Worst Approach, Worst Descent

[Peter_Puget]

I think that running up and down Si in plastic boots is the way to go!

[catbirdseat]

<p>I haven't tried Johannesburg, but I've never heard a story about a good descent off this mountain. Has anybody ever found the "obvious" trail/ledge system/whatever that Becky mentions in CAG?<p>-Mike

Are you talking about the traverse from CJ Col to Gunsight Notch across the west facing flanks of Cascade Peak, The Triplets and Mixup? There is indeed a goat path that is reasonably easy to follow, except for one place where it helps to be a mountain goat.

[olyclimber]

no recess.

[Skeezix]

Worst approach: NE Buttress of Goode

This one I don't get. I'm sure you had a miserable time ...but there's a trail to near the base! I found this approach to be pleasant.

 

The approach would have to be the one into the Southern Picketts in the mid 80's. Ran out of water early on and ended up really dry before hitting the spring up high. That and seeing the massive NOLS party camped where we expected solitude made it particularly aggravating.

This is a brutal hump. I ran into NOLS up there one time myself. Another time I carried a pack in there only to arrive at the top and have my boss call me on the radio and tell me that a helo was on the way to pick me up to go to a rescue effort on Triumph.

For me it was decending after not able to locate a way to cross the deep dike that we had to cross to climb up Perfect Pass to Mt. Challenger.

Perfect Impasse

the descent to Baker Lake from Mount Blum. Steep, brushy, 6000 vertical feet of brutality

In the late 80's somebody built a semi-permanent camp alongside a creek that drains into Baker River. This person cut a primitive trail from Baker River to Blum Lakes. We removed the camp and erased the firering ...the trail is probably deteriorated.

 

My least favs: Ascent - Noisy Creek to Bacon Peak (Don't ask). Descent - Either groping to the Emmons after climbing into a raging storm at the top of Liberty Ridge, or bushwacking out Flat Creek after getting buried by a September storm on the Ptarmigan near LeConte Peak.

[jordop]

Mount Ling:

 

Upper Nahatlatch: each boulder is about ten feet tall:

[chuckie]

North Dome Gully, with a pig, after slipping near the top and busting me arse.

[Scourge]

Some where in Asia if I remember correctly. Vietnam might have been my worst descent and extrication.

[EWolfe]

I have done some whacks through manzanita in the southern Sierra range that rival the worst I've seen in the Cascade range. It is a hardwood, so there is little give and the branches are sharp as tacks.

 

Agreed. Some descents off of the domes in Southern Yosemite were absolutely brutal. For my money, the most shredding, impassable plant around

[Don_Serl]

Exiting the Northern Waddington range via Crazy Creek (between Twist creek and the Scimitar glacier). It's got the worst slide alder and devils club on the planet, the worst bugs I've ever encountered, two sporting creek crossings and a very real grizzly population. Add exhaustion and the need to camp in the middle of a bear trail and you're getting the picture.<p>GB<p>Ooops, guess that's the Coast Range...<p>[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: fishstick ]</p>

 

I was with Mr. B on this particularly "enjoyable" outing, and I kinda agree, with qualifiers. I thought we made decent progress most of the way, averaging about 1km per hour for 11 hours, but there was one slide path out near the mouth of Crazy Ck which required an hour and a half for about 600m of forward movement. that'd be in there at the 3 to 4 mile per day level, which is about as bad as it gets. luckily, it almost never goes on for the whole day at that density...

 

honorary mention goes to the descent with Greg Foweraker from the west face of Mt Bute via Galleon Ck. we dropped from our camp on the ridge at 7000 ft to the valley at 2500 ft in an easy 2 hours and made 1 1/2 km down the valley thru the forest in the next hour - seemed like it was gonna be a dawdle - then we hit old overgrown logged terrain. the next 2 km required 3 1/2 hrs, with numerous 10-foot plunges into the depths and ridiculously strenuous travel. when we finally emerged onto the remains of the old road-bed, we found this to be totally alder-submerged except for a grizzly-sized (and shaped) tunnel. we followed this for another hour before losing the light, our sense of position in the valley, and the last of our desire to keep putting one foot in front of the other, so we camped in the only available space, right on the path. believe me, we both pissed both up-trail and down-trail before turning in that evening, to "announce" our presence to any potential ursine visitors before they stumbled onto the tent.

