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.