Waist High Clouds
Mountaineering: Rainy Pass to Copper Basin
View of Entiat Range from Tenmile Pass. Peaks from left to right: Buckskin Mountain, Marmot Pyramid, Mount Maude (summit obscured by cloud), Mount Fernow (summit obscured by cloud), Copper Mountain. <br>
On May 3 Ithaca College Immersion Semester Program (ISP) students wake to a rainy lightless day at 3 a.m. By midday there will be no rational choice but evacuate from the mountains.
During the past few weeks, our expedition has reached locations far removed from any road and followed trails that are too narrow for ATV or snowmobile passage. The places we find are remote and inaccessible – this was a world guarded by mountains.
Like the highest levels of existential thought, these mountains are vaguely known by many, but only experienced by people willing to push the limits of their own physical and mental faculties. Ultimately, expeditionary mountaineering tests any definition of reality.
Travel through these mountains can be painfully exhausting, but your five senses will tell you that the experience is well worth the trouble. To climb through the North Cascades is something like traveling through a crisp, untrammeled and idyllic winter landscape. At times, perhaps when I’m most exhausted, I can’t help but imagine a claymation version of myself trekking across the set of a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer christmas special; the stop-motion animation would definitely provide some added breaks from hiking, which I desire very much. The picturesque beauty of these mountains was mixed to include a dash of the impossibly rugged Himalayan wilderness that presides at the top of our world, and travel though these mountains is cumbersome. Here, in the North Cascades, the world can be seen as it truly is – elegant and deadly. The relationship between elegance and mortal risk become linked here, and out here in mountains, the sense of beauty and danger gets cranked up exponentially higher.
On this May morning we are camped outside Holden, Wash. It took 14 days of mostly high alpine travel to get to this town. Holden is a converted mining camp, which is now used as a Lutheran ministry. It is very small and isolated, the village has no telephones, cable television or cell phone reception, and there isn’t any road connecting to Holden, the main street dead ends in either direction. Aside from the postal service and their community dock at the edge of Lake Chelan, Holden is completely cut off from the outside world. The journey to get to this incredibly remote town is in and of itself worth reflection.
SR 20 to Buckskin Ridge
Group members beginning the expedition. Photo by Andy Black
We started this expedition on April 19 at Rainy Pass off of SR 20 – the North Cascades Highway. At Bridge Creek Trailhead, we learn volumes from those first steps on a trail completely covered by several feet of snow. Like infants first standing in a new world, it’s important to focus on every step.
Our first lesson is just how unforgiving alpine travel is. This is dramatically illustrated in the hard face-first fall that one student takes within her first few strides of the several week expedition. Carrying a 75-pound backpack, every step is challenging, it feels like the snow is grabbing at your ankles and wishing to toss you off balance.
When the day is over we have all experienced postholing, which is when a snow traveler unexpectedly steps into unconsolidated snow. The façade of a snowy, even-planed traveling surface gets proven false quickly. The snow often collapses and consumes whichever leg is carrying the majority of your weight. The rest of your body follows the laws of impetus, plummeting down with unexpected force. At worst a posthole can break your knee; at best you are momentarily immobilized until you either dig yourself out or have a hiking partner pull you up.
On the second day of the expedition, we encounter elevation gain, which is a challenge much more taxing than just hiking on flat snow.
Hiking steep terrain comes with the risk of falling from a considerable height, and it adds the challenge of finding routes through high piled snow. Gaining nearly 2,000 feet of elevation, and traveling only four miles and hiking for a total of 14 hours straight, we finally arrive at our destination, McAllister Lake.
Tonight my tent group is too exhausted to cook dinner. Instead we have peanut butter, chocolate chips and summer sausage. Despite not eating well, I sleep like a very old man who has been up past midnight – or maybe car crash survivor better sums it- exhausted and fragmented into an nightmare laden slumber. By the end of this expedition we will crush days long days like this one.
Waiting for rappel before descending McAllister Pass. Photo by Andy Casler
After the abuse of that first 14-hour day, the group decides to take a layover day to clean out blisters and rest sore muscles. During the layover we focus on completing as many student lead lessons as we can. Everyone in the class is required to teach three 45-minute-long lessons and three 15-minute-long lessons.
The next day the class makes quick work of ascending McAllister pass. However the downside was of the pass is the risky part. To get down we fix ropes and rappel down the pass one by one. The process takes hours and as time progresses the sun is warming the snow, and we are facing higher risk of avalanche with every moment. We finally get off of the pass at 11 a.m. during this sunny day.
The North Cascades’ features rough terrain, making for very unforgiving travel. In just a few days, a climber can gain 3,000 feet only to lose 5,000 feet and then regain 5,000 feet, but only to find his or herself losing that elevation all over again. For days and days it goes like this. The challenge of traveling here is also a part of what makes these mountains so special; groups come here to train for Himalayan expeditions.
The trek to Holden was filled with the strains of freezing-cold water crossings, more postholes than can be counted, and most dangerous of all, taking a wrong turn up a steep ice-covered avalanche chute, not wearing crampons, with purchase very hard to find.
