Always A Work in Progress (Sticky Post)

Posted on October 6, 2014 by evejakubowski

Thanks to the guy at Marathon Sports back home who made the logo! I think it’s going to have to stay here because I cannot for the life of me figure out how the hell to get it next to the title above. Eventually I’d like to have a few things added, like lists (everyone loves lists), hike of the month, and a few more categories, but for now it’s all about learning to hike, climb, and run. Elevation profiles are in the Strava links when provided, and if anyone would like a GPX file of my route, comment and let me know, I usually have one. Comments, blog suggestions, and recommendations for peaks are always welcome! Doesn’t matter whether it’s a hike, run, or climb.

Recent updates: I have started an instagram! have_tent_will_travel (because some bastards took havetent_willtravel and havetentwilltravel). Not much to it right now, but I figure it’ll keep things moving during the dreary winter days where we can all reminisce on that one time it was sunny for a record streak and we were ~~sick of the sun~~ hoping for rain.

Goat Rocks Traverse

Posted on August 5, 2020 by evejakubowski

Adams over ridiculous meadows

Part of the ridge we would traverse

A body in motion stays in motion, that’s Newton’s first law. I’ve said it before here and I’ll say it again, because it applies to mountains and fitness and success and overall life too.You know what stops a metaphorical body in motion? A pandemic. A new job. Shitty weather. Social isolation. Working from home. You have your own list. And the REAL problem is that getting back in motion after a lull seems completely overwhelming. And that’s what the first half of this year was. I know I’m not the only one.How the hell do you get from zero to a marathon?

It was a combo of pandemic, figuring out how to fit a steady relationship into my usually selfish (ok still kinda selfish) life, new job, vegetable garden, fostering four newborn kittens, I’m sure there’s more. But the net result was me sitting on my couch. Or Robert’s couch. Or at my desk. Or on the floor (you know, bc kittens). And I thought for a while that maybe my life was just moving in a less mountainy direction. But I noticed it starting to become a downward spiral, where I was slowly just becoming mildly depressed and out of shape even if my hobbies on paper were fun. Something was missing.

The ridge over another meadow

It developed over several months. At first it was like oh sick there’s a pandemic, I’ll either come out of this 50lbs heavier or prison fit. Knowing myself, I was like it’ll totally be prison fit. Except then I felt weird about driving long distances to ski. I had trouble keeping the lifting routine while working from home. The motivation to do mountain stuff waned because of the pandemic, weirdness about travel, social shaming, shitty weather, and eventually because of my degrading fitness. Then I would feel bad for not getting out and being active which made me sit around even more. And then I’d feel worse thinking I lacked the discipline to get back to where I needed to be physically for cool trips since I wasn’t lifting as much or running as far and thus began the spiral. Lack of fitness -> fewer trips -> more lack of fitness. Oh boy. I don’t want to find rock bottom.

More meadows

Well about a month ago the weather finally turned and I thought okay, no more excuses, time to start chipping footholds in my self pity party pit so I can rally and get out of this. So I went to Chiwawa for Robert’s birthday. And then I went to Ragged View. And then I went to Ruby. And this weekend, we popped a sweet traverse of Goat Rocks, including tagging Old Snowy, Ives, and Gilbert, which took some mountaineering skills I hadn’t used all year. And these past few weeks are the most I’ve felt like myself in months. And they feel like the ramp up to my normal life, like I’m getting back to my normal glowy outgoing excitable (read: obsessive) self.

Goat Rocks was absolutely stunning. I WILDLY underestimated it. I’m not sure what actual mileage or elevation was, but it was a surprisingly cool ridge traverse with wildflowers that rivaled Spider Meadows and Cloudy Gap last year. Unbelievable. I’m nauseous thinking about the flowers. This EXISTS and I’m sitting at a desk instead of rolling in flowers don’t roll in flowers guys it’s not a good leave-no-trace practice.

Distance: 20mi
Elevation: 6000ft gain, 8150 highest point (Gilbert)
Weather: 60 and cloudy
Commute from Seattle: 3:15 with no traffic
Did I Trip: No just lots of skidding and crying inside

EVERY CORNER IS RIDICULOUS

We hiked in Friday night to camp about 4 miles up the trail where the Snowgrass Flats trail intersects the PCT Bypass. The hike in was uneventful, just darkness and spooky forest. There are two smaller camps just past the intersection on the left through a marsh. The main site was occupied. I didn’t sleep because of sticks cracking which obviously are bears, ghosts that have mass and can crack sticks, serial killers, wendigos, goats, goat men, or the thing from It Follows. I “awoke” at 6am only to find that not only had my food been undisturbed, I had dropped a shot block that not even the bugs had gotten to. That’s how far away the wildlife stayed.

Looking at Goat Lake and Rainier

We got moving around 7:15am Saturday morning, surprised by cloud cover but happy that they were high clouds, and immediately walked into the most glorious carpet of wildflowers I have ever seen in my life. I could have cried. Adams was so close it looked far more majestic than I had ever considered it to be. Helens was its usual toilet-bowl-looking self, though less so from this angle, and even toilets look nice with flowers. And Rainier was hiding behind the main ridge, waiting for us to discover it.

We cruised up the PCT through more meadows, brief snow patches, and talus fields to the top of Old Snowy, which had a trail the whole way. I actually didn’t expect that, I thought hte PCT went right near it but that it would be a talus hop to the top. There were two bivvy sites on Old Snowy that would be fantastic. We tagged the summit (no register) and had some snacks before continuing on. Most of the other hikers stopped here, though I think two sets followed us over to Ives.

Pano of Gilvert, Goat Citadel/Little Horn/Big Horn, Ives, and Adams from Old Snowy

Dropping off Old Snowy

Dropping off Old Snowy towards Ives is easy. Getting to the first saddle is just a talus walk with some short 3rd class ish scrambling on the next knob. You pass a WICKED cool arch that I was worried we’d miss, but it’s right along the ridge and you’ll go right past it. Almost everything steep/sketchy on the ridge can be avoided by dropping slightly left or right. but we generally preferred the left side of the ridge. Everything is loose so don’t expect pleasantries.

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Adams through the arch (PC Robert)

Just before the main saddle at Ives, we decided to drop into the moat above the McCall Glacier rather than traversing that finger of the McCall Glacier. The McCall used to span all the way across Old Snowy and Ives, but it looks patchier now, I am not sure the two halves are still connected. Or maybe one half is the Ives Glacier and the map is badly labeled.

Moat

Anyway, had I read the beta thoroughly, I would have known that dropping onto the southwest side of the slope would have been an easy talus walk instead of 3rd-4th class scrambling. I prefer to stem between rocks and ice over exposed 4th class, so I squeezed my body into the bottom of the moat (which to be fair was also a 4th class downclimb to get into, so… I didn’t really win here) and stemmed out a few feet later. Robert scrambled above the moat just our of the picture frame and vertical-limit-ed his way onto the snow at the end of the scramble. Trust. Nothing. Assume every foothold and handhold will come loose. Assume all ledges are covered in kitty litter. Assume the mountain will dump rocks on you. Wear your damn helmets. We scrambled up another disgustingly loose col one at a time to gain the ridge again where I read the beta again and saw the line about going south to avoid moat/glacier entirely. Oops.

Dropping off of Ives

From there, it’s a quick walk up more loose scree to the summit. We dropped down to the next col, where we ran into the loveliest couple. We chatted with them for a bit about our route and their plans, and thought they corroborated the horror stories we had heard of the west route up Gilbert, we parted ways feeling wholesome and confident. Which is good, be cause we then lost even more elevation going down to the snowfields and glaciers on the northeast side to traverse below some cliff bands.

We had dropped down before the “start” of the route in Beckey’s book because we didn’t feel like going up and over or around point whatever number it is, but we continued to traverse high to see if we could hit it only to be stopped by a cliffy shoulder, forcing us lower. We were losing motivation and starting to consider backtracking to the col south of Ives to regroup. There were cliffs below us and we were traversing on the shittiest rock I’ve ever been on. The talus fields were crumbling, every step was a broken or crushed ankle waiting to happen. Off the talus, you got bb pellets on hard rock, where the dirt (rock?) was so tough you couldn’t edge into it, yet there was kitty litter rubble everywhere ready to help you skid down to your eventual death (or a very uncomfortable landing). We stopped to discuss the route, and figured we’d keep pushing for a few more minutes before calling it and regaining the elevation we had lost. A goat crested the ridge in the distance, coming in and out of view as it climbed. But the stoke was waning and we were both kind of bumming. And suddenly. There was a clear path across a small snowfield. So travelled it looked like an old boot path. And there was that goat, leading the way on the distant shoulder. “Follow the goats” the trip report for the west side of Gilbert had said. Maybe that was true here too.

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Goat path led to beautiful Tieton basin (PC Robert)

Ready for action

With renewed curiosity, we followed the goat. The next 20ft were the most comfortable walking we had done in hours. The miracle goat path led us around the last shoulder to a small moraine that we could walk up to the glacial basin below Little Horn, Big Horn, and Goat Citadel. I think it’s the remnants of the Tieton Glacier, which is in the Beckey Guide, but it’s receded a scary amount since his pic. We figured we could backtrack or bail up and over the col to the left onto the Conrad Glacier if we couldn’t get past the crevasses (we had no pro), but I was cautiously optimistic.

Above the glacier, under Goat Citadel

We cramponed up and crossed some mellow blue ice before the glacier steepened, and eventually were frenching up past a 20′ deep leg-breaker of a crevasse. The sides were solid, no caverns to deal with, just a 6ft wide gash across the glacier and we were lucky enough to find a snowbridge in the center. There were two smaller crevasses near the edges of the glacier that were easily avoided, but we had to do some zigzagging and hope for the best. Overall, it was very well snow covered with fairly obvious features, no concerns for the next few weeks. As long as you can remember how to walk you’ll be fine. It’ll probably get icy later in the season but we didn’t see any signs of anything more gnarly.

Towards the top we stepped across two very small crevasses (~1-2ft wide but covered) before clambering up (guess what) more loose rock to the saddle around 7800ft. The saddle is very mellow and was on our list of camp options, but it was only like 3pm! I thought it was going to take WAY longer to get to Gilbert. Maybe if we had actually gone up and over point whateverit’scalled, but even then we’d probably have saved time using Beckey’s route instead of winging it.

Summit pano from Gilbert

Shitty crossing with death runout

From there, it was a talus walk rising gently to the right to get to the base of the summit. We passed a cool window in the rock just below us, and pulled some 3rd class ish traversey moves just above that to contour above more nasty scree. Back to less nasty scree walking for a little longer, and finally straight up some weaknesses that were surprisingly solid and a combo boot path/a few more scramble moves to the summit. Far less scrambling than I had expected, honestly. The views over Conrad Lake were phenomenal, it looks like a very cool basin and the ridge next to it looked like a lite version of painted hills in Peru. And finally, a summit register!! Several parties had beaten us up Gilbert from the east route, which I hear is much more pleasant (but still gets the neat scramble at the end). We snapped pictures, had a snack, and headed back to the col, mildly anxious about the way down from Gilbert. We hadn’t heard anything positive about it.

