This turned out to be Susan and my first single-day trip since 4th of July, so it felt a little bit strange to break the streak, but two solid months with a multiday trip every weekend will have to do!
So, a single day it was, and Susan, me, Radka and Zoe stopped at the Sultan Bakery for breakfast. Radka had not been so impressed with Sultan Bakery in the past - understandably since she's a vegetarian... Anyhow, we stopped there for breakfast, and Susan asks the quite lovely old lady behind the counter "what is good for a vegetarian?". Quite a comical silence ensued - and the whole thing ended up with Radka not having breakfast, Zoe having a sandwich with a lot of sausage, Susan having her regular breakfast sandwich with bacon, and I (slightly downsized this time) pancakes and eggs. I still maintain the pancakes are great!
Anyways, we were pretty soon done with the morning meal and we got back in the car for the short drive up to Barclay Creek and the side road after 4.2 miles that marks the TH. We had done our research beforehand, so we knew the first little bit may be difficult to follow. We had the requisite Summitpost map (very helpful), but really just ended up following orange flagging through the initial few hundred yards of brushy terrain. It would have been challenging to find the "trail" through the brush without the flagging, but with it there was not an issue.
So we soon found ourselves at the edge of the steep forest slog, and going uphill for a few thousand feet until hitting a clearing with a cliff at 4000'. The trail stayed pretty good all along. We then traversed right under the cliff with some exposed scrambly sections, past the (now dry) waterfall, and some more traversing more and more into brushy alder and fern terrain. Overall the trail stayed decent and there was no issue finding/following it.
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| Radka, climbing past the first seriously scrambly portion. |
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| Susan, Radka and Zoe climbing down towards the dry waterfall. |
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| Zoe, following the trail through the brush. |
Our next obstacle was the berry fields. OMG! So many blueberries - our hiking progress slowed to a crawl as one bush seemed better than the previous. The bushes were so tight we had to eat our way through them. However, we were definitely not alone enjoying these berries as there was tons of bear poop in the area, and later in the day on the way down we saw one of them happily browsing in a meadow below us. The next section up to the Gunn / Barclay divide is characterized by berry fields interspersed with ferns/alder and small cliffs. Overall very pleasant.
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| Looking east to Merchant Peak across berry pastures. |
From the divide we realized we had to descend down right a bit to get past the rocky point in front of us. We found a snow filled narrow valley with a small lake at the bottom, complete with bear tracks in the snow leading to the lake. Thirsty bear apparently. Hopefully not hungry. From the lake we again descended a moderately steep meadow gully to the base of the talus slope covering Gunn's SW(?) side.
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| Thirsty? |
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| Hungry? |
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| Happy. |
The talus slope was all talus and no snow, but went pretty quickly. This took us to the "hidden gully", which looks improbable from far away, but turns out to be ok at least on the way up. Definitely 4th class though.
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| Gunn Peak with the talus field. the hidden gully is hidden. |
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Looking back on exposed north side ledge
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Uneventful to the notch, and the north side traverse ledge was as promised very exposed. We set up a hand-line for safety and one by one went across. From there it was just a short little bit to the summit so we left the rope in place for the way back. The summit did not have any obvious napping spots, but we still managed to spend 2 hours there enjoying the view and having an extended lunch.
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| Hidden Gunn Lake |
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| Zoe, Susan, me and Radka |
Going down we just reversed the route, but chose to rappel the "hidden gully". We brought a 30 m rope which turned out to be perfect for it - anchoring from the lowest trees on top of the gully took us just past the exposed part with some loose 2/3-class in the gully itself. It was good to rappel.
After a few thousand feet back to the bottom of the forest we were once again on flat ground in the brushy part by the creek. Following the orange flagging back we realized you can cross the creek easily away from the big logjam this time of the year (right where the two branches of the creek come together). Doing this took directly to the end of the overgrown forest road and back to the car. To make us feel better, it just started drizzling a few drop just before we got back, ensuring us that we made the most out of the day.
Our original plan was to do Labyrinth Mountain the next day, and finding car camping wherever available. We found a spot (actually a day use area the camp host let us use) at the Beckler River campground. So we had a site right by the river, away from everyone else and enjoyed a good nights sleep. What good luck! In the morning I was up early, made some coffee and just sat by the river for an hour sipping the coffee before everyone else work up. So relaxing.
My knee wasn't feeling too good after I had bumped it into the rock the previous day so I could not hike for this day. Given that we all just had one car, the decision was to just hang out at our camp, enjoy the morning and then drove back to Seattle. What a great trip even if it was really one day shorter than planned! Thanks all for letting me wimp out :)
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| Beautiful tarns below the Barclay - Gunn divide. |
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