[TR] A Walk Around Sitting Bull- Siting Bull, Bannock, Plummer, Cloudy 9/3/2006

[tvashtarkatena]

Climb: A Walk Around Sitting Bull-Siting Bull, Bannock, Plummer, Cloudy

 

Date of Climb: 9/3/2006

 

Trip Report:

A Walk Around Sitting Bull

 

Pics can be found at:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60919971@N00/sets/72157594312135223/

 

Route Summary:

Day 1: Phelps Creek TH > Cloudy Pass

Day 2: Cloudy Pass > Trail 2000 > Sitting Bull Mtn > Bannock Lakes

Day 3: Bannock Lakes > Dick Cheney Bench

Day 4: Dick Cheney Bench > Canyon Lake > Bannock Peak > Image Lake > Plummer tarns

Day 5: Plummer Mtn > Suiattle Pass > Cloudy Pass > Cloudy Peak > upper Lyman Lake

Day 6: Back out to Phelps Creek TH.

 

Trip Summary: Honk if you love bears.

 

Any amateur misguided enough to remodel an older home can tell you that such an undertaking can have a profoundly negative affect on health and well being. Early on accelerated ingestion of drywall dust, solvents, and beer begins to take its toll. Fingernails, skin, blood, and hair are shed. As the project drags on, formerly cordial neighbors take on the look of sinister gypsies willing you to fall onto your table saw. Finally, your own wife revolts. You begin to wonder whether you’ll be awakened in the dead of night to the sound of a Sawzall at your throat accompanied by the maniacal laughter that has replaced your wife’s encouragement and support.

 

After a spring and summer of having my fingers sucked into belt sanders and raking my scalp with protruding roof staples, I knew I had to either finish the remodel with a gasoline can or leave town. I embarked on a trip with the original scope of visiting Bannock Lakes east of Glacier Peak, but the further out I got, the more that original scope ballooned.

 

It took nearly four hours to find all my long neglected gear for this six day trek. By the time I had my pack weighed in at a whopping (for me, anyway) 32 lbs, this in addition to the 20 or so lbs around my waistline from months of pub-based therapy – and all on a recently sprained ankle that clicked like a bad derailleur.

 

Day 1: This is Going to Suck.

 

After a night at the Hotel Outback, I got an early morning start from Phelps Creek. It was Memorial Day, so I expected to find a Gorge concert-sized crowd at Spider Meadows.

 

The first party I passed was carting a three wheeled stroller for their four year old daughter. The daughter sat trailside, dejected (and presumably ejected). The husband and wife exchanged recriminating looks. Apparently, the stroller was no one’s idea.

 

An hour later I entered Spider Meadows and found…no one. It was empty. All the weekenders had converged upon Larch Point, 1200 above the valley. Once past this point, I hardly saw a soul.

 

I camped at Cloudy Pass that evening. The Tinpan fire created its own weather in the form of a massive pyronimbus cloud towering 10,000 feet above Copper Peak. Global warming = pine beetles = dead trees = fires = desertification = global warming. A self referential equation for a self absorbed species. At least the pine beetles will get theirs in the end.

 

The day hadn’t sucked after all. I was a bit slow, but not hobbled. My ankle clicked but didn’t crumple. The day’s clouds had dissipated. I read some New Yorker fiction, and fell asleep under the smoke-blurred stars.

 

Day 2: Brain Stew.

 

By 8:00 a.m. it was already apparent that the previous week’s heat wave had returned. I passed only one party that morning, a couple arising from a makeshift scrub-camp after apparently being benighted on the trail. They would be the last people I see for the next three days.

 

At 9:00 I dropped my pack high in the basin just south of Bannock Lakes, snapped on a thin waist belt, and cinched a water bottle to it with a toe clip strap. After dousing my hat and shirt in a stream, I began to ascend north eastern buttress of Sitting Bull under an unrelenting sun. As I scaled the steep heather, each hot breath rice-papered the inside of my mouth.

 

Sitting Bull’s summit is guarded by a several hundred foot high rock step. I ascended the eastern crest via a short, low fifth class section, and descended what appeared to be some chossy but technically easier ramps to its left.

 

I don’t consider myself a superstitious person. I have noticed, however, that when I solo routes that require a bit of technical climbing, I tend to favor a certain pair of Captain America style lycra shorts that Steven Tyler wouldn’t be caught dead in. And that’s the point. The last thing I’d want is for some poor Mountaineer’s party to stumble over those ragged, flag desecrating shorts draped over my mummified corpse. I view them as safety gear.

