[TR] Mt. Maude- North Face 8/2/2005

[BillA]

Climb: Mt. Maude-North Face

 

Date of Climb: 8/2/2005

 

Trip Report:

I'd been wanting to solo the North Face of Mt. Maude for a while and decided that since it was quite painful to shove my newly ingrown toenail removed toe into a rock shoe, that climbing something involving boots would be a good idea. I headed up to Leavenworth from Portland on Monday with the intent of sleeping at the Phelps Creek trailhead that night and then heading out Tuesday morning for a leisurely approach up to the Maude-Seven Fingered Jack Col, bivying there and then climbing the route and descending on Wednesday. Things didn't go quite as planned.

 

When I rolled into Leavenworth the radio said that the Lake Wenatchee road was closed due to the Dirty Face fire. I stopped by the ranger station in town to see if this was correct and the very nice woman told me that the road was open, for now, and that I should hurry. I thanked her and took off in that direction. (Thanks to the guy that was going into the Enchantments that showed me his atlas, very helpful!) The drive to the trailhead was quite long, but really uneventful. There was some haze from the smoke and lots of firetrucks, but that was about it. I was surprised by the number of cars at the trailhead.

 

I slept in the back of the truck that night with the intent of sleeping in and starting my leisurely approach late the next morning. Instead I was woken up early to the sound of a huge group of backpackers getting ready to hit the trial. They had the largest backpacks I'd ever seen. Not being in a hurry I got ready slowly and ate a slow breakfast wanting to give them some space.

 

I left the trailhead an hour after they did and twenty minutes later I was passing them. I walked and daydreamed and before I knew it I had covered the easy four miles to the Leroy Creek trail. I didn't have a watch with me so I had no idea what time it was. The trail up to Leroy Creek Basin is quite steep, but nice and scenic. I got into the basin fairly quickly and passed a large group who had been camping there. I waved, they looked at me like I was an alien, asked if my name was Travis, and their dog came and barked at me. I kept walking.

 

Smoke from the Dirty Face Fire from Leroy Creek Basin

 

I got up to the col a while later and the sun was still fairly low in the sky. The approach went much faster than I had expected and I wished I knew what time it was. I sat around at the col for a few minutes getting bitten by black flies and decided that this was not how I wanted to spend the rest of my day. Caching my bivy gear, I headed towards the saddle where I would cross over onto the north side of the mountains.

 

I surveyed the North Face from the top of the col, and it looked like there might be a continuous route up the face.

 

North Face of Mt. Maude from the Col

 

I read the route description again for the decent down the backside. It didn't take me long to realize that I'd majorly fucked up and had traversed way too high. I kept getting cliffed out, but finding easy gullys and chimneys in just the right places. It was a bit of a harrowing experience because I really did not want to reclimb any of that stuff as it was all incredibly loose and terrible. The last section I downclimbed was the worst, probably 50-60 feet of mid-fifth class rubble. A fall would have resulted in a long tumble to the ground and then falling under the glacier. OHHHHHH FUN!

 

A shot of the Awful Downclimb

 

I finally got up onto the glacier and was a little spooked from the downclimbing. I wandered around for a bit trying to find some continuous snow/ice that would get me onto the face. It was frustrating to find none. I really didn't want to head back up to the col after enduring the shitty, shitty decent down to the glacier. I surveyed my options for a while and decided that it would be possible to get onto the glacier by climbing a pitch of rock that looked fairly easy, but really loose.

 

Climbing a rock rib to the left of this broken section

 

This pitch was wet and very loose and low to mid-fifth class. I sat for a while on a ledge midway through realizing that I could downclimb it if I wanted to but that I REALLY didn't want to. Even if I had a rope and some gear I don't think it would have made much of a difference. I just hoped that after this the snow was continuous to the top.

 

It wasn't. I climbed five or six pitches of rock that ranged from 20 to 80 feet in length. It was quite tedious as I had to take off my crampons and stash my tools in my pack each time. After every pitch I hoped it was the last. At least one of the pitches was low fifth class climbing through a waterfall of glacial runoff. It was awesome. The whole thing was extremely insecure.

 

A snow feature

 

Is this the regular NF route all melted out?

 

A steep mixed-ish pitch

 

I was glad I had the security of two tools for the whole climb. After a point the entire face is really exposed in the sense that a fall from anywhere would be a disaster. There was evidence of some rockfall on the face and I heard quite a bit of activity in other parts of the cirque. My only encounter was a fist sized rock that whizzed by about five feet to my left. I was very glad it didn't hit me. The last couple hundred feet weren't the steepest, but were the most sustained. I was kind of tired by that time and being very careful not to fall.

 

Topping out the Face

 

Happy to be off the face, what is on my teeth?

 

I left my gear and did the ten minute scramble to the summit and sat in the sun for a while. Being watchless I had no idea how long it took me to reach the top, but could tell that it was getting late. I got back to my gear, packed up, and headed down. I thought that perhaps I would be able to head west towards the col and my bivy gear without descending too far below it. Instead I got stopped by some massive cliffs. and forced into this shooting gallery of a gully where I expected a rock to smash into my head the entire time. It was by far the worst shitty god awful scree descent I have ever endured. I descended a long ways, much of it on my ass. By the time I was able to go around the cliff it looked like I was a long way from leroy creek basin. Like 3/4 of a mile or something and I was way below the col. I was getting really tired by this point and the sun was rapidly descending. I took me some time to traverse back into the basin and I realized that I was going to have to go up a long ways to get back to my bivy gear. I was completely worked and decided the best thing to do was to just find a spot and bivy out in my slightly damp down jacket. As soon as the sun was down I was shivering. There was no way I was going to stay like that all night so I stashed my climbing gear, threw a bottle of water in my backpack and started walking up. It was like hiking a dream. I have no idea how I was able to find the key gully that you need to access the col with only my headlamp. I got up to that point and wandered around until I found my gear. I crawled in and crashed, noticing that the stars were absolutely amazing. I estimated that by that point I had probably been going for sixteen hours. I slept the next morning until it got too hot to stay in my sleeping bag, packed up my things and started the long decent down to the car. My newly surgeryed toe was killing my by the time I got to the trailhead, I thought I was going to die. I drove into Leavenworth and ate a huge meal before heading up to Whistler to meet friends for the Crankworx bike fest and some superfun downhill bike riding. It was a fine trip.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Glad I had two tools

 

Approach Notes:

nice

[thelawgoddess]

glad you didn't get hit by that rock and survived your lonesome endeavor in the wilderness. nice work!

[Winter]

Nice work Bill. Good TR.

 

How's the miss Oregon runner-up?

[catbirdseat]

It's kind of hard to say whether you were on the North Face route, but you had a good adventure regardless.

[JayB]

Nice TR and pics Bill!

 

You ever miss Colorado?

[BillA]

Hey Chris! Emily's doing well, she's working her ass off and bummed that she can't come with me to Yosemite next week. How's your summer going thus far?

 

Jay, I saw that you moved, bummed I won't be randomly running into you anymore! The one thing I really miss about colorado is living at 6500ft.

[Mountainstyle]

Sounds like a Bill Trip... nice work, take me with you next time!