[TR] Thunder Slam: Storm King, Goode, Logan 8/19,20,21- Park Creek 8/19/2005

[BlackHawk]

Climb: Thunder Slam: Storm King, Goode, Logan 8/19,20,21-Park Creek

 

Date of Climb: 8/19/2005

 

Trip Report:

Over August 19th, 20th, and 21st I climbed 8,515' Storm King, 9,200' Goode, and 9,087' Logan. The full moon roamed the night sky and I had the best of weather all around. While there I replaced the summit register on Logan with a new log that I picked up from the Mountaineers – Blake from the CC forum brought down the filled up register earlier. For me, Logan was the last of the ten non-volcanic 9K+ peaks in Washington to climb, and it was the perfect finale to that quest. I’ve been thinking about climbing Goode and Logan for some time and have been lamenting that I didn’t get around to them before the massive storm of October 2003 wiped out easy access. The most recent books covering North Cascades climbing (Stephenson’s Summit Routes: Washington's 100 Highest Peaks, 2005 and Goldman’s Washington’s Highest Mountains, 2004) don’t detail the ongoing difficulties you face just getting to the base camps but do promote the excellent notion of consolidating climbing efforts while you are in a particular area, from the perspective of knocking off the Bulger Top 100. Actually, my simple goal was merely to finish off Washington’s Top 15 (every peak over 9K, volcanoes included) but I decided to put Storm King (#50) on the list because of its great location in the nice line of peaks running up the North Fork Bridge Creek drainage. I found that all 3 of these peaks present roughly the same level of route finding and climbing challenge and that what Stephenson calls the Thunder Slam makes for an awesome outing.

 

The basic idea is to climb 3 big rocks in about 5 days, gaining maybe 14,000 feet in elevation in the process. Attempting this begins with a consideration of the 4 main 20-or-so mile approaches (Cascade Pass, Thunder Creek, Bridge Creek, Stehekin) to the Park Creek Pass area. In order to stay within a good weather window I planned a 5-day trip that allowed one day each for the approach and retreat. Since I wanted to be climbing on the second day, and armed with good beta from Blake, I figured the best one day approach for me would be to drive to Chelan, take the ferry to Stehekin, mountain bike up to the Park Creek trailhead, and then hike on up the Park Creek drainage. I brought along my mountain bike and found that biking up the 9 mile closed-road portion of this approach with a full pack worked fine, even when the road began to look more like single track.

 

 

Arriving in Stehekin, I assembled my things at the landing and then headed up to the Golden West Visitor Center to grab a National Park backcountry permit. I’m not in tune with all the goings-on in the village of Stehekin but it did seem to me that this place is not geared towards those who actually do things in the out-of-doors. I was the only climber currently registered in the backcountry book and, looking around, I didn’t see anyone who seemed particularly capable of finding me, even if I told them exactly where to look. They asked a lot of questions like they knew what they wuz talking bout, but the give away was the overt use of mnemonics to identify the 3 main peaks off in the distance – “I went to Boston to buy a Book for a Buck” and I can’t say they knew which was which. I let them know who to call if I wasn’t back by the end of the 6th day and headed back to the landing where, in the interest of conserving a little time and energy, I paid the Indiana Jones wannabe shuttle bus driver $9 for the 9 mile lift up the valley to where my 9 mile biking exercise would begin. Along the way I realized that I was probably the only one around who didn’t know Stehekin had a bakery - a fine bakery in fact. Actually, I’ve gone out of my way to avoid Stehekin in the past, but all this was soon forgotten as I made my way up the valley and in a matter of hours I was at the Park Creek trailhead where I stowed the bike and headed up the trail to Two Mile where I camped by the river for a comfortable, bug-free first night out.

 

 

Early the next morning I crossed the river and was back on the trail heading up the valley, soon arriving at the enormous washout running down off the SW face of Goode. Just after reentering the woods on the far side of the wash I spotted the 10’ snag and small cairn marking the start of the steep Goode climbers trail. I stowed some food and unneeded gear in the woods and headed up through forest and brush, eventually intersecting the well-established climbers track on the ridgeline and moved on up through forest, grassy meadow, and finally Western Larch laced cliff bands to an excellent 7,400’ bench near the foot of Goode’s SW face where I set up camp and prepared to climb Storm King. From the 7,400’ campsite it is a relatively level mile-or-so of northerly traversing around shoulders, across benches, and over talus and lingering snow to reach the scree-and-talus run-out coming directly down from the spires of Storm King Mountain. I turned and worked my way up that slope and eventually moved right and up onto a rocky buttress for easier progress.

