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

Granite Mountain Bivvy & Ski

Posted on April 7, 2019 by evejakubowski

Kaleetan & Chair Peaks in the background

The lookout with Rainier

Don’t get excited, I know everyone loves a good ah-shit-I-was-stranded-overnight story but this was an intentional bivvy. I was having a hell of a day. Around 6pm JT texted out of the blue. “Wanna go sleep on granite?” I mean… yes? But I’m anxious. Should I stay here in case Google answers my emails and there is a real issue, I’m still stuck getting access to this freaking API which I wanted to have by Monday, I still haven’t finished my taxes, I need to clean, my tabs are about to expire, oh god the panic set in and then was exacerbated by all of the big picture concerns that get dredged up when I’m in a bad place. My two best friends moved this morning, my other best friend is still dead, I have a mortgage to pay and what if I never save enough money to do anything ever again besides fix my house, what if I take 6 hours to get to the top of Granite and I forgot how to ski? Kacie called me to straighten out my manic state and I left the conversation 30 minutes later confident that Granite was the right choice. I’m in. I’m packed. Are you ready?? I’m ready. Let me know when you’re an hour away. Come on come on come on!

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Not so bad sidehilling (PC: JT)

I ranted for the entire 60 minute drive (in my head, alone in my car, you’re welcome). I was hoping anger and frustration would carry me up the mountain, but by the time I got to the trailhead I was just exhausted. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I was just going to be head down, one foot in front of the other until my ass was on top of that ridge looking up at the stars in my cozy bivvy and then I’d take a deep breath of air and remember that the majority of things that stress me out don’t matter and it’s just a matter of perspective. Perspective that has been difficult to get the past few months, whether it be because of work or weather or conditions.

Distance: 9.5mi round trip (incl. West Granite)
Elevation: ~4600ft net gain (5,600ft highest point)
Weather: 20’s and clear overnight, 50’s and clear during the day
Commute from Seattle: 60min
Did I Trip: Basic trip on flat ground followed by a ski wipeout also on flat ground an hour later. Don’t get complacent folks

The ridge in the dark

We started up the trail, which was snow free for probably two entire miles. From there it turned into some uncomfortable sidehilling, fighting with skis and boots caught in trees trying to balance on said uncomfortable side hilling (you’re like 2′ wider than you usually are when the boots are sticking off of your skis too), and oh yeah we were wearing running shoes. It’s a delicate balance, trying to rip skis through branches while not slipping or committing to the point where you stumble.

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Bedtime! (PC: JT)

Once we got above treeline, JT broke trail and took off. Which was a relief, because screw skis snagging on trees, screw my soppy wet feet, screw the cold, the highway is stupid, it looks like it’s the same distance away all the time so we’re making no progress, it better not rain, and why is it always longer to reach this ridge than I think it is. This brought us back to our regularly scheduled evening programming, where JT is mostly a headlight dancing in front of me and I moan in my head until we get there because my bedtime is at 9 and for some reason I’m dragging my ass up a mountain at 11pm instead of sleeping. And I wasn’t sure if I still had feet. They were there somewhere, numb stumps becoming one with the ice in the darkness. At one point I figured JT had disappeared over a knoll, until I heard his voice 30ft in front of me. He had turned off his headlamp to get a better look at where we were going (that sounds like the opposite of what you should do, but your eyes adjust to the darkness and there’s usually enough light above treeline to still see shapes) and probably could have scared the shit out of me if he had waited just a few seconds longer until I was closer.

The ridge was almost a knife edge, which was wild in the dark. Abyss on both sides, though in the morning it turned out the height was not nearly as significant as it seems in the darkness. We debated camping lower than the lookout on a flat piece of ground, but I figured a) there has to be some flat around the lookout and b) I didn’t come this far to camp 50 feet below the top. ONWARD.

