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Mt. Buckner


daylward

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Trip date: 10-01-00

car-to-car, 18 hours from Cascade Pass trailhead (3 am to 9 pm)

Team: Forrest Murphy, Dan Aylward

This climb was everything you'd expect from a late-season attempt of an ice-covered north face in the Cascades. We lucked out on the weather; though rain was predicted for later in the day, we managed to avoid being hit by a single drop. We slept in my car, set the alarm for 2:30, and were hiking by about 3. We ground our way up the 3 miles and 35 switchbacks to Cascade Pass, then up Sahale Arm. We summited Sahale at about 7:00, timing the sunrise just about perfectly. Neither of us had ever been to the very summit of Sahale, which isn't a big accomplishment, but it is discouraging to look at what you have to do to get to the Boston Glacier from there... basically, the only option is to traverse the choss-laden southeast face of Boston Peak on various ledge systems. It actually looks quite improbable from Sahale, but it goes. There was one snow gully in the middle that we had to don our crampons for and pull out our ice tools. After getting to the Boston glacier, Buckner is farther away than it looks, but the travel was easy. The crevasses were very visible and we managed to wind our way around them without difficulty. The middle of the N. face of Buckner has a wide ice couloir that actually seems to be a glacier down it (the route in question). About halfway up, the route had significant seracs and bergschrunds. However, to the left of the main couloir, there was a steep snowfield, separated from the main couloir by a band of fairly good rock. We decided on bypassing the seracs by crossing the rock band (trivial), then rocking up the snowfield. The top of the snowfield provided an easy exit onto the main couloir above the seracs. The route then goes straight up, winds through some rock outcroppings (some objective hazard, I was pummeled by small gravel at one point). We place 3 ice screws, two of which were fairly ineffectual in the firm-but-not-water-ice snow. The third was actually placed in the small amount of water ice that we found and was quite solid. The route trends to the left after the rock outcroppings, onto a wider and lower-angle snowfield, then trends back to the right to the summit, which was upon us before we knew it (1:00 pm).

The descent was more problematic. Most of the snowfields in Horseshoe Basin (off the south side of the mountain) were greatly deminished due to late season conditions, so we could do very little glassading and were instead relegated to the scree. We worked our way down and west (toward Sahale Arm), connecting snowfields and gradually losing elevation. We crossed several streams, and were very pleased when the scree turned to heather. We thought about going up to sahale arm again, but there were some steep slabs with waterfalls and ice chunks that looked precarious... the closer we got, the worse it looked. Apparently early in the season this is doable, making the return trip much easier. We were forced down into the depths of Horseshoe basin. The bottom of the basin is surrounded by steep cliff bands with many waterfalls and lots of brush. We had a hard time seeing where or if there was a way down. We followed the largest stream down as far as we felt safe, and looked down and saw there was a trail leading to a mine on the west side of the basin... if we could only get there... We looked to the left and thought there might be some lower angle sections. We angled back up to the northwest, more towards the center of the upper basin, then followed an animal trail towards the lower angle sections. What ensued was about 800 feet of class 4 downclimbing among slide alder and rose bushes. Unpleasant, but it went. Once we got to the trail things went much more smoothly, but we were disheartened nonethless by the prospect of being a full 8 miles from the car... We had to turn on our headlamps at Cascade Pass, and made it back to the car by 9:00. It was a very sleepy drive back to Seattle.

Dan

[This message has been edited by daylward (edited 06-28-2001).]

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>The descent was more problematic....

>We thought about going up to sahale arm again

There is in fact a climber's trail that goes up the buttress to the right of the bad looking slabs with waterfalls. It begins just to the right of the buttress, and climbs through a notch in the lower part it, then back up to the crest... Much more fun than Horseshoe Basin.

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