NE Buttress of Mt. Hardy - 1st ascent?

[daylward]

Woohoo, we did it! After one failed attempt, and much secrecy, Forrest and I have done what we believe is the first ascent of the NE buttress of Mt. Hardy! Mt. Hardy is an 8080' granite peak located at the headwaters of the Methow river, across the valley from Snowy Lakes and Goldenhorn and the PCT. To get to it via the PCT, it's about 10 miles north of Rainy Pass. But there are some things about this mountain that have presumably diverted attention away from it. First, to most people, it seems far away because it's 10 miles from highway 20 by trail. Second, it's mislabeled on USGS and Green Trails maps as a smaller peak farther northwest. Third, in Beckey's guide, he says something to the effect of "The NE face may offer technical climbing possibilities but is devoid of obvious classic lines". He's a big liar. I think he wrote that purposefully to deter people for some reason!

About two years ago, I hiked N on the PCT and looked across the valley from Snowy Lakes at the NE face, and thought it looked very promising as a climbing objective. It's about 2500 feet tall, with what appeared to be several prominent ridges. The perrenial snowfield at the base was still white late in the year, indicating little rockfall and implying high quality rock. When I got home and looked Hardy up in Beckey, I was surprised to find that there was no mention of any existing routes on the face! When I saw Beckey's wording, I immediately had the impression he was hiding something... so on the tick list it went.

Looking at the map, we discovered that Hardy is actually only about 2 miles from hwy. 20, if you took the bushwhacking approach; you can actually see the summit from the road in several places. It doesn't look like much from that side, so no wonder it doesn't draw much attention. Two weeks ago, Forrest and I went in there carrying overnight stuff and found that it took us a mere 2 hours to get from the road (at the Easy Pass trailhead) to a col in the ridge crest about a mile NW of the summit of Hardy. We set up camp there, and did some reconnaisance. We traversed from the col around the buttresses of a sub-peak, until we could peer across at the NE face from the NNW. Forrest, who had not seen it before and may have retained some skepticism, was visibly blown away. Seeing it from that angle in profile, we could tell that there was one promient buttress with a steep headwall about halfway up, then a long ridge traverse to the summit. It had to go. We then climbed straight up the buttress of the sub-peak back to the ridge crest, then traversed the ridge to the summit of Hardy, so we could look straight down on our intended route. We could see that the upper part was a spectacular knife-edge, and the SE side of the buttress was super clean and overhanging. After getting our fill of the views, we returned to our camp (thereby figuring out the descent).

The next day we made our first attempt on the route. It took a little over an hour to decend into the upper Methow Valley and traverse to the base of the route. We were stymied by some poor route-finding decisions and then, up toward the base of the headwall, I dislodged a huge rock that rolled over my hand and bashed my leg. I thought I'd broken it, so we turned around, accepting defeat, but knowing in the back of our heads that it would go someday.

That someday was yesterday. We decided to try it car to car in a day, now that we had the terrain figured out. We left in the moonless pitch dark of 4:00 am, but it still took us only two hours to reach the col we'd camped at before. By the time we got to the base of the route at 7:00, we were a full hour earlier than the previous attempt. Then we chose a much better line up the lower part of the buttress, and reached our previous high point by 9:00, 3 hours earlier than the first time! At that time I commented "At this rate, we'll be on top by noon!" But the climb had only just begun.

The route begins up an obvious gulley about 200m right of the low point of the buttress. The gulley angles up and left, and the left face of it is actually very good quality rock, low 5th class with the occasional 5.7 move. Forrest led our first simulclimb pitch up the gulley to where a large chockstone clogs the gulley, crossed the gulley and ascended via a short step onto the grooved apron to the right of the gulley. We continued simulclimbing up the grooves to a large sandy ledge with larch trees (our high point the first time). From there, I led up some corners to the right, then moved left into a broken 5.9 crack system, and I belayed Forrest up it from the top. He took over leading again, we were just below the base of the headwall, and Forrest follwed the obvious cracked arrete up to where ended in a steep face, and then traversed around to the left, up some very juggy rock and dead pine trees, into a wide chimney, up which he climbed the right side, which was actually a lot better than it looked. This brought us to the ridge crest again. I led a looping pitch that traversed left, then around a corner, and up right with a short but sweet 5.9 finger crack, to a good ledge.

This is where things started to fall apart a bit. The obvious line goes straight up from there, up a ledgy slab and then into a classic 5.9+ offwidth chimney thing. Forrest did a heroic lead up through it and the corner system above it, and set up a belay about 20 feet below where he could see that the crack fizzled out. For my next lead, I went to the top of the crack and couldn't see where to go from there without getting super run out into steep slab land. I lowered down, and pendulumed around a bit and couldn't find any other real options. We were stuck. Time was flying; it was already 4:00. We decided to bail; it would have to wait 'til next year. We rapped off a hex back to the ledge. But then I saw something that caught my eye... the ledge worms around to the right, around the corner, to a lower-angle place filled with sunshine. I felt drawn to it! So I belayed Forrest over there to check it out. He was happier when he got there, so I followed him. Above us was a gigantic clean corner system that looked difficult but aesthetic and fun and definitely climbable. It looked like it led all the way to the top of the headwall. To the right a little, there was another crack system. Many options!

