TR: Shuksan North Face

[mrefranklin]

Howdy climbers,

 

A couple of friends and I took a look up at the North Face of Mt. Shuksan. I figure it might be of use to some you hearty ice climbers.

 

We drove a beautiful Westfalia in to fire access road 5307 (below he lower lodge at Baker off of the Hwy about 1 mile before the gate). The road is "shrubby" as you get down lower We managed to put some nice little scrapes in the brown exterior of the car. "Merely flesh wounds" I tell you...

 

From the lower end of that road, you bushwack straight down the valley, cross the creek (which is very passable right now), and head up the opposing ridge, veering right towards Mt. Shuksan as you ascend. Stick to the heavily forested areas as much as possible to avoid underbrush vegetation and the ever-popular devil's club. Be careful not to overturn too many completely hidden hornets (bees) nests as I took about 8 stings on the way in. Access the top crest of the hill and hike it to some nice bivy spots near the base of the North Face. Plenty of water opportunities in the form of snow patches still exist if you hike the ridge far enough.

 

When you are ready to begin the ascent of the North Face, don't rush to put on your crampons (as we did). We traversed an ever-steeping snowfield until we reached the base of the climb. The snow was a step below water ice, but not by much.

 

Much quicker travel can be had by skirting the lower rocky edge of the snow field until you get up to the hanging glacier on the actual North Face. It looks like it's about a 12-15 foot iceblock climb to get onto the route. We turned back here due to our unfamiliarity with the route higher up and the fact that retreat looked like it would be a royal pain if we got in over our heads. All of us have climbed on ice that steep, but never for that prolonged of a period of time. None of us felt comfortable leading all of the tough pitches. I think we'd planned on a little bit more neve conditions without quite as much broken near-vertical climbing. Oh well, we'll be back. For a good proficient ice crew, I think the route looks like a blast right now.

 

A nice fellow who planned on soloing the route had bivvied below. On our way out we stopped to talk to him and found out that he was an alpine guide who turned around because the conditions looked a bit fierce for a solo effort. He had climbed the North Face two years ago in August and found a "fun" 30 ft bergschrund up the route. He was guessing that it might even be larger now. He hiked the ridge down with us for a ways but split off to reach his car at the Baker ski area since we were on the fire access road.

 

You can check out some pics I took here:

http://homepage.mac.com/cascadeboy/PhotoAlbum6.html

 

I hope that this helps some of you ice folks out there. We didn't make it far enough to see what happens higher up the route but it looked like fun.

[russ]

nice shots