We traversed to the snow patch

The only beta we really had for the west route on Gilbert was to follow a vein of white sediment that traversed diagonally around 7500ft. The vein doesn’t continue all the way to the col, so we had to find the start of it. We dropped from the 7800ft col above the glacier to the 7600ft col roughly south, and started traversing, following goat paths and the occasional cairn. It was bad, but not terrible.

Cool conglomerate pillar

The route was not obvious at all. Every gully was a death funnel, and the scree was back to dirt (clay? rocks?) so solid you could barely edge into it yet mellow enough to be covered in pebbles. We aimed for high cols, trying to backtrack against the west route description we had from summitpost. Crossing one col above a steep snow finger we found the best rock we had been on all day. Super solid, amazingly juggy third class scramble to avoid crossing the snow patch. Finally some giggling and actually enjoyable movement! And renewed hope for the way down! We found the “white conglomerate pillar,” more of a boulder but there was nothing more pillar-like in sight so we figured this was it. That was about the halfway point.

FINALLY THE WAY OUT

And the second half (well, first half on the way up) was arguably even worse. Remember that rejuvenating rock that got us excited? Yeah that didn’t exist anywhere else. Super loose, no cairns, no obvious landmarks, no goat path, just rubble. Every step is calculated because you’re still moving above a tangle of death gullies (including waterfalls tumbling over cliffs at the base of some gullies) and that takes way more of a mental toll than I give it respect for. The white vein was hard to see from above, but we realized it had dropped ~50ft below us. Maybe that’s why everything was so loose. The white conglomerate is like a strip of glue in the crumbling mess of Gilbert. To quote a trip report, “I think we expedited the erosion in this area by 500 years just by walking on it.”

Lounging at camp admiring Old Snowy

Cute aster and paintbrush

Robert scrambled down a waterfall, I scrambled down some red shit next to it before hopping across back onto the white conglomerate. The white conglomerate is by FAR the most solid band of rock in this crumbling massif and I have to believe it’s gotta be better than the alternate high route given how loose everything else is. Almost reminiscent of the chicken heads on Outer Space. We followed the white band slightly further past the waterfall, and suddenly I heard Robert shout IT GOES! Ah, sudden relief. And confidence. I was so sick of having to balance carefully on every step and having half the rocks tumble down below me. We crossed one last steep snow patch and dropped onto a talus field below all of the gullies. Ahhhh, normal talus and scree! I’ve never been so happy for normal talus and scree!

We cruised to a saddle around 6800ft above Cispus Basin and looked at each other. Should we set up camp here?? Instead of dropping down? We should set up camp here. We found a nice patch of dirt that we level out with some digging, and pitched our tent right next to a beautiful patch of heather. We fell asleep by 8:30, the best alpine bedtime. Full day of traversing behind us and an easy meadow & trail back to the car.

Sunset layers

Waking up Sunday we started heading down Cispus Basin, dodging wildflowers and streams as we went. The sun hitting the wildflowers was insane. We had clouds all day Saturday, and the wildflowers were beautiful enough then, but lit up by the sun made them even more vibrant. Did I mention I underestimated the beauty of Goat Rocks? We took an extra ~1 mile detour to make sure we had drank in all the wildflowers we could possibly fit. It’s the same feeling when you have a drink and you’re wicked thirsty, except with your eyes. Suddenly the world looks oversaturated and ridiculous and yet it’s real!

The way back to the car was less eventful, since the majority of it was in forest. We had chosen the perfect camp Friday night, right at the transition of forest to meadows (so we didn’t miss any flowers in the dark).

Goat Rocks means two things: Mountain goats on rocks, and greatest of all time…rocks. But one of those is a hilarious joke* because it was more like Worst-Of-All-Time Rocks. Amazing views, shit rock (besides that one patch on the west route on Gilbert), mind blowing wildflowers.. I mean it was worth the trade. And I think it’s like a marathon where around mile 20 you’re like fuck no I’m not doing that again. But towards the end, and the next day, you’re like yeah, I could do that again. That’s how I feel about Gilbert. And I’m wicked curious what the route from Warm Lake or Conrad Basin is like, because I hear they’re much more pleasant than the west side. Scree, but not death gully scree on top of slabs.

Gilbert over Cispus Basin

*The other might be a joke too… we saw one goat. So I guess Goat Rocks is still okay, because it doesn’t imply lots of goats, just… at least one. We saw the one.

p.s. I can’t believe I never took a wildflower pano

Ruby Mountain

Posted on July 29, 2020 by evejakubowski

Andy coming along the final ridge

Cats making sure my pack is ready

Ruby Mountain was straight from my OG hikes list. Chosen for its neat location as an ex-island in the middle of the Cascades off highway 20 with 360-degree views, I had always wanted to hike it but never made time or wanted to put in the effort or had people willing to go. Well, enter Andy. Andy has come with me on a few burly hikes (see Arrowhead Mountain snowshoe, or Marmot Pass/Buckhorn). So I thought maybe… maybe he would be the right person for Ruby.

Distance: 19mi
Elevation: 6300ft gain
Weather: 70 and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2:30
Did I Trip: Yes but only stubbed toes and some close calls with rolled ankles

Beautiful forest

I woke up at 5:30, proud and impressed that Andy had committed to a 6am departure. I fought the cats off my pack, We rolled up to the trailhead around 9am. Shockingly there was a TON of parking. I had been worried after driving past Colonial Creek Campground last weekend and seeing it be a total mobscene, so I was relieved we could park 12ft from the trail. We knew it would be a long day but we weren’t sure how long. Oh, we can usually average 2.5-3mph, it shouldn’t be too bad. “How much elevation does it gain?” Andy asked. I looked at the ground. “Uhh… about… a little over 6000ft.” “SERIOUSLY YOU INTENTIONALLY OMITTED THAT DIDN’T YOU” uhh… yes, and also yes. 6300ft. So… we should start walking.

The first ~2 miles are flat along a wide, well maintained trail. That’s great, except that means you gain the 6300ft in fewer miles. We passed some happy backpackers on their way back from Thunder Campground, admired the blue gatorade color of the river, crossed the beautiful bridge over the creek, and started to gain elevation. Still in the woods, we crossed pretty creeks and chased peekaboo views across the valley. Andy picked up his first walking stick, Pole Walker. And then abandoned it later for Patstick Mahomes, announcing you should not name a walking stick until you are positive you are committed.

Meadows!

The first good views are at Fourth of July Camp, and beyond that you go back into the woods getting to the pass, which is fully tree covered, and feels downhill from the camp. Come on stop making me wait for the elevation. From the pass, you turn onto an unmaintained trail (signed as such) that is possibly the smoothest, most reasonably graded, most maintained unmaintained trail in the entire park.

Aside from that, get ready to do high knees over fallen logs and walk along trees to avoid the high knees. My legs were already shattered from the prior day, and my adductors were screaming with every high step I had to do. Andy started talking about hamburgers, some fast food burger that’s actually a stack of 5 burger patties and I finally stopped. I NEED FOOD AND I NEED FOOD NOW. I crushed a half block of cheddar cheese, a bunch of pretzels, and a cookie, and felt like a whole new person. Bring on the downed trees. “I need a distraction. Two actors, six degrees of separation.” “Okay, uh… Jessica Lange and Will Smith.” And then I get to listen to Andy figure out how to connect those two within 6 movies and overlapping actors/actresses that I may or may not have ever heard of. We also played the country game but with animals (you name an animal that starts with the last letter of the animal the prior person said). I got stuck on T (hint: tiger) but eventually won (undeservedly) by throwing out “ibex” and it turns out there are no casual animals whose names start with x. And the only reason I went with ibex was because I wasn’t confident an ibis was an animal and not a color or a pokemon or an Egyptian mythical creature.

More meadows!

The grade of the trail blew my mind. This had to be a real trail at some point. Climber trails don’t do this. It was so mellow until like the last 500ft. We started breaking out of the trees FINALLY around 5,800ft, and admired the increasing views as we gained more elevation. Patches of wildflowers started popping up! The Snowfield and Colonial groups glittered across the valley, and the ridge and glacier running from Buckner to Boston/Sahale to Forbidden stood at the end of the valley. And finally we broke out into switchbacks through a gorgeous meadow with aster, lupine, heather, yarrow, flow, and even the occasional indian paintbrush (which we are now calling prairie fire). Our pace slowed drastically as the camera came out. Oh, and we also started baking in the sun. And getting bitten by mosquitos. And getting dehydrated since there is no water after the pass. We stumbled upon a patch of snow just above the trees and immediately shoveled it into our water bottles to melt. We also stashed some water for later so it would be cold and crisp (a la Canadian Fridge).

Melting cornice along the ridge

The switchbacks through the meadow eventually traverse to the west side of the mountain, where the trail turns “unceremoniously straight up,” which is an accurate description. It’s the type of scree and heather where you kind of which you had crampons. But there are social trails you can find that aren’t bad, and it’s only a few hundred feet to the final ridge! And the views! Shove some more snow on your face to cool off and keep moving. “Is that where we came from??” Andy pointed at the valley below. Holy shit. Yeah, that’s where we came from, and where we need to get back to… sorry knees. You can do it. Hang in there. Good thing Andy found Patstick Mahomes.

The radio tower!

The ridge is a fantastic mellow walk over to the summit, which has a radio tower for park ops. “Oh you’re going all the way up there?” Yes. Yes I am I didn’t gain 6250ft only to bail on the last 50ft and neither did you. The views are astounding. Diablo and Ross Lakes are very different colors, and there are snow capped peaks in every direction. At one point there were plans to build a tram to the top, and while I am glad that didn’t happen, I completely understand why Ruby was the chosen peak. We sat next to the radio tower and Andy popped open some cider from Blue Mountain Cider and it was hands down the best cider I had ever had. Super crisp and tart and refreshing and everything my body wanted in that moment.

Best cider ever.

You know it’s a good peak when you don’t know which direction to take a panorama. I messed up a bunch before saying screw it it’s like 3pm and we need to head down. Luckily, walking down tends to be faster than walking up, and I snapped some photos of Andy singing softly as we descended the crappy kitty litter and scree and soon enough we were back at the snow patch to refill water bottles and chug our cold water stash. From there we slowed a bit negotiating blowdowns again and slapping mosquitoes, and soon we were back in the shady trees.

Andy singing on his way down, Snowfield & Colonial group in the back

We hit the pass pretty quickly thanks to mosquitoes and thirst, and cruised back to Fourth of July camp. At the first stream, we debated the pros(?) and cons of giardia, and whether we should drink from the stream or suck it up until we were at the car. I was rambling about work grievances or something else largely insignificant compared to the size of the mountains and valleys we were tromping through and the beauty surrounding us, and I caved and dropped my pack to grab a drink when I hear “Ohmygod. Eve.” I look up at Andy. “There’s a bear right there.”

