Canyonlands in February

I visited Canyonlands yesterday with my father and step-mother, mainly because it is too snowy in Moab to mountain bike. However, with a high of 40 degrees and a beautiful sunny day, this was not a day to miss. We drove an hour and a half down the highway to the Needles district, stopped by to say hi to the lonely ranger at the Visitors Center, then set off on a day hike from Squaw Flat Campground to Chesler Park. We never saw another person all day. Needles was all ours.

The trail system in Needles District felt a bit more primitive than in other National Parks. We scrambled up and down a few steep ledges and drops that while capable of being handled by fit septuagenarians, definitely felt typically untrail-like. The winter season had erased some of the marks of the thousands of tourists of distant summers past, and patches of snow still languished across the trails along northern slopes and in other shady spots. The trails were well-marked with cairns, however, and every interesection was well-signed. Otherwise, I would have felt a bit disoriented as we traversed over low ridges and dropped into canyons and washes as our path meandered crazily across the park.

Arriving at Chesler Park, we discovered that much of the day had slipped away, and so we picked up our pace a little on our way back. To ensure that we would minimize any problems getting back before dark, we came back down the nice, wide Elephant Wash to reconnect with our outgoing trail and follow it back to the car rather than heading down the longer, as yet unexplored Big Spring Canyon. We realized that we did not have a flashlight along, and I hear it gets very cold and lonely in the canyon when the sun goes down. Our hike went smoothly, and we arrived back at the car at 4:30pm, then headed back to Moab for Thursday night burgers at the Moab Brewery. Total time: 6 hours; total distance: 12.5 miles.

Big Tahoma Rogaine

Andrew and I were going to participate in the 24 hour Big Tahoma Rogaine down near Mt Rainier, but Andrew hurt his hamstring last week and had to stay home. I'm a bit burned out on everything else I've been doing, so I looked forward to doing the 6 hour event solo (solo participants can do the 6 hour event, whereas teams may do the 6/12/24 hour events).

I got up too early on Saturday morning and drove down to Ashford and up the forest roads to the event start, which was in the same location as the Fall Beast race last year. Eric Bone showed up customarily late with the maps, but we started within 10 minutes of the posted start time with a little less time to plan our route. The skies were clouded over and the temp was about 40 degrees, but the rain was supposed to hold off until Saturday night, not affecting us 6 hour folk. I decided to treat this as I would a 50km trail run, and brought just a windshirt and tights, hat and gloves with me. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

I planned an ambitious route that would cover 45 km or so and hit two areas that had some controls with large point values, with a place or two to skip a checkpoint if I was getting behind. Right from the start, it included a long climb to High Hut to get me warmed up, and after the first 15 minutes or so, I was in my t-shirt, hiking/running up the hill feeling good.

At the very first CP, I took off a glove to punch the checkpoint and write my name in the log. I was the first one there. Other people were following me, and in my hurry, I dropped my glove somewhere, realizing only a few minutes later. I would have liked to have that glove later on.

Everything went reasonably smoothly for the first couple hours, and I did very well at navigating to the checkpoints. The climb to High Hut was straightforward, and kept me warm with all of the frost on the ground and trees around me. I was especially happy when I navigated straight to CP 65, which required following a couple overgrown rides then bushwhacking to a "subtle hilltop". I decided to skip a 50 point CP in order to give me a little more time for the second half, then I ran into problems.

Checkpoint 64 did me in. It wasn't that hard to find, but required bushwhacking 300 vertical feet down a ridge across slippery logs. I fell three times in a row and my body was a bit unhappy. Going back up, I had to go 600 vertical feet back up the ridge to get to another path. The faintest trail was marked on the map, but I could not find anything and ended up heading through bushes that were completely laden with water from dew or the previous night's rain. In any case, I was soaked within minutes, and I spent what felt like a half hour thrashing around in the bushes, cold and soaked to the bone. My fingers stopped working; I was miserable.

