mtnsaremyhome

So I finally have something to write about. Louie Dawson and I just got back from a three day trip to the southern pickets. I'm still recovering and still sore as I write this. This trip was the realization of a two year dream that began with a photo. This trip was incredible: incredibly beautiful, incredibly exhausting, incredibly scary at times, incredibly painful and incredibly rewarding.

We will start with the back story; the picket range is here in Washington State in the North Cascades National Park, the Southern Pickets are east and south of the ever popular Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan. Although these mountains are very close to Bellingham and even Seattle for that matter, they see very little traffic on a given year (Shuksan aside). Most of this traffic is backpackers and alpine climbers. None of these peaks are easy however, the names are very telling, Challenger, Furry, Terror, Despair, Damnation, even though most of these peaks are only in the 7,000ft range the valleys start around 1,000 so the local relief is impressive and many glaciers abound. Once we started trolling the internweb looking for trip reports and information it became evident very quickly that this is a rough and remote area. Many trips had horrible tales of bushwhacking through the jungle for days, abandoning gear, or small episodes of starvation, thankfully we were able to avoid most of these.

Steph Abegg’s first ascent of a Thead of Ice in 2008 started the whole project; she mentions that “a challenging ski descent might be possible in the right conditions”. John Scurlock’s website has one photo in full winter conditions, but the 1984 photo was the closest to spring we could find and that's what stuck in my mind. I don't know there was just something about the way the snow snakes down between the two pointy towers that captivated me. I think it’s one of the most esthetic lines I've seen in a long time.

So we’ve both been dreaming about this line and finally a nice weather window and three days off from work li ne up, we’ve had a pretty high snow year here in the pacific north wet, so it seemed like as good a time as any to have a look. We scoured the internet more and found as many maps and descriptions as possible. After some scrambled late night packing we were ready to go. It was going to be a long way in no matter where the snow line was so we went as light as seemed reasonable. TLT 5’s, waybacks, bivi sac, one alpine axe, one technical axe, two whippets, helmet etc. and just barely enough climbing gear to actually be useful. Our rack consisted of 5 nuts 1 pin, two cams, two sticks as dead men, and one ice screw. With what little information we could find on what we might really need it seemed reasonable we weren't expecting to spend much time on rock, in retrospect, a little more would have been nice, but such is life.

My 45L pack was busting at the seams lol, with skis 50lbs of gear is heavy no matter how you slice it. We got up early and headed in. The 1^st part of the trail is pretty straight forward besides a few stream crossings, although the last one has some butt-scooting across a log15ft off the water that was interesting. From there the real “fun” started, the trail gets much harder to follow and steep, very steep for 1,700ft this was some of the steepest bushwhacking I’ve ever done not to mention it was hot, big packs etc…Whippets were a must and we were very happy not to get lost, a lot of small cliffs abound and many roots made progress slow. The vegetation on the floor can make navigation difficult also. We did find this crazy big tree though, biggest I have ever see in my life. Once we made it finally to snowline 7hrs had passed, I think we both burned more energy that we though, finally able to skin we headed towards our spot for the night. We were expecting rock but only found snow. We dug in and got situated for the bivy ahead and the early morning the following day.

We were up with the sun and had a quick breakfast and headed across the valley towards the Otto-Himmel col, the gateway to our objective. Time and distance passed pretty quickly and we both did our poor Ueli Steck impressions up the slope toward the top. A ways up we were kind of surprised to find a cliff in our way with steep walls on both sides, though only 10ft high or so there was also a 10ft moat below it, after some recon we decided it was a no go. A little ways back we had seen a rock gully that looked promising so down and then up we went. The 3^rd class quickly got more difficult, I build an anchor and Louie belayed me on a pitch of 5^th class terrain. Ski boots, crampons and a pack made it interesting. I made the main couloir again without incident and belayed Louie up. From there it was a quick skip to the top and then some fantastic steep skiing down the other side, though even at 55 degrees it was child's play to later.

We arrived at the bottom of our objective and it looked good, we had burnt a little time on the rock, but we were still in very good standing. Ahead lay 1,200ft of snow and ice to the summit, we switched to booting with crampons and tools and off we went again. The steep snow was agreeable enough and we moved higher and higher, although many places were on their way to this couloirs namesake. We tried to be mindful that “whatever you go up you must go down” so when we found a large cornice at the very top we decided to ski directly below and to the side of it. This was some of the steepest snow terrain I have been on in the range of 65 degrees After some discussion we decided that building an anchor in the rock and that ski-belaying was the best and safest option. The photo at the top details our route.

After some maneuvering into his skis I belayed (let out rope, but not under load) Louie down with the rest of the rack. He put in an anchor, then it was my turn and I skied down gingerly and past him to another location and built an anchor. Transitioning to belay or rappel and the back a few times was one of the more scary parts of the day. The runnels and steepness I had just skied on belay did not make skiing feasible for Louie, so he wrapped down to me, and we slung a chock stone and rappelled down to the next patch. We then slowly “skied” (sideslip, ice axe plant, sideslip-repeat) in uncomfortably steep terrain quite a bit till the final rollover; Louie scraped what little snow there was off the bulge so he suggested I rap once more and I took that advice, the “picket” came in handy! I T-slotted it behind a moat wall and then met him further down below. We both finally made some joyous jump turns and picked our way toward the bottom. Success and relief! A serious new ski decent in the pickets had just been made by two early-twenty-something-yearold-hooligans. To be honest we were more relieved than anything and happy to drink and fuel, our mouths were dry and it had been too long since we last ate. We switched and began the long boot back home up the North side of the Otto-Himmel. Once we reached the top we decided a hot drink was in order, we had found a food cache on the way up from some years prior that the marmots had not destroyed for some reason and made the most wonderful, weird, hot powdered egg-nog I have ever had. Then we descended down to the cliff that had been impassable on the way up, slung a good horn and rapped again. Some of our best sloppy turns were down and out the south west side of the Outto-Himmel.(As far as we know no one else has skied any of these either?)

We found some running snowmelt water, filled up and headed back across the valley, we traversed as much as possible with skis, then went to skins, then back to booting finally in the dark back to our bivi. What was left of our 27oz of summer sausage and 2lbs of cheese and potatoes were absolutely fantastic under the stars. It had been a 16hr day and I slept like a log.

We finally stumbled out into the sunlight around 8 and had a leisurely breakfast. We packed up camp and headed out, we booted up to grab some extra turns and with still-too-heavy packs made our way through sloppy turns back to snow line and the hellish decent back out. Even with diligent descending we lost the trail on the way down, however we soon re-found it. We also chose to rap once more on a very scary exposed moss cliff. We our descent progress was matching our ascent speed lol. Many hours later we made it back to the streams which were much higher than before. They required more attention on this crossing and on the final one we used a different big log to butt scoot across. More walking and finally we made it back to the car, warm beer never tasted so good.

Its trips like this that remind me just how lucky I am to be happy, healthy and able to experience all the beauty that life has to offer. I am truly blessed to reside where I do.