TR : Buck Mountain

[MountainMan]

Climbed Buck Mountain with klenke on Sunday. We left the car at 8:10AM and started up the Buck Creek Trail towards the creek crossing. We had no trouble crossing the creek on a large log jam near Beckey's "obvious slide area". We hiked up the ridge with minimal brush wacking (BW2 at most) and began our traverse towards Mt. Berge at ~5900'. We had no problem finding the ramp on the Buttress on Mt. Berge which enabled us to bypass a heavy bushwack through dense slide alder. We then traversed the boulder field and gained the saddle between Berge and Buck. Once on the saddle, we found beautiful views of Clark, Luahna, Rainier, Seven Fingered Jack, Maude, Fernow, Copper, and Bonanza Peaks. There is a calm pool of water between granite slabs that flows into a 1000'+ waterfall over the North side of Buck. This is one of the most beautiful areas I've ever seen in the cascades.

 

We then began to climb the last 1800' to the summit of Buck. Once we gained the high point that can be seen from the saddle, we encountered three main summit areas. It was already 4PM and we didn't know which summit was the true summit. We had to figure it out soon to avoid a forced bivvy. The summit farthest away looked the tallest, but I remember hearing someone tell me that the summit that doesn't look tallest is the one to climb. So, with a little persuasion, I convinced klenke that the true summit was actually the closest one. He agreed and we began the final steps to the [true] summit. Once on top, we looked down the very precipitous NE Face of Buck down to King's Lake 3000' below. The views from the summit are very nice. The last entry in the summit register was September of 1998 by Billie Butterfield and company. The register dated all the way back to 1965 and has very few entries (no more than 30 parties total). Buck definitely doesn't get climbed much.

 

We got back to the trail just before dark. The hike out to the car was uneventful, and we got back to the car at 10PM ... 14 hours after we left.