Sunrise, Mt. Stuart in the back

Beginning the crusty traverse to W Granite

Just behind the lookout and before the cornice was a flat spot. Home sweet home, baby. I set up my two sleeping pads. One has a sneak leak that I haven’t found, so I brought a second for extra insurance so I didn’t end up chilling my body like a sushi roll on the ice every 45 minutes. I tore off my socks and stuffed my feet into the sleeping bag, suddenly coming to the realization that I had entirely forgotten ski socks and was stuck with my dank (not the cool dank), soon-to-be-moldy athletic ankle socks. Well, shit. Put those suckers against your skin or you’ll be even less happy in the morning. I dozed off in my now soggy ass clothing, happy I had brought the 0 degree bag and smiling to myself at the fact we had pulled off a 9pm ascent of Granite and I was away from people and work and responsibility beyond staying safe where we were. Do you ever have those moments where you feel like you are exactly where you’re supposed to be? That’s how it was.

Looking back at Granite

We woke up briefly for sunrise pics, went back to sleep and lazed around until 8ish, when we decided we’d do a lap on West Granite before the snow on Granite was soft enough to ski back to the trailhead (or to the trail, with our sad snowpack). We followed the ridge down Granite, through some trees, and up to the summit of West Granite, also known as Tusk O’ Granite, I believe (a way cooler name). It might have been the first time I had worn crampons all season. Holy crap. We soaked in views, dreamed of skiing Kaleetan, and set up for a ski down to the basin between Granite and it’s Tusk.

The ski ranged from crust to mush to 1″ corn on crust. Nothing terrible thuogh, and overall quite fun. Cramponing back up the slope to gain the ridge back to Granite was less than phenomenal, though it was good to get back into the rhythm of crampons on fairly steep snow, especially crust where you can’t kick nice bucket steps. I was so dehydrated. I hoped I was getting a tan.

Kaleetan & Chair over Tuskohatchie Lake

Back at camp we packed bags quickly and skiied the ridge to the gully. We debated skiing the way we had came up, which is the summer trail, where most hikers/snowshoers were. The gully looked way more fun, I was just scared of it because of all of the horror stories. But the snow up high was bulletproof, and it would be a pretty quick ski, and definitely well within my skill set. We took off and made a few turns, tucking over on a ridge where a party of four was skinning up.

Just before that ridge. we set off three loose wet sloughs. Yeah, they were sloughs, but I got stuck in one of those once and arresting with skis on your feet is a BITCH. And these ran probably 800+ft, basically to the bottom of the snowpack, through a narrow funnel at the bottom of the gulley. So… that was all of the red flags I needed. I took off the skis. I was booting the ridge. I can’t even put into words how disappointing it was. I’m finally good at skiing, we have this beautiful gully, I can even do it with a huge overnight pack… and we waited just a little too long and everything got just a little too warm. Every step set off more sloughs, but on the mini-ridge I was at least confident that nothing big would go (the snow on the ridge was shallow) or stick me in a terrain trap. We were back at the trail way faster than it had taken us on the way up.

Trudging our way back up to the ridge

We switched back to our soggy shoes (at least my soggy shoes, JT’s were waterproof) with maybe a mile and a half of trail left, and cruised back to the car marveling at how loud the highway was and how it never seemed to actually get closer, not unlike how it never seemed to get further when we were on the way up. But finally I caught a glimpse of yellow through the trees, yes! My car! Which has SOCKS! And dry SHOES! Oh, the simple joys of clean footwear.

I used to think that driving home during daylight hours meant you wasted daylight and should have gone farther and done more, especially on a beautiful weekend. But I still had adulting to do, we already spent more time skiing than expected, and it would be good to be home by 2. All things considered, I’m incredibly lucky to be able to sneak in a 15hr trip on demand like that and go from sitting at a desk in Seattle to sleeping on top of a mountain in the Cascades.

Oh, and as soon as I got to Seattle I turned right back around for a SAR mission, so there wasn’t much adulting done on Sunday.

Kaleetan, Chair, and the Leham/Summit Chief group on the far right

Arrowhead Mountain Ski & Snowshoe

Posted on March 24, 2019 by evejakubowski

Looking out at the Chiwaukums

Finally hitting sunshine in the forest

I may be limited to half day trips, but really all that means is that for a while I have to go for quantity over quality for the next few weeks to stay sane until I have full weekends back. But sometimes you get lucky, and that “better to do something than nothing” trip turns out to be pretty freaking rad.

