Pickets Traverse

6/22-7/8 2012

Prelude:

Grace, Ethan, and I set off from Boulder toward the Cascades on Friday night (6/22). The plan is to attempt a complete traverse of the Picket Range. We'll move north to south, climbing everything that weather, snow conditions, and our abilities allow. Problem is, it doesn't look like the weather will allow anything at all. But we won't carry more than ten days of food, and this is a two-week vacation; we have time to be a little bit flexible. So we delay, and head to the sunny Teton range for a warmup.

We roll into Lander around 01:00 Saturday morning, and like last year, fail to find the tent sites in the city park. Instead we bivy on soft grass beneath huge spreading cottonwood trees. I wake to a loud squawk and the sound of squirting water. We've been woken by the sprinkler system. Again. Grace got it full in the face.

We get to the Jenny Lake ranger station at about 09:00, and get our permits. The Ranger is skeptical, quelling. Our plan is to climb the Teewinot that day, and camp in the high plateau between it and Mt. Owen. Then climb Owen on the second day and descend. I try to explain to him that we were on our way to the Pickets, and that this little side trip is well within our abilities, but he isn't convinced. I don't think he knows what the Picket Range is.

The Teewinot:

The Grand and Mt. Owen from high on Teewinot

It's early afternoon by the time we arrive at the top of the apex, a triangular patch of trees rising high on the east face of the Teewinot. The regular east face route is still holding a fair amount of snow, but it looks thin and treacherous, and the whole morning of direct sun has turned it to slop. Instead, we head up the SE couloir on the far left margin of the face, which holds more continuous snow. The couloir is 30-40 degrees in angle, sloppy on top, and firm a few inches down. We take to rock scrambling a couple of times in order to avoid hypothetical rockfall and soft-slide hazards presented by constrictions. Soon enough we gain the south ridge, and through a combination of exposed scrambling and simul-climbing (4th and low 5th class) we reach the gentle plateau southwest of the summit. We are all wrecked.

After a while considering we decide that Owen is not a reasonable objective given our condition and the gear we have. It would require lots of very exposed steep snow climbing, and we didn't bring pickets up with us. I am feeling quite sick from the altitude. Instead, we hatch a plan to climb to the summit of Teewinot for sunrise the next morning. The route finding in the dark turns out to be more complex than we had hoped, and the sun is high before we reach the top. Nevertheless, the views are breathtaking. Being so close to the north face of The Grand for sunrise is truly awe-inspiring.

We descend back to camp and pack up. Three (30 m) rappels off of point 11,840 reach the low saddle between Teewinot and the East Prong. We down-climb the easy couloir south to the sad remnants of the Teton glacier. Glacier Gulch is a mess of unstable moraines, but we get across, and reach Amphitheater lake via steep exposed snow and the remains of an old trail cut into a rock face. From there it's just a long, long walk back to our car, pizza at Dornan's, and our bunks at the AAC Climbers Ranch.

Decision time. The weather forecast for the Cascades is not great, but not too bad. It's going to rain today and tomorrow, then maybe get sunny for as much as two days before the rain moves in again. After that? there's just no way to know. We talk about other climbs in the Tetons, other ranges: the Winds, the Canadian Rockies, the Sierras... But it is the Picket Range that holds our collective imagination. In the end it's not an entirely rational decision. We point the Forester west, into the Pacific weather front.

Into the Pickets:

along Little Beaver trail

Ethan's parents treat us to an elegant dinner of rabbit and salmon and we catch up with friends. Then we're up early, packing, sorting, verifying. It's pounding rain all the way up highway 20. But we planned to start in the rain, right?

"You're brave!" The ranger says, but issues our permits with a smile. 

We weigh in. I win, at 54, and 191lbs for my pack and person, respectively. $125 later we are 15 miles up Ross Lake at Little Beaver trail-head. It isn't raining. Much. The hike is endless (17.5 mi), partly because the old-growth forest is so beautiful; Ethan and I stop over and over to try and capture it. Grace is patient, and stops wandering too far ahead when bear-sign becomes fresh and ubiquitous.We don't make it to Watcom pass, as planned. It's raining again after a long hiatus, and we want to stay dry for the night. We camp on a flat snow patch amidst an alder thicket beneath the final head-wall.

