[TR] Mt. Booker - Northwest route via Sahale Arm and Horseshoe Basin 8/23/2008

[DHC]

Trip: Mt. Booker - Northwest route via Sahale Arm and Horseshoe Basin

 

Date: 8/23/2008

 

Trip Report:

Climbers: Martin S. and Dave C. (Scribe)

 

Prolog: I had Booker on the agenda for quite some time and had made an attempted several years ago from Park Creek, but was stymied by a nasty moat beneath the Buckner-Booker Col on the Buckner Glacier. I had read a couple of TRs for people climbing Booker from Horseshoe Basin as an overnighter in conjunction with a climb of Buckner. The times quoted in the TRs made it appear that Booker could be done as a long day climb. The weather forecast for Sunday didn't look good, so Martin and decided to car camp along the Cascade River Road Friday night and attempt a one day assault on Saturday.

 

August 23rd:

 

We departed the Cascade Pass trailhead under headlamps at 5:15 AM. The rising sun greeted us at Cascade Pass. There was a light dusting of snow on Johannesburg, from a storm earlier in the week. We topped out on Sahale Arm at 7,400 ft, and began our descent into Horseshoe Basin around 8 AM. Initially we went down soft snow, followed by a short stretch of Class 4/5 rock, then a finger of hard snow into the basin. We did a gradual descending traverse to 6,100 to clear a rocky knob half way across the basin then regained elevation to clear the toe of a buttress at 6600 feet, completing our crossing of the basin at about 10 AM. We quickly hung a left turn, climbing towards the Buckner/Booker Col. At 6,900 we veered rightward on hard snow up and over a wind cirque. We held our elevation at about 7,400 feet as we headed eastward avoiding the temptation to head for the west ridge of Booker. Once we located the notch between the west and east summit blocks, we ascend class 3 rock for a couple of hundred feet then exited rightward onto the easy south slopes reaching the summit at 11:45 AM. We had excellent views of Goode, Stormking and Logan to the north, along with the 2,800 foot exposure off the northeast wall of Booker. There was a summit register placed by Fay Pullen back in 2003 which was in good shape and had a handful of entries.

 

After lounging on the summit for a little over an hour we began retracing our route back a 1PM. The accumulation of the elevation we had gained and lost had its effect upon us as we re-gained the 1,300 ft of elevation out of Horseshoe Basin to Sahale Arm. We arrived back at the trailhead at 6:45 PM.

 

Time: 13 ½ hours

Elevation gain: 7,200 feet.

 

Select the following link to view photos.

 

Mt. Booker