I had no plans for the weekend going into Friday evening besides a short ski tour with Amber on Sunday. I suggested maybe Andy would want to come snowshoe while we skiied. He was super into it. I suggested maybe he’d want to snowshoe while I skiied Saturday and then again with Amber and I on Sunday. He was super into it. Great. “Can you be here at… 6:30am?” Andy is not a morning person. “Let’s plan on 6:30am but expect 7.” Perfect. I can knock out an hour or two of work and be ready to go.

Distance: 7mi round trip
Elevation Gain: 3,300ft gain (6,000ft highest point)
Weather: 30’s and sunny
Commute from Seattle: 2hrs if you avoid Stevens Pass ski resort backup
Did I Trip: A single wipeout on the way down. Perfection is hard

Yes he’s wearing mostly cotton

We hit the road just after 7 and stopped at Sultan Bakery for summit treats and breakfast. I had packed my snowshoes for Andy and my skis for myself, conscious of the fact that 1) I’d be skiing a snowshoe route 2) it was Andy’s first time on snowshoes and 3) I wanted him to actually enjoy the snowshoe, not resent the fact he might be chasing me on skis the whole time. #3 ended up not to be that much of a concern on the way up, because cutting a snowshoer friendly trail while skinning is actually kind of a pain in the ass, because basically anything with kick turns isn’t going to fly (snowshoes blow for sidehilling). It might have been an issue on the way down, but Andy was pretty quick to get used to the goofy flappiness of snowshoes, and kept up pretty well.

Let’s quickly go over the setup for Andy’s first snowshoe.

Rated “strenuous” by the mountaineers, 3k gain in about 2 miles
Low traffic (expect to be breaking trail yourself)
Wearing mostly cotton
Running shoes (old road running shoes to be specific)
Two layers of socks with a plastic bag in between to try and keep feet dry
Three apples
Coming off a ~1 week long cold
I think he might be a Seattle sports fan but I can’t really tell
Keeping company with a skiier (even if a mediocre one who’s trying to break a snowshoe trail)

Not a good start for most people. I made him swear to keep me updated on temperatures, comfort, and the status of his feet, because they could get cold and wet enough to make us turn around at some point. Don’t be a hero. But it was sunny, fairly warm, and I had enough jackets and extra pants for him to use if his layers got wet. I didn’t have extra shoes. And how did it go? Pretty freaking well.

Living the dream

We found the railroad tracks immediately, and roughly followed Steph Abegg’s map (several gpx files on peakbagger). Stupid me thought that they were abandoned, but they were very much active, and that freaked me out. Every loud car that came by made me freeze and listen for 30 seconds to decide whether it was a car or a train. We had one train pass almost immediately, and then we started walking east until we ran into four skiiers headed in the other direction. They confused me for at least 30min, convinced that we were going to the same place yet we were going east and they were going west. We turned around to follow them until I checked the map and put two and two together – they were taking the Henry Creek approach, same route to get up to Jim Hill. Duh. That’s basically skiiers only, I wasn’t going to drag a snowshoer up that to destroy skin tracks and be a traffic cone for skiiers to dodge. So we turned around again, committing to the snowshoer route as originally planned.

Tell me that doesn’t look amazing

That was a great choice. We popped off the train tracks where it looked like an old road or another railroad grade started, and miraculously found some very old snowshoe tracks that we could somewhat follow. As soon as we stepped off the train tracks, boom, a second train came by. Trains are awesome and also scary. The uphill travel was easy, open forest, and we knocked out the first mile of real elevation gain at a steady pace, getting sneak views of the peaks across the highway. I tried to avoid kick turns as best I could, and when they did have to happen I told Andy to keep going straight up. But I think you could say I broke one of the least efficient skin tracks ever to be broken in the Stevens Pass backcountry.

“This is the best apple of my life.”