 

 

I paused to review route descriptions and realized that Stephenson/Beckey and Goldman describe two different climb approaches for Storm King and it looked to me like the Lowell Skoog photo in Stepenson’s book has the arrow pointing at the wrong notch. I think the correct notch is actually further left, per Beckey, around to the left of the peak and not visible in the picture in the book. I didn’t bother to check it out because I was already headed up Goldman’s route that leads up through blocky boulders to an easy notch at the natural finale of the scree-and-talus slope, to the right of the twin-towers that rise up before you. Passing through that notch, I traveled left across a narrow ledge system, around one ridge and over to another beneath the summit, and then worked the route up from there, paying attention and staying on class 4 rock to the top. I had great afternoon views in every direction but the look over to Goode, which I would be climbing the next day, was the real knockout. I quickly down-climbed the route and got back to camp about 3.5 hours after starting out with plenty of daylight left to cook dinner, relax watching the sun set, and contemplate the next day’s climb.

 

 

Waking up several times throughout the night I watched the moon in stop-frame progression as it moved across its horizon-spanning arc and finished off my breakfast tea as it hung low in the west over Johannesburg and the night sky shifted from purple to pink. From camp the slog up to Goode’s SW Couloir was a tedious exercise in scree-and-talus negotiation, heading easterly up along moraine slopes towards a ridgeline at the head of the SW face cirque. As the length of the SW Couloir came into view so too did the ledges that provide easy access to the couloir. Ascending the couloir was very straightforward but about 3/4 the way up there is a more challenging rounded slab with sparse hand/foot holds that may slow you down. At the top of it, after a few class 5 vertical movements, I found a block with multiple rappel slings and a ledge that I followed to the right. At its end I headed up an angling gully to the flat-rock notch on the SE ridge of Goode, at the top of the SW couloir, known as the Black Tooth notch. From the notch I worked a ledge downward and left on over to an obvious ridge of the notorious NE Buttress, gaining it near a bivy site right on the ridge where I doubt anyone intentionally bivouacs.

 

 

From there it’s the typical Cascade climbing exercise. If you pay attention it’s all class 4 movements up ramps/gullies and across ledges to reach the top. I zigzagged upwards some distance across the buttress and then headed straight up a blocky ridgeline adjacent to one of the few remaining snow fingers running down from the summit. Once again I had simply killer views in all directions, but the look directly down the NE Buttress to the Goode Glacier far below will take your breath away and made me want to do the entire route. I down-climbed the way I came up until I reached the one little difficulty in the couloir where I set up a rope on the existing slings and rapped down to its end just to justify having hauled it all the way up there. From camp this was about a 4 hour summit round-trip, which left plenty of daylight to break camp, head back down to the Park Creek trail, exchange and stow gear near the 5 Mile camp. I exchanged greetings with a backpacker who was setting up camp, one of the few people I met anywhere along the trail, and then headed up to the Park Creek Pass vicinity to camp and prepare for the next day’s climb of Logan and the hike out.

 

 

That night I set up camp near another campsite, but the occupant of the bivy bag was nowhere to be seen as the day’s light faded. This was cause for some concern, but I suspected that someone would eventually drag their weary butt into camp by headlamp after a long day out climbing or something and got organized for the next day’s glacier traverse up to Logan and slid into my bivy for the night. Shortly after dawn the next morning, as I departed for Logan, I noticed that the other campsite was still not occupied. This was definitely not good. The sun had not yet risen over the distant ridge as I headed up the climbers trail from a switchback a short way down the Thunder Creek side of Park Creek Pass. As Beckey says, the SW route to Logan has some flexibility. Rather than stay on the sketchy climbers track heading northerly at 6,200-6,400 feet towards the basin beneath the Fremont Glacier, I moved upwards through open Western Larch towards the large rock outcropping of the South Peak and crossed over it at about 7,200’, dropping down into the basin beneath Logan via a loose rock gully and then worked upwards to reach an awesome 8,000’ bivy site next to a large boulder at the southwestern end of the Fremont Glacier. I headed across easy hard snow and glacier ice with crampons and axe, passing between Point 8248 and the Middle Peak, and then headed steeply up through an icy and crevassed portion of the Fremont where I found ways around difficulties - nothing major. I headed to the left of the huge wind cirque in the glacier and followed an icy ridgeline to the edge of the cliff where the rock climb begins. The glacier overhung a deep moat and I planted my axe for protection as I leaned across the moat and stepped down onto a small ledge. This first section seemed to be 4th class, but the rest was mostly class 3 scrambling, northerly along and below the far side of the ridge to a final more vertical push from a shoulder just beneath the summit spire – all very enjoyable.

