Mt. Christie, East Ridge

[jport]

Saturday I hiked from the N. Fork Quinault Ranger Station to Martins Park. From the Park I continued up the trail towards Martin Lakes. At the last switchback, I continued southward across the meadows to a low-point at the far east side of the Christie massif.

At the notch, I found small cairns that continued southwesterly around the opposite side of the ridge. I followed the cairns in an upward-trending traverse before I lost them after several hundred feet of elevation gain. Does anyone know where these cairns lead to? The best I can figure is they lead to the two icy lakes on that side.

I climbed through a rotten gully to the ridge and found myself on a really exposed ridge with patches of dense brush and loose rock. A lot of the rock has been scoured smooth from the glaciers. A dusting of fine gravel and rock bits make for very sketchy footing. From there, I realized that Christie was farther away than I anticipated!

I know that the standard route climbs the glacier along the north side of the ridge. However, I didn't have crampons or axe to negotiate that. That certainly looks like the most direct and obvious route.

Instead, I managed to scramble the ridge for +/- quarter mile. My bivy that night was spectacular! The next morning I bailed off the north side of the ridge and slowly made my way down rock fingers and very firm snow. I hiked all the way out and arrived at my car at 4pm. Long (+/-42 miles), but enjoyable weekend!

Can anyone identify the peak in this picture? Does it have a name?

Sunrise on Mt. Christie:

Looking up the Standard Route:

[wayne]

Nice work, I do miss the Olys

[letsroll]

Looks like you had a good weekend as well. way to rack up the milage. The Olympics are such a sweet place to play around.

[Fairweather]

Nice! I've been wanting to climb Christie for a long, long time. The late Robert L Wood describes Martin's Park as one of the most beautiful meadows in all the Olympics. True? Any pics of the glacier itself? I would love to see. Views out to Dellabarre?

[jport]

Martin's Park is definitely worth a sidetrip from the Low Divide. With a beautiful waterfall, nice streams, alpine plants, mountain goats, and the all the mountains, it's an amazing place! Not sure if it's actually the "most beautiful". I'd put Seven Lakes Basin pretty high on the list, too.

Which direction is Dellabarre from Christie? I didn't have a very detailed map when I was up there. I'm sure I have a photo of it. I'll try to find one and post it here.

The last photo from my original post shows the "glacier". It has obviously been impacted by global warming and has receded greatly. It still looks like it would be a nice spring climb.

[jport]

Video clips:

[Trailhead]

Hi again Jport! This is Paul (and Kate) from the N Fork Quinault trail! You must be the one we met who passed along the message of someone waiting for us at the trailhead! On the Bailey Traverse thread, you mentioned talking to others about the Bailey Traverse at Low Divide, maybe it was the lone couple that we met as we went S to N. They were a young couple going the other direction. We wondered how they would fare since the weather had been crappy and they were entering the real route-finding area of the traverse. Does that sound like the people you talked to? Nice trip yourself - we actually wanted go up from Low Divide Friday night to stay in Martins Park but adding more mileage to the 16+ we had to do was not in the cards. Plus steak and cold beer were on our minds. Don't know if you noticed but when I saw you on the trail, I was picking up a couple of chanterelles to go along with the feast. You really got some mileage in! Good meeting you!

Paul(&Kate)

[jport]

Hey Paul! I didn't see the young couple at Low Divide. Rather, I spoke with a guy who had just finished the Skyline Trail. We chatted about the Bailey Traverse and the possibilites of linking it with the Skyline. We figured that would be one stellar tour of the Olympics!

I was wondering about all the mushrooms I saw. They were all over! I need to brush up on my fungi id so I can harvest a few on my next trip.

Nice work on the Traverse! Hope the steak, beer, and shrooms left you fat and happy ;-)

[seaportguy]

To try to answer your question, this fall we went out toward mt Christie and made that saddle there which is in your picture. You are looking east toward Muncaster Basin and ridge area, with June 10 peak to the left and around to the right Muncaster Mountain. Those rocky peaks straight ahead are not names, I think, just gnarly knobs. We crossed the col and then traversed around the northeast slope (?) dropping a bit and working over maybe 300 yards, then working up in easy gullies. We came to a snow filled lake and then another one, up pretty high, and from there is is a steep but easy climb up a snowfield to the summit of the east peak of Christie (which I think is about 50 feet shorter than the main peak). My partner Jeff tried from that lake to work up some gullies toward the main peak of Christie coming from the east side but was truned back by steep cliffs. I am guessing you camped west of that ridge. The view from the summit of east Christie was stupendous, just amazing. You could see Muncaster, June 10, Chimney, you could see across to the Olsen range and that ridge, you could see all the way over to Mt Stone and the Brothers I think. Jeff and I could see the entire trip we took the year before in Muncaster Basin as well. From a distance the country looks a lot less rugged than it is....