Kevin's Blog: Mt Spickard (8979')

Upon getting back to camp on Saturday after climbing Redoubt (story here), we imbibed on some whiskey after a long day on Redoubt. We were still planning on doing Spickard Sunday, but we expected it to be a walk up, not too difficult, and not take too much time. So we slept in and had a casual morning on Sunday. So at the early time of about 10:30 AM we started off towards Spickard. I think the mentality of the group was that "who cares after doing redoubt, but we have the day to waste so why not do 'something.'" We decided not to do the standard S route, but instead ascend via the Silver Lake glacier and the N ridge. Appeared strait forward enough, but a little more interesting.

We left camp and ascended the tallus field to the col between Spickard and Custer ridge. From camp this seemed straight forward and quick, but only ~half of the ascent was visible so it was more of a task than at first thought. Nonetheless, we finally made it to the 'col' and immediately thereafter, the toe of the glacier. The glacier was pretty open but there appeared to be a way through the crevasses. At this point, maybe we should have heeded the description that this is an early season climb when significant snow bridges are present. Undaunted we roped up and where on our merry way up and across the glacier. At the toe of the glacier we decided to leave some stuff that we wouldn't necessarily need - the rope bag that weighed mere ounces... a few ounces would have slowed us down way too much! :-)

Being the lightest and easiest to pull out of a would be crevasse, I had the priviledge of leading. At first it was no biggie, but then it became apparent that we would have to go through more of a troublesome maize of crevasses. being slightly sketched out on a bridge above a large crevasse, I tried to set a picket. With the glacier down to ice, I probably set the worst picket of my life. In the end it probably didn't even matter as I still would have pendulined into the side of the crevasse if I had gone in with or without the picket. We quickly shortened up the rope hurried over the few remaining bridges. We then ascended the "moderately steep" glacier (as Beckey describes) which turned out to be pebble imbedded ice amidst some more crevasses. Above this steep section we just had to traverse around some wide gaps and we finally made it to the top of the glacier. This was supposed to put us on the NE face for a 200' scramble onto the summit. Unfortunately, there was a huge bergshrund that made the route on the very top of the glacier impassable. Instead, we found a way onto the rock, after a nifty move on snow, that was about 500' from the summit.

Upon getting onto rock we followed the NE ridge to the summit, at a couple of points heading up a couple of gully systems just S of the crest. This turned out to what I would call class 4 climbing up to the summit. Fun, semi-solid rock all the way.

While we were looking for and expecting a "casual" day, this route was far from it. It had an exciting glacier with some steep sections, exciting crevasses and all that fun. The route was broken so we had to route find and get around some obstacles and then it ended on some spicy rock that kept the adrenaline flowing! So while the previous day ended up being a 'blah' climb on a great mountain, this ended up being a fantastic climb on a lesser known objective. While it might not have been as dramatic as I describe, 'twas a wonderful day and climb on interesting and awesome terrain!

So at the summit we hung out for a long time watching the clouds roll through, never really threatening with weather. Daylight soon to be gone we decided to head down via the [unknown] standard route since there was no way in hell we would decend what we just came up if possible. Unfortunately, we soon found that the Beckey description is not 'obvious.' We headed down loose scree/crap (equivalent to the day before). From here we didn't understand the Beckey description but finally made it past an old camp (circa the 20's, 50's???), to a gully leading us to the 'small glacier' on the S face. We traversed across the glacier to the right col landing us back in the Depot Creek cirque. We descended a second glacier (crevasses, staying far right) and then traversed across the cirque back to our original ascent 'gully' by a group of larches. As Lucas and Ryan headed back to camp I literally ran up the 750' to get the $&^(@#&^ rope bag that we had left and then headed back to camp myself, arriving wel after dark with no problem.

Several shots of whiskey greeted us as we reminisced abotu such a fun day and fun climb .... especially compared to the day before on crap rock. We enjoyed each other's company and finally hit the sack ready for another casual morning.

Morning came, and we slowly packed up camp, headed back down depot cirque, through the endless forest on the US side, into Canada, and finally back at the car. We celebrated with a few stashed 24 Oz Raineers and headed back home. Twas a great trip hitting two awesoem peaks: one excellent peak via a blah route and one lesser peak with a fun, inspiring route. The latter being one of my favorites in the N cascades, especially amidst such a trip.

And finally... another LJT masterpiece: