8 miles of hiking • 5500' elevation gain • 1 night
New WA 100 Summit - 1 of 10 for 2014
Hooked up with my buddy Jason for a nice overnighter. Made the mistake of hauling my ski's up with me. Turns out we were a few weeks late. I had read a report from May 18th and it looked like you would be able to skin most of the way after the first mile or so. At the trailhead I went back and forth on whether or not I should carry them.
The climbers trail is in descent shape for the most part, but there were a number of blow-downs that made for some interesting travel with Ski's strapped to my overnight pack. Just before the 1st clearing there were some nice slide alder trees that tried to pick a fight with me.... but I showed them who was boss. Once we hit the clearing I was hoping to see a giant snow field and bust out my skins. Boy was I mistaken..... I was greeted with a fantastic view of Silver Star, Burgundy Spire and a hillside of Bare Barney Rubble !!!
Luckily we ran into a nice couple that explained the conditions ahead and suggested that I ditch the Ski's and make camp at the next clearing by the creek. About 20 min later that is just what we did !! We weren't picky about our camp spot, it was already getting late and we just wanted to crash. We had gotten a late start from Seattle and needed to plan for an early start on Sunday.
We woke up at first light and got moving to go slay some alder. We carefully worked our way up the head wall and stayed in the forest to the right of Silver Star Creek to avoid as much of the bushwhacking as possible. Within a short time we hit continuous snow and began our long traverse over to the Silver Star Glacier. Many hours of slogging and we finally found ourselves at the top of the col. We fueled up and marched on up the ridge to the summit. The ridge provided some nice steep snow climbing over some big rocks. Which always makes things nice and spicy !!! Then we hit the last 50 feet and it was a nice class 3 rock scramble up to the top. The views were endless and the summit was full of a bunch of Mounties ! So we quickly snapped a few shots and off we went. There were plenty of glissade hills on the way back, which made for a quick descent.
After all that fun, we then had to deal with the slide alder again. This time we didn't want to go out of our way and navigate through the forest. We attacked it head on... and boy did it put up a fight. But in the end... we destroyed it and got out with a few only a few F-Bombs being dropped and some minor scratches. I said to Jason "I am so glad that I left my ski's at camp....ohh crap I still have to carry those things down (insert one last F-Bomb)"
The hike out was long and about as bad as I thought it would be, but we made it and I finally got my 1st WA 100 for the year. After a couple failed attempts on some other peaks earlier in the season, it was nice to finally get one checked off.... Only 9 more to go !!!
The Angry Hiker
June 9, 2014
Great photos. It's nice that you finally got in a hike this year!