Watcom Pass to Luna Col:

 The sun rises. The clouds break. We hustle! The north ridge of Watcom looks too snowy for fast travel, and we opt for a low traverse around the east side of the peak. It goes easily, with little objective hazard, and the scenery just keeps getting better. Grins all over. Near easy pass we find the tracks of a large animal that can't be ursine, feline, or canine. This is real wilderness; we're in the territory of a wolverine.*

traversing the Challenger glacier

We cruise the Challenger glacier, and cut Challenger Arm as the sun is dipping. Packs down, hardware out, we head for the summit. Scenic climax. Easy snow climbing leads to the summit ridge and we simul to the summit. I'm in too much of a hurry to take them off, so I lead summit pitch in my crampons. It's exciting. By the time we are all on top it's getting very dark. The descent goes smoothly, and by 03:00 we are all snug, asleep in the tent.

traversing high in Luna cirque

The sun rises, much to our surprise. Lacy cirrus and lenticular clouds the day before had us convinced we wouldn't see it. But we do, so we move. Luna Cirque is overpowering. Fury is immense. The north buttress looks amazing, and snowy. We try to keep moving, but shutter stutter slows the pace. A long descending traverse to skier's right gets us into the basin with nary a cliff band, waterfall, or sprig of brush. The snow travel is fast and easy. We stop for lunch on the moraine and glory in the views. Aside form the lunch stop, the only time we step off of snow is for a 15 foot strip of gravel before heading up the south wall of the cirque toward Luna Lake. As we climb the thin scudding clouds begin to solidify and darken. We push hard and get our tent up and fortified at the col with everyone inside. Five minutes later the rain begins. And the wind.

*Confirmed from our photos by park wildlife biologists. They got excited about it. This is apparently the first confirmed evidence of wolverine habitation in this region of the park.

Tent Time, Luna, and a False Start:

It rains and it blows. We bear it. What's more important, the tent bears it. We read aloud. A Clockwork Orange offers a bit too much ultra-violence. Decidedly not our kind of horror show. John McPhee is interesting, but a little dry. We settle on Canterbury Tales, and English Fairy Tales (hilarious, and often gruesome). An afternoon weather break tempts us up Luna. No glorious views of the whole range; the peaks remain shrouded. But the intermittent sunshine and scudding tatters of cloud are exhilarating. We try to make a cell call from the summit to check in and get a weather report, but no go. We burrow back into the tent and it rains some more.

More rain the next morning, but in the afternoon things seem OK. It's still a white out, but by 13:00 it hasn't rained for a couple of hours. We decide to go for it. There's no way the north buttress of Fury will go in weather like this, so we might as well make some progress on the traverse. We drop a few hundred feet north on snow, and traverse to the next col, the only one accessible. We cross over, and it goes, but it turns out to be the wrong one (these glaciers have shrunk since Beckey's day). No big deal, traversing above Macmillan cirque is pretty easy. We turn a big spur, and a wall of rain hammers into us. It's stinging and horizontal, and we're all soaked to the skin inside of five minutes. A handy flat spot beckons. We get the tent up, and some hot soup down. It's surprising how quickly we transition form abject misery to comfort.

Luna Col to Fury, Outrigger, and Picket Pass:

The next day we are more cautious. It takes a real break in the weather to tempt us to take the tent down, but around noon, we go for it. More wolverine tracks on the SE glacier of Fury. We plod upward, and drop our packs at Fury-Outrigger* col.  Some traversing and a few rope lengths of 50-degree snow leads to the shoulder just below the summit pyramid. We wander, lost in the whiteout. Eventually we start up the final ~45 degree slope. I trigger some shallow (2") soft slides, bury a picket to keep us on the mountain, and continue. The summit is a gentle snow crest, and we are treated to glorious, if intermittent, views.

Mount Fury in the mist

Back at the packs we decide to go for Picket pass, rather than camp where we are. The climb up Outrigger is a bit nerve-wracking. Solid 4th class, with some treacherous loose rock. But now the clouds are braking up, the sun is setting, and everything is too crazy-epically-beautiful for words. We hit the top of Outrigger, and make a pleasantly easy descent toward Picket Pass. After one short rappel we are stopped by a short knife-edge section of the ridge. Is this the pass? I didn't think there was any 5th-class between Outrigger and it so... we chop out a tent-site with our axes, and quarry snow blocks to fill out the edges. More wolverine tracks at our camp, sharp and clear.

*The SE peak of Mt. Fury.

Picket Pass to Chopping Block col:

North Face of Mt. Terror

We wake up, and the sky is partly cloudy. No chance we'll start up the north buttress of Mt. Terror with this kind of weather, so we push on for the Mustard Glacier, Himmelhorn-Ottohorn col, and Crescent Creek basin. The knife edge is fun, but short lived. Soon we are walking easily, descending broad slopes down to the real Picket Pass. The mist comes and goes, and the southern pickets loom above. I know there is a 5th class bit between us and our route onto the upper reaches of the Mustard Glacier, but the slopes ahead look easy.  There's a continuous snow gully all the way up from the pass.

