ianmferg Posted May 7, 2015 Posted May 7, 2015 Trip: North Twin, twin sisters range - West Ridge to North face Date: 5/2/2015 Trip Report: I've wanted to ski the north face of the North Twin for a long time, drooling at the sight of the gleaming slope on every trip down the Mt. Baker highway. Last Friday, Ky Nayfield and I decided to check it out the next day. He had climbed the west ridge last summer. I had never visited the Twin Sisters range. Not knowing what to expect we brought skins and crampons, but ended up using neither. Ky had good approach beta from his previous trip, much of which was taken from Steph Abegg's excellent descriptions and maps here: StephAbegg.com. We left Bellingham at 7:40 a.m. and arrived at the gated bridge across Clearwater Creek (4.8 miles up Middle Fork Road, cross a bridge and stay right at the fork) about an hour later. The best way to access to the Twin Sisters in any season is with mountain bikes because of the six miles of gated logging roads required to get into the area. It was a long slog on the way up, alternating pushing and riding for 2.5 hours, but well worth it for the return trip, a high-speed descent to the car. We were soaked in sweat by the time we reached the top of the logging road section and the beginning of the trail at about 1260 m. There's a well-established fire ring. This is where we ditched our bikes. We decided to leave skins behind based on what we could see looking up at North Twin, which turned out to be a good decision. The trail from there goes up through forest and up onto a broad ridge, thickly overgrown at times but easy to follow. After about a mile we reached tree line and the west ridge laid out in front of us. We were happy to see no snow on the route from that vantage point. I was already tired from the weight of my ski gear and the approach, and the west ridge looked pretty imposing but Ky assured me it would be manageable scrambling, and it was. The skis and boots on my pack were at times annoying, bumping and scraping against the rock as I scrambled up it. The olivine dunite of the mountain is extremely grippy and secure for the most part, with handholds everywhere you want them to be. Ky led the route and had no trouble routefinding. In general, we stayed just south of the ridge until we passed the giant balance rock on the ridge, and pretty soon after that we gained the ridge. We followed cairns and they didn't lead us astray. Shortly after gaining the ridge I thought we would have to traverse a section of steep snow on the north side of the ridge which made me nervous, but it turned out staying on the rocky ridge was easy. All in all the ridge was a long, steady scramble with a couple high-exposure moments but no class five moves. As Ky told me, if it feels sketchy and insecure, you're probably off-route. The summit was broad and snowy and didn't require crampons, and the north face entrance was un-corniced. The South Sister and Mt. Baker looked mighty fine from the summit. We waited out a couple intermittent cloud banks then put on our skis. Corn snow on the summit lured us into thinking the descent would also be corn, but the shady top of the north face was re-frozen slide paths. It had been about a week since the last storm and plenty of freeze-thaw cycles in between. As we made our initial turns the scraping of our skis was very loud. About two-thirds of the way down the snow softened up, and the rest of the descent was lovely. We traversed skier's left as high as we could and stayed on snow all the way back to the lower west ridge. A couple hundred yards of hiking brought us back onto the trail. We got back to the bikes at 4:10 p.m. and back to the car by 4:45, for a car-to-car time of ~8 hours. I was thoroughly worked at the end of the day, but it was an excellent trip from start to finish. Looking forward to future explorations in the Twin Sisters! Gear Notes: West ridge was clear of snow all the way to the summit - no need for skins or crampons. Approach Notes: See Steph Abegg's maps to navigate the logging roads: http://www.stephabegg.com/home/tripreports/washington/northcascades/northtwinsister Quote
JasonG Posted May 7, 2015 Posted May 7, 2015 Cool! I got a kick out of fact that your partner wore a helmet on the descent, but not the scramble. Quote
ianmferg Posted May 7, 2015 Author Posted May 7, 2015 That does seem funny, but with the grade, the rock quality, lack of others on the route and our spacing (the photo is an exception) our ascent was pretty much free of rockfall hazard. The descent was pretty firm and there were sharkfins lower down, so the helmet was a good call at that point. Quote
JasonG Posted May 10, 2015 Posted May 10, 2015 Very true, North Twin is one of the choss exceptions around here. Quote
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