THE BEAR

I’VE NEVER SEEN A BEAR. Years of doing this shit like EVERY WEEKEND and they must smell me coming or hear me coming or maybe I’m wildly oblivious but doesn’t matter, I’ve never seen one. This was a vanilla bear, maybe 100ft away, good for bear beginners like me. I tried to get a picture but he moved behind trees too quickly, so I present you with this incredibly realistic microsoft paint rendition of the situation and my reaction.

Game cam?

When it was mostly obscured I figured time to start moving before it got closer, because I don’t like wildlife or the forest and definitely not massive wildlife with claws and teeth and muscles and the ability to run 30mph. We debated the best way to evade a bear should it start chasing us. Zigzag? Follow trail/switchbacks? Cut all the switchbacks? How well can they pivot? Would their momentum carry them past the switchback? Fortunately, we did not have to find the answers to these questions, because the bear didn’t give a shit about us. We did find this camera strapped to a tree that we didn’t notice on the way up, so I took a picture of it taking a video of us because that’s only far. I have not found any write-ups of what it’s actually for, but I imagine it’s for some wildlife study.

We popped out at the trailhead around 7pm, 10hrs round trip. Not too shabby. And the gpx track? 19.4 miles. 17miles my ass, WTA. Hilarious that we thought we’d be back in time for beer at Birdsview Brewing but I told Andy I swear we can do another trip that’s not like 20 miles and 6000+ ft of elevation gain. We chugged more water and whined about our sore feet and basked in the comfort of our flip flops.

One more of the meadows!

Ragged View

Posted on July 24, 2020 by evejakubowski

Photographer things

Tell me why you are here.

I don’t even know where to start. I’ve been sitting at home for 5 months, have seen like a net five people since February, and you all know my life revolves around activity and socialization so you can imagine the puddle I have become. Finally the planets aligned and Surafel, Brad, and I were all free on the same weekend. We had two options for trips, and given the new moon and the Neowise comet, we figured we’d pick the one with the best view so they could work on the astrophotography skills while I slept. We chose Ragged View, except approaching on an abandoned trail (my favorite) and bushwhacking up the Cabinet Creek drainage. Short, but oh so sweet.

Distance: 10 miles
Elevation: 3500ish ft
Weather: 70’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: ~3hrs, 3:15 if your friend oversleeps
Did I Trip: Yes but I never truly ate it

Up and up!

I felt like a kid going back to summer camp about to see friends after a year apart and go on an adventure. I was stupid excited. Like fidgeting days before the trip. I even offered to drive. We met at the park n ride at 6am. Well, Brad and I met. Surafel, who lives 5min away and is usually first, was nowhere to be found. At 6:13 we got a message. “Shit shit. On my way.” Okay, so someone just rolled out of bed. He made it to the park n ride by 6:27, pretty quick for someone who had just woken up. And soon enough, we were piled into my yellow bumblebee of a car and on our way.

Okay, it wasn’t ALL open

We pulled off Highway 20 just before Cabinet Creek. We walked up and down the patch of trees, looking for a good way in, and finally just pushed through them. We started alongside the stream but headed uphill thanks to the only route beta we had. We immediately ran into some beans. Brad stepped right over them, because bottles of beans are a common feature of natural forested landscapes. Whose beans are these? Why are they here? How did they prioritize their beans? Are there more beans hidden here that we should know about? Did I just blow someone’s bean stash secret? We’ll never know.

Trail!

We continued up steep but mostly open forest, and eventually ran into (woo!) a trail! The trail has been abandoned for over 30 years, but the tread is pretty obvious for 80% of the way, and luckily this mysterious CP had flagged most of it! Turns out the trail was built in the late 1920’s and appeared on maps prior to 1960, so possibly abandoned for even longer than that. Why was it built? And why was it sequentially abandoned? That was looong before the highway existed, which makes it even more fascinating. I don’t know of any mining or logging history in that drainage, maybe it was recreational.

Our pace tripled as we cruised to the river, following pink flags and soft dirt tread. Close to the river, we encountered another oddity. A garbage barrel, crunched in half and stuffed in a tree. Brad went to inspect it and found nothing. We forded the river, mostly shin deep, and quickly found another barrel. We knocked it with a trekking pole, seemed hollow. What goes in barrels besides various lifestages of petroleum and people? WHY ARE THESE HERE? Did you need more storage for your forest beans?!? I don’t like forests and I don’t like mysteries and these murder barrels were mysteries in the forest.

Fording the river

OH, and there was no hint of a trail to be seen whatsoever. We had been warned, the trip report we had said to not bother to find anything. So we just started following the path of least resistance, spitting out leaves and moss and pollen and spiderwebs as we went. Our pace slowed a little, but honestly wasn’t bad all things considered. We came to the junction of the north and south forks of Cabinet Creek, more of a braid of a dozen creeks than a crossing of two rivers. We hopped over to the furthest south, and followed that until the meadow, where some sexy pine trees graced us with more pollen and we helped them all copulate.

Murder Barrels

The meadow still had some gnarly avy debris. We checked the map. Okay, the trip report says cross the stream here and go up through steep forest to the left of the stream. But the right is so much more mellow… my opinion is that trip reports exist for a reason. Someone somewhere (well probably there) fucked up decades ago and that’s why the only beta we have says go left. But…. right is mellow, and we know better than everyone obviously, so we went right.
Straight into class 3 trees. Class 4? I’m not sure. I straight climbed a tree at one point. It was like swimming uphill through evergreen veggie belays. We finally broke out into a small creek, which we followed to another small clearing, and from there it was easy access to the lake. But that might have been the slowest like 400 vertical feet of my life to date. I don’t even have a picture because all of my hands were busy dragging my fat quarantine ass over short stubborn spruce trees. I smelled a hint of alcohol and fruits wafting on the air, convinced I was hallucinating I tore my pack apart and found a completely empty bottle of hand sanitizer. It was full when I started the trip.

Highways

We skirted the lake on the west side too (also a mediocre choice), and explored the swampy meadow behind it. The lake and meadow were underwhelming until you were several hundred feet above them, and then they were actually pretty cool. We started up the central talus field, where it’s choose-your-own-adventure to the right. The bottom half of the talus was an easy hop. The we headed for a brown gully to the right of a cool cave. I went to check out the cave. Don’t, it’s not worth it, there are no hula hoops and the heather is steep so going back down and/or sideways blows. I crossed over to the gully, which Brad had started up. I decided that fourth class downsloping kitty litter ledges were not my jam, and followed Surafel traversing to a lower part of the ridge. Traversing steep heather is not that much better than sloping kitty litter ledges. As soon as I left the gully I heard a bunch of small rock fall and turned back to make fun of Brad when I saw a toaster-size block come tumbling by. He knew I was out of the way, but wowww was I glad to be out of that gully.

The lake. I was whelmed

We crested the ridge and I immediately turned left to find Brad. And then I turned back to see where Surafel was. And then I saw the views and started running back and forth. Ahhhh!! Ragged Ridge! It’s so beautiful. So freaking beautiful. We dropped our bags where we thought we’d camp and headed up to Ragged View for prime views and more frantic exploring. We eventually figured we’d go back to set up camp and come back up for sunset, or milky way photos. We decided to find a better campsite, more dirt and less heather, so we lazily walked our gear down the ridge a bit. Dropped it there, and walked to explore the rest o the ridge, where we found an even better campsite. Third time’s a charm, right? We went back and got our stuff again.

Gaining elevation

We had more ambitious plans, but as soon as we were on the ridge they pretty much just melted away. Surafel chilled in his camp chair, which was way more useful than the bonus gear Brad and I had carried (ice axes, crampons… Brad even carried freaking mountaineering boots!). We cooked dinner (except Surafel, who brought a huge tupperware of pasta & beef), fought off mosquitos with lemon eucalyptus (hot take: it is useless) and chilled for hours until it was time for sunset pics, where I get to be jealous because my phone and camera can’t handle the colors/light contrast of sunset pics. Or maybe it just needs post processing and I expect too much of a camera, I don’t know. I got cold and went to sleep and woke up occasionally to them taking night sky photos and the panic associated with a mosquito buzzing somewhere near your face but you aren’t sure where. The Neowise comet was clearly visible, and I think this might have been the most stars I’ve ever seen in my life. Usually there is only one cluster in the sky that is the Milky Way, but here it stretched all the way across the sky. It looked like a fake image, it was magnificent and exactly what I needed after months of quarantine.

Heading up to Ragged View, Mesachie Pass lower left. Cub, Mesachie, Katsuk, Kimtah, Cosho from left to right.

Kitling Lake

In the morning we dropped down to the meadows, which were also stunningly gorgeous. More mosquitos for sure, but a really cool web of springs and creeks flowing into Kitling Lake below. the glacier recession was noticeable, which was very cool. We had a moment appreciating the silence, until we heard… a drone? It flew right over us. We stood there with our jaws on the floor. Seriously?? I’m torn, is this really cool or really annoying? Where are the people flying it? It came back over us and hovered for a bit before flying into the trees. “We should have mooned it.” Shit guys, why didn’t we think of that 10 minutes ago?! The only conclusion I can draw is that the person who stashed the beans and filled the murder barrels is now tracking us with a drone to see if we’re coming back towards them or not. Better be on the lookout when we go back through those barrels. And they’ll find us because they have a drone and we’re loud and smell like hand sanitizer exploded in someone’s pack. Dibs middle.

Surafel looking cozy

We trekked back to the ridge and packed our bags. I wasn’t excited to go down some of the stuff we had come up. We took a more roundabout way, entering the bowl on the low end of the ridge and traversing over to the talus rather than going down Brad’s gully by the cave. A much more pleasant route than going straight up and then sidehilling. Talus hopping is tedious but better on my ankles, so that part was decent enough.

Heading down to the meadows

At the lake we went around the east side this time (skiier’s right if leaving the bowl) which was wide open easy travelling forest. And then we went down on the opposite side of the waterfall from where we had come up, which was amazingly open (but steep) until the last like 50 vertical feet. We popped back out in the meadow, and from there it was just a matter of pushing through more licentious trees, path of least resistance with the creek on our right, cross the junction again, more bushwhacking with the creek on our right, murder barrels #4 and #3, cool mushy swamp spot, murder barrel #2, and then fording the river past murder barrel #1 and we were back on the freshly flagged trail.

More photographer things

One of many cute streams

We followed the trail all the way back to the highway, where it dumped us out like 20ft beyond where we had given up looking for an entrance. Oh, if only we had read the WTA reports for Cabinet Creek. For anyone looking, the trail entrance is behind some piles of dirt about 100ft past the Cabinet Creek sign. Not even.

We stopped at Burger Barn on the way back for some amazing burgers and milkshakes. I feel bad for Cascade Farms with the berries and ice cream because the road closure is probably screwing up their business on top of everything else going on 😦 Hopefully they hang in there. I’ll definitely visit when everything reopens, and probably accidentally before the road reopens given my uncanny ability to drive past bright orange detour signs.

