Live to be outside: December 2012

Today feels like a great day to catch up on trip reports from the sunny summer season. It is a rainy December Sunday - winter blues be gone!

It was likely the last sunny weekend of the year, and our friend Misha had made time to go out with us so we were fairly excited and we debated the appropriate destination for this last of the year trip quite a bit. We needed something adventurous enough but with a reasonable likelihood of success. The Thursday or Friday before the trip we decided on a (for us) fairly ambitious 2 day ascent of Jack Mountain in the North Cascades.

View Jack Mountain in a larger map

Day 1 - No pancakes

We did not have time with a pancake breakfast since our first day was rather long. We calculated it to be approximately 7000ft gain, crossing 3 different passes, and much of it off trail. so we set off from the trailhead with a quick breakfast of bananas and scones. Yummy.

The first pass was a not-so-quick 5000 feet above our car, which translates to roughly 5 hours of hiking steadily uphill. Fortunately the trail extends most of the way to this pass and makes progress easy and we had some lovely vine maple areas to hike through which provided nice red fall colors. The trail takes you up towards Crater Lake, set at the base of enormous bowl which encompasses Crater Mountain and the pass we were heading towards. We followed the trail a bit more up to the ridge just south of Crater Mountain, and then easily headed cross country east towards our pass. Time for a rest!

View down towards the highway.

From the pass, the view ahead of us was of snowfields and Jerry Glacier with a large rock fall area. We put on crampons and headed onto the snow, soon finding ourselves at a rock outcropping on the edge of the glacier. We roped up and dropped a bit further just below a very dirty area of the glacier that exhibits frequent rock fall from above. It was not very pleasant.

The glacier soon gave way to bare ground again, and a hike up to our second pass of the day - the pass between Jerry Lakes and the Jerry Glacier. Another rest and enjoyment of views. From here we could see the three deep blue Jerry Lakes nestled among a plateau of golden larches. I think we all thought about how nice it would have been to spend the night there. However, given that our objective was Jack, and still a few hours away we had no choice but to push on.

Late season snow - hard as a rock.

Looking back at the dirty part of the glacier.

First view of Jack at Jerry Lakes pass. Still so far away.

Some perspective with lakes in foreground.

As we dropped down the north side of the pass down towards the lakes we realized that the scree was frozen hard, and there were large areas of frozen mini-waterfalls running over the rocks, making the hiking tedious and a little difficult.

Once down by the lakes, we had another rest and found a tent and associated people there. They were fishing in one of the lakes, and at that time it just seemed like the perfect this to do to me. I was tired and had limited desire to climb a third pass for the day. Maybe just camping in comfort by the lakes would be just fine....

The lake basin was covered in golden larches.

Nice fishing spot!

After a few minutes rest by the lakes, we headed up towards the third pass of the day, between Jerry Lakes and Jack Mountain. A steep meadow traverse, some loose climbing, and another 1000ft later, we were on top of the pass. Now all we had to do was to find a place to camp in the valley below us. As the sun was casting longer and longer shadows we dropped into the valley and set up camp at the edge of a gorgeous flat meadow. In summer it would be filled with mosquitoes, but at this time of the year, the only ones there were the three of us. Rest and dinner had rarely tasted so well.

Susan and me set up a tarp, with the head just by the edge so we could watch the stars as we (quickly) drifted to sleep.

View back towards Jerry lakes.

A closer view of Jack from the third pass.

No mosquitoes, but a bear had been here.

Susan rolling into camp.

Day 2 - Yuck!

Morning light on Snowfield, Colonial and Paul Bunyan's stump

Today was going to be an even longer day than yesterday. We woke up in the dark and started hiking with headlamps on to make the most of the daylight hours. The first bit from camp is easy with a well defined meadowy ridge to follow towards the base of the mountain so this worked well. As you get closer to the base of the mountain, you pop over a shoulder and finally get a (very) close look at the south face - the easiest way up the mountain and our intended route. Call me a wimp, but I didn't like the look of it at all. Steep, loose and a lot of it!

Yuck!

We started side-hilling on scree, then steep scree, then hard packed steep scree, then small loose rock ledges above said scree until we were on top of the moat of a steep hard snowfield with a bad runout. Yuck. Our original plan A had been to somehow traverse over to a small nose on the other side of the snowfield. Given the size of the moat, going down in it was not an option, and any further traversing on the rocks above the snowfield was also out of the question. The only way over to the nose was going back to drop below the snowfield, climbing it to then get on the nose. However, being late season, the snow field was bone hard, and with no snow protection and aluminum crampons it did not seem like a wise idea.

Standing on the small ledge, our only real option of progressing towards the top was to climb the rocks where we were. It did not look very hopeful, but some of the beta indicated a line up the face from here. So up we went, on 3-4th class at first, then short seps of 4-5th and then what seemed like more and more exposed terrain. Soon enough we decided to call it quits and turn around - just too much looseness and exposed 4-5th class climbing.

We backtracked our route down to the ledge above the snowfield, then back to the steep hard scree, then towards the regular scree and soon were back at the shoulder which felt very good. Quite disappointing given all the work that had gone into getting to this spot, but the mountain may be there for another attempt in the future, unless it has fallen apart by then.

Relaxing and having lunch after abandoning Jack.

Looking out over the valley.

Our camp is at the edge of the flat meadow.

Looking back down

Susan and me had tried to climb Jack a few years ago during 4th of July weekend. Although we had managed to find (almost) the right way up, it had been a very similar experience, too much looseness and exposure, and at that time a lot of spontaneous rock fall from the mix of snow/rock above. Now we were 0 out of 2 :)

After our break, we hiked back to camp, tore it down and started the beautiful but very long hike back to the cars. Four valleys and three passes later we were finally back by the car an hour or two after dark. Despite not getting or summit, this trip was so much fun. Great scenery, high adventure factor, and tired legs!