- Ten Mile Pass as seen from Fourth Of July Basin . Photo by Andy Black
The group was attempting to cross Ten Mile Pass to Holden Valley. The intended route was crossing the pass at its lowest point. This involved hiking into thick tree cover. In the trees our group’s student-leader-of-the-day got disoriented when trying to find our intended route up the pass. Finally we ascend a taller, steeper and more exposed icy route.
Climbing the avalanche chute above Ten Mile Pass. Photo by Andy Black
Much of this climb is through hard-frozen-icy snow that can barely be penetrated by the but of an ice-axe or a boot. When it becomes clear that crampons are necessary for the climb, the group is already too committed to put them on. This terrain is much too steep.
Will Holets, another ISP student, and I are at the front of the hiking group, and we trade off with each other as lead step-kicker. In these awful conditions, making steps takes at least five boot kicks just to make a tiny toehold in the icy snow. Our route is through a recent avalanche’s deposition zone. The avalanche left the slope laden with snow and ice boulders. Falling here could lead to a 600 ft slide. Even with proper self-arrest, cuts and cracked ribs are probable.
Chris Pelchat pointing his ice axe towards Buckskin Ridge and Mount Maude. Photo by Andy Casler
“As late morning approached and the sun was reaching its peak all we could do was pray for clouds to block its hot rays from melting and loosening the snow beneath our feet. We were in a life threatening situation,” Radley said afterward.
At the top of this avalanche chute strong wind gusts gave cacophonous, shrieking whistles, providing me a permanent reminder of the potential for a horrid turn of events that could have left a member of the group injured, an also a better sense for the magnitude of challenge the group had overcome. We came within 200 feet of summiting Ten Mile Mountain, and received a beautiful view of the mountain that we were scheduled to ascend, Mount Maude.
May 3, the day we had to turn back
Village of Holden, Wash. Photo by Andy Black
This expedition has planned for 22 days worth of food and supplies for 12 people. All of the gear equates to many hundred pounds of supplies between us. So much weight means there is no way we can hope to carry all the food, fuel and personal gear. To make this three-week expedition possible we arrange for two seven-day rations and one eight-day ration. The first time we restock is in Stehekin, Wash. The town is located on the north shore of Lake Chelan. The town Stehekin is inaccessible by road. The only ways in or out are by foot, boat or flight.
Having spent the last two days getting our final re-ration together the group is well rested. Now leaving Holden, the day ahead of us is expected to be the most physically demanding trek of the expedition. The rain in getting heavier as morning light breaks.
Already soaking wet, we begin this ascent of Copper Creek Basin. The plan is to camp 2526 feet higher than Holden and 3.73 miles away from the town, just below Buckskin Mountain. On the next day, May 4th, we should climb and descend Buckskin ridge. Gaining and losing a total of 4,600 feet – 2,300 feet up and 2,300 feet down, at the top of Buckskin we would be looking at the north face of Mt. Maude, a mountain that the famous climber and climbing guide author Fred Beckey characterized as a “dominating hulk” of the North Cascades. In the next two days after that, we plan to climb up the eastern face of that colossal rock.
The Copper Basin climb is complicated by snow. First the trail we need to follow is entirely covered. We locate the trail by looking for felled trees and hold the path for a few hours. Hiking for more than an hour, we’re moving fast and gain lots elevation, but the steady morning rain turns to snow. Now it’s getting much colder. To get warm again we stop and put on extra layers of clothing. In the time it takes to get into my backpack, put on a long sleeve shirt plus another jacket, the top of my pack is filled with several inches of snow. Though we’re under tree cover, these are blizzard conditions. We waste little time and continue to boot-pack through increasingly deep snow. Within minutes we come to an avalanche chute. After 14 days of navigating alpine terrain, the protocol of crossing an avalanche chute is nearly common sense: The leader of the day (L.O.D.) walks across the chute first, sets their backpack down at a safe zone — which is usually in the trees on the other side of the crossing, we then cross the chute one by one. This limits the risk of injury if an avalanche were to occur, because if we all crossed together the whole group would be exposed to the risk of an avalanche, simultaniously.
The avalanche chute crossing at Copper Basin comes with hard pounding wind and snow. Gusts are estimated at 70 to 80 mph. The whipping snow grinds against my checks, I worry about losing my footing and falling down the avalanche chute and the pressure of a strong gust seems to compress my eyeballs deep into their sockets. It’s no wonder why ancient cultures decided that mountains hold mischievous spirits that delight in the pain of humans; local folklore holds that witches live high in these mountains.
After crossing the chute, we arrive at the edge of an alpine meadow. At the meadow we are reintroduced to the driving snowstorm. There is already a new layer of fresh snow that is 3 ½ feet deep.
Wading through what is now waist deep snow we continue the ascent in the snowstorm. The gusts of wind are deafening and this is the most strenuous hiking we have ever dealt with. Steps wash away as you try to maintenance them for the people behind you, and with a pack that’s pushing 80 pounds, every step taken is agonizingly laborious. To make it even harder, for the first time in the trip, my pants keep unbuckling and falling down despite my tight belt. I’m not the only one who this happened to, but I think no one else had them fall to knee level.
