[TR] Mount Goode - Megalodon Ridge 9/3/2010

[Dannible]

Trip: Mount Goode - Megaladon Ridge

 

Date: 9/3/2010

 

Trip Report:

 

I round a bend in the trail and see the beam of Jens’s headlamp through the trees few hundred feet ahead. Suddenly there is a crashing noise not far away from me in the thick brush to my right. I keep walking and call out to the bear to let it know where and what I am so that it will give me plenty of room to pass. It’s the 4th bear I’ve interacted with tonight so the novelty has worn off. In fact nothing is very fun or interesting in my world at the moment. I’ve been on the move for 26 hours, and have covered over 30 miles of rugged, remote mountain terrain in that time. I’m suffering, and there are still many miles between me and my sleeping bag. Minutes later I round a corner and find Jens laying on his pack half asleep. He stands up with a groan, mumbles a few words that I can’t understand. I’m able to keep up with his never slowing pace for a while, but when the trail starts sloping downhill my knee suddenly feels like it’s on fire and I can only descend at a slow hobble. We’re lost deep in our own minds now, but experience the same pain, exhaustion, and somewhere deep down the same sense of accomplishment.

 

 

22 hours earlier we left the trail behind, still feeling fresh after walking 12 miles from the North Cascades Highway. In the dull light of dawn we crashed through thick, wet brush and took our shoes off to cross a cold glacial fed creek. The water was swift, but it was my 5th time making the crossing and it didn’t seem at all treacherous like it once had. We walked past the campsite used by Blake Herrington and I on our first attempt of the ridge three years before and bushwhacked up the hillside next to pristine waterfalls as the sun rose.

 

I was feeling pretty worked by the time we reached the first high point on the east ridge a few hours later and 4000 feet higher, but the excitement of finally getting to head into the unknown brought on my second wind. On my earlier attempt of the ridge with Blake this point was where we changed our plans and started a new adventure: a scary series of rappels down a 1000 foot face so that we could get off Goode and continue on with our plans to climb Booker and Buckner. My journal entry from that trip says “We ruled out the possibility of climbing the route due to our heavy packs and a light rack.” This time my pack weighed 16 pounds when we left the car, most of which was food and climbing gear.

 

From there our route differed from Blake and Sol’s. They made a 50m rap to the north to bypass a couple of chossy towers, but this time the north side was covered in a few inches of snow forcing us to pitch out a few pitches on the crest. Once we put away the rope it was clear to me that our strategy was going to work. We bypassed some of Sol and Blake’s crux pitches on mid 5th rock 50 feet to the left of their route and were on the sub summit (and on top of the ski line) in no time. We stopped to melt some snow and continued on steeper but better quality rock, bringing out the rope a couple hundred feet before Black Tooth Notch. It’s never over until its over, and the snowy last pitch up the NEB turned out to be a surprise crux. Of course it wasn’t nearly over when we were on the summit, but the realization that we were right on schedule and should be in the woods by the time it got dark kept us relaxed. The plan had worked.

 

 

 

 

Jens was the perfect partner for this trip. He’s faster than anyone I know in the mountains, and is stoked to try huge routes and linkups, even when success is definitely not assured. He’s a much better rock climber than I am, but also enjoys the kind of climbing that I prefer: covering a lot of moderate ground fast. He was the only person I know who I thought might be willing to try this. Both of us knew that spending a freezing night out with very little gear was a real possibility. From dawn to dusk we were covering ground that would be hard to navigate in the dark.

 

Sometimes I find myself surprised after completing a route when the summit and the end of the day brings about little emotion beside the desire to do something bigger and more challenging. When I am done with a climb, all I think about is the next one. With this one behind me it feels good to be able to look back and see what a long road its been since my first “big” route, the Northeast Buttress of Goode, four years ago. To be honest, pretty much all I did for a couple of days after this climb was sit around my house feeling good (and a little sore). I’d been dreaming about climbing this route in one push for a year, and for two years before that I had been thinking about climbing the NEB in a push. Almost every decision I’ve made for about a year and a half, from where I live, to what kind of jobs I look for, to what I eat and do on my days off have been affected by these goals. Life goes on, and by the time we pulled back into Leavenworth the next afternoon Jens and I were discussing ideas for future climbs that might put us back into that state of total focus on the moment that we found on Goode.

 

Jens’s story can be read on his blog. It’s interesting to note that I chose to start my narration at almost exactly the same point in the 27 hours that he did even though I started to write this days before he posted that.

 

 

Gear Notes:

Less is more.

 

Approach Notes:

Really long. Expect some bushwhacking and low 5th climbing to get above the treeline.

[jshamster]

[ivan]

funny what hairless monkies find fun

[Blake]

Inspirational guys...

[telemarker]

Very compelling narrative Dan! I really like a TR that begins near the end. Give me a shout if you guys plan another endurance outing. I get nostalgic for that autopilot, 'state of mind'...

[keenwesh]

hardcore dudes! endurance sufferfest at its finest.

 

hey jens, did I talk to you and your dad on your way out of the pickets on august 10th? you? had just come down off wiley ridge and were heading out big beaver. I was in the group of old guys, one of which was my dad.

[Jim S]

Love your style. Did the 6th ascent of the NE Buttress years ago on a marathon from L Chelan. Your report brought me back. We tried to take as little gear as possible and kept on moving. Spent more than a few nights wrapped in not much more than a rope.

Great job.

[danhelmstadter]

yeah!

[mountainsloth]

marvelous! great adventure!

[Sol]

... and years later the route get repeated as a day-climb!

 

So stoked for you guys, inspirational send to say the least.

 

STYLEE!

[Dan_Miller]

Stellar effort on a long committing climb! It was time for a repeat after all. A real 'walk in the sky' as Barry Blanchard often says.

My recollection looking at it from both Storm King and Goode summits is that it'd take a lot of work.

[wayne]

Wow, that is very nice!

[Ziff]

awesome!