meganerd Posted May 31, 2003 Share Posted May 31, 2003 Trail snowfree to Stuart/Colchuck junction. Patches to lake. Easy to follow. Mostly covered around lake. Lake almost ready to melt (no walking across). Route in good condition to col. Didn't make it past for reasons outlined below. In short, I suck. For the three people frequenting this site with a reasonable attention span, here is a more entertaining report: Ok, I'm going to fucking shoot the weatherman. (Not seriously people, please take a little sarcasm). Forecast: 85 degrees and sunny in Leavenworth. Reality: 65 degrees and raining with ominous humidity clouds clinging to the walls of the Icicle Gorge. Hmmm, not so good. Well at least the trip started off promising. In fact, as I was sitting in class yesterday morning admiring the best day of the year so far, something inside just snapped so I skipped my evening math class to head over to Leavenworth and try to get up to Colchuck Lake before sunset. As it turned out that's exactly what happened. The snow on the trail is melting very rapidly. Patches start at the Stuart/Colchuck junction and the coverage only becomes consistent a few hundred yards before the lake. The trail is never difficult to follow. I arrived just as the alpenglow was shining on Dragontail and Colchuck. Neat. Through a little quick scampering about and a lucky find, I picked out a small dry campsite perfect to set up my little bivy/tent. I don't think I saw a melted out camping spot big enough for a full size tent. Keep that in mind. Had a pretty warm night in my sleeping bag and bivy sack but woke up to high but apparantly thick clouds in the morning. What the crap? This wasn't supposed to happen. On some days I would have just turned around and headed down right then (I'm a fair weather climber) but I was fairly determined today. Then I saw the one glimmer of hope needed to initiate a full hearted attempt: a single pink sunrise ray hitting the bottom of the high clouds. So I was off. The trail around the lake is mostly snow covered (NOONE is going to walk across the lake now) and would be a little difficult to follow if there wasn't a beaten track (which there was even on a Friday morning). As was expected, the snow was reasonably firm but with soft spots great for post-holing. As soon as the trail broke out of the trees onto the open avalanche slope/ boulderfield beneath Colchuck, I took a hard right to avoid the worst of the boulders which present somewhat of a hazard being half covered with snow. I made my way quickly up in good snow conditions to the low point in the old moraine of the Colchuck Glacier. Beyond this, once the route started climbing again toward the actual glacier, my energy really started to wane and I realized for sure that I had not brought enough water. I eventually ended up reaching Colchuck Col just over 8000 feet at the head of the glacier but it took me forever and I was completely out of water and getting somewhat cold (I had been going sparingly on the water for some time. The weather looked as though it was getting worse instead of better although Rainier actually appeared to be completely under the clouds still. Also the third class scramble up from the col had some snow on it, so this combination of factors forced me to turn back. It feels kind of stupid considering that the summit was only 600 feet higher, but it still feels like the right choice even now sitting in my nice warm house, so it must have been. The descent was fairly quick as I glissaded about half the route. Most people would be comfortable glissading the whole thing but I'm very wary of steep glissades when I'm by myself. This route does approach 40 degrees for one section. Just before I reached the lake, I finally found a creek coming from a small basin not frequented by anybody and took water from it unfiltered because I did not want to use my iodine tablets. I hope I don't regret that. Just as I reached my camp, it started to sprinkle. Again, what the crap? I was moving slowly because I was wearing my burly Nepal Extreme boots for some reason and it took what seemed like forever to reach the trailhead. A little past the junction it started raining steadily but still fairly lightly. Annoying still... Oh well, at least I got a good workout. Listened to some good ol' Slayer, Morbid Angel, and Dead Kennedys classics on the way home to calm my frayed nerves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nolanr Posted June 4, 2003 Share Posted June 4, 2003 Are you at CWU? I went there...well, a few years ago. I was such a putz I didn't do any hiking or climbing, didn't know anything about the Enchantments, Stuart Range, Icicle Cr., Peshastin, Frenchman Coulee, etc. Damn, what a waste of 4 years. At least I've somewhat made up for it since. Yeah, it's hard to beat the glisade down from the Col. In good snow conditions I did it w/out taking any more than about a dozen steps for the 2500 feet or whatever that is, sliding the whole rest of the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meganerd Posted June 7, 2003 Author Share Posted June 7, 2003 Nope, not at CWU, I'm at CCC, hooray for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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