I headed back to do the second loop in bad shape. The day was still cloudy, so I was not warming up much. My shoe got untied and I couldn't retie it. The strap on my thumb compass came off, and I could not rethread that either. Then I dropped my compass while trying to get some food, and only noticed it a short time later. I spent the next five to ten minutes hiking back and forth like a drowned rat packing, looking for my compass, shivering with my shoe untied. I was deciding at this point whether to fake a debilitating injury and call it quits when I spotted my compass on the ground. Not too much time lost. Maybe I would keep going, but no more bushwhacking.

I tried to find CP 43 which was off the road down a reentrant, but after a short effort, I turned around, as there was too much brush. Then I headed up for a long climb up and over a ridge. At one point, I turned around, deciding to call it quits again, but after hiking back down only 30 feet or so, I psyched myself up again and decided to continue on. Being alone brings out the difficult psychological battles in me, apparently. It would have been nice to have a partner to work with to keep me going strong.

After getting another couple easy checkpoints along the road, I got to an intersection where I could head up to some of the higher scoring ones, but I decided I did not have the time or determination to do so, and I followed another trail that would loop back to the start. I completely went past CP 23, which I thought might be easily visible from the road, but it wasn't. No turning back, though. At another intersection, I had a chance to go for a couple more CPs that were on side roads, but my will was gone and it had started to flurry, so I kept following the course back to the start/finish. I picked up a couple more CPs along the way back, then grabbed a couple easy ones near the start/finish before checking out in 5 hours 30 minutes. As I had run to the last couple CPs along the road, I had actually started to warm up by the time I got back, but otherwise I had been miserable for the last two and a half hours. I wrung the water out of my hat and called it a day.

It turns out that my 725 points was enough to finish in 2nd place of all the 6 hour folks (including the people who were on bike half the time), and Matt Hart was only 30 points ahead of me. I could easily have picked up another 30 or 50 points in the half hour I had left, and won. I guess that goes to show that one should never give up. Next time, though, I'm bringing my gortex jacket.

Hiking the Hard Rock

Running with James Varner the other month, I told him how the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier was one of my favorite trails. He indicated that it was one of his as well, but that the course for the Hardrock 100 mile trail run was his favorite trail. This made an impression on me, and so I decided to hike some of it during the week after the Imogene Pass Trail run, as I would be out in the area anyways. I asked my father to join me for an overnight trip from Tellurdie to Silverton, and he said OK.

The Hardrock 100 follows a 28 mile course from Telluride to Silverton at an average elevation of 11,000 feet. It crosses a 13,160 foot pass and it includes 10,000 feet of elevation gain. My father provided the camping gear, which was the heavy old school kind of gear. My pack was full after putting in the sleeping bag, pad and 3 person tent (for extra room). I barely had enough room to throw in a piece of warm clothing or two, then we were off.

Karen dropped us off in Telluride, planning to meet up with us the next evening in Silverton. The weather was looking grim, with expected rain and thunderstorms, but we were determined to give the hike our best effort. Karen left town with the car, and we were on our own.

The hike from Telluride up to the two passes (Oscars and an unnamed one) was the longest climb of the trip. We climbed almost 4500 feet in intermittent rain and sunshine. The views were as beautiful as James had said, though. As we neared the pass, we saw a thunderstorm way off to our right, and heard another way off to our left, but we crossed the 13,160 pass with sunshine above us and no fear of electrocution.

From Oscars Pass, we dropped down a steep, steep, rocky jeep road towards Ophir road. We missed the turn to Chapman aid station (or where it would be), but using our USGS quad and the course description, we quickly got back on track. I found it fun to try to follow the unmarked course; it gave an extra feeling of adventure and exploration to the trip.

