The Hazardous Enigma

[CascadeClimber]

An image of the upper portion of the route:

Lots of fun and adventure for me. Definitely a classic Beckey 4th class route.

My full TR here:

http://cascadeclimber.com/mt__garfield.htm

-Loren

[This message has been edited by CascadeClimber (edited 08-20-2001).]

[philfort]

Mt Garfield - 8/19

Loren (CascadeClimber) and I climbed the standard route on Mt. Garfield yesterday. Wow, what a day! It took us over 16 hours car-to-car ... and that is one steep mountain.

The routefinding wasn't all that hard (there's lots of flagging tape), but it was definitely a physical challenge, with lots of very sketchy sections, and strenuous climbing. We made what we thought was good time to the "glade saddle" before the "key ledge" (3 hours). At that point you've done two thirds of the vertical ascent. However, it took another 5 hours to make it up the #2 gully, and to the summit. The gully starts off with enjoyable solid scrambling, but gets steeper. We veered off the right side part way up, and got in some truly desperate "cascadian" climbing - definitely 5th class. We were cursing ourselves for getting off route, but it may haved turned out better, because the gully itself had some absolutely heinous-looking sections! The slabs are mossy and crackless, with loose blocks - it looked like hell to climb and protect. The "steep heather and easy rock" from the col to the summit, was not, and required still more belayed climbing. I think we belayed 7 pitches in all on the ascent. The 4th class on Garfield is definitely "Beckey 4th".

We were the second party to climb it this year - the first one climbed it only a week earlier. The last entry in the summit register before that was from 1998 or 99 (maybe some pages went missing?). In general, in the 80's and 90's, there seemed to be about 4 parties a year that summited on average. Looking around from the summit, you are impressed at how steep a mountain this is. Huge sweeps of steep slabs everywhere. Pete Doorish had two ascents listed in there from several years ago, within a week of each other. One was Grade IV, 5.10, 23 pitches, the other Grade V, 5.10, 20 pitches (SE ridge?). Then he had written "I think I've had enough of Garfield for a while now!"

Beckey says the descent takes 4 hours. It took us 7.5 hours. We made 8 rappels in all, most double-rope. Someone has installed two sets of rappel bolts in the #2 gully. Thank you!! Without those bolts, the options for rappel anchors are quite poor. We had a few route-finding difficulties on the descent, when it got pitch black (made it back to the car @ 11:06pm)

Summary: it is a continuously steep climb, "unrelenting", lots of exposed steep brush (a serious arm workout hauling yourself up on plant limbs), some very loose sections with serious rockfall potential (Loren let loose some big ones, scraped his leg up pretty bad), some solid fun climbing, no water above the slabs near the bottom, and above all, an adventure.

[Cpt.Caveman]

Good job Loren and Phil! Hey Loren did you spray like you did in the Stuart log?!

[Dru]

Good TR. sounds like a true Cascade Bush Classic.

what is the rock - basalt or something? i heard somewhere iit isnt granite.

Pete Doorish is amazing, awe inspiring guy all round. thank god he doesnt cross border much or many SWBC alpine routes would have been poached

[philfort]

The rock is definitely not granite. Some kind of volcanic rock I think (although definitely more solid than what you'd generally think of volcanic rock as being). But it's very compact. When there are cracks, it's usually because something is loose. Doorish mentioned for one of those hard-core climbs that the rock was solid with good pro - hard to imagine though, because there don't seem to be any cracks on the big slabs.