and this was on mostly very soft snow-covered ground. Took a long lunch at the moraine and discussed what to do next. Upon first look the high snowfield looked too steep to traverse but once we reached it, we found it 45 degrees and okay to traverse. We crossed the rib and head up a very loose gully to the summit. The loose rock fall was BAD. We reached the summit at 2pm and spent 1.5 hours enjoying the views and registers. There were two registers and one was pretty much devoted to discussing the name of the peak. party (10/7/2000) was last entry and it was amazing that he did it in one day. set up camp on a fairly level snowfield below Buckindy while we summited Misch. We got into camp at ~5:30pm. We found running water on some nearby rocks where we cooked at a great spot. After dinner Matt scrambled Caradhras for sunset photos. I had hoped to join him but my energy level was low and I passed.

 

The third day we awoke to clear skies and hard snow conditions. We got up around 6:30am and enjoyed breakfast in sunny conditions. We cramponed up to the ridge just below the summit of Buckindy. The route described indicated a Class 3 scramble to the summit. However we used the rope to climb a class 4 gully to the summit. Beckey's route is a bit under-rated. We spent 2+ hours on the summit of Buckindy and another highpoint. Views were so great it's hard to describe. The plan was to stay a long time on the summit hoping the decent would now have soft snow and were able to plunge step to camp. We quickly broke camp and headed out for Kindy-Buck pass at 1:30pm. I had hoped to have time to climb Dol Amroth, at cool look spire but I had to pass due to time. We followed Becky's route that had us going west of Pt 6495 but it would have been easier to go just east of the point. We had planned to camp at the 5975 tarn but the pass look more pleasant and it was a great place to camp. We reached camp at 4:15pm. After dinner Matt and I checked out the down route from the north Kindy-Buck pass. Much to our surprise we needed to rappel it but were not sure the ropes were long enough to reach. Matt went to get the ropes while I scrambled Pk 6680+. Matt rappelled to check out rope length and they were just able to reach with a few feet to spare (we had ~125' ropes).

 

Tuesday we were awaked to Sun on the tents before 6am. We took are sweet time pack and enjoying breakfast. Left camp at 7:30am and it took the next 3 hours to complete two rappels on north Kindy-Buck pass. However I screwed up by leaving my Ice Axe at the top of the first rappel and it cost a little time to get it. We dropped to the basin ~5100' and traversed to the 5800' pass south of Mutchler Peak. From the pass we studied the route options. Nothing looked great but we took the lower option which was pretty much level with pass. At the pass we baked in the hot conditions. Temperatures must have been in the 80's. We left the pass around 12:30pm and reached the ridge at 6900' just west of Mutchler peak at 2:15pm. Here we cooked some more in the sun before heading to Mutchler peak. Below the summit, its best to head up on the snow/glacier but the glacier could have some crevasses later. We found no summit register (3:30pm). We were now running behind schedule and spent only 15 minutes on the summits. Snowking was just in front of us. We discussed camp options and decided to head for the pass north of Pk 6995. However as we headed there on the south side of the ridge the terrain looked like the drop to the basin at just under 6000' would not go. We decided stay on the south side to drop. This went pretty fast on mostly snow-covered sloped. The views of Chaval were outstanding. Upon reaching the 5900 basin, we were treated which a deep-scared glacier carved cirque. Pretty much polished rock everywhere and very beautiful. The glacier receded and has formed a couple of lakes that are not shown on the maps. We camped on snow-covered moraine 50' above the lake. Found running water nearby and made nice kitchen on the rocks.

 

Our last day we headed out at 7:40am. The plan was to reach the car early afternoon. We had eyed a snow gully to gain the ridge west of Pk 7015. We dropped from the cirque on the NW end. There was some polished rock but found a route down and dropped a couple hundred feet. We traversed to the snow gully and then headed up to the ridge at ~6800' below Pk 7015. The north side was completely snow-covered and this leg went nicely. We were able to stay on snow pretty much to where the ridge turned north. We gained some to traverse open sloped below Pk 5897 (Ottabot). I managed to quickly scramble Pk 5897 but found the summit very block and tricky. We continued down the forested ridge crest to the car. Encountered some large boulders, brush, and old clearcuts during the drop. We reached the Slide Lk TH at 3:15pm. We quickly washed-up before heading back to Green Mtn TH. It was 6:40 went we reached Darrington. We decided to have dinner in Arrington at The Fountain. Home at ~9pm.

 

[Dulton]

Wow, thanks for the report!

[Dulton]

chucK said:

I've been to Bench Lake a couple of times and Buckindy looks cool from there. We missed the trail to Bench Lake and climbed partway up the spine headed to Misch. There was a faint climbers trail.

 

Where does the trail to Bench lake start from? Does it follow the ridgeline? How did the traverse look from Bench Lake over to Buckindy? Thnx for all the help!