At the ridge in the sun, we stopped for a snack. Andy had definitively the best apple of his life. I was skinning in circles babbling about the Chiwaukums and how we had picked such a good area to go to. It was still another thousand feet of gain to the summit, and from the reports I had read, those last thousand feet go pretty damn slowly. And they were right. We meandered around trees, avoided some exposed convex slopes, some fluffy pillows that are a pain in the ass to go over but easy to go around. The views got increasingly better and finally, we were looking at the summit. Andy had been taking breaks every few minutes to let his lungs catch up and made me swear not to tell him if it was the actual summit. He clambered over a steep snow pillow (picture the dramatic hand-grab-over-ledge scene from movies) and pulled the beached whale move to get onto the top and boom, we were there. I flipped into mom mode and demanded he wipe the powder off his sweater and put on a jacket, otherwise he’d be wet and cold real fast. Andy enjoyed the second best apple of his life while I faced the stark reality of having left my summit treats in the car.

SUMMIT

We took a million pictures before heading back down. We followed our tracks, I’d ski a bit, wait for Andy to catch up. The skiing was phenomenal. Absolutely perfect. Probably 12″ of fluffy, cold powder THE ENTIRE WAY DOWN. The ridge was fantastic glade skiing, threading the needle between trees trying to stay near the ridge top and not dropping too low. We passed two other snowshoers who took a much less pleasant route up and were turning around because of time limitations. “Where did you come from?!” they were shocked. “Yeah, you should probably follow our tracks down, it was all nice open forest.” They had gone too far east on the railroad and ended up in thick trees, steep snow, and some nasty bushwhacking. We hadn’t had to do a single bit of schwacking. They offered us some of those coconutty girl scout cookies, which were everything my body wanted in that moment. I told them it was Andy’s first snowshoe. Their jaws dropped.

Looking out at Jim Hill Mountain

Rock Mountain, Howard Mountain

We continued down, I think I was giggling the entire time trying to find mini jumps along the ridge between trees. The skiing was just so surprisingly great. We followed our tracks back into the forest, where the powder continued. Trees were slightly thicker, but not enough to ruin the fun, arguably it was even more fun. Andy moved pretty quickly going downhill on snowshoes, figuring out how the sliding works and some mini glissades. The snow eventually thinned out and mixed with sticks and pine needles and barely covered logs and surprise rocks, but the trees were still sparse and the skiing was still prime I had my first and only wipeout trying to get enough speed to make it back over the mound that was between the railroad grade and the actual railroad, which resulted in me hitting a tree on the mound and slowly sliding backwards to rest on my ass on the railroad grade. It would have been easier to pop skis off and just walk up the hill, but I didn’t get 3,295ft of vert in just to walk the last 5 feet. I side stepped up that shit and skiied to the railroad.

Starting out on great low angle powder

We walked back along the tracks and dropped down to the highway, where my car was waiting for us, ticket-free. I never know with those pullouts. Most are allowed but there are some that are restricted to maintenance vehicles. I have no idea where the skiiers or snowshoers that we saw parked, and we definitely had the best pull out. It’s on the left side of the highway if you’re driving east, just after a small overpass ~6 miles after Stevens Pass. I think there is another pullout further down where the skiiers parked (I joked that we should have switched starting locations) that would work for Arrowhead and cut off some of the railroad mileage, but never confirmed where. Either way, we were back at the car by 4pm, felt like we were the only ones up there, I got to listen to the wshhhhh of cold powder under my skis, Andy crushed his first snowshoe (despite coming off a cold!), and we didn’t even need an alpine start. Pretty rad for a half day trip.

Monogram Lake Ski: Don’t Take Candy from Strangers

Posted on March 7, 2019 by evejakubowski

Looking back at Monogram Lake with Eldorado, the Triad, Hidden Lake Peaks in the back

It’s not 100% funny yet, there are still a bunch of embarrassing moments and regrets mixed in, but in a few weeks/months it’ll be a stupid story from my 20’s when I was still a 5-year-old on the inside. Don’t take candy from strangers, don’t let someone else bring you your drink at a bar, blah blah blah. We’ll get to the fun part in a bit. Karma bit me in the ass on this one.

Distance: 10 miles round trip
Elevation: 4500ft agin, 5700ft highest point
Weather: Single digits overnight, maybe teens during the day. Sunny, cloudy, snow showers.
Commute from Seattle: ~2.5 hours with no traffic
Did I Trip: Oh boy

Rescue car!

