The Brothers - 5/25/09

The Brothers are visible to the West from Seattle and they have been staring me down almost everyday since I am always traveling East/West. Because of this I have wanted to climb them for the last several years .... just have never gotten around to it. Alison and I attempted them mid Feb and pretty much had a tough go of it because of conditions. There was enough snow to make finding the proper trail feasible and make things slick, but not enough to cover everything for easy progress. So we made plans to take advantage of the awesome Memorial Day weather and attempt them. The original plan was to head out to Hurricane Ridge Saturday for an easy hike with friends, stay on the peninsula and hike into Lena Lake (and beyond) late afternoon, possibly into the evening. Summit on Sunday and possibly stay another night if needed/wanted.

At the last minute we realized that the hood canal bridge was closed, causing us to change plans. On Saturday Alison still went snowshoeing with friends while I stayed home and recouped after a weeklong conference in NY while brewing an imperial IPA. Sunday morning we were off to Lena lakes trailhead, more or less delayed a day from the original itinerary.

We had a casual start and casual hike in. . The trailhead was a madhouse – there must have been 100+ cars there! Of course it was memorial day weekends with stupendous weather, but it made me rethink whether this was such a great idea. TH to Lena lake is about 1100 ft gain/ 3 miles, all on nicely (maybe too nicely) graded trail. We arrived at the lake in about 75 minutes time and then continued up the valley of silent men, again about 1200 ft/3 miles. Pic left is sun cascading through the trees in the valley. This is where we first saw the difference from Feb. No snow. Easy trail. No messing around, easy going. In another 90 minutes we had gone through the nice forest and arrived at a crazy busy camp. We found a more or less secluded camp and took in the scene.

Based on conversations with some climbers, about ~60 people summated that day and at one point there were 20+ people sharing the summit. We conversed with climbers, feared that we would be trapped in the middle of a zoo, and set up our own camp. At about 5:30 we were the only group still in camp (pic right is camp after everyone left), although others would straggle in later. However, we concluded that our change in itinerary turning out to be the best decision all weekend long!

We were on the trail by 5:15 AM making easy progress up the creek. The trail winds through next to the creek and up a short headwall into the old burn area. It’s here where we had the most trouble in Feb, but good trail and fine markings allowed us to navigate sin problemas. The trail hits a gully, which takes you right up to the headwall at ~5000 feet. We pretty much hit snow at 4200 feet (???), right before out turnaround spot in Feb. Hit the headwall, turned right up the ramp and farther right again for easy access to the S Couloir after a bit of travel on rock. Pic left is the bottom of the couloir/gully leading to the summit. Pic right is Alison coming up the couloir. Since we were first on the mountain I thought the hourglass might be doable (it collects the rock/snow fall from the S couloir so you don’t want to be in there with people above) but it had melted out too much and there were waterfalls, etc. Anyway, after traversing around the little buttress, we started climbing the couloir with crampons (great hard snow at that time of day!). Up into the top gully and we were almost there. I decided to veer slightly climber’s left following footsteps thinking that all tracks would meet up. Not true. 30 feet from the summit we were on a ridge trying to figure out a way up. Things looked doable, but a little too dicey for our equipment (or lack thereof), so we downclimbed 500 feet and went up the normal way, easily reaching the summit, Pic left.

Views were great. The weather was still great, although a little hazy. We enjoyed the 360 views of the Bailey range, Mt Olympus (all shown in panarama), and the hood canal. After soaking it in with a few other groups we headed down. The first ~2500 feet of the dissent went quickly since there was what looked like luge runs for glissading. We pretty much glissaded to the end of the snow. We made it back to camp in short time, packed up, and trudged down the final 6 miles to the now, mostly empty TH.