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Trip Reports
Here's where you peruse WACer trip reports and post your own for everyone to see. Remember: Never let the truth interfere with a good story! | Trip Reports |
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| GuideBook | Becky |
| Weather | great |
| TrailConditions | overgrown but well marked |
| Owned By | kaupang |
| Mailed to WacList | 07/17/2007 |
| RowId | 414 |
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Sloan Peak, per Becky should be called the “Materhorn of the Cascades.” The summit block is easy to recognize when standing a top many a Cascade peak, beckoning to be climbed. But I am fairly convinced that it is not quite as difficult as the Materhorn! In previous years, I had to turn back twice due to weather and glacier condition, so another year – another attempt...
Recruitment for the summer climb was low – we could only convince one recent graduate… maybe we should take that as a sign, but it was also late notice and half the recent class was headed to Rainier! We (Leah, Jonathan, Andy and Kristin) made it to the trailhead around 9am after collecting the crew at the “Ballard Park and Ride,” a.k.a. Jonathan’s place. While loading the car we managed to irritate the neighbors who apparently wanted to sleep at 6am on a beautiful Saturday morning??? Jonathan promised to make them cookies when he returned to keep the neighborhood peace!
Trailhead directions: Follow the Mountain Loop Highway through Darrington to Forest Service Road 49. FS 49 is open to the bridge just before the #648 Sloan Peak trailhead.
There were tons of cars at the trailhead, so we expected the route to be well worn from the morning traffic, but we did not see another soul the entire day. The brush was quite dense, and at times it was even hard to see each other… so, maybe we just missed them? Likely they all headed further into the N.Sauk trailhead to access Glacier Peak.
We all brought stream crossing shoes for good measure, as the previous years I remember fording a few hefty water crossings. But after easily crossing the first stream on a perfectly placed log, I was convinced that we were beyond the most difficult and directed everyone to leave their shoes behind. I seemed to overlook the report that there were 3 crossings before the big crossing…and also blocked out my previous memories of crossings. Luckily with newly (within the last year) fallen trees jamming up the major crossing of the North Fork Sauk River, it didn’t prove to be a problem that the shoes were left too early.
After the three initial crossings we faced about 4 miles of steady uphill travel through obnoxious brush and vicious mosquitoes. The trail was well marked with pink tape, and it was not hard to stay on track, despite the trail being “a bit” overgrown. There were numerous water crossings, usually you could manage to get by with only one boot getting soaked… or you could do like Andy and take off his boots prior to crossing. The most difficult was the waterfall at Cougar Falls. Again, I was starting to worry about early onset Alzheimer’s. How could I forget this grand of a waterfall?? But, I chalked it up to late season attempts with lower water levels, rather than my brain being slower. I have to say I was pleased to hear that my friend on the previous trip also didn’t remember any difficult waterfall crossing…. Needless to say, the only option for crossing was over logs situated at the base of the falls. The logs were constantly sprayed with water, and therefore extremely slick. We debated setting a hand line but were able to slowly work our way across with only minor ‘slimeage’ on our clothing from hugging the logs. Jonathan gleefully basked in the ‘true cascade experience’, Andy successfully achieved dry boots yet again, and Leah was just hating us at this point for not informing her of the challenges encountered on this approach!
Up we continued until hitting the vast avalanche debris field, also marked very well for crossing. Shortly thereafter we broke out into the open meadows (approximately 4500ft.) The gully was full of snow (unlike the late season attempts which consisted of talus and scree!) Yeah! Not much route finding here, you can see the summit and you just go up. We found a great bivy site around 5600ft on the rocks below the glacier’s edge. Here we dropped gear, pleased to see that we made it by mid afternoon and debated our plan of continuing to the summit or calling it a day and attempting in the AM.
We voted for a summit push, led by time nazi Johathan whose watch went blank shortly after the start. The glacier was very benign, easy to traverse with minimal crevasses. We took a southwest diagonal approach on the glacier to attain the ridge just below the summit block. From here we traversed south (fairly quickly due to rock fall) to the southern edge of the summit block. It was a walk off from the glacier onto a well beaten path – The Corkscrew Route. No Moats, no problems. It was about 1 hour from camp to cross the glacier, and then we spent another hour ascending around the corkscrew to the summit. It travels, very well marked along the southern face to a gully on the western side. We brought our axes which served to be beneficial on a few snow fingers, but ditched them no more than 100ft of ascending on the west side. It would be easy to get around these snow fingers with some class 3-4 scrambling, and the snow will likely be melted out in a few weeks. The gully was full of loose rock and scree, but the routefinding was straightforward. We spent 5 minutes catching our breath after a huge boulder shifted and careened down the gully. Luckily we were all fine albeit frazzeled. It was a good reminder not to trust even the largest boulder, and that 15 ft (although seemingly close) is too far in a rockfall area. On we went, time nazi dictating an upward push!
The summit is phenomenal, with spectacular 360degree views…especially on the clear day that we had. All in all it took us 8 ½ hours to summit, and we were able to be back in camp an hour later cooking some dinner and celebrating with some wine! The best celebration though was in the morning as we woke up with no schedule – and dozed in and out of sleep almost until 9am! We thought many times of the WAC group on Rainier and hoped they too summitted and were heading home! The trip out was quick (about 3 hrs) with a bumpy glissade back to the meadow, fighting the brush, swatting the mosquitoes, and not caring whether both feet were wet in any stream crossing. We met a couple who were just starting to head in the jungle like trail when we were about at the cars. We gave them some beta on all the stream crossings and bushwacking ahead of them with smiles on… back at the car, changing and getting ready to head out – we see the couple return to their car as well. They were a bit disgruntled at the amount of brush they had to fight early on … or they were scared by our haggard appearance, cut legs and arms, dirty clothes, etc. As Jonathan stated – a true cascade weekend with just about everything!
Gear notes: ice axe, helmet, crampons (not necessary for pm summit, but would be for am), glacier rope/harness, poles are great for the crossings, stream shoes not essential but could be helpful if you don’t leave them after the first crossing.
Check out our photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/KristinKaupang/Sloan2007/
http://www.andy-iles.org/Trips/Sloan/index.html
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