North Face of Mt Shuksan, June 3-4, 2000
The time had come for the North Face. The weather looked sunny and stable, and Matt and I arrived at the Mount Baker ski resort late Saturday morning, packed light, and ready for action.Instead of the approach described in the Becky guide, which was notoriously brushy, 6 hour affair, we had decided on a higher level traverse, along the base of the Shuksan Arm, followed by a crossing of the upper White Salmon valley, to the ridge below the North Face. A ramp, indicated on topo maps with wider-spaced contours, seemed to provide a passage across cliffy Shuksan Arm.
Matt beats his stuffed packed into submission
We parked near the lower lodge of the ski resort, ascended on snow to a 4200ft pass, crossed under a chairlift, and entered Rumble Gully. The snow was firm, and the creeks were filled with avalanche debris, making for easy crossings. We angled down on easy forest terrain, and within a short time emerged from the last of the big trees to behold the northwest facade of Shuksan - from here, we could see the route between us and our bivy below the North Face, was a brush-free romp on snow.
Our trip nearly had an early ending, when we encounted this sign on the approach.
The gargantuan ice cliff of the Hanging Glacier appeared in mid-face, with teetering seracs seemingly ready to drop. The slope below was littered with ice and rock chunks. The rest of the upper valley was almost completely covered in avalanche debris - most of it old.
We descended a chute 200 feet to the valley floor, and began crossing. I've never seen such a wide, long runout zone! The first of the days snow and ice avalanches was heard, as some ice chunks slid off a slab high on Shuksan Arm, spilled into a narrow gully and erupted into a cloud of snow dust.
View of the ice cliff on the Hanging Glacier.
We followed gentle slopes up to our bivy ridge, just out of range of the upper mountain's recent slide paths. Upon reaching the ridge, we saw another party on a nice-looking rock outcrop. Respecting their right to outcrop, we dropped our stuff at a small patch of trees in the snow, and ate, drank, and checked the time. It had taken us just slightly over three hours from the car. However, we suspected our approach would lose much of its appeal in a week or two, as we stayed just barely above the snowline for much of it, and it was probably pretty brushy underneath.
We went over and chatted with the other party. They had taken the standard approach, and said it was pretty brushy - nonetheless, it had only taken them four hours. They indicated that they were training for Liberty Ridge, by taking heavy packs. We indicated that we were sort of also doing the same - by packing light.
Seeing how it was only 2pm, and we had 7 hours of daylight to kill, we started some serious dozing off. Matt took shelter from the sun behind a small tree. I tried to sleep where I had dropped my pack, but the heat made it impossible. Finally, I decided to move into the small shady area next to Matt, behind the grove of pathetic alpine trees. Matt had succeeded in dozing off, and was thus nearly oblivious to my slapstick antics. As I walked over, I stepped in the "wrong place" and punched through a tree hole up to my crotch. Matt looked over in a sleepy gaze as I mantled on a semi-buried tree trunk in my struggle to extricate myself. Once I had established a "bedding" (consisting of pack and thermarest) behind the tree grove, I lay down and tried to sleep. Something wasn't quite right though. The spot wasn't quite flat enough. I got up and slid off my pad to rearrange it, and prompty slid into the tree well up to my waist. Trying to free myself, I then fell in up to my chest, before I stopped. Matt woke up to see my head emerging from the ground, with a confused look on his face.
Matt enjoys the view. The White Salmon Glacier, our intended descent, is on the right
All afternoon and evening, avalanches roared down the mountain. Things were heating up, as the sun moved around to the northwest side of the mountain. There were constant sloughs coming down the northwest couloir, off the side of the North Face, and from the Hanging Glacier (unfortunately a rock ridge blocked our view of most of these). Some were impressive, funneling down narrow gorges and shooting chunks of ice and rock out horizontally into space.
Several came down across the traverse onto the North Face, but we took comfort in the knowledge that we'd be on it in the cold morning. We also happily noted that, though our descent route, the White Salmon glacier, had a lot of debris on it, nothing had come down yet. Just as we made that remark, a fast moving debris slide came right down our line of descent.
The North Face from our bivy... note the avalanche plunging over the lower cliff.
We got to bed around 9:30. Neither of us had brought a shovel, so we couldn't dig a flat bivy spot. My spot was definitely sloping, and made sleep difficult. At around 3:15, I awoke. I could see the headlamps of our neighbours down the ridge, emerging from their tent. I sat up. Throughout the night, I had heard the avalanches continue, so I suspected bad things. It was so warm. The sky was hazy, except for a spot right above us, where some stars were visible. I touched the snow with my hand... a thin crust gave way to yesterday's slush! I booted up and took a walk around... I was sinking in just as deep as the previous afternoon - the snow hadn't frozen. I woke up Matt and told him the bad news. After he tromped around in the snow a bit, we both agreed that it would be unsafe to go up.
We looked over towards our neighbours, and wondered what they we going to do. They had planned to leave before us, and yet they still weren't ready. Finally, one of them came over and discussed the situation. Eventually, they decided they wouldn't attempt it either. But they did decide to tromp on up to the base just to check it out. They also mentioned there was another party heading up, that was camped a bit further down the ridge from them.
We waited.
10 minutes later, we spotted a figure walking towards us. A short distance behind him was a man with a strange haircut (yes, we could spot this from a hundred yards away) and skis on his back, flopping loosely back and forth.
