Colchuck Peak

Summited Colchuck Peak (8705' - GPS Track) on Saturday with my team during a long climb and descent.  We covered the 14 mile round trip in a single day since we didn't have a backcountry camping permit.  I further experimented with going fast and light, minimizing my carry weight to just the essentials.  Unfortunately, this meant that I forgot my camera during the packing process, but you can see grliepixie's photos on flickr.

Heeding the long day ahead, we drove to the trailhead after work on Friday and slept there (which is allowed without any permit) before waking at 4 AM and hitting the trail a little over an hour later.  With the summer solstice just past, there was already enough light to navigate without the headlamps at that hour.  The first five miles of the route are on a well-maintained trail going up to Colchuck Lake.  We passed several waterfalls and crossed over Mountaineers Creek on a couple of foot bridges during this stage of the climb.  It's a fairly easy grade, gaining about 2000' over 5 miles.  Good warm up for the grueling push ahead.

We stopped at Colchuck Lake to filter some water and refill the water bottles.  We also watched the "sunrise" over Dragontail Peak.  It was about 8 AM.  We were making pretty good time, and we had hardly seen anybody on the trail at all.

Just before the trip, J and I had purchased hydration pouches for our new backpacks, which are "hydration compatible."  I find this designation somewhat silly in that any backpack that can carry a couple of pounds is really "hydration compatible" to the extent that you just have to stick the tube out through the zipper.  But I guess what it really means is that there is a designated place to stow the pouch and a designated (preferably designed so water can get out but not in) slot for the tube to thread.  Anyway, in the spirit of collateral damage, I figured since we have this great feature we might as well spend even more money to use it.  Now the rest of the world has probably known this for years, but what a difference!  Using the hydration tube totally changed the way I drank water on this trip.  With the Nalgene bottles, I would have to stop and sip every once in a while, breaking the rhythm with these "water breaks."  Either that or risk spilling precious water all over myself as I tried to drink in stride.  The tube lets me just bite and suck water in stride with no problems.  I drank more than I usually would, and stayed well-hydrated throughout the day even as the sun came out and beat down on us later.  Our guides on Rainier last year had told us not to use the hydration tubes on the upper mountain because they tend to freeze, and I will still heed their advice for next week's climb, but for anything below 10,000' in the summertime, I'm going for the hydration pouch every time.

Whereas I had plenty of water on this one, I found myself low on food.  I'd underestimated while packing, so I ended up blowing through all of my food by the time we hit the col, and had to mooch off of other team members for the descent.  I also didn't have enough sugary stuff, and found myself feeling a bit down and hypoglycemic before teammates pumped me full of chocolate and candy.

Alright, back to the trail.  After skirting Colchuck Lake to the west, we gaitered up and brought the ice axes out to hit the glacier.  We made it up the moraine and onto a boulder field in an attempt to join up with the glacier proper towards the east side.  It turns out that we didn't have to make the detour across the boulders, as the snow that we had been on did join up with the rest of the glacier higher up, but we couldn't tell that from below.  So we went across the boulder field and out onto the glacier proper at about 6000'.  The next 2700' were steep.  Very steep.  We put the crampons on at this point, as the snow was hard and icy all the way up to the col.  Without them, it would have been too dangerous to continue.

For the next several hours we slogged up the glacier, one step at a time.  I alternated between front pointing on the steeper sections and flat footing on some of the less steep sections.  Of course, the trick is to keep changing it up as you go up to keep your legs and feet from getting too tired in one method or another.  During one of the stops, we had to fix J's crampons since she had recently ditched her plastic boots in favor of the soft, lighter synthetic/leather.  This meant that her crampons needed to be adjusted for a smaller boot, but for the life of us we couldn't figure out how to get it small enough.  She actually went up a pretty steep slope with the crampons maladjusted before I forced her and I to stay behind the others while I figured it out.  As I expected, it was a very simple operation:  just turning over the connector bar did the trick.  The difficulty was in figuring out the trick itself.

So it was that J and I ended up a good 10 minutes behind for the last 1500' of the glacier climb.  We pushed hard though, and by the time we reached the col, we were just behind everyone else.  I think they also took it a little easy, but hey, I can take some credit, right?

The reward for all the hard work at this point was that we were treated to some absolutely beautiful views of the lake we had left behind.  In the increasing morning light, the colors were just the richest blues and greens you could imagine.  The photos barely do the scene justice.

At the col, we removed our crampons and had a snack before heading up for the last half mile to the summit around the back.  Aside from a traverse across a steep patch of snow, it was pretty straightforward and simple.  Some light scrambling across boulders, and then just a walk across an alpine meadow at the top.  The summit itself was reached by taking a short scramble on an outcrop.  It was 2 PM.

We found the Mountaineers' canister there, but the lid was missing, along with the summit register.  I was kind of bummed, since I haven't had the privilege of signing one of those since Mt. Rainier last year.  We didn't find one on Baker, and since I didn't take the last scramble up Wedge, I'd missed that one too.  So it was really too bad.  On the other hand, we were treated to such a beautiful vista that it hardly mattered.  We could see the formidable north face of Mt. Stuart beckoning, as well as the entire valley we had just come up through.  We had seen peeks of Rainier, and we could see the bases of Glacier and Baker as well.  The clouds enveloped their peaks.

While were clearing off of the summit, a couple of Mountaineers from Tacoma were just reaching the summit.  They were kind enough to take a picture and we chatted a bit about our respective groups before heading down.

There's something I'm really coming to realize with every climb I undertake:  the descent is, emotionally if not physically, much more difficult than the ascent.  This one was no exception.  Some teammates put their crampons back on for the descent down the glacier, but I plunge stepped all the way down.  There just isn't much to say about this, other than it sucks to be on a glacier plunge stepping in the hellish heat of the afternoon.  I re-upped the sunblock and all, and tried to keep cool, but in the end it's just uncomfortable.  At least my knees didn't start acting up on this one.

Anyway, as if descending on snow wasn't bad enough, then we ran out of snow and got back onto the trail.  Trail descents are just as bad as snow descents, but for different reasons.  This is where the feet really start to hurt, and if I don't have the laces up nice and tight, my toes will be too free to move and inevitably be slammed into the front of my boot.  Making sure my upper laces are tight really helps this situation, as it takes some of the pressure and redistributes it to my shin and upper foot instead of my toes.  Anyway, I brought the trekking poles for this one because I knew the approach would be so darn long, and I was thankful to have them all the way down.  The nice thing is that I got so heads down during the descent (I was in the back at this point just following everyone) that I missed a whole bunch of landmarks, and before I knew it, we were back across the footbridges.  So there wasn't so much languishing anticipation that usually goes on in my mind during descents.  I hate that feeling, where you're thinking "man, we should have hit that fallen log by now...  where is it?" or "I wonder how much longer it was between the fork and that bridge..."

We hit the cars at just a tad after 8 PM, 15 hours after we'd left.  Not the fastest on the mountain to be sure, but it was still a great climb and a great time with friends.  When the whole endeavor began, we had it in our heads to possibly try for the two-fer with Dragontail, but after taking a look at the route we would have had to take and gauging our tiredness, we decided there was no way.  So we'll be back.

With Colchuck, the 32nd highest mountain in Washington state, that makes a tiny 4 out of the top 100 for me.  Pales in comparison to T's 34, which he celebrated by allowing 1/3 of us to reach the summit before him.  Hah.  I'm glad we got this one out of the way in June, because I think the glacier would fall apart pretty badly later in the summer, with a lot more exposed rock and just general annoyance on that steep section.  All in all a great early-mid season climb.