Condition Report - Northern Pickets

[Jake F]

We went into the Pickets via Wiley-Eiley Ridge on June 30th, with hopes of doing a full Picket traverse. Our plans changed, but we still got some great climbing in. Here's the detailed conditions:

 

We still found a few feet of snow at Beaver Pass, although the first 1000' feet up Wiley-Eiley Ridge was snow free and surprisingly easy forest walking. Solid snow started around 4500' ft. if I remember right, and pretty much continued for our entire trip. Snow conditions along the ridge were soft in the afternoon, but we didn't have any postholing problems. We generally stayed on the South side of the ridge, with mostly easy travel. We camped on dry rock benches on the S side of Wiley lake. We didn't find any liquid water, but snow is abundant.

 

Climbing Challenger was great - no crevasse or 'schrund problems, and one steeper bit of snow on the summit ridge. The rock pitch had patchy snow and was wet, but do-able. Traversing down into Luna basin was nearly all snow, although we did cross a number of rock slabs and streams (plentiful water). We traversed the south side of Lousy lake, which was probably a mistake - gravelly moraine walking and some schwacking. The climb up to Luna lake was all snow, as was camping at Luna lake. We did find some water puddles on top of frozen Luna lake.

 

Climbing up to the Luna-Fury ridge was all snow, with no real moat/routefinding problems, although I could see some sections melting out a little in a week or two. Both cols on the ridge had large cornices on their S sides. We scrambled up the ridge towards Fury a little ways - the 3rd class sections were dry rock. We found dry camping on the ridge on dirt/rock. Fury looked good, but we didn't climb it. We waited out a rain event on July 3rd, which seemed to trigger a cornice collapse and point release slide on the SE glacier of Fury. In Marblemount we found a condition report from a party who summited Fury a few days after us, they reported good conditions. From here, most of the big north faces (Terror, Fury) looked pretty snowy, and probably need more time to melt out.

 

Eyeing the Goddell-McMillan divide from here, we decided to bail on the full traverse. That ridge appeared heavily corniced, and we were hesitant to drop into such intimidating looking terrain in such a remote place. So, we backtracked towards Luna, and found fresh bear tracks over 7200 ft Luna col! We scrambled Luna via the Southwest ridge, which was completely snow free and dry. We then dropped in towards access creek basin - the initial cornice at Luna col was easily avoided, but we did traverse under several large cornices. A long 40 degree snow gully got us to the head of access creek, where we again camped on snow. The last day we did the schwack down Access Creek and hiked Big Beaver to the road. Access Creek basin had snow and easy travel as low as ~3600 ft. Below that the real schwacking began, but it wasn't so bad - most of the Devil's club hadn't yet bloomed. We crossed Big Beaver Creek just North of Access Creek - logs and sandbars got us part of the way, but we ended up fording the shallowest part we could find (mid-shin deep). There may be a better log crossing a few hundred yards downstream.

 

Overall it was an awesome trip! We got pretty lucky with weather, and snow conditions were generally good. There did seem to still be a lot of cornices around, but there's definitely climbing out there to be done!

[AdamZuber]

"We traversed the south side of Lousy lake, which was probably a mistake"

 

 

Two friends and I are doing a traverse of the range in August. What would you have done here instead? Thanks for the TR.

[Jake F]

Sorry, that was a typo! We traversed to the EAST side of Lousy lake, which involved tedious scrambling on a rocky moraine, a little bushwacking, and crossing the lake outlet. I think Beckey recommends going around the west side of the lake, where you stay above the lake on a glacial remnant for most of it. With all the snow down there, we thought the west side contained an active glacier, and felt that taking the time to rope up would've slow us down too much.

 

Hope this helps, and have fun!

[off_the_hook]

 

Lousy Lake in lower left.