After crossing the alpine meadow we regroup in a cluster of trees and begin to push straight up a 45-degree slope. After what seemed to be an eternity, OAL major Will Holets’s finally takes a break from leading.
I am now leading and kicking steps for the rest of the group. Kicking into three feet of fresh snow is infuriating. Steps wash away when you add weigh and there is good way to support them other than completely rebuilding it. The person in second, the sweeper, doesn’t have it much better they’re just plowing less snow.
Kicking steps in the blizzard at Copper Creek Basin was more like trying to make steps in baking flour, flat surface can be achieved, but it will collapse as soon as pressure is applied down on it. Every step washes away underneath your feet and it goes on like this step after step. We climb across the snow blocked alpine meadow and now the group is pushing up the right side of an avalanche chute. Despite all the physical work of sweeping and leading kicking steps, I am freezing in a hard charging wind. While snowboarding I’ve sometimes had my gloves freeze solid on my hands, but this is the first time in life that all the clothing on my body is frozen stiff. Kicking steps through the high piled snow, I cut up through some pine trees to my right. On a ledge now, I probe the snow with my ice axe trying to work rightward through the cluster of trees. Maybe 15 steps into the traverse, in one probe, my ice axe plunges deeper than the bottom of my feet. The path ahead looks unsafe. The terrain below me is somewhat clear of trees, which is worrying. If snow was always stable there, there would be full grown trees. A fall from here would be very dangerous, and being consumed by an avalanche could be fatal. With the ultra fluffy snow consistency I decide to wait for a professional opinion. Turning around I see Professor Chris Pelchat come in to view. He looks where I’m standing, “This is sketchy!” he says.
Pelchat turns the group around, and we work our way a little higher to take cover in the tree wells above. Many people are very cold, despite having just climbed harder and faster than they ever had during the whole trip. I put on what layers of clothing I have left, the snow is still driving down. It’s decided that everyone needs to regroup in a cluster of trees 200 yards below.
During the descent snow and wind combine to make a blinding veil that cuts at your cheeks. After the climb down Pelchat addresses his class. “So this changes everything!” he begins.
Most of the announcement is unintelligible to me as Pelchat yells over tremendous winds. I gather that the avalanche risk is too great to continue, that we are going to hike as fast as possible to get back to tree cover, and that I should keep watching the person in front me.
Halfway across the alpine meadow Andy Black and I notice a small avalanche coming down above us. Luckily it’s a minor slide and does not reach us, but the sight makes my knees quake and heartbeat quicken, scared and exhausted a few prayers come to mind. Thoughts of death are near. The wind is much stronger on the race back to tree cover and flatter ground. The blasting gusts come in waves. They are often strong enough blind me and I get knocked down more than once. When I can finally get to my feet and vision is restored I make sure that the person in front of me is still in line. After a couple of these gusts I see the whole line of mountaineers get knocked down like upended dominoes, but every time we stand up again.
Andy Black and Chris Pelchat with frozen beards after the blizzard. Photo by Andy Casler
It’s hard work, but after a very stressful and fast paced hike we are back in the trees. The L.O.D. takes the opportunity to let the class eat some food and drink water. I have food, but all of my water was frozen in the blizzard. After the break the L.O.D. maintains the pace of mad dash back to Holden. Some instinctual force says that even though being back the trees means we are out of avalanche danger, our hiking must be as quick as possible, and the L.O.D. forgets to arrange for another packs-off break. This rush down didn’t need to happen, but I also don’t hear a single person request a break. We are all mildly shell-shocked.
The end of mountaineering comes with some regrets. We never got to learn how to travel in a rope team, use crampons or climb on a glacier. After returning to civilization, the expedition aspect of this last trip is lost, as cell phones and laptops must be used to plan a rock climbing trip and inform family members that we’re still alive after a huge storm in the mountains.
There was one very important lesson that was imparted on every student after we decided that alpine travel was no longer safe enough to be an option. The lesson is that adapting to new facts is more important than finishing what you started out to do. If properly applied this lesson can save a lot more than just 12 lives.
Back at Holden we meet in the main lodge of the old mining town. Amid the Lutheran Ministry serving a town dinner, Ithaca College ISP students decide that high alpine travel anywhere in the area is unsafe because of all the fresh snow. The Lutheran’s let us stay in the yurts next to the campground and the next morning we take the Chelan Lake ferry to Chelan, Wash.
Breakfast on evacuation day in a yurt outside of Holden, Washington. Students from left: Will Holets, Wes Judd, Lisa Radley, Andrew Casler. Photo by Andy Black
In the subsequent days we decide to go rock climbing in Leavenworth, Wash. There we meet famous climber and one of the first men to ascend the more technically difficult north face of Mount Maude, Fred Beckey. We see him at a rock climbing area called The Playground, Beckey is there because he also couldn’t hike with all the new snow.
Mount Maude was first ascended by John Burnett and Hermann F Ulrich in July of 1932, and its much more difficult north face route was first ascended on June, 17 1957 by Fred Beckey, Don Gordon, John Rupley and Herb Stanley.