We next climbed up Swamp Creek basin to Swamp/Grant pass. The last portion of this was across rocky scree-ish fields and then across a basin to finally climb up an almost impossibly steep slope to the pass. The slope looked impossible from a distance (due to foreshortening), but was a little more moderate when we got up close. We still slid back down the slope with every other step. The other side felt even steeper right near the top. I can't believe that people do this as a trail run.

Below us was Island Lake, and from there we dropped down to Lower Ice Lake and detoured off the Hardrock course to find a campsite. Darkness was threatening to set in by the time we set up our tent, and we quickly ate and crawled into our tent as the rain moved in. We were beat, having climbed a cumulative 7000 feet during the course of the day, even though we only went 15 miles.

I admit that I was a little afraid during the night when the thunderstorms set in. Lightning flashed brightly and thunder quickly followed, reverberating loudly off the peaks around us. I was so glad that we were 2000 feet below the pass, and that we had made it over all the passes without lightning setting in. Thunderstorms moved through every couple hours during the night, providing me a fitful sleep at best.

We woke in the morning to find a dusting of snow on our tent and on the mountains around us. Today was an easier day, so we took our time eating breakfast and packing up, and we hit the trail at 9:30am or so. Shortly after we started, we ran into Karen, who was hiking up to Ice Lakes from a nearby trailhead, having driven up from Silverton this morning. After a short chat, we continued on, while Karen headed up to Upper Ice Lakes for a day hike, planning on meeting us back in Silverton in the evening.

An animal trail took us down and across Ice creek to the Kamm Traverse. The course description marks certain spots as "Exposure. Acrophobia", but they weren't so bad. I might feel differently if I were trying to run along it though. After a fairly short exposed section, the Kamm Traverse joined an abandoned jeep trail which dropped down to the road, which we crossed. We forded a stream (ankle deep) and bushwhacked a short distance to pick up another trail that headed up and across towards Porcupine Basin. After the stream crossing in Porcupine basin, we lost the trail briefly, but just headed upwards until we picked it up again.

We gained the wide ridge and pass between Porcupine and Cataract basins. To our right we saw two wolves peering at us from over the ridgeline. They might have been red wolves - certainly larger than coyotes. Weather was moving in again as we moved along the ridge to climb up and over to Putnam basin. It started to snow, but at least there was no thunder/lightning as we scrambled to attain the highest ridge and dropped down to the pass and into Putnam Basin, our climbing finally done for the day.

The rest of our day was a relaxing descent down Putnam and Bear Creek basins to Silverton. The very end of the trail was very muddy and chopped up by horses that had come out of the horse camp by the road to Silverton. Not the best way to finish, but we were glad to be done. We looked forward to fording Mineral Creek to wash off our muddy shoes. The creek was about a foot deep where we crossed and refreshing. The other side of the creek was muddy and soggy, however, and our shoes got twice as muddy as before just trying to go 30 yards to the highway.

As Karen was waiting patiently for us to arrive in Silverton, we decided to call her and have her pick us up along the highway rather than hike the last mile or two into town. Then it was time for prime rib at the Pickle Barrel and a good night's sleep.

Kayaking in Clayoquot Sound

Kathy wanted to go kayaking, so I decided that we should head up to Tofino for the week. Clayoquot Sound has a good mixture of open ocean kayaking and sheltered spots, and no matter what the weather, we could find someplace to go. I had only been there before for one day, so it was also a somewhat new area to me as well.
We drove up Friday and stayed at the Paddler's Inn. It was slightly overpriced for what we got, but it was right next to the Goverment Dock and was run by knowledgable paddlers. We also talked with another group that had just finished their paddle and told us of their experiences. Although they had nice weather, today it rained all evening and all night. Saturday morning was blustery and rainy as well, with wind gusts over 30mph. Luckily, the weather cleared out by the time we got on the water at noon. This was going to be a relaxing trip.