Amazing trip with great company and to a spot where we didn’t see a single other human being for two whole days. Despite the crowds out there with the pandemic right now, it’s still possible to find an escape if you try hard enough. And there are so many unexplored areas back there that used to be accessible. Gabriel Peak and the Mebee/Beebe ridge stood out since the Cabinet Creek trail used to take folks up to the headwaters just below those. I always wonder why they were abandoned and how long they’ll take to truly fade. It is fascinating that the first 1.5mi of the trail is still so obvious, but across the creek, it disappears. I wonder what it was like 30+ years ago when it was still in use. And what the hell were those barrels for? And who is stashing beans off highway 20?!?

Dreams. PC Brad

p.s. Link to Brad’s trip report and more ridiculous photos here.

Yellow Aster Butte

Posted on October 12, 2019 by evejakubowski

A break in the clouds

Foliage along switchbacks

“This isn’t sustainable.” I glanced at Surafel through my tears as the wind sprayed snow in my face. It was September. And it was like 20 degrees with 25mph winds and snow. What. The. Hell. Washington. How DARE you skip fall. All we wanted was bright red and yellow and orange all over the ground and larches and crisp air and sunny blue skies AND BLOOBS and instead you give us high winds and a foot of snow and buried blueberries? Such a cruel mistress.

Sudden winter wonderland!

We were waiting for Amber, and of course I chose the spot with the best views. That means it was the most exposed spot. That means the wind was whipping and the snow was flying and my soft summer body had apparently forgotten how to circulate blood past my elbows and knees when challenged with below freezing temperatures. We ducked around the corner behind a small knoll instead and finally went to hike back down the trail, just as Amber comes around the corner grinning like a kid seeing their birthday cake for the first time. Yeah, okay, you’re right, is there anything I’d rather be doing?

Distance: 7.5 miles round trip
Elevation: 2550ft gain
Weather: 20’s and “partly sunny”
Commute from Seattle: 2 and a half hours
Did I Trip: No, I’ve gotten really good at walking over a few decades of practice
Past comparison: Mid October 2014

Surafel taking a picture of me taking a picture of him taking a picture

We met at 6:30am at the Lynnwood Park n Ride and headed north. I hadn’t been to Yellow Aster Butt(e) since October 2014(!), but we knew the fall foliage was supposed to be fantastic and better yet, the area had the highest chance of being sunny in all of western Washington (including the east side of the Cascades). So we figured we’d take our chances.

We immediately saw how low the snow level was. The fall foliage lasted maybe two switchbacks before being covered with snow, and suddenly we were back in the woods. I had blocked the woods from my memory, apparently. But it was a winter wonderland! Fresh snow on all of the trees! Amber wouldn’t stop smiling. I kept laughing every time I saw her face come around a corner just freaking glowing. And Surafel too, the night before I was like oh you’re welcome to join us if you want to come to which he immediately responded TAKE ME WITH YOU! We were all just happy to be out there. But we were missing Brad, who we thought had ditched us to go find larches on some crazy east side off trail adventure of his own. Well maybe he found sunshine and larches, but at least I have friends!*

Surafel and more foliage

The forest opens up into meadows, from where you can see the trail steadily rising across the bowl and actually the butt(e) itself (I think). So you think you’re close, but as you continue you realize you’re about to circumnavigate the butt(e), not go straight up. Also make sure you take the left for where the trail splits to YAB vs Tomyhoi Lake. I hear the lake is beautiful, but it’s 2 miles of mostly elevation loss you have to regain on the way up.

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Hiking past a tarn (PC Surafel)

The wind started whipping as soon as we left tree line. Subalpine meadows are gorgeous, but damn was it cold. We crossed a neat outlet stream, some leftover snow from last winter, and finally broke out into blueberry heaven (bloobs, as Brad calls them). Except you had to dig through the snow to get to them. That didn’t stop us.

NEON FOLIAGE

We continued to follow the trail wrapping beneath the butt(e), and finally came around a corner to views of the Yellow Aster Tarns and Tomyhoi, which had some cool cloud action along the ridge. The final push to the top was steep and slick with fresh snow, so Surafel and Amber chilled at the knoll while I went the rest of the way. I loaned a hiking pole to a new friend, and she and I had the summit all to ourselves. She had come from the San Juans to knock out a hike before work, so we snapped a few pics and hustled down to a point where she could give me back my pole and take off to get to work on time. That was where I met back up with Surafel and Amber, and we headed back to the trailhead ourselves, ready for bathroom and drinks and a warm car.

New friend with tarns and Tomyhoi in the background

P.S. we placed bets on how many cars would be at the trailhead. I bet 17. Amber bet 22. Surafel bet 25. There were 27 when we got there, and 68 when we left. Get there early and hike fast!

*He found one larch, no sunshine, and had his girlfriend with him which counts as two friends

Winchester Mountain Birthday Surprise

Posted on September 29, 2019 by evejakubowski

Here come the balloons! Baker peeks above the clouds.

Party ready! PC Ken

Yeah, we took over a lookout. I almost felt bad, but everyone around us was pretty nice and patient and there weren’t many people because the mountain gods decided to wrap us in fog. To make the colors really pop, I assume. Thanks guys.

Eva had planned this crazy surprise from scratch maybe two weeks in advance. Like two dozen people coordinating formal wear, balloons, blueberry tarts, carpools up one of the worst roads in the cascades, how to get everyone there on time despite everyone being chronically late… amazingly it worked out.

Distance: 3.4 miles (i know, it’s almost a personal record of shortness)
Elevation gain: 1300ft (not too shabby for 1.7mi)
Weather: 40’s and partly sunny?
Commute from Seattle: 3hrs with no traffic
Did I Trip: Not today

Blueberry break! PC Ken

I got to the meeting spot at 9:45. Everyone agreed to meet at 10. They all went to the Wake and Bakery (heh) beforehand, but I was out of cell service so I assumed they were wrapping up and moments away. But then it was 10, and then it was 10:15, and then Emily rolled up so at least I had company, and then it was 10:30… and finally everyone was there. We shuffled gear into the cars of those willing to take on the burden of driving to Twin Lakes, and headed off to the trailhead.

The procession of the balloons

My car had about 40 balloons, which I figured would be enough to float us to the top. But it wasn’t, and that meant we had to actually face the road. Turned out the road isn’t technically that bad, just some small washouts. The scary part is the steep drop and the fact that it’s one lane. And I didn’t want to back that shit up (back up that shit?) in my manual transmission xterra, which, as dope as it is, doesn’t even like reversing uphill in a city. I need two gears for reverse in that car. Amazingly, we only had to pass two others, one that was a little spicy with like 3″ of space (Emily was like uhhh don’t go any farther this way…) and one where Emily and I both laughed and cheered because we passed them on a nice wide beautiful switchback. And suddenly we were at the trailhead!

Each balloon can lift ~14g, so they helped a bit with pack weight

It took a while again to get everyone organized (party decorations, balloons, kids, dogs, debating turning cars around to hide obvious bumper stickers that would give us away) and finally we were on our way. I stupidly signed “EVE – PARTY OF 12” in the trail register. Thankfully, Eva had the foresight to guide Stephen away from the register so my idiocy didn’t give us away.

The procession!

Meanwhile, we scampered (slowly) up the trail, taking blueberry breaks, pictures of everyone with their balloons, making bets on whether we’d have any views at the top. We got to the lookout and started setting up. Splitting up helium balloons (which don’t float as well at 6000ft because of the lower air density), recruiting the kids to blow up normal balloons, taping streamers across the ceiling, hanging up birthday signs, putting out the alpine blueberry tarts that Becka made, eating everyone else’s snacks because my snacks were mediocre at best:

A crumbled honey stinger waffle
A bag of muddy buddies grabbed at a gas station on the way to a SAR mission months ago
A salami wrapped around a cheese stick I didn’t know I had (aka old)
A quest bar I didn’t find until later
Some Peter Rabbit baby food (emergency sugar)
Espresso clif shot (emergency caffeine + sugar)
Pride and also Shame with a dash of Embarrassment (what I ate on the way up this time)
PB2 dust(???) in my pocket??? Basically pocket sand

My favorite on the balloons

Yeah, I hadn’t been out since like mid August. I wouldn’t have starved but I mean… I’d need a certain level of desperation. Anyway, we finished up the decor just as Eva topped out, a few minutes ahead of Stephen. We scrambled to get the last of the balloon inside, eventually shoving them in the door and closing it while we tried to get the strings loose (I can untie them!! Wait! I can’t untie them!! What happened to the strings?! DOES ANYONE HAVE A KNIFE?!” I dodged inside worried Stephen was coming around the corner and snuck the knife to Eva, who finally cut the balloons free and turned around innocently just as Stephen crested the final incline.

I am still like a child playing hide and seek, suddenly I have to use the bathroom but I know it’s just the anticipation. Don’t turn around. Don’t make eye contact. Stephen of course immediately starts heading in the wrong direction. No don’t look. We hear Eva trying to corral him towards the door. He finally turns around like okay fiiiine i’ll look inside first.

Cheryl helping with streamers

“SURPRISE!!” Those bastards going rogue, we had agreed to say happy birthday! At least, everyone except me seemed to be on the same page, and that page said surprise and I had just missed the update memo so I said more like “hhhhhhaaPRISE!” Stephen just goes “oh, hey guys??” and we can see the wheels turning. “Oh there are lots of you!” “Oh oh wow you even decorated!” and we’re all laughing and clapping and HE HAD NO IDEA. I figured he’d at least have a feeling he was getting into something, just not the full scope of what we had pulled together. But he was completely clueless.

We had blueberry tart, whipped cream, whiskey, champagne, sang happy birthday with Eva on ukelele, and caught up on just how Stephen had no idea. He said everything suddenly made sense. Why Eva was waking him up early. Why Eva was rushing him out of the house. Why Eva dodged the trail register. Why Eva was dragging him up the trail so fast. I can’t believe the numerous WHC stickers (and bright yellow car) didn’t give us away. I was worried they’d even catch up to us, because we were pretty behind schedule too!! But everything went smoothly.

Balloons make it easy to find your friends

We eventually took down the decor and headed back to the trailhead, stopping along the way for formal photos. Eva and Stephen do this thing where everyone brings up formalwear and changes into it at the best viewpoint, and we found a great outcropping on the way down that wouldn’t block the whole trail but also had a perfect backdrop. We froze in the cold and the wind in bare feet and semiformal dresses but it was totally worth it for the laughs and the pics. And we were still back to the trailhead before sunset, which is great, because it meant we could drive the shitty part of the road in daylight, instead of hugging the road next to the abyss for 2.5 anxiety inducing miles.