Plans came together Friday evening. Originally we were thinking of checking out the Enchantments, but last minute we settled on Little Devil Peak. Tony joined our plans around 9pm, assuming he’d follow our skin track and catch up to us at camp. We left around 5am Saturday, stopped off for coffee and breakfast and climbing permits (which I left at the car anyway, so you could argue that was a pointless detour), and started the drive up Cascade River Road, which is allegedly plowed to mile 7.

False. It was not plowed to mile 7. We had to pull over ~1.5mi from the trailhead, because I was too lazy to drive and we took JT’s car which, while great on snow and ice, has like 5″ of ground clearance and was bottoming out on the chunk of ice between tire tracks. We knew Tony was only 30ish minutes behind us, so rather than skin the mile and a half, we got all of our gear ready and waited in the car for Tony, who we hoped would be driving his snow-crusher FJ.

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Tony skins up below (PC: JT)

Aaand we were right! We waved Tony down and hitched a ride to the trailhead, where we started up with skis on our backs. I almost wish I hadn’t been up here before, because I only remembered two landmarks and of course both were like 2,500ft of gain up the trail so every switchback was a reminder of how far we still had to go. I found a piece of candy on the trail (woohoo, free snacks!) and stashed it in my pocket. We finally broke out into the clearing I remembered from last time, where we re-entered the forest and started to boot straight up once we lost the snowshoer trail. We hoofed it for a while as Tony skinned a more mellow route, keeping within earshot (whistles and various signature whoops), and met up just below a second clearing where we were officially starting to skin.

WHERE IS THE SKIN WAX

We had a quick snack break where I decided to have kimchi pancakes leftover from Amber’s Korean feast the prior night and that candy I had found. Which was gross, like a combo of licorice and a cough drop but it looked like a lozenge so cough drop taste made sense. We took off up the icy drainage, fighting through trees (but actually, too steep and dense for skins but you could drag yourself up by pulling and pushing on trees and toning your triceps) and dragging snow-caked skins (picture 10lb weights on each ankle) through the shitty slush followed by shitty powder as we zigzagged in and out of sunshine and shade. Take five steps, try to smack snow off the skins. Another five steps, smack snow. Another five steps, cry a little bit. Another five steps, smack snow and fall over streaming profanity into the powder and lie there in defeat only to find JT taking a break 15ft away when you assumed he was a mile ahead laughing at your plight from above in the distance.

PC Tony, so it actually WAS pretty (See bullets below)

I flopped down next to JT. I couldn’t figure out why I was so spacey and wow my mouth was amazingly dry. I changed into thick gloves and remarked on how cold it was, my fingers were sharply painful and suddenly numb, it must be single digits! I was smacking my lips when I noticed my heart rate still elevated and a mild anxiety about everything we were doing. My vision lagged, I’d move my eyes and the scenery would drag behind. I looked up at JT mid sentence. Life in slow-mo, cotton mouth, shitty circulation, mild anxiety? My life is pretty vanilla, but I remembered this from college. Only one thing has given me those symptoms. “Oh my god. JT. The candy wasn’t candy.”

Tony caught up to us and we told him what was going on. “This can’t go in the blog post.” “If you don’t write about it I swear I’ll add it in the comments.” Well we weren’t camping here, so let’s get over the ridge and down to Monogram Lake and re-evaluate. This stuff can’t last longer than like an hour, right? Oh god. It was just kicking in. I kept my eyes on the ground, focusing on the skin track in front of me. If I looked up at JT I’d get dizzy and start to tip over. Kick turns were the worst. Put your poles here. No, put them here actually. Or maybe there? Actually if I lean into the snow with my whole upper body including this elbow then on the fourth attempt I can swing my ski in line with the turn aaaand… .there it is. Stand up straight. Eyes ahead. NO, no, eyes down. Yes. Good.

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Bedtime!

We crested the ridge and I could see the lake. But the slopes to the lake. Oh my god. A million things ran through my head.

