[TR] North Cascades - Blum lakes to Pioneer ridge via Mystery ridge 7/6/2010

[Marikos]

Trip: North Cascades - Blum lakes to Pioneer ridge via Mystery ridge

 

Date: 7/6/2010

 

Trip Report:

Mystery Ridge Traverse

 

Just returned from a high traverse from Baker river to Pioneer ridge. Originally this was planned as part of a traverse we had done from Watson lakes to the Baker river in 2008; weather and minor delays kept this side trip from happening then but I remember staring up at the beginning of Mystery ridge telling myself I would be back. The plan was for an early July trip with a good snowpack for easy travel. And that we indeed had! Fortunately dry campsites were not too difficult to find as well. Here`s the blow by blow.

 

Day One Jeff, Will, Tom, Bruce and I left the Baker river trailhead at noon and crossed the bridge and found the start of the Blum lakes path. This path turned out to be a real grunt. It is steep, hard to find and dry all the way. In retrospect we should have started super early to aid travel but instead started at mid day and suffered for it. Ran out of water about half way up and plodded on eventually breaking out of the woods with great views of Mt Hagan on a scree field as we traversed to the Blums. We arrived at dusk and found a flat snow patch near the lower Blum inlet stream ate, and collapsed in bed.

 

Day Two Slept in and then headed up easily for a traverse to the Hagan col which we crossed easily and then headed down towards Berdeen Lake. It was totally snowed in so we headed up to the pass just prior to the entry point to Mystery ridge. A relaxing eve was had and the weather was warm and the stars fabulous. In mid eve, I woke up to a turbulent cramping stomach and diarrhea. What a bummer. In more than 30 years of cascade travel, this had only happened to me once. The next day I felt like I had Montezuma`s revenge and laid low. There was really no choice in the matter. The weather was fabulous I might add……

 

Day Three As above.

 

Day Four I felt a hell of a lot better. Tom, unfortunately was the next victim, going through all the same fatigue, cramps and other fun that I had the day previous. We tried to figure out how we had managed this fate and could only come up with the snow patch we had devoured (out of water….) en route to Blum lakes which likely had fecal animal contamination. Our plans had to change now. 2 days of wiggle room were gone. We had hoped to run Mystery ridge to Pioneer ridge onto Pickel pass and onward to Picket pass and out the Otto/himmelhorn col. That seemed unrealistic so we decided that if Tom was better, we would head out for a 4 day trip to Pioneer ridge and back to our pass. Bruce and Jeff headed back to Blum lakes and they only had time for half the trip and all of us headed up the arm from the pass heading west and found a stupendous camp 400 feet up with flat camping, water, snow and tremendous views in all directions. Will and I did a recon trip onto Mystery ridge to see what tomorrow would hold. That was a great idea and we found the best way to traverse the ridge the next day. Came back to a recuperating Tom and all relaxed under the warm evening sky.

 

Day Five Tom was better so we headed down to the pass and then traversed very steep solid snow to get onto to MR. Headed up snow (side stepping big cornices) and heather and then dropped to the east side of MR which was full of snow. Rather than running the ridge continuously we elected to drop down into the big cirque SE of the ridge and traverse over to a large rib which looked easily passable and then towards an obvious pass further on the ridge which should take us over to the other side of MR and then onto Jasper Pass/Pioneer ridge. After reaching the rib we crossed it and then passed over a steep cornice to the other side. Before us was a big complex cliffy basin that didn`t look easy. Fortunately, after some scouting we made our way high above to an obvious buttress and dropped down a finger of alpine trees/easy class 2 rock to below the buttress and back into the snow filled cirque. We then headed over to the pass anxious to see if it would go easy. Our binocular views didn`t allow a full view as to whether we could make it over. A steep snow finger led us up and up and finally we saw that an unpleasant heather/rock pitch would be negotiable up to trees and likely easy to the pass from there. The rock was really crumbly and we swore we would rap down on the way back. An easy game trail took us to the pass and then we glissaded easily down to a beautiful tree island camp just above Jasper pass with awesome views down lonesome creek, back towards Mt. Despair and the best was a beautiful display of the Northern/southern Pickets with Pioneer ridge in the foreground.

 

Day six Woke up to cloudy skies and decided to forego the packs and head up to Pioneer ridge as a day hike. We then dropped down to Jasper Pass. Nice old growth Mountain hemlock forest and a great game path that bisected the cliffs on the other side of the pass. Eventually we got to the beginning of Pioneer ridge on easy travel and made it up to a pass of sorts after negotiating a cliff band with views to Mt Crowder and much closer views of the pickets. We had hoped to climb Crowder but the weather looked lousy so we headed back to camp.

 

Day seven The weather got bad and rain wind and even snow and sleet peppered us for 24 hours. Set up a tarp and watched it all roll through….. Hoping for better weather the next day.

 

Day eight The rain stopped upon waking and after a brief breakfast we headed out in the mist. Dropping down off the pass to the nasty terrain we had negotiated the day before we set up a rapel line and easily rapelled down the nasty stretch. We then retraced our path several days previous in the cloudy misty weather eventually making our way back to the camp we had stayed at 4 nights prior. The storm was clearing and everything looked amazingly cool with alpenglow to boot….

 

Day nine Clear skies again as we dropped down and took a side tour to see frozen Berdeen lake just beginning to come out of it`s winter thaw and then an easy trip to the Hagan Col and back down to the lower Blum lake and a dry camp under a grove of Mountain Hemlocks.

 

Day ten Got up at first light with all the water we could carry to hopefully easily negotiate the Blum lakes path down. Having negogiated some pretty heavy brush 2 years prior on the west side of the ridge we unfortunately overcompensated heading east and ended up cliffed out on the way down. A series of gullies were a no go (after a painful try to get across) and so we headed back up 1000 feet headed back west and found the path and then carefully made our way down (losing it innumerable times along the way). Eventually we hit the Baker river, our waiting car and well deserved beer and a burger along Highway 20!

 

All in all a great trip. The weather was generally good, the snow made for easy travel and the campsites were memorable. Will said we made lemonade out of lemons on this one and I would have to agree.

 

Hopefully next post I will incorporate the photos into the post but these two sites will have to suffice:

 

 

 

 

 

[fatboy]

Sounds like a great adventure, bummer about the stomach.

 

In 91 or thereabouts, skied from Watson Lakes to Thorton Lakes TH via Mystery Ridge in 9 or 10 days. Climbed regular routes up a number of peaks along the way.

 

Highly recommend going back in there.

[JoshK]

Very very cool trip, and awesome pictures. I have wanted to get in to this less traveled area for years now...