Great day, great company, and even the long drive didn’t bother me (it helps having company – thanks Emily!!). The days like this are just as good as the crazy climbs and runs. Happy birthday Stephen!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHEN! (don’t judge by this streamer THE REST WERE PERFECT)

P.S. I used a couple of Ken Poore’s photography. They’re easy to spot in this post. You can tell by the way that they are. By which I mean they’re brighter, sharper, and better composed than my poor phone’s attempts at making clouds look okay. You can see the rest of his (more epic) work here: https://www.kenpoorephotography.com/

Spider Meadows, Lyman Lakes, & Cloudy Pass

Posted on August 19, 2019 by evejakubowski

Let the beauty begin

I’m sorry for skipping the forest

Spider Gap and Lyman Lakes are another two trips that were on my OG hikes list from 2014, composed through hours of clicking every hike listed on the old WTA hike finder map with endearing notes like “This might be a scramble, not sure what that means” and “people mention ice axes, maybe wait until you know more about mountaineering.” I quickly got so wrapped up in chasing summits and technical skills that I never made time for a backpacking trip and never got in good enough running shape to do the full Spider Gap/Buck Creek Pass running loop (someday!) but two weeks ago when Amber and Kacie had some shit come up I figured it was time for a casual overnight. Everyone needed a break away from cell service and a trip that wouldn’t destroy the human body or test resilience. I was already leaning towards Spider Gap, and when Ken and Surafel posted pictures of Lyman Lakes and Cloudy Pass I basically lost my mind. That was it, that’s where we’re going. Damn the 3.5hr drive and the trailheads rats and the bugs.

Distance: ~22mi round trip (15 round trip to Spider Gap)
Elevation: 3600ft (like all in the last 2mi to Spider Gap)
Weather: 60’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 3:30 without traffic
Did I Trip: No full on wipe outs, but some nice stubbed toes and shredded shoe soles

Just before reaching Spider snowfield

We didn’t leave until like 6:30 or 7am on Saturday, knowing we probably wouldn’t get a parking spot at the trailhead and would not have first dibs on campsites. We parked a half mile from the trailhead when a car pulled up next to us. “Hi, there’s actually a spot at the trailhead if you want it…” we leapt back in the car and took the trailhead spot. YES! We packed our gear (I even brought camp shoes! Flip flops for camp! Luxuries!) and started walking. On the most incredibly flat, well maintained trail I have ever been on. Double wide, as Amber called it. It was mostly forest, a few small streams, some mini meadows. Campsites every 1.5 miles, if not closer. I think I have selective blindness, because we passed a hunter and I legitimately did not see the enormous rifle he was holding until Kacie mentioned hunting and suddenly it materialized in front of me. Omg. But if the hunter can’t find any bears, then I probably also won’t find any bears, so… sleep tight!

The remains of a glacier 😦

You break out into the meadows suddenly, from dappled sunlight in the forest to open meadows with wildflowers as far as you can see. And massive peaks in the background! I stood there in disbelief. This might be one of the prettiest places I’ve been in Washington, technical peaks included. We scouted out a camp right next to the river and dropped out overnight gear so we could head up to Spider Gap.

The hike from the meadows is maybe another mile of flat travel, and then you gain something like 2,500ft in two miles. When you look up it looks like there’s no route through the cliff bands above you, but the trail keeps going and the views get better and better. The “glacier” is no longer really a glacier, it died sometime in years past and is now just a snowfield. No poles or spikes necessary, though they did help. I left Amber and Kacie here because I wanted to have time to run to Cloudy Gap and back, and I think they were getting fed up with my pushing. And I didn’t think I’d even make it past Upper Lyman Lake at this point, it was already almost 3pm. Kacie finally laughed and told me to shut up and go, and I did. I told them I’d meet them back at camp by 9pm.

Upper Lyman Lake ohhh myyy goood

Game on, baby. I was at the gap in about 20 minutes. I met the happiest dog in the world, a golden retriever or a yellow dog reminiscent of that dog who has to ignore all the toys and go straight to his owner in a dog show and instead picks up every single one. Cresting the gap was incredible, my favorite part of any trip is gaining a ridge above treeline and suddenly having views in every direction and that’s exactly what it was. Phelps Creek valley behind me, Lyman Lakes ahead of me, red rock everywhere. Oh my god. I was wrong earlier. This is the most beautiful place I have ever been.

Upper Lyman Lake again eeeeee

I bootskiied (some real skiers passed me) down to the talus awkwardly staring at a group of three hikers thinking I saw my friend Ann. I finally shouted out to her, since they seemed to recognize me too. Nope, not Ann. Guess they were staring because I was staring. I cruised down red rocks to the shore of Upper Lyman Lake, which was every bit as turquoise as it looked. Uhh… okay, this part was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. The contrast of the colors is just ridiculous. People always say photos don’t do justice. I think they do, actually, and sometimes it’s better than real life. This wasn’t that. Lyman Lakes wasn’t real life. A pika shouted at me. Sorry, I know you were here first but look where you live!! Ahhh!!

Cruiser ahhhhh

The trail wraps evenly around the shores before leaving red rocky barren wasteland and entering bright green meadows with peak wildflowers all around. Crap, is this the most beautiful place I’ve ever been? I kept running. It was maybe 3:30, I swear time dilated itself to give me a window to do this run. The trail is amazingly well maintained and easy to follow. I got totally spooked by a guy who was not happy to see me and made me very aware of being a late 20’s chick running solo miles from anyone. Luckily, shortly after him I ran into the most amazing older couple on a 5 day backpacking trip who were so stoked to talk with me and tell me about the area. They had been to Cloudy Pass 8 times and said today was the best day they had ever seen up there. Great. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

siiiiiiigh

It was 1.5 miles from crossing the Lower Lyman Lake outlet to Cloudy Pass, and I ended up walking the uphill. At least, until I broke out above the trees again giggling like a kid because I was trotting through these absurd meadows with insane views and I’m sure endorphins were kicking in like crazy because I was talking to myself just thinking WOW I mean you see pictures but being here it’s in my BLOOD the SCENERY IS PUMPING THROUGH MY VEINS AHHH yeah, endorphins are great. I tagged the pass around 4:45 (my turnaround time was 5pm) and spent a while snapping pictures and staring back at Spider Gap from Cloudy Pass and the striking colors of rock on each side and those stupidly green lakes. And they won’t be green forever, the glacier will likely die and the lake will fade back to a more normal (still beautiful) blue. How the hell does this even exist? How did I get here, how am I so lucky? This topped Spider Meadows. We’re back to the theme. This was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. I don’t think it was the endorphins. I think it was legit. Okay, it was also probably endorphins. The rest of the loop was crying at me, begging me to keep going, just peek at Glacier peak around the corner Eve there’s so much more out here and you can run all of it Eeeeeeve just keep coming! But I had to get back to camp, and good company, and the ~1,000ft of gain back to the pass weren’t going to be fun.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH

ahhhhaaahaha

Running back down to the lake was a blast. I sidetracked to every single alpine toilet I could find (“If I was a toilet I’d be…. here!”), but most were nestled in private tree groves, not perched atop cliffs with views like the ones I like. More giggling through meadows. Wrapping around the lakes was a more mellow incline than I thought, so that was knocked out pretty quickly too, saying hi to larches and telling them to let me know when they turn yellow and maybe I’ll visit again.

The gain back to Spider Gap was… as expected. The last 100ft I cursed at the guy on top watching me suffer. Yeah you enjoy sitting there. With your warm puffy. Admiring the views eating your snack. Don’t give me that look, I know I’m taking a break. Just turn around, for like ten minutes. The boot ski down the other side was also unpleasant because slippery snow with jelly legs sucks and it was shaded and there was one big ass melt hole that had me mildly concerned (I knew I couldn’t see it from above) but I skipped over it and let’s just say I was very happy to hit the trail at the bottom, where I knew I was like 2 miles of runnable trail back home. Home being camp.

waaahhhh

Knocked out the switchbacks pretty quickly, finally realizing how steep they were. Got yelled at by some marmots. At the bottom as it flattened out I was back to giggling through meadows, and I popped back into camp two hours earlier than expected. I chugged electrolytes and put my feet in the river and brushed dried salt off my face, while Amber and Kacie did the camp work. I swear I’m useful sometimes. Just not this time. And having camp moms is amazing. And camp shoes are amazing. Did I mention I brought camp shoes? Never done that before and it was amazing.

Okay, get your shit together, back to the pass

We had nothing to really start a fire with, but we were determined. We wanted a fire. We had a lighter (except Kacie kept trying to light everything with her Chapstick instead of the lighter) and collected some small branches, but had no kindling. Except… wait. Kacie shredded a tampon, smeared the pieces with chapstick, and looked up at us grinning. This will totally work. And I’ve never started a fire in such a hilarious way.

An oasis on Mars

And it totally worked. Soon enough we had a cute little fire going, some licorice basil mint tea Kacie made, it was absolutely perfect. We got to watch Kacie drop her ramen everywhere trying to eat out of a ziplock bag with a fancy ramen spoon. We sat by the river swapping afternoon stories. A deer came to check out our campsite, some hummingbirds and maybe bats?? flew around, and I remember going to sleep wrapped in my favorite quilt hearing Kacie crack herself up after AGAIN trying to light a cigarette by flicking her chapstick instead of a lighter.

Looking down at Spider Meadows

We had a lazy morning with more tea, I think Kacie hopped in the river, I tried to study for my Python final (brought the whole textbook with me). We saw the world’s happiest dog again, just his tail wagging hilariously over the meadows until he started bounding to greet someone. We eventually got moving around 10:30am and after losing Kacie to the flowers and butterflies in every single meadow crossing we got back to a pleasant surprise at the trailhead. Mice, or rats, or some local riff raff had gotten into the car and eaten all of our snacks. Including my old earl grey teabag from my Saturday morning tea. Turns out we weren’t the only ones. Those bastards have car raids down to a science.

D’oh! A deer

We hit the inevitable highway 2 traffic almost immediately after Stevens Pass. I almost had them drop me at a SAR mission launching nearby, but decided against it given the distance from home and my weird selection of non climbing gear (the mission was soon postponed anyway). After maybe an hour of traffic, Kacie jumped out of the car. “What’s she doing?” “I dunno, smoke break maybe?” Kacie lit up a cigarette and went off to the side of the road. Maybe she’s just going for a walk? She has to pee? Wait. She started picking blackberries. Handfuls that she’d bring back to the car while we sat there waiting for the gridlock to move. The car behind us was cracking up. We started filling a nalgene with the most delicious blackberries ever. Several rounds of this before traffic finally sped up a bit and we made it to Sultan Bakery for dinner.

Kacie trying to cope with civilization

I got home in time to take my final early, which meant I didn’t have to do it Monday morning at work! And it went well, obviously because I learned via osmosis while carrying the textbook. Seriously though, I could not have asked for a better weekend. I got to have my cake and eat it too, camping with awesome people and knocking out a long trail run I’ve wanted to do for years in comfortable fashion. The entirety of the trip had that feeling where you just know you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be and there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing. The world might have a lot of sharp, harsh coldness to it, but there’s a hell of a lot of warmth and beauty out there too.

ahhhhhh

Royal Basin & Mt. Deception

Posted on July 22, 2019 by evejakubowski

Anita coming around a glacier boulder, Deception on the right

Wildlife by Royal Lake

Hooooly crap, this was a good one. You know sometimes everything just falls into place last minute and your mildly half-assed plans actually work out? That’s what this was. Like 24 hours in advance Anita mentioned she was going to Royal Basin, which I had always wanted to do as a trail run. And some dude had done Mt. Deception earlier that week, so I knew it was in decent shape. And that would be a cool day trip too. Maybe I could run up early in the morning, meet her, and climb Deception? She was stoked when I suggested it, and I decided I’d head up late Sunday night after Marmot Pass/Buckhorn and camp with them so we could get an early start. “What are you wearing?” she asked. “Some yuppie lululemon outfit” I responded. My climbing pants have a 6″ hole in the butt [insert asshole joke]. “No, I mean for boots!” Oh, duh. A real gear question.