I led up the corner system (5.10), and then found a slightly dicey traverse over to the crack systems on the right (it looked better to me than continuing up the corner), and set up a belay at the base of a large offwidth. Forrest went from there, leading the key heroic pitch of the day... over 200' of 5.10 and A1 with a bit of gardening, punctuated by a scary but short episode of misdirection, that took an hour and a half to finish. But it took us to the top of the headwall at 8:00! After that it really got fun. It was the knife-edge ridge we'd seen from above two weeks before, which was as good climbing as advertised, fast, interesting, exposed in places but easy, similar to much of the N. ridge of Stuart. We summited at about 9:00 just after sunset and decended back to the col and then to the car in the dark, arriving at about 12:30 am.

Being biased as usual, I'd say this route has the makin's for being a true classic. There is a lot of good rock on it, but there is definitely a fair amount of loose and rotten rock as well... Not more than many other similar but popular routes in the N. Cascades though... The line is very aesthetic, and there are several pitches of difficult and sustained climbing. Forrest and I figure it's a solid grade IV, and our particular line was 5.10 A1. Further exploration will undoubtedly uncover better lines, one good possibility being the super steep SW face of the gendarme. That would be a good project for better climbers than us. It's way shorter of an approach than we'd originally expected, and certainly a pair of fit and experienced climbers could beat our time by several hours if they followed our established line and avoided getting off-route.

Dan

[erik]

nice work forrest and dan, i would love to see a topo. once again going against what old fred says pays off. he tries to mislead on a few mountais where he still has ideas.

again nice work

 

[Cpt.Caveman]

Nice work boyz!

[philfort]

Wow, good job!

This is a picture from near Snowy Lakes - that's Mt Hardy in the clouds in the background. Is the dark buttress the thing you climbed?

That face looked like it had some nice winter gully lines on it too.

 

[Dru]

Great TR, good decipherin' of Beckey.

[daylward]

quote:

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Originally posted by philfort:

Wow, good job!

This is a picture from near Snowy Lakes - that's Mt Hardy in the clouds in the background. Is the dark buttress the thing you climbed?

That face looked like it had some nice winter gully lines on it too.

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Yes, that black thing is the headwall, the top of it is right where the cloud is moving over it, but the summit of the mountain is obscured by clouds in your picture. Our approach took us from the obvious col you can see in the picture to the right of Hardy, down the slide path below it, and then traversed over scree to the base of the buttress.

As for winter routes, I'd guess it would provide many options. Being NE facing it stays out of the sun a lot of the time, and the whole face is basically undulating with ridges/gullys. Might be hard to get in there in the winter though... how did you guys go in when you took the picture?

Dan

[philfort]

Went in by swamp creek - quite brushy even in winter/spring. I think it took 6 hours to Snowy Lakes. To get to Hardy, you could probably veer off earlier and cross over methow pass - sounds like your way would be quicker though.

[forrest_m]

i will post some photos and a topo later this week

[slaphappy]

Excellent TR!! A fine effort!

[Smoker]

Nice work Dan and Forrest. Way to see thru Becky!

Smoker

[forrest_m]

Hard to believe this was still unclimbed in 2001!

More pictures and a topo: http://www.saarch.com/forrest/hardyfull.htm

[This message has been edited by forrest_m (edited 08-22-2001).]

[erik]

thanks, look real good!

[This message has been edited by erik (edited 08-22-2001).]

[forrest_m]

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[This message has been edited by forrest_m (edited 08-22-2001).]

[CascadeClimber]

Nice job! Thanks for posting the pics. Looks like a great line.

-Loren

[Dru]

Great pics. Looks good on the slabs to the right of the arete too??

[Lowell_Skoog]

About ten years ago Greg Markov told me that he and John Stoddard bailed off the NE buttress of Hardy because of poor rock. It's possible that Greg was sandbagging me, but I doubt it because neither of them ever tried the route again. I've got some good slides of the face from spring ski trips, but unfortunately no scanner to post them.

--Lowell Skoog

[daylward]

Lowell,

No, I don't think you were intentionally sandbagged. On our first attempt we found a rap sling that seemed about 10 years old, and I can see why they bailed there! As shown on Forrest's route picture, the first time we started up the slabs to the left of the big gully. There we found vertical bushwhacking and lots of bad rock and lots of wasted time. The second time we just climbed up the left face of the gully, which was much better. Much of the face does have bad, rotten, and loose rock, but generally staying close to the buttress crest you avoid the majority of it. The steeper pitches in the middle were great; quite solid.

Dan

[mattp]

Dan -

You may be right about those guys, but Greg Markov studied under Fred Beckey for a while. So maybe the guidebook reference and the "beta" are part of a conspiracy.

- Matt

[JGowans]

I know this was done ages ago, but I just wanna say that it was totally inspirational reading the TR. That's what it's all about, and what I hope I can progress towards someday. Awesome!

 

I hope there's loads more TRs posted this summer about adventures like that. The spray gets old after a while.

[JoshK]

JGowans said:

I know this was done ages ago, but I just wanna say that it was totally inspirational reading the TR. That's what it's all about, and what I hope I can progress towards someday. Awesome!

 

I hope there's loads more TRs posted this summer about adventures like that. The spray gets old after a while.