The first guy was wearing leather boots and had ice tools dangling from both his hands, as if ready to take on the mountain. When he reached us, we said hi.
"You guys coming up or down?", he asked.
We announced that we had decided not to attempt the face, due to the snow conditions. He seemed confused.
"How far did you guys go up yesterday?"
We explained that we only did the approach yesterday. We asked him how his approach was.
"I sure ain't going back down that way!"
He explained he was planning to meet some friends on the summit, who were coming up the Sulphide Glacier, and
he was going to go down with them. He explained that the skier behind him was not with him. Then he continued on his merry way, seemingly unconcerned at the slushy
snow, or solo glacier travel.
Next, the skier walked by us. He seemed to have a more level head on, although it is questionable how level one's head can be if you are attempting to climb and ski the 50 degree "if you fall you die" North Face - alone. He realized conditions sucked, and said he would just take it as it comes. He said he had always wanted to ski the North Face, and made an excuse for going solo: "All my partners got married!". He continued on up.
Matt and I just relaxed in our bivy sacs an watched the unfolding drama before us. The group of three returned from their mini-excursion and said they had been sinking in up to their knees. They said they were going to head back out to the road sooner rather than later - so they wouldn't have to end up rescuing the other two solo climbers! We nodded in agreement.
Shortly after passing us, the skier put his skis on, and started skinning up. He quickly caught up to and passed the hard-core-two-ice-tool-wielding-I'm-slightly-crazy-watch-out-I-might-kill-you-in-your-sleep-gotta-go-meet-some-friends-on-the-summit guy (who looked sort of like a Terminator). Terminator guy was going slowwww, and we could see he was sinking in deep with each step. More curious was his direction of ascent. Instead of traversing left, we was heading straight up towards a cliff band. One of the group of three, still chatting with us, mentioned that he had said he was going to take a more direct route. Finally, we saw him start backing down, reverse his steps, and begin a horizontal traverse, right towards some crevasses. We could hear the skier and him exchanging words.
The Terminator Guy started back down. The skier traversed over, to get a more direct line of descent down the 200ft he had climbed. So they were both turning around.
Terminator made good time coming down, and was back beside us in only a few minutes. As he passed by, he mentioned that it was certainly doable, but it would take too long.
We then watched the skier attempt to handle the breakable crust. He handled it quite impressively... it looked like he was an excellent skier. Upon his return, we told him about our approach, and he thought about returning to the road our way - except it would be a long walk back to his car.
After this, Matt and I agreed we should head out in the next hour or so. However, we both fell asleep for several more hours, until around 9am.
By 10, we had packed up, and left. Disappointed by the whole affair, we now wanted to see some impressive avalanches and ice fall on our way out. The sun was baking things, and we were hopeful. Down in the flats below the Hanging Glacier, we took a break on a rock and waited for stuff to come down. Nothing. We resorted to some Hans'n'Frans taunting.
"Phil, you know, I think this is a little girly mountain."
"Yah, dat's right. A little girly mountain. Ooo... look at me, I'm so afraid of you!"
Of course, then we would stop when we realized we were setting up some kind of karma problem - and voices loud enough to be heard by the mountain gods, we would blame each other for insulting the mountain.
Occasionaly small roars punctuated the silence, but nothing much. Lower down, we took a more direct line onto the east side of Shuksan Arm, crossing through a pile of avalanche debris that we didn't give second thought to. That's when karma almost caught up.
"Head's up Matt!" I yelled. A hundred feet above us, a large block of hard snow, the size of an oven, was bouncing erratically down the slope. There had been no warning. Matt started running like hell, but the block bounced in his direction. I thought running wasn't the best way to deal with this... instead, I decided to keep an eye on the debris and try to avoid it at the last minute. But then I looked up and saw why he was running... the snow block was being followed by a wet snow slide, directly above me. Adrenaline kicked in and I shot off towards Matt and out of the way of the oncoming slide. Another bouncing snow boulder, the same size, appeared, and it was a tense few seconds trying to run as fast as I could through chunky debris, while keeping an eye on the two airborne chunks of badness. They seemed to follow us, and as they got to within spitting distance, they slowed and rolled instead of bouncing, and one of them came to rest only a few steps away from us. We continued our hasty traverse out of the avalanche zone. The wet slide was nowhere to be seen... either it had stopped, or it was concealed from view by a small snow ridge. We felt better once we reached the trees.
A few more long breaks were taken, waiting for more avalanches at a safe distance. There was a loud collapse on the Hanging Glacier, but it didn't produce much of a display. We crossed over the ski resort, and back to our truck. The Lone Skier was only a minute ahead of us. We had seen him traversing the Shuksan Arm much higher than us... we wondered if this was on purpose.
On the drive out, we passed the longing road mentioned in the Becky approach... there was our Lone Skier, trudging away. We turned onto the logging road, drove up to him and gave him a ride back down to his vehicle (well, almost all the way). It probably would have taken him an hour to cover what we drove... that road goes a long way down! On the way back up, as we rounded a bend, Matt told me to keep an eye on the ski resort, when it appeared in view.
There was a large "Z" on the upper slopes. Matt said he had seen it on the way down, and wondered what it was. We looked at it for a while. It was just weird. There were no marks leading up to it, and it was big, probably several hundred feet across. Too perfect to be intersecting glide gracks. Aliens? You decide.
* more pictures coming soon *