Distance: 20mi ish
Elevation: 5500ft (also ish, highest point 7,788ft)
Weather: 50’s and partly cloudy
Commute from Seattle: 2:30 without traffic or ferry delays (ha!)
Did I Trip: No, I’ve gotten very good at walking

Flat beautiful trail to Royal Basin

Mt. Deception is the second highest point in the Olympics, which I didn’t know until we were done climbing it. It is one of the largest piles of chossy shit I have ever had the pleasure of touching, and it was mostly covered in snow when we did it. I have strong feelings about this. I would not have enjoyed it if it hadn’t been snow covered. But snow meant some steep snow, some 3rd class scrambling, and a more mountaineery-feeling experience than had we struggled up a one-step-up-slide-half-step-back-god-damn-scree climb.

Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I had driven from the Marmot Pass trailhead to the Royal Basin trailhead and was rallying to knock out another 8 miles and meet Anita and Zee at their campsite. I assumed the trail would be flat soft dirt, easy cruising. I had also assumed that the Marmot Pass trail was one mile down the road from the Royal Basin trail.

Royal Lake with mist in the morning

I was wrong on both counts. There is a Marmot Pass trail close to the Royal Basin trail, but it is not the trail I had taken to get to Marmot Pass. And as for the Royal Basin Trail once I did get there, well… the first two miles were nice soft flat easy cruising, and particularly beautiful in the dappled afternoon sunlight. But after that it’s rocky, uphill, sometimes overgrown, there are mosquitos, devil’s club, spiderwebs to fight through (you know how I feel about that – spiders fine, webs nooooo), and a surprising amount of elevation gain, though usually gradual. And carrying an overnight pack still isn’t pleasant, especially when you did a 13mi hike right before it, and I was not too enthused every time I rounded a corner only to see more uphill, or opened up the map only to see I was somehow only 500ft closer than the last time I checked. Views finally started to open up and I got glimpses of Deception. Shit, I’m going up that? It’s sooooo far.

This used to be a lake! Heading to the Upper Basin

But I was making good time, and soon enough I heard two hikers. And one voice sounded familiar. Same accent, same tone, a guy dragging behind her… that’s gotta be Anita. I jogged up to Zee and said hi, just as Anita turned around and saw me. And we had a nice running hugging reunion, we hadn’t seen each other in months and holy shit I was so happy to have company for the last mile of the hike so it wasn’t me vs. my mind for another half an hour. And it guaranteed I would find their campsite and not be walking up to random tents in the dark “are YOU Anita?” “are YOUUUU Anita?” “Is ANITA in there?” and blinding everyone with headlamps while I stumbled around exhausted about to give up (which may have happened before).

Upper Royal Basin

We found a great campsite just northeast of the lake. I crashed in my bivvy almost immediately (after panicking at two things: the recently updated forecast, which showed overnight showers – not great for a non-waterproof bivvy and down sleeping bag and the bear poop like 15ft away and I was between the poop and Anita’s tent, aka I’d be the first bear burrito that evening should the bears decide we smelled delicious). Eventually it didn’t matter because I was unconscious by like 8:30pm and if it did rain, I didn’t even notice.

We got moving around 8am. There is the alpine start (the offensively wee hours of the morn), the Anita start (mid hours of the morn but as late as possible), and the bonfire start (>11am). So 8 wasn’t ideal knowing we’d be slow, but I figured if we moved steadily we’d be fine. And it was partially on me and the fact it took me 20 freaking minutes to find the stupid pit toilets. Zee turned around on the way to the upper basin, and Anita and I continued. The basin is spectacular, almost like Enchantments lite. I can see why the permits are so competitive. That’s another thing, I got SO lucky. Anita had been fighting for permits for years, and here I am mooching off her hard work. And the main attraction over the basin is Deception towering over some small glacier tarns below a dying glacier. At the base of the slopes, we decided to take a rising traverse rather than risk the rockfall on the more direct route, so we started kicking steps uphill. And so it would be for the next few hours.

Anita on the way up

There were a few scree sections (“ugh, should I remove my crampons?” “Nope, back on snow in 50ft!”) a few loose third class scramble sections (“can i take my crampons off?” “No, back on snow in 20 ft!”) some steep snow (PERFECT conditions for bucket steps and a nicely plunged ice axe) some moats (there’s no way for them to not be awkward, would it help if we took off our crampons?) and a little more kitty litter scrambling (“can I take off my-” “no”) and we finally topped out at the col, marked with a stick to help differentiate from the myriad of other similar cols.

Here’s where the route was longer than expected. We dropped down some talus (loose, because this mountain is a crumbling POS, we’ve been over this) onto another dying glacier and traversed to the back ridge, where “can I take off my crampons” was finally answered with a resounding “YES!” and we rejoiced in the feeling of boot sole on rock instead of scraping metal. We traversed to a third ridge, which was a perfectly straight talus walk on top of the world followed by a short step of near vertical snow and a final talus walk (i’m so done with talus by this point) to the summit, where we sang and hollered and waved at Zee and marveled at the views. It truly was incredible. Long day of uphill, but high reward with the gorgeous scenery up there.

Pieces of steep snow

But we had to descend all of the shit we had come up. Getting back off the upper talus section was easy. Crossing the glacier on the north side was easy. Getting back up to the stick-marked col was easy. Then we had the only tricky part to contend with: downclimbing a few sections of pretty steep snow. Maybe 50 degrees. Face in, kick steps downclimbing. I kicked enormous steps for Anita, and luckily some cloud cover meant the snow wasn’t total slush. We actually made surprisingly good time, and these are the parts of climbs that are so singular, so focused, that everything else goes away. I had lingering stress from my old job and nerves around starting a new one, nerves around fitness after working weekends for so long, none of that matters when you’re on terrain like this.

Some 3rd class scramble

We even skirted most of the 3rd class scramble, with one awkward 4th class step either on a thin downward sloping slab or to hop across a moat back onto snow (pick your poison, I do think Anita’s route across the moat was better but I thought it looked sketchy from up high). From there, we cruised plunge stepping down moderate snow the entire way back to the basin after a short scree field! It was amazing! We found yaktrax prints at the bottom, I said I hope that’s Zee. Despite turning around earlier, it turned out he had rethought (almost went with “rethunk”) his decision, and gave it another shot. And I’m glad he did, the upper basin was phenomenal. We soon found goat hoof prints perfectly inside of the yak trax. They continued for maybe a mile, until we eventually found Zee, hiding in a patch of bushes from the goat that had been stalking him for literal hours. He did get an incredible picture when the goat got too close for comfort.

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Mr. Billy Goat (credit Zee!)

Coming across the north face

We made it back to camp around 4. Zee went to get water (THANK YOU! I was so tired I did not want to do camp chores) while Anita and I changed our shoes and laid around a groaned. When Zee hadn’t returned for 20 minutes, we started wondering what was up. Should we be worried? Is he taking a nap? Maybe we should go look. And then we saw Mr. Billy Goat walk across the trail again, slowly, starting at us. “Zee, the goat is back!” Anita shouted. And then we hear Zee’s deep grumbly voice. “…I know.” We burst out laughing. He couldn’t get away. It’s okay, Mr. Goat will be extradited to the Cascades any day now if he hasn’t been helo-dropped there already.

Anita coming along the final ridge

I hung out until 5, and then packed up my bags to start the slog back to the car. Anita gave me a brownie for the way out (THANK YOU! For feeding me! Everyone fed me this weekend!) and I started on my way, where I was immediately blocked by Mr. Goat. God. Dammit. I tossed a rock and whined. I just wanna go hooooome mr goat pleeeease let me pass! He eventually ambled over to the side of the trail and I darted past. Anita made a bet that I’d be back at the car by 7:30. I thought 8. But she had given me a goal, and I made it back at exactly 7:30. Even took a selfie to prove it.

One last push to the top! Mystery in the background

Huuuuuge thanks to Anita and Zee for adding me to their Olympics permit at the last minute, and to Ranger Scott for all of the phone calls trying to get my name on there (and my payment). Seriously amazing trip, and another data point that the Olympics are far more beautiful than I ever give them credit for. And I was the perfect amount of wrecked when I woke up back in Seattle on Tuesday. Just in time for a shit ton of programming homework that I had procrastinated on. Woohoo!

P.S. This would be a sweet trail run (maybe minus the chossy shit, like we discussed above. Wait for snow).

Olympus way in the distance, the highest point in the Olympics

Marmot Pass & Buckhorn Mountain

Posted on July 8, 2019 by evejakubowski

Wildflowers out in full force

Sedum!

Okay okay I know this is wildly overdue and I’m mostly posting it because I love the pictures but also because it’s one of the biggest bang-for-your-buck hikes out here if you’re okay with the mileage. I took a week of funemployment between jobs to try and shake the burnout, and this was the start of it. There was only one downside. It’s been weeks and I’m still not sure this trip was worth the traffic jam trying to escape Seattle. 99 south? Narrowed to one lane. 99 north? One lane. Oh, and an accident. That means 45th and 50th were both at a standstill, because those feed onto 99. I-5 south? Accidents, plural. I-5 North? I don’t know, because I never made it that far. After nearly an hour trying to get more than 10 blocks from my apartment, I gave up and drove through Ballard, then through downtown, then to I-5 south because getting to the ferry was supposedly an hour longer. Good lord. It’s a bummer I’ll never be rich enough to get helo-extracted from my own neighborhood and plopped in the mountains.

Distance: ~13 miles
Elevation: ~4,000ft (6,988ft highest point)
Weather: 60’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2:30 regardless of driving down and around or ferry
Did I Trip: No but Amber tripped enough for all of us

Brook by the last campsite

I made it to the trailhead after maybe a 4hr drive. I had been planning on doing Marmot Pass/Buckhorn mountain, and Amber and Andy would meet me later to trailhead camp. I just wanted to be not in the city, so I left early and read my book in my sleeping bag waiting for them. Andy was dogsitting Rudy, an adorable Australian Shepherd I figured would love a good hike. I don’t want to commit to a pet just yet, but I do like other people’s pets, and Rudy was a bad ass. And I love taking pictures of people’s cute dogs being bad asses.

Amber got a head start around 5am, Andy and I started around 6 (not like I gained that much extra sleep, though I do remember watching Amber’s calves walk off into the distance). The first few miles are pleasant forest, starting with wild rhodondrons and thinning out as you gain elevation on a mild incline (great for running). Rudy was perfect at staying on trail and walking right in front of us the whole time, with no interest in whatever was off trail in the woods. Which was a relief, you never know if they’re going to be tugging trying to dart off into the brush the whole time. But Rudy was content to trot alongside us the whole time like he was checking in on Andy to make sure his human was okay, and carrying the occasional small stick like a proud trophy hunter.