After a stop at my favorite coffee shop, the Common Loaf, we parked the car in a most-likely-to-be-there-when-we-get-back spot and headed on out. We crossed the channel to Opitsat, a small Indian community across from Tofino that is served by occasional water taxis, then we headed up around the east side of Vargas Island. We lunched at a gravel bar, pulling out the cooler from my Big Beast (I brought the PWS Sea Otter in order to carry the cooler), then spent the early afternoon wandering over to Flores Island. Swell came in from the outside coast in spots, giving Kathy a taste of what it was like, and a tailwind kept us moving along. Kathy used Andrew's NDK Romany Explorer. She was still learning how to use the skeg, and in wind and waves it became a bit frustrating learning how to manuever correctly. She decided to use the Big Beast for the rest of the trip.
We landed on a beach just east of Whitesand Cove to camp. Rain appeared as we set up camp and stayed with us all night and into the next morning. The wind picked up, too, and blew sand through our tent, which was one of those tents that had only a mesh liners underneath the rainfly. I hope I don't wake up under a sand dune... At least the rain will keep the sand from blowing on us too, too much. I moved the kayaks next to the tent to act as a windbreak.
The next morning, we made sausage and eggs scramble w/veggies) for brekkie, watched a few diving birds through the binoculars, then headed out for a hike. We hiked along the Wildside Trail a short bit, which runs along all the beaches as far as Cow Bay, about 4 miles away. We also hiked a trail north towards the bay containing Ahousat, but turned back due to miserable-looking watery bogs in our path. At lunchtime, we decided to move camp down to a nicer spot on Whitesand Cove where there were more amenities (including a wooden pallet that acted as a table). After moving camp, we paddled our empty boats out toward Cow Bay.
Rounding the point, we started to enter areas of larger swell. My stormsurf forecast showed that 10 foot swells were expected today, dropping down to 3 to 5 feet for the rest of the week. As we got further along the coastline to the more exposed areas, the swells picked up to at least six feet and got steeper and steeper. I felt a little nervous taking Kathy out in these conditions, and we eventually turned back. Cow Bay was a good spot to see whales, but we would have little chance to seem them in these conditions in any case.
In the evening, we walked along White Sand beach to wash our dishes at a stream along the far end of the beach as literally millions of sandfleas jumped erratically around us. Kathy swore as she crushed their small bodies between her feet and her sandals. The sand was not even white here.
Monday was the best weather day - it only rained a couple times in the morning, then stayed overcast to partially sunny the rest of the day. Wind and swell were low. Kathy and I watched birds again, then eventually broke camp and paddled south. We stopped at Whaler Island to look at the campsites tucked into the edges of the dunes there, then continued on to the northwest side of Vargas Island. The weather report predicted 20-30 knot SE winds (not to mention rain) the next day, so we decdided to camp on one of the NW beaches, planning to go back around the inside of Vargas and back to Tofino in the morning. At this point, we have decided to cut our trip a day short, as the rain is a bit too much for us. Kathy practiced surfing into shore on small 1' waves. A sign warned about the wolves on Vargas Island. We saw wolf tracks in the morning. Or maybe fox. They looked a little small to be wolf. Maybe they were skinny wolves. An osprey circled above us.
We returned to Tofino on Tuesday just as the winds picked up, and we decided to go visit Port Alberni for the evening. It rained most of the way there, which made us feel good about our decision to stop early. Port Alberni has a nice river that runs next to town where we did some more bird watching. The next day, we washed all the sand out of our kit and headed home.

Ptarmigan Traverse

The Ptarmigan Traverse is a classic 5+ day traverse along the crest of the North Cascades. John Commiskey and Susan Ashlock joined me on a recent trip. John and I had tried doing the traverse two years ago, but I had an inflamed tendon before we started (from running White River 50 mile trail run the week before) and I made us turn back at Koolaid Lake when I realized I was going to be limping (or worse) the whole way.

