7/2/16 – 7/4/16

This one has been a long time in coming.  The PCT goes through Glacier Peak Wilderness, skirting the namesake 10,541′ volcano.  Despite getting so close, I never actually saw the peak on my 2011 PCT hike.  It was obscured by clouds and rain while I was close, and it’s not a peak that can be seen from a great distance, like many of the other Cascade volcanoes.  Daybreaker and I had scheduled a trip to climb Glacier Peak at least 3 times in the past, always having to resort to a plan B or C hike due to weather.

Finally, this July 4th weekend, the weather was good enough to at least give it a go.  Also joining our party was Daybreaker’s friend Catherine, a fellow Mountaineer.  This peak requires travel on a crevassed glacier, and therefore, ropes, making partners with appropriate skills important. Glacier Peak isn’t a very difficult peak, but it is remote, the shortest route is ~17 miles one way from the trailhead.

We had a beautiful day Saturday for hiking in about ~13 miles to Glacier Gap, at ~7300′, where we set up camp.  Solitude was not on the menu.  There were seriously at least a hundred other climbers out there, but the farther we hiked in, the more the groups dispersed and it didn’t feel so crowded.

All green along the North Fork Sauk River

approaching White Pass on the PCT

western anemone

getting into some snow

glacier lillies galore!

parade to the peak – our first view of Glacier Peak

a long way in across a snow field

Clouds over the Suiattle Glacier from camp

camp at Glacier Gap

Overnight, clouds dropped in and the wind picked up.  When our alarms went off at 3:30am, we were sitting in a cloud, wind whipping a light but persistent rain into the ends of my Hexamid.  Lesson learned: do not use a minimal thru-hiking shelter for mountaineering trips.  We woke up ever hour or two to check on the weather, hoping things would clear out.  By 9am, conditions hadn’t improved, but we figured we might just pop out above the clouds if we went up the mountain a little ways.  If the weather hadn’t cleared by the time we got to the rope-up spot, we would turn around.

After about an hour of climbing, we did emerge from the clouds.  For a while, we actually had blue skies and a view of the mountain!  Unfortunately, just as we finished the roped section, the wind picked up and brought clouds back in with it.  We labored through some really intense wind up the final ridge – dirt, then steep snow – to the summit.  The wind on the summit was so intense we couldn’t stand up straight, and standing inside a cloud, there was absolutely no view.  We very quickly snapped the obligatory photos and headed back down.  Just as we left the summit, the cloud we were standing in blew away, and we got a brief view….of clouds.  The only other thing we could see was the tippy top of Mt Rainier poking out. Gonna have to come back another time for the view!

finally popping up out of the couds

crossing the Cool Glacier

wind picked up on the ridge

on the summit

This is the best pic of me on the summit

between cloud layers on the way down

a nice patch of dirt trail

Glacier Peak back in the clouds

We made good time going back down and arrived back in our camp about 5pm, only to find Daybreaker’s tent was nowhere to be found.  The wind blew it away. Seriously.  The stakes had been ripped right out of the ground and the whole thing was just gone, along with his sleeping bag, sleeping pad, shoes, and some sentimental items he’d left inside during the summit.   We looked around, peering down the expansive Suiattle Glacier to the north. No sign of it, nothing we could do.

New plan: hike as far back down as we could to get out of this crazy wind and as low in elevation as possible for the night.  Daybreaker had an emergency mylar bivy, and Catherine had an extra sleeping pad.  So we hiked until 10pm, headlamping it for the last half hour or so all the way back down to the Mackinaw Shelter along the North Fork Sauk River, at 3000′.

Back down the mountain

Oh sure, now it sorta clears up.

Marmot!

Evening hiking is the best!

salmonberries

We had a quick hike out in the morning, driving directly into the 4th of July Parade in Darrington, where we stopped for some celebratory mediocre burgers and beers.