The snow turns out to be 70-degrees where we can climb it. 80-90 degrees in others where I decline the risk. I climb half a pitch of mixed, and then the crampons come off for a longish simul-pitch of low-5th class moat-ratting. Half way up, I've got my boots in the snow, hands on small rock edges. My feet blow, and I'm dangling by one hand. Blood runs freely from a small gash on the other. It's nice to know I can hold on where I think I can. Upward we go. The mist closes in.

We stay roped for the easy ridge crest that follows. It's hard to see anything at all, and the last thing we need is someone walking off a cornice. I worry about finding the route onto the glacier. But just as the ridge rears up toward the summit of Frenzel Spitz, the way becomes obvious. A short rubble filled 3rd class gully leads to the steep snow of the Mustard Glacier. We ascend the glacier. It's consistently steep, ~45-degrees. Visibility does not improve.

At the col we un-rope. I look up at the Wild Hair Crack on Himmelhorn. Amazing, but we don't have the weather or rock shoes. I must return. We make a very short rappel over a chockstone, and proceed down with care. 

There is apparently not a single square inch of flat ground in Crescent Creek basin, not with significant snow cover, at any rate. So we plod on, through intermittent sprinkles, and make the short climb up to the col beneath the chopping block. We hack out a site on the only moderately flat ground we can find: the summit of the pinnacle just Northeast of the Chopping Block. More stomping, more snow-blocks quarried. We climb into the tent, and it begins to rain. Then blow. Then snow.

Rain, Snow, and Vine Maple:

The Twin Needles, after the snow

We're trapped in the tent for 36 hours. It snows us in. Very short breaks allow quick trips outside for elimination. We read most of Ender's Game aloud. The morning after our snow day reveals clearing skies, and bitter cold. There is 7 inches of soft slop on top of the consolidating summer snow pack. We decide the risks of big soft slides is to great for us to go out via Elephant Butte, the travel too painful through the mush. So we pack up and prepare for the brush along Terror and Goodall creeks.

We descend the barrier in good time, turning left down steep and cliffy forest at 3700'. We avoid the drops and most of the brush until the last few hundred yards to Terror creek (2200'). The vine maple does not let us go without a fight. We locate a good log immediately, and start up hill on the far side of the creek. We gain a few hundred feet and begin traversing. The brush thins, but never departs. At last, we strike the Terror Basin route, and follow a good* tread all the way out to highway 20.

The sun is blazing. We stick out our thumbs and no one stops. Finally Ethan heads toward the North Cascades NP Visitors Center. Almost immediately he finagles a ride for me 20 miles up the road to where our car is parked. We pack up, and the gluttony begins. We eat our way across the state, stopping first at the BBQ Caboose, then the Burger Barn. Tragically, Cascadian Farms is closed. We watch the fireworks with Ethan's ever hospitable parents, and cap the day with ice cream and rum-pot. A shower and a civilized bed never felt so good. And yet, I want to go back.

*'Good' is a relative term here. There are many places in the Goodall creek bottom land where the tread is so overgrown you can't see your feet, or the ankle breaking holes in the trail, but it's far, FAR better than no trail at all.

Postscript and Stats:

The only things to regret about this trip are the north buttresses of Fury and Terror. I'll have to come back for those. In every other respect things couldn't have gone better. We faced some very challenging conditions, achieved a lot, and came out at the end still smiling. Still wanting more. Our team of three was pretty much perfect in every way. Ethan and Grace were both great, even on the tent days, and during the more stressful moments. I hope I was too.

Geographic:

Peaks: Teewinot, Challenger, Luna, Fury, Outrigger.

Hillmap stats: 18,000' cumulative gain over 41 miles.
I wanted to google-earth our route, figure out total distance and cumulative elevation gain. But I'm too lazy. Maybe Ethan will pitch in with that.

Photographic:

Photos taken: ~3200* 

Photos saved: 518

Hours of photo processing: ~30

Memory cards: 56GB

Batteries: 7

Gear: Panasonic G3; Panasonic 20mm f1.7; Olympus 12 mm f2.0; Panasonic 45-200 mm f4.0-5.6; cable release; mini-tripod.

Total Weight: 5.2 lbs

*Earlier reports of a lower number were due to a missing memory card.

Person/Pack Weights:

Ethan ......before: (170/50 lbs)

................after: (162/30 lbs)

Grace ......before: (136/42 lbs)

................after: (130/38 lbs)

Obadiah ..before: (191/54 lbs)

................after: (180/38 lbs)


Photo Onslaught: