[TR] Kaleetan Peak - South Ridge or East Face 4/26/2014

[Ramkathi]

Trip: Kaleetan Peak - South Ridge or East Face

 

Date: 4/26/2014

 

Trip Report:

We tried to climb Kaleetan Peak via its South Ridge or if conditions were feasible via East Face

 

East face is a reportedly a nice steep snow climb - vertical 600 feet, earlier trip reports from Jan indicated that this could be climbed.

 

Well, the weather in seattle has taken a U-Turn, it was warmer, less snow in Jan than now.

 

Yes, there was tons of snow, when I looked at the telemetry data from NWAC I should have understood that. We all thought it was an error that it showed a spike in the snow to so many inches when it was sunny in seattle.

 

Trail head is blocked by snow, atleast 0.75 miles of it. it was melting, so you may be able to drag forward till say 0.5 miles.

 

Then you walk till the sign says denny creek trail, you follow this towards melakawa lake trail and then you will also see franklin falls trailhead and board sign.

 

I have been many times to franklin falls, this is first time i saw the th being snowed out.

 

We parked about 0.5 ~ 0.75 miles before the th. walked through probably a 5 feet snow, the top surface was slushy not too much of postholing.

 

however, there was something odd, some kind of nasty stuff all over the trail. it looks so bad.

 

watch carefully on not stepping them.

 

it was there till you reach melakawa lake, i don't what it is, whatever, it really looks ugly, bad, nasty and kills the taste of wilderness ethics.

 

now at trailhead, you may see some dirt and snow and dirt, it keeps changing depending on tree / no tree cover.

 

the first bridge is easy to cross, no snow.

 

the second water crossing abt 1 mile is easy to cross, no high water.

 

the third water crossing is spicy, be careful not to get water inside your shoes, which i did and hated it whole day.

 

crossing the second water crossing the trail cross an avalanche slope, the first set of avalanche debris.

 

below is a steep deep cliff, the second set of waterfalls too.

 

be very careful while you traverse this slope, pretty exposed.

 

once you cross this, the maps shows some switchbacks, but its all snow, you wont find any switchbacks now.

 

head steep up marking the way along the path of least resistance, only few trees.

 

once you head up, you hit the third and last river crossing.

 

once you cross the river, you head up again towards melakawa pass, the more closer you get to the pass, more dangerous and crazy it gets.

 

there is series of avalanche chutes, probably 20 of them.

 

huge balls reminding you how cruel this place is

 

we clutched our hearts and crossed the heart of avalanche debris on rock hard ice balls.

 

once we cross over, we head up to the funnel gully which is even more terrifying terrain.

 

we went quickly up and cut over towards the pass.

 

after reaching the pass, we traversed to find a flat spot for camping, the lake is covered with full snow, you wont see anything. its just a snow field.

 

by this time, we were only people in the mountain and kicking all the steps, pretty tired.

 

after us, slowly a lot of day hikers followed our path and wands and made up the way towards the lake

 

the night started dramatic with a lot of snow. abt 4 to 8 inches of new snow covered eveyrthing.

 

cornice, crazy avalanches, load of snow, bad weather, what else reason we need to get out.

 

we packed and got out first thing in morning.

 

the slopes were getting loaded dangerously.

 

I would avoid this area for a week or two for the snow to settle better!

 

kaleetan, we will be back for you!

 

heard a helicopter on the way and found out later, a skier triggered a point release and another one caught in it broke the legs and helicopter tried to rescue him.

 

[img:left]https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/10329294_10152027555706332_8014363907734834976_n.jpg[/img] [img:right]https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1554412_10152027556151332_8984410792714406837_n.jpg[/img]

 

Gear Notes:

no snow shoes used, however while coming lot of post holing.

 

 

Approach Notes:

via denny creek trail - snow all the way -

[alpine et]

seems you learned a lesson about conditions... though I feel the need to mention for others who read this who might not realize the seriousness of this area in the wrong conditions. can't imagine a worse time to pick out a steep south face to climb...

[Marco Falken]

Thanks for your interesting TR. In your photos those conditions look about as expected.

You and "a lot of day hikers" you mentioned might have been playing avalanche roulette.

Glad there was not another sad accident report. Maybe most of it had had already released?

[Ramkathi]

the route is all covered with debris which were most likely from 2 weeks back. it was all really iced up and hard balls. there was no new snow loaded atleast when we started, but then it started snowing.

 

we came back before it started accummulating a lot.

 

we felt pretty safe, the tests we did showed good stable snow. but yes there is always risk of avy from upper slopes which we cannot see and the funnelling tunnel route of gully is sketchy. we did follow the avy procedures of one at a time.

 

this week i am assuming there may be some new slides.

 

some of the photos are taken zoomed in from safe locations, so just to clarify they are NOT in the Route, but on other side.