 

but my vote for the most horrendous approach in my knowledge goes to Campbell Secord, Arthur Davidson, and the brothers Ferris and Roger Neave for their journey down the Homathko canyon to reach Waddington from the east in June 1934. after driving from Winnipeg to the Chilcotin (which took a WEEK back then), they skiffed 14 miles down Tatlayoko Lake and horsepacked a further 8 miles to the upper entrance to the canyon. since they planned to travel, camp, and climb unsupported in the wilderness for the following month, they had 600 pounds of equipment and supplies to move, which required double-carries with 70 to 80 pound packs. their toughness was proven over the following weeks, as they required 17 DAYS to move 17 KILOMETRES through the canyon - an average of two-thirds of a mile PER DAY, extended over two and a half weeks! they finally emerged onto the Tiedemann Glacier and still had the fortitude to make the first ascent of the Bravo Glacier, failing on the heavily-snowed-up north face of the summit tower within about 400 ft of the then-still-unclimbed top.

 

we're all pansies, compared to the old-timers...

 

cheers,

[MisterMo]

The Munday's trip up the Homathko from tidewater does not come off as any picnic either.

[jordop]

The Munday's trip up the Homathko from tidewater does not come off as any picnic either.

Yeah, but they had each taken *FIVE* NOLS courses

[Harkin_Banks]

w/o any experience working in a gear shop, your statistic is meaningless

[layton]

hey Stacey

[EWolfe]

Happy Birthday, Mike!

[glassgowkiss]

as far as a descent AA col late in a season made me want to sell my climbing gear. not hard but freeky scary. same with the late season descent from nf of stanley.

the worst descent (scary) after a new route on torre del elefante in the dolomites.

[iain]

if we're talking alder, there should be a minimum cutoff of at least 5 minutes of being suspended in air by the alder.

 

I'd much rather deal with devil's club than a quality alder grove.

[MisterMo]

It's not very long but in the Klawatti area there's a gully that bypasses the upper McAllister icefall, your goal here being to get out to Austera Towers & such.

 

I would not have thought it possible to stack rubble that loose that steep...it was a horrifying little slice of time

[Jens]

Here's a twist to this thread....

How about the worst approach that takes 120 minutes or less?

 

-anotherwards what approach in the cascades inflicts the most suffering but has a total duration of under 2 hours from the car?

 

I remeber getting off route approaching mt. Index in winter when I was a teenager and suffering pretty bad in fresh snow and slide alder.

[specialed]

The worst approach is the one in which you don't climb anything afterwards.

[Squid]

It seems like the descents are usually more epic than ascents.

Honorable Mention: Using Rat Creek to descend from the Enchantments is worth avoiding - we'll stick to Toketie in the future

-Mike

 

I wish I'd read this last summer

Still, it was a fun/crazy way to end the day!

[Dru]

The worst approach is the one in which you don't climb anything afterwards.

 

The worst approach is the one having the least fun

[specialed]

The worst approach is the one without any

[Gary_Yngve]

Hey Mike, thanks for the Rat Creek warning. A couple of times I was going to use it to get to Cannon Mountain.

 

The direct way to Cannon up from where the old FS road is washed out has a metric fton of windfall on it. A friend of mine headed up Cannon from branching off the 8-mile-creek trail somewhere near one of the bridges and it sounded like he had much better luck -- mostly timber.

[Doug_Hutchinson]

Another vote for Sleese as the worst descent - did it in a long a day and that descent was as long and way harder than the climb.

 

Moving a little north, coming out the Cirque of the Unclimbables in the Northwest Territories to get picked up

by a float plane makes Sleese look easy! Everyone usually is carrying out two weeks of gear down a 3500' talus/bushwack getting ate alive by bugs and hoping the bears don't eat you while trying to follow a non-existent trail. By all means, pay the extra for the heli lift out!!

[layton]

worst descent: hiking out when you didn't climb shit