 

 

I doubt there is there a better mountain anywhere in Washington for such long views of so many familiar high peaks, massive glaciers, and deep valleys. The weather was perfect, and I took my time heading back down after transferring names to the new summit log and adding my own. As I neared Park Creek Pass I ran into another climber who planned to climb Logan the next day. I asked him if he had seen the vacant bivy on his way up, and I was relieved to hear it was his. Turns out, he had climbed Storm King the day I climbed Goode and attempted Beckey’s high traverse to Park Creek Pass on the return. He ran into serious difficulties and then ran out of daylight and wound up bushwhacking down to Park Creek where he stumbled into the 5 Mile camp exhausted and unable to continue – Blake reported difficulties attempting this too. The backpacker I talked to while stowing my gear had shared his camp with him for the night – awesome! So, 6 hours after I had started out I wished him luck and headed back to the campsite, packed up, hiked the 8 miles down to the old road, and then biked a few more to the Bridge Creek campground where I camped in relative luxury with a picnic table next to a clear (no silt) running stream. The next morning I rode the 16 remaining miles back to the Stehekin landing, checked out with the ranger, caught the ferry back to Chelan, and made my way back to Seattle.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Rope, helmet, crampons, axe

 

Approach Notes:

Park Creek via Stehekin

[Blake]

Sorry I missed you on your way out, i think i was up in the mountains or something. Glad to see all went well. I think that the guy who epiced on that high-traverse was Tom Sjolseth... he should have listened to me.

I'd love to hear from someone who has done that route as an approach or deproach to Goode/Storm King without having it turn into a 5+ hour ordeal involving 5th class.

 

Maybe you can double check my suggested Storm King route description, and comment on errors, or maybe newer editions of green Beckey have been corrected. In either case, let me know:

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/498674/Main/223474/#Post498674

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Indeed, it was me who you saw up by Park Creek Pass, Blackhawk .. it was a pleasure to meet you.

 

As for the high traverse, I noticed Blake said he was in cliffs and such in his TR, but on the map I noticed there were no cliffs where I was intending to go (a level traverse at ~5200'). I assumed (correctly) that Blake was a bit higher up than I intended to be, so I figured it might go. It went (with no cliffs), but I got into a boscage of slide alder and devil's clubs that lasted a fair while. The first bit was misleading, as it was wide-open forest. This is what got me thinking it might go. But as soon as I crossed the first rib, it was all thicket and I had already crossed the point of no return. I didn't have the luxury of seeing the terrain on the way in, as I approached via Thunder Creek. If I had seen the terrain with my own two eyes, I wouldn't have gone that way regardless. I consider it a learning experience. I should have listened to Blake, but the thought of descending to <4000' didn't appeal to me.

 

That evening on the way out, I found the climber's path leading out of the basin below Goode, so I followed it to Park Creek and, soon thereafter, saw the gentleman with the tent and decided to camp there since I didn't have my headlamp with me and I had nearly run out of daylight. So the moral of the story here is that there is no good way to traverse high from Park Creek Pass to the basin below Goode/Storm King unless you're packin some napalm. I think between myself and Blake, we pretty much covered that entire hillside.

[BlackHawk]

Blake, did you go up the big V notch, straight up and across the snow, in this picture (check the attachment)? From the summit I saw rap slings leading down in to that notch, but on page 61 of the Stepenson/Bongiovanni book an arrow is pointing directly at the small V notch - next one to the right (there's a little finger sticking up in it). I was thinking no freaking way and went even further right, to a notch on the right of that furthest spire back - this may have been easier than the route you (and Beckey) describe. Your description is good, but it all hinges on getting the correct SW orientation.

Randy

 

(edit info - annotated attachment picture below added 9/19/2005)

[summitseeker]

First off, this is an awesome trip report and it sounds like you had a great outing... I felt like I was up there with you enjoying the views.

 

Blake, did you go up the big V notch, straight up and across the snow, in this picture (check the attachment)? From the summit I saw rap slings leading down in to that notch, but on page 61 of the Stepenson/Bongiovanni book an arrow is pointing directly at the small V notch - next one to the right (there's a little finger sticking up in it). I was thinking no freaking way and went even further right, to a notch on the right of that furthest spire back - this may have been easier than the route you (and Beckey) describe. Your description is good, but it all hinges on getting the correct SW orientation.