 

After a quick descent down goat trails (ungulates everywhere, I salute you), I stopped for a quick lunch I call “Fuego de la Boca;” Pepper salami, Tim’s Cajun style chips, Tabasco Cheesits, and hot tamales. I continued north, rounded the valley bottom, and left the trail at the first tall timber. From there I headed up, trending right, on steep forest duff as crisp and matted as the hash browns at Beth’s Café. By now, the heat was impressive, and nearing oppressive. It seemed the snap of a finger could ignite the whole forest. My sweat soaked pack strained to slide back down the to the valley floor like a well basted piglet late for a luau. My simmering mind wandered. I imagined a regular tapping sound, perhaps a branch in the wind, to be an alien slapping its anal probe, preprogrammed for ‘Irishmen’, against his three fingered palm. A distant waterfall became a chilled, bottomless tap of Roger’s Pilsner. I would have had that weird ‘eeee’ desert sun ringing sound in my ears, but I was, after all, in a forest.

 

Timber suddenly gave way to skeletal hellebore (skellebore?) swaying in a freshening breeze. I ascended through heather to a saddle of white rock and peered into a heaven where heathens are welcome.

 

There are four Bannock Lakes. The two lower are silted, glacial reservoirs in shadowed talus. The upper two are shallow super sized tarns surrounded by swamp, larches, and meadow. The shore of the uppermost lake was riddled with bear and coyote tracks. I made camp on the rocky hillock to its west, and watched the setting sun showcase Dome Peak and its commanding fortress.

 

Day 3: Dick Cheney Bench.

 

By now the plan had changed entirely. Rather than detoxing at Bannock Lakes, I decided to put my new-found energy towards a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Sitting Bull. The trick was getting over the precipitous ridge west of Bannock Lakes.

 

After backtracking to the pass south of the lakes, I traversed high and westward, dropping to a pretty little tarn. From there I traversed the steep alp slopes above the highest cliff bands, ascending as I went, until I reached a high bench with a view so entrancing I dropped my pack right there then and there. Due to its undisclosed location, outrageous views, and dangerous approach, I named my temporary perch in honor of our beloved vice president.

 

With plenty of time on my hands, I popped over the pass above my bivvy for an attempt on Bannock Peak. Below, Canyon Lake rested like a mirrored lens fallen from that great big pair of Johnny Depp aviator glasses in the sky (for more on the deification of Johnny Depp, see my wife). It appeared, from a distance, that there might be weak spot, a gulley, through the imposing cliffs that guard Bannock’s southern side.

 

I shimmied across a grassy, down sloping ledge to peer into the gulley, but a persistent vision of a cat meowing forlornly from high up in a tree broke my concentration. Or focused it. I cut and ran.

 

Through dinner I watched serpentine tendrils of smoke stream over the shoulder of Sitting Bull and dive into the haze below. A blood orange moon brightened as it rose above the smog. Before turning in, I moved further from the cliff’s edge, not wanting to make a wrong turn in my sleep and find myself cinched up in a downy luge skittering towards oblivion.

 

Day 4: Mr. Chocolate.

 

The following morning I popped over the pass again and descended until I gained a high point on the Canyon Lake trail. From there I dropped my pack and headed for Bannock Peak via the sensible walk up route. Sunlight fanned through the smoke, highlighting the Bannock’s chiseled rock sentinels like a Hudson School painting. I began to ascend the steep heather and blueberries, and almost stepped in a wine colored pastry of very recent vintage. I looked up and noticed the large, black boulder above me was moving.

 

Wild bears are as curious about us as a sorority sister is curious about the Hell’s Angels. A million years of getting speared, trapped and shot has taught them that the hairless monkeys are assholes. When we’re around, they almost always go the other way.

 

Almost always. Even Buffy will tennis racket-whip a biker who’s had one too many Jack Daniels if she catches him keying her brand new Jetta. With bears, particularly when there might be little Yogis around, it’s best not to make too many assumptions.

 

The bear scrammed, presumably when he noticed my fragrance, and I continued upward. Bannock’s summit was infested with lady bugs and flying ants, doing there weird literalist navigation thing. Ladybugs, fine. The ants, though…really annoying.

 

After rejoining my pack, I continued on to Image Lake. During the ascent I saw another bear, this time right in the trail. Ignoring my advice above, I snuck up for a closer look.

I got it. He was so busy making quick work of the blueberries that he didn’t notice me. He then flattened himself out on the trail, as if to snooze, but then thought the better of it, sat up, and panted. Trying hard not to breath, I was covered by so many mosquitoes that I could have been an Off commercial. A bumblebee landed on my nipple. I slowly raised my hand and dinged him loudly into my water bottle. Still nothing. A tree between us provided the cover I needed to creep even closer.

 

At about thirty paces, every alarm in my brainstem was screeching. Still, I couldn’t get a good look at him because of the tree. Then he backed up. His ass was like Queen Latifa in black velvet. I little voice inside of me whispered “Must Not Spank.” As he came into view, I realized that what I had thought was a normal, really big shaggy dog sized black bear was, in fact, a hippo with fir. He turned and faced me. Oh, Jesus. His head was the size of my chest; its squared features resembled an oncoming Peterbilt. He was the biggest black bear I’ve ever seen.

 

At this point, I had to say something.

 

“Hello, Mr. Chocolate.”

