[TR] Chehalis- Viennese to Clarke Traverse 7/30/20

[peas]

Climb: Chehalis-Viennese to Clarke Traverse

 

Date of Climb: 7/30/2005

 

Trip Report:

Having heard and read a number of legends about how great the climbing in the Chehalis is, a friend, Mark, and I decided to check it out first hand. The Viennese to Clarke Traverse looked like a nice intro to the Chehalis that would give us a good look at a number of the mountains in the group.

 

On Saturday we headed out from Vancouver and the drive was uneventful until the infamous cross ditches. Mark's old Toyota truck handled all of them fine, and only scraped once on the way in. Beyond the trail to Statlu Lake, the road looks like it gets a little more serious. Apparently someone headed up farther on Saturday night and had to take a couple runs at the hill. The other thing worthy of note is that gas is super cheap in Mission compared to Vancouver (81c/L vs. $1/L).

 

Hiking up to the alpine basin below Viennese was quite a slog and doing it on one of the hottest days of the summer so far didn't make things any easier. One bonus was that the blueberries and huckleberries were the best I've ever seen. We ate so many berries that we pretty much skipped lunch. We stopped for a short swim in Upper Statlu Lake before continuing on to the thrash up to the basin. The description we had said look for flagging through the bush, but we didn't find any on the way up or down. The bush section is short enough that it is tolerable to just point uphill and thrash. The McLane guide mentions 4th to low 5th near the waterfall that looks doable although Mark didn't feel up for it. There aren't a lot of flat spots in the basin, so we ended up flattening out a snow patch to sleep on.

 

On Sunday we were up and off early. We started off with Viennese rather than 6500 since we were worried about the amount of time we'd take. Almost immediately after gaining the ridge on Viennese, you can look about 15 pitches down the North side of the Mountain. Some nice gut churning exposure. The 5.8 or 5.9 bit near the summit had me up and worrying the night before, so I was a little tense as we neared the summit. I took a wrong turn after traversing the 4th class slabs mentioned in the McLane guide and ended up below some overhanging blocks above a nice crack. I reversed the crack an climbed the wall to the left and on to the summit. The climbing here was more like 5.6 rather than 5.8. With that monkey off my back I relaxed and really started to enjoy things. On the West side of Viennese the slabs that lead to the summit from the North side look amazing!

 

Recourse was fairly uneventful, but nice scrambling. We brought the description from Matt Gunn's new scrambles book. The crux crack felt a little harder than what a typical scrambler would do. It may be possible to work around it though. There were a few patches of snow on the East Ridge, so we were able to drink up and fill our water bottles.

 

The East Ridge of Clarke was the most fun climbing on the whole route. The 5th class climbing starts right out of the notch with Recourse, and last for about three 30m pitches. Some of the 5th class sections can probably be avoided, but they're fun and not too hard. This climbing was definitely harder than the moves on the East Ridge of Viennese. There is a cool rock window, which you can see from the basin, just above the notch that looks over to Bardean.

 

After hitting the summit of Clarke, we headed over to the sub peak to the West so that I could take some unobstructed pictures of the Judge and Robie Reid. Both mountains look very impressive from this perspective. From there we scrambled down from between the two peaks of Clarke. No rappels needed as mentioned in the McLane guide. There is also a scramble route described in the Fairley guide and Matt Gunn's guide, so you really don't need to rappel if you don't want to.

 

The return to camp involved endless boulder hopping back to camp. Neat views of the alpine terrain between Clarke and Ratney from here. We ran into a group of 4 who had planned on climbing Viennese and Recourse, but ran out of time. They'd camped at the trailhead the night before and didn't get up early enough to complete both.

 

Altogether, it took us about 10.75 hours camp to camp, and we should have done Peak 6500 to start with. Oh well. Next time.

 

After a short nap, we headed back down to Upper Statlu Lake where the bugs seemed to be a little better. It rained pretty hard on Sunday night and by Monday morning the brush was soaked. The awesome blueberry bushes on the way in were now responsible for soaking us to the bone. At least we didn't do the schwack down from the basin in wet bush.

 

We returned to Vancouver along highway 7, looking for our crazy friends who are trying to do Judge Howay by bike from Vancouver. They either were already past or had wisened up. Most likely already past.

 

The climbing was awesome! Nice textured granodiorite, splitter cracks, incut holds, awesome exposure, great views. The Chehalis definitely lived up to my expectations. I'd like to go back and check out some of the routes on the North faces of Viennese-Clake, on Bardean or Grainger. The lesser touted peaks in the area like Ratney, Stonerabbit and the numbered peaks look pretty cool too. Definitely an area that could keep you busy for quite a while.

 

Gear Notes:

4 hexs small to red camalot size, red Metolius tcu, one each of red-yellow camalot, one set of nuts, 4 slings, approach shoes, one 60m double rope used as a 30m rope. Used most of it, although never placed more than 2 pieces of gear on a 30m pitch.

Edited August 3, 2005 by peas

[Zoran]

Good work!

[luwayo]

well done chaps!