On Monday morning (8/17) we met Bob Coleman, who travelled with us to Suiattle River Road to drop off the car, then shuttled us up to Cascade Pass TH where we would start our trip. Thanks Bob! We all hiked up together up easy switchbacks to Cascade Pass, then Susan, John and I said our goodbyes to John and headed out on the climbers trail up to Cache Col. We ascended the glacier unroped to the col and dropped down scree fields on the other side to Koolaid Lake. Not wanting to stop quite yet, we headed over to the Red Ledges, which is a short scrambling section on an otherwise modest day. We scrambled about twenty feet from a steep snowfield up onto the ledges, then traversed across one or two gullies before it opened up again. John dislodged a boulder as heavy as he was during the climb to the ledge, and it crashed down into the moat between snow and rock. Susan was luckily out of the way below him, but it reminded us that mountaineering is an inherently dangerous activity that requires constant attention. Shortly after bypassing the Red Ledges, we found a heather bench next to a stream, and settled in for beautiful views of Formidable and a gorgeous sunset.

We rose at dawn on Tuesday (6am), our usual wakeup time. We made a descending traverse to bypass a rib, then climbed alongside the Middle Cascade Glacier to about 6600 feet before roping up and walking onto the glacier. We dropped a short bit to avoid icefall and crevasses above us, then headed straight up the center of the glacier, occasionally bypassing a crevasse in the way. We reached the Spider/Formidable col, then dropped down a very steep snowfield on its backside before traversing right towards a saddle on a ridge south of Forbidden.

At the saddle, we prepared to climb Formidable. None of us had a summit pack, so we dropped food and gear from our packs that we did not need. John decided to stay with the packs after eyeing the scree-filled gully we would have to descend; he was on vacation after all and had enough scree for the day.

Susan and I use the beta from summitpost to choose our route to climb Formidable. We traversed across a basin a then traversed a rib that bisected the south basin. In order to bypass a cliff band above us, we could either choose a gully option or a ledge option - they said the ledge option was easier except for a very exposed section, so we decided to choose the gully, as we felt good about our climbing abilities. I felt like everything was fairly exposed, but at least in a gully you get to use your hands and your feet. We stayed right up the gully and climbed past a short class 5 alcove before reaching easier grades above. We scrambled the upper sections, aiming for the leftmost of several summit stacks, and made it to the top after some exposed but fairly straightforward scrambling.

Getting down made me a bit more nervous. I spent extra time downclimbing in order to focus on what I was doing and not slip or dislodge rocks on Susan below me. We downclimbed the gully (one at a time) that we had gone up, and eventually made it to easier ground below. A traverse back across the basin brought us to John and our packs. Whew! The route was a bit more chossy and exposed than I liked, but the day was perfect and the views were incredible.
We grabbed our packs and dropped down to Yang Yang Lakes to camp.

On Wednesday, we followed a trail onto a ramp that headed up to the ridge leading to LeConte mountain. At the upper end of the ramp, we had to scramble up a steep dirty section for a couple hundred feet to attain the ridge. The ridge itself is was wide and flat and very easy going. After we reached the low point in the ridge (good bivy spots, but not much flowing water) we hiked up a couple hundred more feet and then traversed leftward onto snow, then made an ascending traverse of the snow onto the side of LeConte mountain. From afar, the traverse looked very steep, but it was quite moderate. We continued to traverse, dropping to a corner of LeConte glacier where we roped up and worked our way up past a couple crevasses, then headed up towards a gap on the right of the glacier below Sentinel Peak.

On the other side of the gap, we traverse rock/scree all along the west and south side of Sentinal Peak until we could drop down onto the South Cascade Glacier, a fairly flat glacier which stretched the length of the valley below us. Crossing the upper part of the glacier (no rope or crampons) , we crossed a gap on its south side and then descended steep scree slopes to White Rock Lakes. It was a hot day, and we enjoyed a good foot soak. John wanted to camp at White Rock Lakes (it was 3pm), as Pat had mentioned what a beautiful spot it was. Susan wanted to go on to Itswoot Ridge to be in good position for Dome and Sinister tomorrow; I decided to stay at White Rock Lakes - it was a classic camp site and we had it all to ourselves. We would get up in the morning at 5am instead of 6am, however, so that we could have a good shot at Dome Peak the next day. We camped with beautiful views of Dana Glacier across the valley, and we pondered at what our route would be, as it all looked impossible (foreshortening at work again). Susan, always full of energy, decided to hike part of the next day's route as a scouting mission, and came back at dinnertime with reports that the route was once again very moderate.

