JoshK Posted September 8, 2002 Posted September 8, 2002 Headed up to end of cascade river road last night with a friend. Plan was to do sharkin tower and sahale, and get him back somewhat early tonight. The plan went down hill when the thunder+lightning+heavy rain started hard shortly after we got to the parking lot. We slept in the back of my station wagon and figured we would take a look at our options in the morning. 6am rolls around and from what little bit of j-berg we can see, it's clear that snow fell fairly low down last night. Hmm...don't really want to go rock climb. New plan...just hike up sahale from the arm and check things out and shoot some pictures. We leave trailhead at 7am. At 4800 feet we encounter the first little bit of fresh snow from the night before. Make it to cascade pass at 8am. The pass has scattered bits of snow here and there. We take off up the sahale arm trail around 8:15. Snow on plants starts to get thicker and thicker. By around 5800 trail is covered. By just over 6k, trail is covered in 1" to 2" in places and occasionally hard to find during that long flat area. We get to sahale glacier camp at around 10am and sit around talking to some backpackers who were there last night and witnessed the thunder+lightning. We still can't see much, but head up the sahale glacier at around 10:30. There is probably around 4"+ of new snow on the glacier. At around 12:00 I turn around about 20 or 30 from the summit with my friend about 10 feet behind me. Unfortunately the summit rocks were all icy and snow covered and a slip would have really sucked. Part of our lightweight plan included no rope, pro, etc. so there wasn't much we could do at that point. Oh well... We got back to the car around 4 with some great pics taken during the few clearing moments. The fresh snow made for awesome views. I wish we could have made the last few fet, but I was pretty happy with the effort considering all the snow and the fact that I was in tennis shoes. Quote
Off_White Posted September 8, 2002 Posted September 8, 2002 Sounds like a good time. Did you have any moments where you were glad to not be in the middle of the mega hike/climb over Buckner and Logan you were imagining for this weekend? I know I'm still hoping for a nice little indian summer season.... Quote
JoshK Posted September 8, 2002 Author Posted September 8, 2002 Yes, I'll admit that it was one weekend where I'm quite glad I wasn't a.) solo, b.) bivying, c.) on a mega climb. I'm still hopeful for an indian summer. The weather-guessers say it's supposed to be prety nice next week. Quote
ivan Posted September 9, 2002 Posted September 9, 2002 josh...sounds like you're the guy whose car i slept by after the rain stopped friday...no shit on the 3 things you didn't want to be doing this weekend...the east ridge didn't happen....ah, well, it was all worth it just to make that miserable avalanche traverse...gimme a call if you ever need someone to climb w/...i'm new to the northwest and still trying to put together a pack of fools to keep the weekends entertaining Quote
JoshK Posted September 9, 2002 Author Posted September 9, 2002 hey, ivan, whats up. It's funny you posted because I thought of posting and asking if "that guy who was trying the E ridge forbidden was on this board" but I figured it's a big area and what are the chances? Sorry that the weather burned you guys. About half way up the arm when it started dumping snow I was saying to myself "damn, I feel sorry for those guys on forbidden" \ Hopefully you guys at least got some of the peakaboo views of the nearby peaks also. I'll send you an email (or feel free to do the same) and we'll hook up for a climb or at least get a beer and talk about a climb. Quote
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