Marmot Pass

Finally you start getting breaks along alpine meadows, with wildflowers scattered across the hillside. And succulents!! I had just planted several species of sedum in my garden, and here they were in the wild! Turns out they’re very common on lower elevation rocks and cliffs in the Olympics. I had no idea, I always considered the Olympics mossy and jungley and there I was staring at older, thriving versions of what I was (and still am) desperately trying to keep alive in my garden. The last area with running water is a campsite around 5 miles up the trail, where we all refilled and gave Rudy (secretly a mountain dog, given how happy he seemed the entire time) a good drink before continuing on.

Rudy on the way up to Buckhorn

At Marmot Pass, the views opened up for real. It’s amazing and I want to run every single loop around that valley. The trails are nicely graded and just cruise along open rolling ridges, it looked incredible. We took a quick break for more water and Amber fed me her snacks because I brought next to nothing. I had stuff, just not appetizing stuff like peppered salami and cheddar cheese. Andy, Rudy and I went right at the pass and continued up some annoyingly steep scree (there’s a boot path for most of it but it doesn’t help with the kitty litter situation) to a broad, open ridge that we followed to Buckhorn. At first it looks like the east side (think Vantage or Ancient Lakes) and then it turns to reddish rock and starts to look like Mars. Someone had outlined a trail for the last section, probably to prevent people from taking random paths and eroding the hillside. The summit looks intimidating, but is almost entirely a hike with a single third class ish move where you might have to use your hands. We figured we’d play it by ear with Rudy and just bail if he wasn’t happy, but he basically led the way the entire time, skipping up the lone scramble move as if it didn’t exist.

Nicely lined trail below the summit

At the summit I hopped onto the summit boulder while Andy poured some water for Rudy and pampered him with treats while he lay in the shade. That dog freaking LOVES Andy. If Andy was more than 10 feet away and Rudy couldn’t follow he’d whine with his huge (adorable) puppy eyes and nothing could distract him. We didn’t want to leave Amber waiting for too long, so we didn’t spend long at the summit. Rudy had no trouble going right back down and had an easier time on the kitty litter than we did (we joke that dogs have four wheel drive given their four legs while us humans have to stumble around on two).

It was Father’s Day, and we ran into an older man cruising up the scree. We stopped to chat and he said his son and grandson were carrying his things, and we ran into them maybe 10 minutes later. Life goals, guys. Three generations of outdoors on one trail, and apparently the grandfather was a pretty legit climber in his prime. We could see Amber back at the pass, and whooped to let her know we were almost back. I forgot how far sound carries out there, she had been able to hear our entire conversation for almost the whole way. I don’t think we said anything embarrassing enough that the entire valley heard.

View back along the ridge from the summit

Back at the pass, Rudy jumped into some shade while we poured him some water and had our own snacks (or ate Amber’s superior snacks in my case because I am a child). We chatted with some trail runners (jealous) and some backpackers (jealous) and I nagged everyone to get started back to the car, because I had to get back early enough to not hate myself hiking up to Royal Basin that night to meet a new round of friends for a climb. Rudy led the way down yet again (endless source of energy) though his paws were a bit sore from the rocky sections and he was definitely happier on the soft dirt trail. They’re like people, they have to build callouses and get into shape too. We definitely felt bad, but that tail was still wagging. I get it. I’ll go have the best day of my life and my body will be wrecked for the next day or two. I wonder if dogs get endorphin rushes like people too.

Sweet campsite

I high tailed it to the Royal Basin trailhead as soon as I was back at my car. I had wildly miscalculated the distance between starting points, thinking the usual marmot pass trail was just down the road from the royal basin trail. True, sort of – there is a trail to marmot pass from that same road, but it was not the trail to marmot pass that we had hiked. Ooooops. But I’ll save that story for the next post! For now, huge thanks to Amber and Andy (and Rudy) for kicking my week of funemployment off to a great start!

A boy and his dog

Monte Cristo via the North Col

Posted on June 14, 2019 by evejakubowski

Glacier Basin. Dayyyyum.

Foggy Peak, Mystery Ridge, Wilmon's Peak Monte Cristo, WA

Monte Cristo in 1960

“I’m so fucking sweaty.” “A fat fuck and a recent appendectomy patient go to climb a 7,000ft peak, what did you expect?” “It’s okay, you can say two fat fucks.” I laughed. Calvin and I were on our first trip of the year. I was coming off of a brutal few months of being very sedentary, and Calvin was what, three weeks post appendectomy? And a winter of no climbs? Yeah. So we figured we’d do Monte Cristo, and we’d roll up at 9pm and camp and take it easy in the morning. I mean, how hard could it be? 20 years ago it was basically a walk up.

Distance:16mi round trip? Ish?
Elevation Gain: 5000ft, 7000ft highest point
Weather: 50’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2hrs with no traffic
Did I Trip: No but I hit a tree on the bike

View from Monte Cristo town center

Well, as it turns out there are a few things I’ve taken for granted getting out so often over the past few years. Like always knowing snow levels. And snow conditions. And overnight freezing levels. And recent weather. A strong Facebook presence and weekly beta spray. And in my dark months I avoided Facebook and I hoped for rain every weekend and I did not care to know when we had powder days.

Dumas St 2019

Calvin and I met at the trailhead around 4:30, and took off on bikes. I was borrowing Tricia’s bike, which was a small frame. I am not a small frame. I am a solid medium, which I figured out within 10 minutes of being hunched over on a bike with a 45lb pack on my back. Also, biking with a pack for the first time is like skiing with a pack for the first time. Inertia is different and turning is harder and you don’t just sit there (or stand in the case of skiing), you actually have to use muscles and do stuff. I learned that when I hit a tree immediately on the first turn.

The road is easy at first. You pass the (new since I was last there) turnoff for Gothic Basin, and continue to where the old turnoff was about a mile in, which involves some non-road singletrack, where the aforementioned microcrash happened. At that point you go straight for another ~100ft and then cross the river, popping out right where the bridge on the old road is. From there, you have maybe a quarter mile along river rocks, and then it’s clear road from there. Oh, the other shitty part? Biking uphill with a massive pack as a fat fuck is fucking HARD. I walked the bike. I WALKED THE BIKE. ON A GRAVEL ROAD. And hung my head in shame. And stretched out my cramped, screaming back muscles. Jesus. I’m too young to be getting old.

Dumas St, 1916. It’s now a trail with no views.

We rolled up to Monte Cristo around 6. I had lost Calvin, who toasted me on the ride in, but with some shouting we reconvened and parked the bikes. “What’s the combo of the lock?” Oh shit. Owen told me once. “Uhhh… 5730. If it’s not that then… then I don’t know. I’m not sure why I think it’s even that.” Well, it was right (now you all know) and we hitched the bikes to the rack. I marveled at the views from the meadow and how the hell this area used to be a bustling mining town. Here’s a quick link to some history on the mining boom, decline, tourism, and eventual abandonment of the town. The prominent old sites are still labeled (Royal Hotel, Dumas Street, homesteads) and it’s just wild seeing how much the river and forest have taken back. Flat plots of land have been eroded by streams, trees have regrown to block views, buildings have fallen with only pieces of foundations left. I grabbed a pamphlet from the sign in the meadows for bedtime reading at camp and we headed up the trail to Glacier Basin.

Already beautiful and not even the actual basin

The trail starts in two places, either from the campsites up the road before the turnoff to Monte Cristo, or from just beyond the bike racks where you immediately cross the river after the clearing in town (down Dumas street). The trail is nice and only a mild incline for maybe a half mile, and then it turns into Boston Basin Lite. High steps, slick rock, dust in the air, veggie belays, they even put a hand line (rope) in place for one section. We climbed higher and higher and finally turned the corner into the basin, and WOW. This place is spectacular. I couldn’t believe Surafel didn’t want to spend the night. It’s breathtaking and you don’t need any technical gear to get there. I marveled at the area around me as we tried to not kill moss and dodged newly grown slide alder. Calvin had been here last in 2001, when it was just a meadow of wildflowers, and it’s incredible hearing how it has changed.

Time to gain some vert

We set up camp dead in the center and buried our food under some rocks.I’m scared of bears. I read the Monte Cristo pamphlet, and it’s pretty incredible what that town used to be and how quickly the forest has reclaimed it. I barely slept (bc bears, jeez). It barely gets dark this time of year, especially when you’e surrounded by snow. We basically didn’t need headlamps at any point. We woke up at 6am, had a casual breakfast, and got started up at 7:30.

The first section was a talus hop followed by mellow snow with perfect cramponing conditions. We were doing the guide pace, which is a nice way of saying the fat fucks were plugging along. Two Facebook friends I had never met in person caught up to us (Fletcher and Jake) with two buddies, and broke trail the rest of the way. On one hand, sick, there’s like a staircase by the time I get there. On the other hand, I have become a fat fuck and I’m not here to be fucking pampered you fucking assholes don’t you dare break trail for my slow ass. Well, it didn’t matter, because the nice steps quickly turned into steep runnels, and we found ourselves perched precariously above a moat on a 50ish degree ice slope.

Finally back on normal snow

Calvin was cruising up and I hesitated. Soft moat, basically ice, no ice gear, no real ice axe…. yeaah, I’m not going that way. And I’d strongly prefer to not downclimb this. I was having flashbacks to downclimbing the Sherpa Glacier in 2017, except this was even more firm. Can we go up and around? Calvin downclimbed (“the downclimbing was fine, i was more concerned by the soft step” he says. i don’t think my butthole unpuckered the entire time he was downclimbing) and started up and around the runnels, which worked out very well. Still spicier than I’d have liked given the gear we had, but nothing unmanageable, and soon enough we were back on crampon friendly slopes.

Traverse to the start of the rock pitch

We topped out soon after, took a snack break, and made the quick traverse to the start of the rock pitch. We waited for Fletcher’s group, which unfortunately delayed us long enough that Calvin’s coffee kicked in and forced him to take a shit right there on the rock step 2 ft below the last climber in Fletcher’s group. Yes, he brought a blue bag. Yes, I was nearly in tears laughing. Yes, we won’t ever let him live it down. Between that and the moaning and groaning of climbers trying to do a wet 5.6 in mountaineering boots, I was right at home.

“The Ramp”

That pitch is wicked uncomfortable in slick boots, and it was covered in snow too so soon enough your hands are numb and you can’t feel where you’re stepping because you’re in boots so you just muscle up it and hope for the best. There were a bunch of old slings and it really is just a few moves. Above that, the rock ramp was covered in sloppy snow, which we stayed roped up for. I felt pretty fine on the snow. By the time I got there, everything was kicked so firm nothing was collapsing. Calvin had the opposite experience, f bombs flying in every direction. In a flash of brilliance, we had left our ice axes at the base of the rock pitch thinking the rest was a scramble. Funny joke. It’s snow. We topped out at the summit, sent some “hey gonna be late getting back” messages, had a beer, and ran into Colin, another Facebook acquaintance! Calvin was anxious about getting down the sloppy snow and I was anxious about getting down the runnels, so we got off of there pretty quickly.