I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking that John was grinding his teeth. No wonder he needed a vacation. It must be the stress of work. I looked outside our tent to see a goat chewing on the heather a short ways off. After shooing it away, the grinding noises stopped. We put our boots and poles in the tent (we always kept our food in the tent, in odor-proof bags) so as not to lose them to the goat if it came back.

On Thursday, we woke pre-dawn to alpenglow. Susan led us on her pre-scouted route to the base of the Dana Glacier, and we climbed along rock and snow sections until we reached a spot where we could easily enter the glacier, although we ended up much higher and to the right of the area for which we were aiming. We crossed a lot of blue ice with small crevasses and melted out sections and ascended to the pass at the top of the glacier near Spire Point. From here, we traversed a snowfield and climbed down scree/boulders on the other side, trying to figure out how to start traversing east without losing too much altitude. In retrospect, we should have dropped all the way down Itswoot ridge to the bivy sites, left our packs, and took an established trail across heather below the many scree fields and ribs on the south side or the ridge that aimed for Dome Peak. We went a harder way with our packs, and after much scrambling, decided to leave them in order to make better time to Dome and back. John decided he had enough scrambling for the day and planned to meet us back at our gear drop in five hours or so.

Susan and I headed out for Dome Peak with lightened loads, gradually ascending up snowfields aiming for the upper part of the Dome Glacier. We crossed some very tricky glacier-scoured slabs. A few moat crossings between the snowfields and rocks were tricky as well. We attained the Dome Glacier and traversed over to a flat area below the Dome/Chickamin col. From here we had to skirt between several huge crevasses at the base of the col (I was a little more nervous as there was only two of us now on the rope), then climb up dirt/rock (ok in crampons), dropping onto a steep snowfield on the other side. From here we climbed a couple hundred more feet up steep snow to sandy benches, then headed up the benches to the summit. I opted for the easy summit (probably two feet lower than the true summit) that I could comfortably sit at, while Susan scrambled around on an exposed 100 foot long arete in an attempt to see which of the small bumps on the arete was the tallest. Once she was satisfied, we headed back down the way we came, and met back up with John - round trip time from our gear drop was 6 hours.

With our full packs again, we decided to drop down to heather meadows and pick up the established trail that took us easily to Itswoot Ridge. A stream ran briskly by the camp spots along the ridge, and Glacier Peak commanded our view southward as we settled in to camp. Shortly before dark, a thunderstorm passed 15 to 20 miles east of us, and we saw the lightning flashing east and north of Dome Peak. Five drops of rain fell on us.

Friday morning, clouds filled the valleys a few hundred feet below us, but dawn sparkling off Glacier Peak enticed us out of our tents. Enjoying the last views of the mountains, we dropped down into the clouds for the long slog back to the car. Slick dirt, wet brush, slide alder and avalanche debris awaited us during the course of our 15 mile trek down Bachelor and Downey Creek basins to the trailhead. The road was closed due to washouts, so we slogged another 9 miles down Suiattle River Road to the car. The trail was quite reasonable for the most part, though, and bountiful blueberry bushes helped soften our sorrow as we winded our way slowly back to civilization and milkshakes at the Darrington Burger Shack.

Between Cache col on the first day and Downey Creek on the last day, we saw no other people. The skies were sunny and beautiful every day. The mountains were gorgeous. We climbed a couple very remote peaks and crossed several glaciers that you cannot see from any road. We are definitely happy campers.