[TR] Shameless Pasayten Summit Whoring Junket - La

[tvashtarkatena]

Trip: Shameless Pasayten Summit Whoring Junket - Lake, Lost, and the Craggies

 

Date: 8/24/2009

 

Trip Report:

TR: Lake, Lost, and the Craggies

 

8/24-30, 2009

 

 

 

Lake Mountain, with Lost Peak in the background, from Pistol Pass

 

 

How to take someone on their first alpine climb?

 

One strategy is to brutalize them on the approach, so that the climb itself is a relative picnic. The Pasayten’s now abandoned Pistol Pass trail, with its 5000’ of south facing, bone dry elevation gain and gauntlet of post-burn snowbrush is an excellent venue for this, particularly during a heat wave. My friend Beth and I decided to spread the fun over two days, with a climb of Lake Mountain tacked onto the afternoon of day two. Superfun for the both of us: I got to carry the water. It was almost as fun as retracing the route on the way on an even hotter day.

 

The Pasayten rarely disappoints in the wildlife category, and this trip was no exception. We started off by clearing a rattlesnake off the Lost River trail. From there, we forded the river (you can rock hop it this time of year) where the bridge used to be; hence the trail abandonment, and started up our first but certainly not last scree slope, finally making a dry camp at 5800’. In hindsight, I’d hang on until 6300’; a beautiful ridge line above the burn with many nice, flat spots for a tent-with-a-view.

 

 

Wolf spider schizocosa sp., Lost River

 

 

The following day we popped over Pistol Pass and traversed to Lake of the Woods, which, despite being about an acre in size, was surprisingly well camouflaged, even from the prying eyes of an altimeter. You won’t have this problem, however: a ¼ mile long trail to the lake splits off from the main trail at 5400’.

 

That afternoon we headed up Lake Mountain’s east ridge towards Beths first summit; a fun little scramble over not-that-bad rock that ends right at the summit without the usual ridge top ramble.

 

 

 

Beth nears the summit on the Lake’s east ridge

 

 

 

First summit cheeze. The Shellrock group, from Lake Mountain

 

 

 

Lake’s summit, looking south

 

I’ll be damned if I couldn’t find the Lake of the Woods on the second go around with whipping out my compass, again. During this brief flail, we did run into a couple of rarities: two treed pine martens, one of which was pretty talkative.

 

 

 

Pine marten martes americana, Lake of the Woods

 

 

 

Lake Mountain from our camp at Lake of the Woods

 

The following morning I popped back over the saddle on Lake’s east ridge and schwacked my way straight down to Monument Creek and Lost Peak just beyond. From the east, the Shellrocks look like something straight out of a Coors ad, aspen groves and all. I kind of expected a cartoon bear to come paddling up on a birch bark canoe and…well…you know how it can go when you’re climbing solo.

 

 

 

 

The east face of Lake Mountain

 

 

 

Lake Mountain and the rest of the Shellrock group, from Monument Creek

 

 

 

Bumblebee awakening from its bivouac on angelica genuflexa, Monument Creek

 

 

 

Getting screed on the west ridge of Lost Peak

 

From the creek I just shot straight up lightly forested alp slopes of Lost’s west ridge: zero brush. Two thousand feet of this and a thousand feet of scree later I was…wait, is that tree on the north ridge moving?

 

In what was probably the only multiple, independent party ascent of this highly prized summit in its history, I suddenly realized that I was not alone.

 

I topped out to find a young bearded gentleman named Matt already nestled in a bivvy site amidst what appeared to be a Cabela’s catalog realized. The first thing I noticed was the miniature guitar. Then fishing gear…and binoculars, and a water pump, and a leather bound journal, and a pistol. This guy either had a severe boredom phobia or spring steel legs. I suspect it was a bit of both.

 

 

A red tailed hawk buteo jamaicensis floats over the summit of Lost Peak

 

 

 

Summit buddy (sp. Unknown), Lost Peak

 

 

 

Dikes on hikes, from Lost Peak

 

 

 

Red shafted northern flicker colaptes auratus feather, Pistol Pass trail

 

 

THE CRAGGIES

 

The following day Beth, fresh from her day off, and I, ripe from mine, hike out, headed to the Twisp River Pub for some serious grease, repacked, then drove on to the Copper Glance trailhead to car camp.

 

 

 

The Copper Glance Mine

 

 

The Craggies are, well, really craggy. The area has more rubble, and rubble loving pikas, than any place I’ve ever been. Fish filled Copper Glance lake, is nice, but offers only one campsite a couple of hundred feet above the nearest water. We decided to head up the drainage towards West and Big Craggy and camp at another tarn at around 6600’ instead.

 

 

An impressive and fresh collapse above Copper Glance Lake

 

 

 

Yellowpine chipmunk tamias amoenus, Copper Glance Lake

 

 

Beth hung back at camp with a book while I tended to my OCD issues. First I tagged Big, then ran over to West, then straight down its south side scree slope and back to camp and the trip home.

 

 

The classic arm-in-the-sunglasses shot. West Craggy, from Big Craggy

 

 

 

Moraine patterns, from the summit of West Craggy

 

 

So ended six days of shameless summit whoring in one of my favorite Wilderness areas…after greasing up again at the Old Schoolhouse Pub in Winthrop, of course. And I didn’t even get Beth killed…although her legs suffered a few…um, hundred lacerations.

 

Oh, and the Twisp River Pub’s got better grease for less money.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Guitar, fishing gear, binoculars, pistol.

 

Approach Notes:

Pistol Pass trail: no water from the Lost River to Lake of the Woods. Can be hard to follow in spots from 5300' to 6300'...in good shape up higher.

