[TR] Bailey Traverse- Appleton to Mt Ferry 6/30/2006

[Suz]

Climb: Bailey Traverse-Appleton to Mt Ferry

 

Date of Climb: 6/30/2006

 

Trip Report:

A short trip, since we had limited time, but great to get out. There's still a really variable snow level out there. Saw absolutely no other people the entire time, but several bears (including two cubs!), a number of elk, and a mountain goat. Gotta love this place...

 

We got to the Whiskey Bend TH on June 26, parked the car and got a ride all the way to the Boulder Creek TH after walking only a few miles! The trail up to Appleton was great til it disappeared under snow, leaving us to play hide and seek trying to figure out which was the actual pass. It's probably at least partially melted out by now - this may have been the most obnoxious part of the trip.

 

Camped at Appleton (great), then more trail hide-and-seek under variously-aspected snow around the many ridges to Cat Basin, camping just before the catwalk.

 

The catwalk was totally clear of snow, and way fun. Mt Carrie's shoulder is gorgeous right now! Still snow in many of the gullies on the way to Cream Lake, but the path is easy to follow.

 

The guidebook directions to Cream Lake are terrible. Apparently looking for more obvious landmarks than exist, we bivied above cream lake, thinking that next time the rumored slide alder and avalanche debris would be better. The "meadow" is now mostly treed, and we never did see Lower Cream Lake. Once leaving the trail, just stay high-ish, then look for your own good way down; no obvious trail shows the way. No snow in Cream Basin.

 

Cream Lake for lunch, then up the river to Mt Ferry; Ferry Basin is still totally snowcovered. The traverse to Dodger Point is mostly straightforward - no snow issues until you get near Dodger. We camped just before the saddle on dry ground. From the saddle campsites, go DOWN the saddle gully to the east to find the path. The trail near Dodger is covered but not hard to find, though by day 5 of soggy boots, I was more than happy to have the snow finally disappear on the trail down.

 

Pictures are digital but neglected - I'll get some up soon. FYI, the guidebook allows "one full day" for Cat Basin to Mt Ferry, but if you're planning to enjoy the scenery, it will take longer, even without getting lost near Cream Lake. Hope to do a longer version one day when time allows; being in beautiful high country that far away from any established trail was awesome.

 

Gear Notes:

Brought crampons and ice axe

Didn't need the crampons, but it was nice to know we had them in case. Glad to have the ice axe on a few steep gullies.

[MTNEER]

Just curious, were you refering to the 3rd or 4th edition of the guide?

[Suz]

The new, fourth edition. Which surprised me, since it said "completely revised" and all that stuff. Meaning someone actually went over the route again in the last 10 year to update it? Or that they changed the text to reflect updates submitted by climbers?

[downfall]

I know this post is old but just wanted to note that we did the traverse using the 4th edition of the guide shortly after you did (july 4th week) and were able to make the non-avy-debris approach to cream lake mostly by using the GPS coordinates. We wouldn't have made it just with the route description as the distances implied between each landmark were longer than we expected. There is a little bit of flagging along the way (which we didn't add nor did we remove) but definitely was not straight forward. We hated to bust out the GPS but after that long day our weak-mountain-man wills had been wasted.