Tour of the North Pickets, Cascades, WA
Sep 19th - Sep 23rd
Summary:
Jeromy Waddell and I spent a five day whirlwind tour through the northern Pickets. Our agenda gave us just five days to climb and stuffed three planned ascents into the itenerary: Challenger, NF Fury, and Luna Peak. All my friends with previous Picket experience had warned me about going into the N. Pickets with just five days. Unfortunately, we were not able to add any extra time. We should have taken their advice. We needed more time.
Everything about the Pickets surpassed our expectations: the beauty, the remoteness, the length of the approach, and the difficulty of travelling cross-country. We found in short order that we had underestimated the approach. The 14.5 mi hike with our overly bloated packs, loaded with technical gear in anticipation of the north face of Fury, pummelled us. As the rain poured down on us on the final miles up to Beaver Pass, we saw our strict time-schedule drip away from us. After escaping the rain at the Beaver Pass shelter, we collapsed with exhaustion. The next day the bushwack, ascent, and traverse of the Eiley-Wiley ridge tormented us with its tempting views of the Picketts, but the continued scree slopes and up-and-down traverse kept our progress from again meeeting our strict plan. When we pulled onto the Challenger glacier late Friday, we knew there was too little time to climb Challenger that night. We axed our NF Fury plans and settled for a scrambled up Challenger the next day followed by the Luna scramble on Sunday.
A couple of long nights of bushwacking and traveling by headlamp ensured that we made it back to the Big Beaver trailhead by late Monday afternoon. This was just in time for us to wait an extra 1.5 hours for the Ross Lake Resort boat driver who had nearly forgotten us.
Agenda:
Day 1:
Hike to Ross Lake Resort
Take power-boat to Big Beaver Trailhead
Hike to Beaver Pass
Crash the night in the shelter, safe from the rain.
Day 2:
Bushwack up Eiley-Wiley Ridge
Find climbers trail up ridge
Spend day traversing up and endless scree slopes
Camp at Challenger Glacier
Day 3:
Climb Challenger
Pack up camp
Descend to Luna Cirque on steep scree slopes
Ascend to and camp at Luna Lake
Day 4:
Hike to Luna-Fury col
Scramble up to Luna Peak
Descend and traverse Luna to Nelson 6100' col above Access Cr. (very steep heather slopes).
Descend to Access Creek on steep scree slopes
Bushwack down to Big Beaver, some by headlamp
Camp on gravel bar just upcreek of Access-Big Beaver Cr. confluence
Day 5:
Short bushwack to Big Beaver trail
Easy 11+ mile hike back to Big Beaver trailhead
Wait for pick-up from Ross Lake Resort.
Photos:
Photos from the PicketsI hauled in my tripod. This helped me capture some lower light pictures. More to come.