The hills – they’re so steep (they were not)
Who LEFT this there this is ILLEGAL (no, it’s not, you live in Washington)
Are these good views or is it just my eyes? (both)
Can I ski down on my skins? (no)
Can I ski down in downhill mode? [world spins and up is down and i’m covered in powder] (…no)
Can I boot it? Hmm. Yes. Feet are good. This is good.
Every slope will avalanche if I step right there (false)
Has it actually been two hours, or has it been 15 minutes and it feels like two hours? (2 hours)
Have I moved? (debatable)
Is JT ahead of me still?? (yes)
Where’s Tony DID WE LOSE TONY OH NO (we did not)
DID WE LOSE ME WHAT IF THEY WENT SOMEWHERE ELSE AND I JUST FORGOT AND NOW I’M ALONE AND shut up and follow the tracks ya dingus

Looking back at our tiny camp

We got to the lake and I flopped on down on my pack. Do we continue to the ridge, or camp here? I stared into space for 45 minutes. “You’re the high one, you decide.” I’m sorry, that’s backwards. High people can’t make decisions. “Come on, stoner cat.” Let’s go to the ridge. No, let’s camp here. Yeah, camp here. JT started to set up his tent. I handed him the first set of poles, point first. Hmm, the second set must have to go feet first. I turned it around and bent it so the feet would be the width of the door. Almost there aaaand…. SNAP!

It rang through the valley like a bullet, or the sound of Alex Honnold falling during that 24hr climbing competition in that one short film. I stared at the pole, now two poles. I stared at JT. I tried to put them together. If I had been hydrated maybe I’d have cried. JT took it in stride and patched it up and didn’t let me touch any other piece of the tent, which was fine because now I was scared to touch anything anyway. As soon as the tent was set up, I crawled into my sleeping bag and passed out. It was 3pm.

Skinning back up the ridge

I woke up to Tony and JT talking. I could hear them and wanted to laugh and say things back but that involved blowing air past my vocal chords which sounded like such a chore, I’d rather just meld into this sleeping bag and become on with the fluff and drift off like a piece of a cloud. Eventually I was somewhat munchy so I had cheez its (amaaaaaazing) and dinner. And passed out again.

In the morning I awoke to snow, frozen boot liners, frozen water bottle, frozen socks, a very full bladder, a clear(er) mind, and some shame. And the gradual realization that yes, this had to go in the blog post. I chose to face the bladder first, followed by the socks and liners. We boiled water to melt the ice in our water bottles, and I started skinning laps around the lake to get my feet and liners to warm up. By the third lap, I was walking on numb stumps. I crawled back into my bag and JT boiled some water for me to put in my bottle to put between my thighs to try and get circulation moving. I told Tony and JT to head to the ridge to ski, I had to figure out my feet and liners. The liners would never be dry, but if I could just get them warm enough to not freeze once they touched air again, then I could keep them warm once I was moving. I took a deep breath and put the damn ice blocks against my chest. They were melted within a few minutes and warm ish maybe 15 minutes later, and I stuffed my feet in them and took off to catch up with Tony.

JT with Lookout Mountain

The first run down was phenomenal fluffy powder. JT went first, then Tony, then me. We’re whooping and grinning and suddenly JT yells “watch out for the-” “CRRRRRSSSSKKKKKKK” “-crust…” as Tony skidded to a stop on sheer ice. Only the shaded snow was fluffy, anything that had been touched by the sun was no fun. We did a few laps before packing up camp and starting to skin out. Getting up and over the ridge was brutal because anything involving using my edges resulted in me popping out of my bindings and the ski sliding back down the ice until I caught up to it, but skiing down the other side of the ridge (especially in one fluffy gully) was spectacular. Going back down the veggie belay/tree climbing drainage was brutal, I booted it for about 4 steps before putting the skis back on because survival skiing was the lesser of the two evils.

“Skiing”

The survival ski continued back to the boot pack we made on the way up where the trail enters that first clearing. We crashed through trees, skiied over some dead branches and rocks, kept in touch by shouting “marco!?” “polo!” and the usual “whoop whoop” [whistle] “woo!” I caught up to JT. “I… I got into a bad situation.” The look on his face wasn’t good. I was trying to think if he was stuck on a bad slope or had a bad gear issue but no, we were never anywhere like that. “Look at the back of my pack.”

