[TR] Mt. Maude- N. Face 6/1/2004

[Sol]

Climb: Mt. Maude-N. Face

 

Date of Climb: 6/1/2004

 

Trip Report:

Left Bellingham late on sunday night with partner Ty Johnson. Rolled into Phelps trailhead around 2 am. Leisurely start on memorial day morning found us at the low bivy around 1 in the afternoon. Summits of 7-fingered jack, and Maude were covered in clouds most of the day but overall weather was surprisingly good: partly cloudy, broken sunshine. hiked up to the col west of 7 fingered for a look at the backside of Fernow (whoa) in pure midday snow slop. crashed out early praying for cool and clear weather overnight. Woke up at 3:30 am on June 1 to clear skies and amazingly hard snow. Left bivy at 3:45 and found perfect cramponing up to the maude, 7 fingered col. Hit the col at 5 am just as the sun rose. followed tracks for the first third of the traverse to where they mysteriously stopped??? the traverse got much harder after that point as the snow became a bit more variable (breakable crust atop sugar snow) and the terrain steepened. at this point we each pulled out our tool and negotiated our way through steeper snow flutings with icy runnels in between (crux) until finally we reached the bottom of the face. a note about the traverse: some parties may want to protect this section as it is currently steep and exposed snow and ice. to limit our time we chose not to, though it was still early in the morning, rockfall was present and we both were pegged at different times with golfball sized rocks. one would proabaly be able to drop down further on the traverse in hopes of finding easier terrain. conditions on the first 1000 feet of the face were awesome hard snow, they got a little crusty towards the top but in all remained stable and fun. finished the face via a steeper 50 degree variation to the left to avoid exposure under the cornice. Summited at 7:15 on neato rime covered summit. Nice views of Glacier Peak, Bonanza, and even Baker. took south side easy descent with continued hard snow conditions all the way back to camp. back to bivy at 9:15.

 

Gear Notes:

one ice axe, one tool. we brought a rope and some gear but never felt the need to rope up.

 

Approach Notes:

sections of snow on trail but very easy to follow.

[JoshK]

Nice job. Check your PMs!