[TR] Bonanza- Mary Green Glacier 7/4/2004

[JasonG]

Climb: Bonanza-Mary Green Glacier

 

Date of Climb: 7/4/2004

 

Trip Report:

With a three day weekend and a pretty decent forecast for the east side, we (my wife and two friends) headed over to Field's Point and caught the Lady of the Lake Saturday morning.

 

It was total chaos at the landing, with the boat running late from the sheer volume of humanity trying to cram aboard. There were literally no seats left once everyone was on, and they even had to break out a bunch of folding chairs to calm the teeming masses. We left a good 45 minutes late and arrived in Lucerne in due time ($26 RT). We(I) had neglected to reserve a seat on the bus to Holden, but mangaed to cram on the floor in the back of one of the buses for the painfully slow crawl up the hill to Holden ($10 RT). I had never been to Holden before and I thought it had quite the cool feel with the mining relics and all. It'd be great to base out of in the winter I bet- Anybody done that??

 

Anyways, the hike to Holden Lake went by quickly (~2 hours) and soon we found the climbers path on the east side and were at the great camp sites at Holden Pass (3.5 hours total). This early in the season there are dry spots to camp with small meltwater streams providing water just feet from the tents!

 

Given Beckey's intimidating description of Bonanza, we got a 5am start the next day and expected a full day of battle. Imagine our surprise when we arrived on the summit at 8:30 am! The glacier was not badly broken, the rock not nearly as loose as I had expected, and the route finding straightforward. If we felt pretty good on our performance, all we had to do was open up the summit register and find out how slow we really were. Sean (Courage??), Andreas (Schmidt??) and Greg(??) listed a time of 4:10 from Holden village!!! Now that is fast!

Regardless of times and such, we had a good time on the summit and lounged for about 3 hours, napping and photographing the amazing vistas surrounding us.

 

Finally the time came to say goodbye and we started down, passing a group of Mountaineers on their way up (part of the reason we waited, so as not to knock rocks on them). I think it took us less than 3 hours to descend and we were kicking back barefoot in the meadows of camp by 3pm. A short hike out on Monday, followed by a swim in Lake Chelan after arriving at Field's Point, and dinner at Gustav's made for the perfect 4th of July weekend! All in all I'd highly recommend this outing for those looking for a mellow long weekend in the high Cascades.

 

Gear Notes:

37m, 8.5mm rope

Picket- just in case

axe

alum. crampons-nice for the early morning

small rack- didn't use

 

Approach Notes:

trail in great shape as is the glacier.

[Jim]

That's a respectable time. It took us about 3 hrs longer rt but we started from the lake near the trail and had some major detours on the glacier and ugly melt-out slabs to downclimb. Ha! but we did make a week of it and got up Maude, TFJ, and Fernow. Good job, that one is a bit of work to get to.

[JoshK]

Glad to hear you guys ended up getting in the trip and summiting! I wouldn't be ashamed one bit, 7 hrs to 4:10 with you guys carrying overnight gear is within the same time ballpark, IMHO!