“There’s nothing there.” “Exactly.” Shiiiiiit. His tent. Should I laugh or cry? I mean, I’m off the hook for broken poles if there’s no tent, right? “Why not just take $700 and make it rain over a cliff?” He had been tracking our route, so there will be a spring revenge trip to find the tent eventually. It’s up there somewhere.

Apparently it’s cold

We booted straight downhill until there was not enough snow left to cut switchbacks efficiently. I muscled through a downed tree only to lose my ski strap a few switchbacks later, but at that moment I didn’t care enough to walk back up to look for it. We popped out back at the car followed shortly by Tony, who found the ski strap! Woohoo!

We drove back to JT’s car and were going to stop by Mondo (Tony was a little jealous of the Korean feast Amber had cooked before the weekend and had been thinking about kimchi pancakes for days now) but in a crushing moment of defeat, it was closed. We decided to part ways so Tony could pick up his son only a little late instead of very late.

Amazingly, driving through Darrington we found that Burger Barn was open. We demolished some burgers before driving back to real life in the city, where I immediately googled the letters on the candy wrapper to discover it was from Magic Kitchen, a Tacoma based pot shop. Great. I wasn’t crazy.

P.S. I peed literally brown on Sunday morning. If you’re gonna go do edibles or eat candy you found on the trail because you have the impulse of a small child, stay hydrated, folks.

Skinning back to camp

Table Mountain Circumnavigation

Posted on March 1, 2019 by evejakubowski

Brad skins up below Shuksan, Artist Point in the background

Looking up at Table Mountain

I’m sure there will be a collection of winter turnaround short stories and half day might-as-well-get-out trips, but I figured I’d start with the first successful (as in “wow look where we are!!!”) trip this winter. There’s been a lot of resort skiing, a trip to Costa Rica, some weekends where I couldn’t drive the hill in front of my house and skied the 48th St Couloir in Fremont instead of touring the backcountry… and then this weekend happened. Short and sweet.

Baker! Brad scouts out a traverse route

Surafel was fresh (6 weeks?) off a major surgery and ready to get back at it. Brad for some reason had no plans. I was resigned to staying in town to work, but then decided to stick it to the man because when did the expectation change to assuming I’d be available on weekends? That’s not my modus operandi. Especially on one of those unique weekends where there’s powder and blue skies in the winter. And the slopes are like an adult playground and the snow is widespread enough for car to car instead of carrying the damn sticks for 6 miles each way before skinning and did I mention it was sunny and the days are getting longer and the skies are blue? Yeah. You bet your ass I’ll be there.

So we met late (by our standards) at 7am at the Lynnwood Transit Center. We almost lost Brad, who parked on the weird side instead of our normal side and also jumped when my car rolled because we were on a slight incline and my car is manual. Surafel had a banana for breakfast, Brad forgot to eat the muffin he had packed, and I didn’t bring breakfast because I’m too impatient and ready for action. Who needs food anyway.

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Brad’s awesome pic of Shuksan being a beaut

Heading towards Ptarmigan Ridge

We drove up to Baker, stuck in the clouds until halfway down Baker Highway. Surafel had to rent snowshoes because he forgot that I, too, might own snowshoes he could borrow, or perhaps Brad, another grizzled outdoorsman. We finally broke into the sunshine, and everything was oversaturated and the sky was bright blue and the mountains were all white and we were ooh-ing and ahh-ing staring out the windows. Every switchback on that road was fantastic, I just kept laughing looking at Shuksan. It doesn’t get old. We freaking live here. And it’s been so long since I had a sunny weekend in the mountains, wow standards were low.

The skin track was icy, and the fact that I did a shit job trimming my skins did not help. Like really shit, like ashamed that I walked into REI 10 minutes before closing and said “oh I don’t need you to trim my skins hurr durr” because then I slashed off like half of the bottom of one of my skins and now a solid 12″ strip is only 1″ wide. But whatever. Problems for future Eve. We followed the ski/snowshoe highway to Artist Point, where we debated whether to continue and I groaned about how I forgot that I hate people, and boy were there people at Artist Point.