 

Mr. C turned and loped about 50 paces up some boulders, then stopped, sat up, turned, and glared down at me. From his granite pedestal, his obsidian fir haloed in golden sunlight, he was…magnificent.

 

My turn to pant. Every emotion I had burst through the thin levy of my composure. My mouth dried. My eyes teared. My adrenal glands lit off like the launch of a Saturn V rocket accompanied by the percussive score of blood surging through my inner ears. Suddenly, I found myself effortlessly floating up the same trail my formerly exhausted body had been struggling with not 15 minutes before.

 

I’ve never thought of myself as the least bit scared of bears. Respectful, yes, but not afraid. But this time I had an epiphany. Here, before me, ABOVE me, was an alpha specimen of the most terrible predator (OK, first cousin to the most terrible predator) on earth. Sharks? Hell, an octopus can take a shark. Tigers? They only go after gay magicians and the occasional starving villager.

 

But a bear. A bear will take on anything. Bull moose. Walrus. Us. And probably a tiger if you put them in the same room. And I have no doubt that when this bear staring me down as if to say “I’d REALLY like to get back to my blueberries, now” walked, the ground squirrels trembled.

 

When his inscrutable, level gaze met mine, I accepted him into my heart as my personal predator. I became a Bearstian.

 

Soon after Image Lake I left the trail to contour east to the tarns below Plummer Mountain. By that time I was paying for my encounter with a serious adrenaline hangover.

 

Just as I was entering the basin east of Plummer, I looked up to see what appeared to be twin, man-sized meringues slumping on a hillock. On closer inspection they were “superbags” (strapped plastic bags for helicopter transport), presumably filled with mining equipment. I was outraged. I knew there was private property in this area, but MINING! In My Wilderness? It’s Monkey Wrench time!

 

Fortunately, before phoning Earth First and Al Gore I checked inside one of the bags. It was old plastic tubing from previous operations, cut up and bagged for removal. I wouldn’t have to start that eco-terrorist group after all.

 

After some later research, however, I learned that such private holdings within Wilderness Areas pose a significant risk to both the public and environmental well being through ‘greenmail’. It works like this: landowner starts to build luxury lodge via helicopter right in the middle of pristine wilderness. Public outcry ensues. Landowner agrees to destroy nascent construction project in exchange for enormous amounts of choice federal land elsewhere, say, just outside Telluride, where he/she makes a killing. (have you guessed yet that this is a true story?) Oh, and by the way, the use of Wilderness areas is subject to the whims of the president. If our president wanted to, say, allow the strip mining of a wilderness area, by law, he could. Not that he’d bother to consult some stupid law…

 

Day 5: Unfinished Business

 

After a morning hike up Plummer I dropped to Suiattle Pass, where I encountered a more normal sized bear with much more matted fur. Apparently, proximity to humans results in low self esteem. I dropped my pack at Cloudy Pass to take care of some unfinished business (I had backed off of Cloudy Peak during a spring ascent because my avalanche shovel wasn’t giving me quite the self belay I wanted. No shovel problems this time). After my return from the summit, I bivvyed near upper Lyman Lake and watched demon like clouds swirl and dance around the rising moon. I seriously considered scooting through Spider Gap in the dark to outrun the incoming weather, but fortunately laziness prevailed.

 

Day 6: Escape

 

I was awakened at five a.m. to the soft patter of fine rain on my face (it’s amazing how long you can remain asleep while being rained on) and fifty yards visibility. I think it took all of four seconds to get into my emergency bivvy, which is essentially a fabric sweatbox, but hey, a lightweight one. I figured at some point the moisture from within and without would equalize and I’d have to make a run for it. Fortunately, the rain stopped. I jumped into my shoes, stuffed my pack like a bank robber stuffs his loot, and off I went towards Phelps Creek and my unfinished home.

Edited October 4, 2006 by tvashtarkatena

[Alpine_Tom]

Fun TR. Thanks for sharing it.

[Trent]

An excellent, entertaining TR. Keep em coming!

[RideT61]

A damn good tr even w/o photos, although, I am dying to see the pics.

[Blake]

did you see the "Golf Course and Country Club" sign up by Suiattle/Plummer?

[olyclimber]

[tvashtarkatena]

Photos are coming. I'm still trying to figure this site out.

 

I didn't see the "Golf Course" sign, but I did find a golf club, five gallon gas can, double bitted ax, four tarps, and and about 10 tins of Kipper Snacks. Yum.

[tvashtarkatena]

Pics are in. See link at top of TR.

[HappyCamper]

Great read! Favorite line - "I little voice inside of me whispered 'Must Not Spank.'"

[tvashtarkatena]

Great read! Favorite line - "I little voice inside of me whispered 'Must Not Spank.'"

 

Tough moment. I like baby with a little back, and this baby was back in black. Damn!

 

It didn't help matters that I had my Steven Tyler shorts on...

[Crux]

Fascinating TR, Bearstian. The account of Mr. Chocolate is breathtaking.