Glacier Peak: Fail

Biking on the road - that's one large fallen tree. Fourth portage. Carrying the bikes across a fallen tree. Tom crawling under a large fallen tree River crossing. Original Bridge in not so good of shape One of the many washed out areas. The trail used to be on the right slope. Glacier Peak so far far away. Must wait for another day.

From our outing to Sloan last year, Tom was captivated by our view of glacier peak for good reason. He swore that this year we would do it. The weekend of June 26th presented the opportunity. We wanted to do something other than the standard route and decided to see what all the todo of the washouts on the white chuck river road and trail were. We knew there would be washouts but thought that we could bushwack around them and they wouldn’t be a showstopper. We started biking at the road block at white chuck river road (10 miles until the trailhead). After portaging the bikes around 4 washouts, the going got easier with just a bunch of fallen trees to hop over. About 2 miles from the trail head, the fallen trees made biking more of a hindrance than a help, and as soon as I heard hissing from my popped tire, it was time to huff it. The white chuck trail was well and good and we made our way around a washout. Then another. Then another. We finally decided to try the creek bed and/or bushwacking on the other side of the river since the going could only be easier over there. It wasn’t. As sun was setting we had made it about 3 miles of our intended 7 miles on trail with no elevation gain. We camped on a sandbar down in the river basin and decided to succumb to the mountain and that there was no way we would make it to the climb. After a casual evening and morning, we retraced our steps and made it back to the bikes. Even though the return bike ride was solely on rims, bikes made the 8 miles to the car go relatively painlessly. We returned to Seattle and watched the US-Ghana world cup game on replay only to be disappointed again. Next time we’ll go the white pass approach even if we do a different route on the mountain. But hey, it was great company, exercise, and stories.

Mt Pugh (7224' 7/17/10)

I haven't been able to get out as much as desired, but I am hoping to change that. I decided to get back in the groove and just do a long, straight forward solo "climb." Decided on Pugh since since it's one that I've heard was fun, is a lot of elevation gain (I need to get back into shape), and it's mostly on known, good trail so there wouldn't be a repeat performance from last outing (glacier peak fail).

Got out of Seattle at the bright bushy time of 8AM and was hiking at 1900' by 10:00. There isn't much route description since it's walk on trail until you are at the summit. But the first 3k are in timber which is a little mind numbing. At least it was cloudy and I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

But as I came out of the timber, the clouds were burning off. View up to Stujack Pass.
I got up to Stujack pass in a surprising 2 hours. Then the fun part of the climb started. The knife ridge shown here, leading up to the class 2+ kinda exposed alpine scrambling.

Another vantage of the ridge, looking back down.

I managed the summit exactly 3h after departing the trailhead. It was a gorgeous day. Crystal clear about 75 and 360 degree views.

Sloan Peak and the monte cristo group to the SW

White Chuck and Baker to the NNE. Loved how white chuck looked... that might need to be added to the list.

Dickerman, Forgotten, Twin Peaks, etc to the S(W)


... and to the North the panorama on top. Everything clearly visible. Eldorado, Forbidden, Dome, Glacier, etc. etc.

At the top, I needed refueling and spent 90 minutes enjoying the views and exhaustion. I could have easily spent another couple hours taking in the sun and views, but commitments awaited. I took off and landed back at the car in just under 2.5 hours.

I really enjoyed this hike. Although not the most technical at all, it was interesting up above Stujack pass in a fun environment. The 3,000' timber slog was a little blah, but added to the exercise and I am sure keeps some of the riff raff out.