Randy

 

I missed this trip report when it was initially posted (out of town). It seems there is some consensus forming that we may have labeled the incorrect notch in our picture. Regrettable, if true. Please let us know if this is the case and we'll get it corrected, both as an immediate posting on our website and in the second edition (later). We really appreciate folks letting us know when we've got it wrong, or when things have changed, etc.

 

--Scott

[Blake]

Blake, did you go up the big V notch, straight up and across the snow, in this picture (check the attachment)?

 

i went from where the photo is taken, up toward the big v-notch on the left side of teh photo. It was snow below, then rock. I then went up all the way to where i could see down to bridge creek, (loose stemming/chimneying) and that wasn't working. I eventually went up a branch of the gulley that split right about 40' below the notch. This became a 4th class right-facing corner. Then it was straight up for 1/2 rope length to the top. 3rd/4th and nothing too loose or scary. I rappeled from the established anchors at the top, and this brought me back to my axe and pack, just above where the gulley branched right.

I didn't see a 20' crack.

I think that this route was fine, and was NOT snow covered at the 200'.

I don't know if the notch indicated in "summit routes" is better or worse, but i doubt it's much better.

-blake

[BlackHawk]

Below is a closeup of that Storm King notch that has an arrow pointing at it in the Stepenson/Bongiovanni Summit Routes book. The summit block is the rock rising up to the left and none of the route suggestions I've read describe going up this nasty little gully.

 

Tom, you went the same way that I went, heading up to the right from where this picture was taken to an easy notch. It's the way Goldman recommends in her Washington's Highest Mountains book. I passed through that notch and headed left on a ledge, passing back on the other side of the notch pictured here via class 3/4 rock, and headed up to the summit from the far side.

 

Blake, you went up the way Beckey talks about which leads up into the notch on the left side of the summit block (to the left of where this picture was taken) between the east/west peaks. I saw the rap slings you used to drop back down and would have done the same but I didn't bring the rope on this particular outing. Going your way, you angle right onto summit block rock before you get to the notch. As you point out the Beckey route description could be a little better and nothing changed for Storm King in the 2003 (green) revision.

 

Scott, I'll post a report on your summitroutes.com site.

Randy

 

[summitseeker]

This is fantastic information and I really want to thank all you guys for taking the time to correct our mistake. Memories/sources appear to have failed us in this instance. We will definitely address this in the second edition, and notify folks of it on my website. Randy, if you have the time to post a report on my website, that'd be great too.

 

There are two distinct routes discussed, so we will be sure to include both.

 

--Scott

[summitseeker]

Tom has sent me additional information via email which has made me unsure (again) as to what the conclusion is. I've asked him to take a look at the excellent picture of the "Summit Routes" notch that Randy posted and let me know if that is the notch that he climbed up to. I am interested to see what he has to say. I'll post more as I hear it.

 

Either way, we will be making a correction/adjustment in the guidebook to reflect all this great information, as there are obviously multiple ways up this peak.

[BlackHawk]

I've got one other pic that may help - if you swing the camera just to the right of my photo of that steep, nasty-looking notch you see the easy way I went. The easy notch I passed through is just on the other side of the big block in the picture below - given a choice at that vantage point the way of least effort is obvious. Once through the notch you move downward and left to get onto a narrow ledge with over hangs that make you want to crawl in a few places - that's the distinguishing characteristic of that ledge and Tom would remember that if he did go that way.

 

Note that Beckey's description, cited in your text, clearly talks about moving "right" from the notch access point, which would put you on the wrong block of rock if you went up that nasty gully. Well, the nasty little gully may in fact go (it would be tough) but nobody has written a description for it.

Randy

 

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Randy is absolutely correct. I took the same notch he did. The notch depicted in the Summit Routes photo was hard for me to see clearly, and now that I see the close up of the notch that Randy just posted it is definitely NOT the notch I took. Sorry for the confusion.

[summitseeker]

You guys are amazing! Thanks for clarifying my confusion on which notch you (Randy and Tom) were talking about. It is great to know that you are both talking about the same notch, and that we unfortunately mislabeled the notch in our guide (and that we need to correct our route description). Those are some fantastic photos, Randy. I'll be talking to you when work starts on the second edition.

 

--Scott

[JoshK]

I took a major thunder slam this morning. It felt great.

[BlackHawk]

if you didn't see God it doesn't count