Columbia looking like a monster (walk up from the other side)

We did the alpine butt scoot back to the rock pitch (“step glissade” is my friend Cheryl’s nice name for it) and rapped back to the snow. Cruised right back to the notch, and boom! It was wayyyy softer than on the way up! Easy plunge stepping for the first section, face in kick steps for the next couple hundred feet. It was a long ass way. I was just getting into the rhythm when I hear “SNOW!” and I hit the deck. Which means leaning like 20 degrees forward given how steep it was. “EVE, LOOK UP & GET RIGHT!” I look up and I’m in the perfect line of fire. I kicked ~10 steps right, slammed into self arrest, kicked huge buckets, and braced. The biggest pieces flew by to my left. Great, not getting back in those tracks. I kicked my own steps until they connected with Calvin’s, and we were able to cut to skiier’s right and plunge step the rest of the way down. I had a hockey game to get to. Calvin glissaded as I jogged next to him. We got back to camp where I changed back into running shoes and flopped on the ground while Calvin packed up his yard sale and I tried not to nag.

Columbia Glacier and Blanca Lake nestled between Kyes and Columbia

Ready to head down, Sloan giving us the side eye

We made good time back to Monte Cristo, where the bikes hadn’t been stolen! Woohoo! And I still remembered the lock combo, which Calvin had responsibly written down in case we didn’t get another miracle memory. I had been hoping we’d have time to explore the town on the way down, but again, that freaking hockey game. Priorities, guys. Calvin had dropped his helmet and ice axe somewhere on the trail, but we weren’t going back up (you know… hockey).* We hopped on bikes and enjoyed the loooong mostly downhill ride back to the river crossing. From there we had to carry the bikes up the single track trail, I passed a couple hiking with their cat, and then we faced the mild uphill ride back to the trailhead (ugh, my back). The game was starting and I wasn’t even back in cell service yet. Gah!

Yay, downclimbing! said no one ever

We left notes on everyone’s cars about the lost gear and who to call if they had found it and hauled ass back to Granite Falls, where we went to a local bar and caught the last 12 minutes of the game. I demolished a steak slathered in blue cheese They had steaks, the had blue cheese for salads, and I asked if they would be so kind and combine the two, and they did. It was unbelievable, and the Bruins won (but then lost in game 7, and I’m still sick about it and I don’t want to talk about it and don’t say oh there’s always next year oh Boston has enough championships oh it was a great series I WANTED TO WIN brb crying) and I got to drive home to a comfy bed and a great night of bear-free sleep and the satisfaction of a great first trip back out. It may not have gone exactly as planned, but we ended up using actual skills and making sure basic techniques, decision making, and mental game were right back on point. Turned into more of an improvisation climb than a basic snow climb, but that’s exactly what I like about climbing. Thanks to Calvin for getting my ass out of the house, hopefully there will be many more!

Oh, and when I got home, I joked with Surafel and Brad about how scared I was of bears. And what did Surafel tell me? He had gone up to the basin earlier Saturday (we passed him on the way in!) and THERE WAS A BEAR IN THE BASIN. I mean of course there was, I just like it better when I don’t see them and can pretend they do not exist. Surafel didn’t tell me when we passed each other. He knew I wouldn’t sleep. Stupid wildlife.

Looking down on Glacier Basin from the top!

*A woman posted on FB a few days later that she found some gear on the way down from Glacier Basin… and it’s Calvin’s! Great community 🙂

P.S. sorry i forgot how to take non-diagonal photos

The Argument for Half Assing It

Posted on June 8, 2019 by evejakubowski

Sage Hills, the best wildflowers I think I’ve ever seen

The view skiing from Castle

Three months ago, I stumbled upon a Reddit headline that just said “half-assed is better than no ass at all.” Funny, because about two weeks prior I had come to the same conclusion. My work life balance was in the toilet, I was unhappy with my team, my team’s direction, my daily duties, and mostly the fact I had to be available to monitor shit on weekends. I was not important enough to the company to be full time and yet I was important enough to manage this test day in day out. And yes, it’s only ~two hours of work on Saturday, but an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening means any overnight climbing trip is shot. I have always been very good about drawing lines between work and personal life, and somehow everything I had always worked to fight against was suddenly happening and I was just sitting there and taking it.

Sage Hills. It’s like quenching thirst.

And then after a day doing the Table Mountain Circumnav, I decided that you know what, a half day trip was better than nothing. Maybe I didn’t get my winter Rainier ascent, Chiwaukums traverse, Baker ski. Maybe I wouldn’t be fit enough to leave town to do a last minute ultramarathon for my birthday like last year. Maybe I wouldn’t get to trailhead camp Friday nights and do long day trips from 3am to 10pm and stay in lookouts and ski in the middle of nowhere two days in a row but that doesn’t mean I should spend the entire weekend in town ignoring everything I love to do. And so, the short trips started.

Here’s where I got lucky. I actually had a few friends in similar situations. They could only get out one day a weekend. Or they wanted to just go to the ski resort. Or they were new to backcountry skiing and just wanted a couple hours playing around on their new setups. The Rainier National Park gates helped me out too, they don’t open until 9 so if I found someone to go to Paradise or the Tatoosh then suddenly we didn’t have to leave until 7am anyway because it was pointless to leave earlier. And I started a streak of half day trips.

Near the top of Sauk Mtn with Sauk Lake below

Let’s be straight, it’s not better yet. I’m nowhere near the fitness level I was last year. I was doing job applications from 5am-7am instead of the gym, I had late nights at the office, I had nights where I was too drained by 7pm to want to do anything beyond shower and sleep by the time I get home. My coworkers are all impressed when I run commute to the office and I sit there bitterly thinking this isn’t how I want it to be, this is a sorry excuse for the reason I live in Seattle, everyone has forgotten who I am and what I do and why I get out of bed in the morning (hint: it’s not my job) because I’ve turned into a work slave instead of a free willed human being. Yeah, a lot of this is self inflicted because I take pride in being good at my job and I don’t want to tell everyone to go fuck themselves and do my thing on weekends regardless. And it’s a downward spiral. The less you climb, the worse shape you’re in, the less you can do, the harder everything is, the less you want to do, and getting the ramp-up started from square one is brutally humbling.

But as it turns out, there are actually some pretty decent half day trips out there.

Brad ready to ski at Hurricane Ridge

1) Hurricane Ridge. Wow, this place is beautiful, and you drive right up to it and can walk as far (or not far) as you wish. And you get the ferry experience. It’s like the Paradise/Artist Point of the Olympics. They also have an adorable mini ski resort. This was a series of unfortunate events for Amber, who froze a binding that Brad expertly repaired with a random sling I had, wiped out many times, and booted all the way back to the car only to break a boot buckle while taking her boots off in the parking lot. Brutal. If I wrote a full post about this, it’d be called the Misadventures of Amber Yun.

Calvin gets some air below Castle

2) Castle Peak (ish). This is a great ski!! Short approach mostly along a road, but the Castle-Pinnacle Saddle is just a really fun, mellow ski run. Like maybe 3 miles round trip. Perfect for anyone new to backcountry skiing. I did this two days straight because it was fluffy and amazing and the gate doesn’t open until 9 so hypothetically if you have to work from 6-7am it’s not a problem. And you can do multiple laps without too much effort, especially if your friends wipe out multiple times on the way down and you have time to sneak another one in while they remember how to ski. I might not have earned that blue cheese steak at Copper Creek Inn with just this, but you bet your ass I’m still gonna eat it.

Big Greider Lake

3) Greider Lakes. 8 miles, runnable for the first few miles, power hike the rest (or run if your’e more ambitious than me). The larger of the lakes is beautiful. Even Spada lakes (the reservoir for a lot of Snohomish county) is a beautiful shade of green with the snowy backdrop of Vesper looming above. Lots of great campsites (with toilets!) for an easy overnight. You do have to drive through a bunch of shooting ranges, which still makes me feel weird. The road was just long enough that I started to doubt whether I had the right directions.

Very beginning of the Sauk Mtn trail

4) Sauk Mtn. 4 miles round trip for some fantastic views and steep switchbacks. It’s not quite melted out yet, most parties turned around at a short but steep snow traverse. I brought an ice axe and crampons because I was originally going to do Huckleberry Mountain, but bailed because I was lazy and there were too many spiderwebs. I thought I’d look like a total tool with mountaineering gear, but it actually came in handy. I made it to one of the ridgeline bumps, don’t think it was the old lookout site though.

Amber basically being a disney princess

5) Sage Hills. Holy crap. This is like a whole ass with the effort of a half ass, assuming you’re okay with a 3hr drive for 3-9 miles of hiking depending on how far you want to go (the wildflowers start immediately). Best wildflowers I have seen maybe in my life. And it’s basically in someone’s back yard. It’s a system of multi-recreation trails outside of Wenatchee, I literally parked next to someone’s driveway and had my mind blown for the next two hours of vibrant yellows and purples. This might get its own post eventually because the flowers are INSANE and it was like sitting in a disney movie. It’s like larch season. Chugging cold water when you’re hot and thirsty. Blankets and tea after a day of skiing. Oversaturated colors after a greyscale Seattle winter. You get it.

Surafel on the ridge to Hannegan

6) Hannegan Pass/Peak (okay fine this might get its own post when I make time). We had both already done Ruth, so we decided to go for Hannegan, and also that way I didn’t have to pass all of the skiiers and cry with jealousy (spoiler alert, we ran into them anyway. waahhh). ~8-10 miles, still lots of snow when we were there and I definitely should have brought skis.

And eventually I realized that half day trips are still pretty jaw-dropping. Especially on a sunny day, any hike is better than sitting in the city. Especially when you have people to join. Especially when you feel like you’re going crazy and don’t know what to think about anything anymore. I used to joke that the overnight trips kept me sane, and at this point I think there’s actually some truth to that. Something needs to remind me that I’m more than just my job, and the Cascades have provided that, so long as I can get to them.

So these might not have been the full ass trips I wanted, but they kept the hunger and excitement alive, and gave me something to still look forward to every weekend. I’ve also planted a garden (well, my visiting family did most of the work but I’ve been watering it), rediscovered my passion for cooking, read more books in the past 4 months than in the prior year, went kayaking on Lake Union, visited San Francisco, and the cilantro I planted is thigh high and I can’t eat it fast enough. And the Bruins are playing in the Stanley Cup Finals, which actually takes priority over almost everything else. Brooke, Forrest, Amber and I joked that everyone was domesticating. Forrest insisted it wasn’t domesticating, it’s more like renaissancing. This has been my late 20’s Renaissance. God forbid I should have a balance between mountains and housekeeping.

This weekend, I’m about to head out on my first mini overnight in months. The only other two I’ve had were a 12hr camp on Granite (which was technically overnight albeit straightforward) and that fateful ski trip where I ate a piece of candy that I found on the ground and it didn’t go so well (and the work issue over those days solidified the fact that yes, someone did have to monitor what we were doing, and my small act of rebellion was in vain). Wish me luck, guys, feels like I need to relearn how to camp and climb. At least I remember how to belay. I think.

One more from Sauk Mtn

Have Tent, Will Travel

Trail running, mountaineering, and the occasional wipeout