Edited September 1, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[t_rutl]

stellar TR...what's your camera of choice?

[fredrogers]

Funny. I ran into the same Matt at Fred's Lake on Friday night in my own shameless summit whoring- you did much better than me with angry knees forcing me to settle for Oscelola and a recon of Rollo.

 

I'd go with spring steel legs. From our conversation, sounds like he gets out a lot. Super nice guy.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

stellar TR...what's your camera of choice?

 

Canon Powershot SD870 IS. All shots are hand held (which you can certainly tell with the pine marten shots)

[danhelmstadter]

sweet pictures

[t_rutl]

Canon Powershot SD870 IS. All shots are hand held (which you can certainly tell with the pine marten shots)

 

do you do any editing? the contrast and colors are spot on which i've found hard to get with a handheld w/o correcting them (photoshop ect)

 

but quite the photog...well done!!

[tvashtarkatena]

While shooting, I use the manual mode almost exclusively so I have more control over things like exposure, color balance, etc.

 

Then I shamelessly post process the living shit out of everything I do. That mostly means:

 

Adjusting brightness and contrast (post processing can fine tune this far more accurately than your camera can). This, in part, replaces what lens filters used to do.

 

Cropping (of course).

 

Occasionally adjusting sharpness when it gives the effect I want.

 

Creating cutouts to adjust brightness and contrast for different parts of the photo (basically doing with a mouse what Ansel Adams did with hours in a chemical filled dark room). Also partly what filters used to do.

 

Using the transparency brush to blend and the clone brush to remove distractions and unwanted marks, etc.

 

All of the above is essential for stitching panoramas, which I do 'by hand'. Three of the images above are stitched panoramas of up to 4 images each.

 

I think nothing about removing something distracting, like a stupid tree branch, from the image if it strengthens it. Occasionally, I swap the whole sky out for a different one if it makes me feel groovy (very occasionally...that's a lot of work), or ad a phalanx of alien spacecraft descending to destroy the angry hairless monkeys of this planet. I don't care at all about 'accuracy' or other myths: these images are not reality; they are creations which become even more fictional when your brain starts interpreting them. It's all about trying to deliver to the viewer something that will have some impact using the minimum amount of the image (and images) possible, which means most images and much of each image get tossed.

 

By way of example, this TR is the distillation of over 300 photos. Yeah, there was a bit of weeding and tweaking involved.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 31, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[G-spotter]

Your moraine looks more like a rock glacier.

[tvashtarkatena]

That's kind of what I thought, too. Pretty far east for something like that, but then again there is a very similar feature just as far east below Bigelow in the Sawtooth Chelan range.

 

I wasn't about to go down there to check it out, though.

[t_rutl]

i do some post processing in my shots to make the brightness/contrast appear more accurate...yours are some stellar shots so just seeing if needed a new camera!

 

thanks and once again...great TR

[davidk]

Your moraine looks more like a rock glacier.

It definitely looks like more than a cool series of moraines, but the pattern seems a bit chaotic for it to be a relatively small rock glacier.

 

A very intriguing photo

[tvashtarkatena]

Maybe its a feature caused by avalanche/melt cycles. I should do a little research. In any case, I don't see this feature very often.

[Dirtyleaf]

Honestly now, those are the coolest pictures of spiders and the bee I have ever seen. Especially the wolf spider.

[Alex]

Love the pine marten. I'm very surprised you actually saw one! I worked on a pine marten project back in the 1990's and they are very elusive even when you are trying very hard to find them!

[G-spotter]

It looks like maybe it's a rock glacier that ran out of ice. A fossil, so to speak.

[Sol]

Absolutely stunning!

 

[olyclimber]

nice pictures, looks like a nice week out.

 

i take it you were using a grease powered stove? Or just greasing the skids?

[tvashtarkatena]

Duplicate post from the climbers forum:

 

 

 

Jessica Lundin of the UW Glaciology Dept was kind enough to send this prompt reply to my inquiry:

 

"I believe your photo is not a rock glacier for 2 reasons: (1) there appears to be a tree growing on it, which would not work on any glacier. (2) glaciers don't typically have a lumpy surface topography similar to soft ice cream, as in the photo. I'm not a geomorphology expert, but I diagnose this as debris flow (mud, rock, etc).

 

It dawned on me that this probably isn't a moraine feature, as it appears at the top, rather than the sides or bottom, of the cirque. It probably is the result of material coming directly off the peak...annual snow from the gulleys above and the resulting melt/slides, for example. I wonder if the top layer of rock rests on an underlayer of mud/silt, which sluffs underneath it during the spring melt.

 

 

 

[G-spotter]

Rock glaciers typically have topography similar, if not identical, to that Jessica lists as reason #2....

 

[tvashtarkatena]

....and its Gspot by a length....

[CollinWoods]

Looks cool. I wouldnt want to run into those spiders tho.

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Wow, GREAT photos, tvash. Excellent in fact.

[tvashtarkatena]

Going back out that way for another six day spree as soon as the wedder settles out to torture another noob.

[jhamaker]

Fun! The Pasayten was on my list for this fall, but here I am still in AK.

Keep you eyes open for long winter trips, I'm sure I'll be heading out by then. Probalby the desert SW this late fall.

 

Pine Martins: I made the mistake of sleeping under tree occupied by two such varmits in Yellowstone N.P. The chater kept me up all night!

Edited September 3, 2009 by jhamaker

[tvashtarkatena]

I'd love to hit the desert this year...haven't been in a long while.