Baker and the Seven Layer Cake

The people may or may not have been a factor in my decision to continue. On one hand, the snow was more stable than I had expected. On the other hand, I hadn’t been out in winter in a while, I’m a wimp, I’m good at psyching myself out, and I felt bad leaving Surafel behind. But Surafel insisted (he’s too nice) and Brad was pretty familiar with the area, so Brad and I took off into the silence of snow covered mountains and skied the traverse over to Ptarmigan Ridge (after wallowing in powder because I can’t transition without taking my skis off my feet). At the bottom, we switched back to skinning in a patch that had been nicely stomped down by some good samaritians ahead of us, and took off towards the ridge, where I waited for Brad to take the longest open-terrain bathroom break in my life. I thought he had broken a binding or something but no, just really, unbelievably hydrated. Unlike some of us.

Looking back at the pass we came from

We skinned along the ridge for a while, enjoying the otherworldly views, aiming for what we were calling the Sydney Opera House or the Seven Layer Cake. It was a wild formation of cornices that looked like a sea shell or a fungus, and the Portals we were originally aiming for were something like 2 miles beyond it. Dammit. Classic winter underestimation. We figured that was a long shot and we didn’t want to get back after dark or leave Surafel waiting for hours, so we decided to ski down into the valley below and head up and out on the other side of Table Mountain if we could, assuming it would be the popular Table Mountain Circumnavigation. We scouted a skin track on the opposing slope from up high and committed to the descent.

Coming back up to the opposing ridge

It might have been one of the best runs of my life. Only a couple hundred feet, but the type of powder that just makes you giggle the whole way because it’s so fluffy and beautiful and the “wshhhhhhh” surrounds your skis and i’m not a good enough skiier to deserve this. We skiied as far as we could and then started to traverse back towards Table Mountain, which took us across our first sketchy slope of the day. Shaded (new) and near tree line (new), even though it was a similar aspect to a piece of microterrain we had just skied the feel was completely different. Within a few steps we noticed the difference, but still kept going. Luckily it was short, but it was not where I wanted to end up, and I wish we had skinned back up to more mellow terrain. Good reality check that you should constantly be aware of changing conditions and new characteristics. We dropped into a river gully and popped out on the nice comfortable sunny side of the valley where I admired the shiny round white ass of someone taking a dump 50 yards away. Ah, the joys of the mountains.

Almost at Austin Pass, Baker and the clouds setting the mood

We passed doody dude and avoided eye contact, skinning uphill through trees a ways before breaking out into the Chain Lakes Basin, where we had a glorious skin across a frozen lake with Baker in the backdrop and the first evidence of an actual avalanche all trip. It was a small debris field and we were well out of the way, and took our time crossing the lake soaking in views before skinning up to Austin Pass. We caught up to a group of four, who I innocently asked “are you doing the full circumnav?” “Yeah, full Table Mountain Circumnavigation, it’s been amazing!!” via which I confirmed that we were, in fact, on the trip that we thought we were on. The snow had changed to dripping, sun-loaded slush, but we were in the trees and the skin track avoided the steeper gullies on either side. At the top of Austin Pass we admired one last glance of Baker behind us, Shuksan in the sun in front of us (Homer Simpson drooling = me) before skiing a disappointing, surprisingly crusty run back to the shady base. After lamenting the loss of my brand new snow basket (RIP lil buddy) we found Surafel at the car, who had ravaged my backup snacks like an animal and eaten all of my candy.*

We devoured burgers and beer and bottomless hot chocolate on the way home to wait out the ski resort traffic. It was amazing to be back in the mountains, and I was stoked we pulled off a pretty classic half day tour out of nowhere and stoked that Surafel was back out. He even swore he’d never touch snowshoes again after a romp around Paradise last year, but it’s like a marathon, you forget the pain eventually and want to do it all over again. Bring on the spring season. My body is so not ready.

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Surafel’s awesome photo of Baker. Good thing we left him for several hours

*Just kidding, he only ate a reese’s peanut butter cup/kit kat hybrid.

Have Tent, Will Travel

Trail running, mountaineering, and the occasional wipeout

Author Archives: evejakubowski