(pics by myself, Luke, and Scott)
A couple months ago, my friend (and dentist!) Luke hatched a little plan to do a climb and ski descent of Glacier Peak, the most remote of the five Cascade volcanoes in Washington state, via the White Chuck, Gerdine, and Cool glaciers. Each Cascade volcano is to be a worthy ski objective in my mind, with all of them having challenging aspects. Glacier’s challenge is an especially grueling one, since the typical round trip car-to-car distance is ~34 miles of slogging. Some friends of mine make a habit of devouring this kind of thing for breakfast, but as a novice to backcountry skiing and mountaineering, this loomed large in my mind as the most strenuous trip I’d attempted to date.
Luke put together a group consisting of himself, our friend Pete, and his photographer friend Scott, and we piled into my Jeep at 5 am on Saturday morning. Pete, Luke, and I quickly fell into our typical sarcastic and chippy group dynamic and Scott joined right in. We were able to get all the way to the trailhead with some careful Jeeping over a washout on the North Fork Sauk River road. We arrived to find a little Subaru Forester waiting for us in the parking lot and felt a little bit ashamed at having been so cautious at driving…but at least we got through it! We loaded up our packs, astounded at how heavy they were compared to our normal ski touring and overnight backpacking experiences, and hit the dusty trail, making good time in the shaded forest. After passing the Mackinaw Shelter 5.5 miles in (seriously, who builds a shelter like that), the trails begins to switchback up towards the ridge until it hits snow. At this point, we decided to play it a bit safe, navigationally speaking, and stashed our shoes, switched to boots, and booted straight up through the forest until we met up with the trail that eventually leads towards White Pass south of White Mountain.
Before we reached White Mountain, we turned north and booted through slushy snow straight up to the ridge and towards the summit of White Mountain itself, in the hopes that the north-facing slopes would yield some fun skiing down to our basecamp location. When we got to the ridge and found a great view of Glacier and a typical spring cornice, we decided to follow the ridge up to the summit of White, where we took a few minutes to transition and plan a line that would minimize the amount of climbing we’d need to to recover elevation to our planned campsite. I was struck by how much bigger the terrain seemed to the eye than by the maps I’d been studying.
We descended through snow that was soft enough to let us enjoy our turns, but a little too sticky to be extremely thrilled about. Nevertheless, it was a relief to get into ski mode after our long slog up to the ridge, and we let out a few whoops and hollers as we tried to balance fun skiing with a traverse to the east to keep our elevation up. Skiing with a ~40-50 pound pack was new to me, but not too difficult to get adjusted to on the mellow terrain.
After a short skin up to Glacier Meadows, we set up our camp, taking advantage of some exposed rocks to minimize our digging and set up our kitchen/drying area. We enjoyed the views in our little basin as the sun set and we melted water and cooked our freeze-dried dinners. As the temperatures dropped, the wind began to kick in, and we hunkered down into our tents, Luke and Scott digging out their fancy porch, and Pete and I keeping it low-key in the PP teepee.
We woke up at 4 am to get going, and found ourselves in the middle of a windy whiteout, so we used our best decision making processes and went back to sleep for a couple hours. Unfortunately, the clouds showed no sign of lifting, and the winds continued, so we put on our wet and cold boots, made some breakfast and decided to bail! Heading back up to the ridge proved more challenging with low/no-visibility, so we carefully bootpacked back up to the ridge, trying to stay away from cornices, and eventually summiting White Mountain for the 2nd time in two days.
As we skied down just a couple hundred feet, we broke through the clouds and into HOT HOT sunshine. The rest of the way out was fairly uneventful, other than the feelings of excitement at being out in such a beautiful setting mixing with our disappointment at not being able to summit, and our exhaustion anticipating the long haul back to the car. I was glad that our group was all on the same page in terms of safety and decision making, and felt good about the trip, enjoying most of the moments in retrospect, although the slogging certainly wasn’t fun at the time. We made sure to end the trip with burgers and beer so we wouldn’t be left with just sweat and soreness…unfortunately I got a flat tire and then my car broke down right as we pulled into Lynnwood, but I’m keeping those tribulations in a separate mental compartment from this trip!
I hope to make a regular habit of chronicling some of my weekend skiing and climbing adventures here (replacing my old attempts at science writing), and I figured an unsuccessful summit bid was as good a place as any to start! Getting out and going for it is the real goal, and as long as the outcome is safe, the people are great, and the setting is beautiful (always is in WA!), then it’s a worthy trip in my book.
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