It's a new year, which is often considered a time to recommit to things. For this new year, I am reaffirming my commitment to my family, sobriety, and mountaineering. This post deals with just the mountaineering part...
I've been doing a bit of exercising in the off season. Starbucks HQ has a full gym on the 7th floor and they offer a variety of exercise classes to employees. I have been taking a "boot camp" class on M/W/F and a combination Spin/TRX class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The classes are 60 minutes each and are in the mornings, which is a good time for working out. It's a great way to get a good start on the day and your body continues to burn calories throughout the day.
Things are picking up again for OSAT. Registration for the 2014 Glacier Climbing Course opened up a few weeks ago and it quickly filled up with 60 students. I am going to volunteer as an instructor and mentor this year. This will help me keep in shape, keep up on the mountaineering skills, stay in touch with others from OSAT, and also allow me to provide some service back to the group.
I wanted to start the new year off with a climb. Last year, I went up to the top of Mt Si on January 1 for a quick day hike. This year, I went deep into the Olympic Mountains with my good friend and climbing partner Chris F. What a difference a year makes!
I had summited The Brothers last August and that was the highlight of my climbing season. I wanted to go back and try to summit in the middle of winter. Admittedly this was a very optimistic goal.
Here was the plan - leave Edmonds around 1 pm Wednesday, January 1. Stop in Kingston to get any last minute supplies, then drive down to the trailhead, hoping to get there before dark. We were then planning on hiking in to basecamp that night, then get up early the next morning to head for the summit. We would then come back and spend another night at basecamp before coming back Friday morning. This way, we wouldn't have to worry about rushing up to the summit and trying to get back to the car that night.
In hindsight, there were a few things wrong with that plan. One is that we were going during the time of the year that has the shortest amount of daylight for climbing (8 hours).
We had a few goals for this trip: try out the new 4-season tent I purchased in November, introduce Chris to the Olympics, see if we could successfully find our way to basecamp at night, and ultimately summit the south Brother.
Things did not exactly go according to plan. As a matter of fact, that pretty much became the theme of the trip. However, it is a achievement in itself that, although many things did not go as expected, we still were successful in many ways, we never were in any real danger, and we made it home safe and sound.
Here's the story:
Basecamp for The Brothers is at 3000 feet and is about 6 miles in from the trailhead. The elevation at the trailhead is just under 700 feet. It's a nice hike to basecamp in the daylight. It's a completely different beast when it is pitch dark.
To make sure we didn't get too lost, I downloaded a GPS track that another hiker had posted online onto my Garmin 62s GPS. I could then use this to keep us on the trail throughout the night. At least that was the theory. Those Garmins are great instruments but they are very complicated and notoriously difficult to master.
Chris and I coordinated on food and supplies for trip. We would be out three days and two nights. I thought there would be snow near the summit (I was counting on it, actually), so we brought all our snow gear - crampons, ice axes, helmets, full zip rain pants, goggles, mittens. It is a very steep ascent to the summit from basecamp (you gain over 3800 feet in about 1.5 miles), so we also brought a 30 meter length of glacier rope and our climbing harnesses, in case we got stuck on a ledge somewhere and needed some moral support to get back down.
In addition to that, we brought the usual camping stuff - tent, two stoves, fuel, food, sleeping bags and pads, gloves, water purifier, headlamps, 10 essentials, extra batteries, plus all the warm clothes we could jam in the packs. When it was all said and done, the pack weighed in at a healthy 47 pounds. That's a pretty hefty weight for the first time out, but it wasn't really a problem. I guess I'm not quite as out of shape that I thought I was...
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| Fully loaded and ready to go |
I picked up Chris at 1:00 pm on New Year's Day. We caught the 1:40 boat out of Edmonds and stopped at the IGA in Kingston for some last minute food. The plan was to get Subway sandwiches and have those for dinner so we wouldn't have to cook up anything. Subway was closed dye to the holiday, so we got a fresh pizza instead, and wrapped it up in foil. Sounded good on paper...
We made it to the Lena Lake trailhead by 4:00, at dusk. There were a lot of people coming back from day hikes and I think they all thought we were looney for heading out just as the light was fading away. We unpacked the car, loaded up our stuff, checked the headlamps, and headed out for what we thought would be a 4 hour hike to basecamp. Things sure are different in the dark...
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The only other time I had been on this trail was in the summer, in the daylight, following a group of about 10 people. This time is was just Chris and me, and Chris hadn't been there before. The trail from the lake descends into the Valley of Silent Men, and once it gets there, it becomes rather difficult to follow. We lost the trail 3 or 4 times, and had to stop, search, check the GPS, search some more... Chris started asking about bears and cougars. I said they aren't around that area (but really, I had no idea...). We kept scanning the brush on either side for reflections from some wild animal's eye's, but luckily, they remained hidden. That would have been kind of scary. We did see a couple of small, fast-moving things that looked like little white ghost-mice scampering across the trail. I think they were little chipmunks, but they really did look white. They were the most ferocious creatures we ran into and I'm certainly thankful for that. My knife was buried deep in the pack and we didn't have any bear spray on us, so our only defense against something fierce would have been the trekking poles. We thought about unhooking the ice axes (those would made formidable weapons), but that seemed like we were inviting trouble if we did that. Sometimes, you just don't want to think about what might be out there following you around.
We weren't too concerned about getting hopelessly lost, since we had plenty of food and supplies. We could set up the tent anywhere there was a flat spot and just continue in the daylight. Besides, its just one big valley out there so as long as we stuck to the creek bed, we'd be fine.
The accuracy of the GPS was pretty bad in there due to the heavy tree cover, so we relied on it a little bit but mostly relied on just our limited vision to pick out the path. Some of the trail looked familiar, but other parts seemed totally new. I soon felt like Aragorn, head down, scanning the forest floor, looking for any sign of unusual wear that indicates a trail. The headlamps worked well enough, and we kept on moving.
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| This is how the trail looks between Lena Lake and basecamp. Now, imagine walking along here with no light at all, other than your little headlamps... |
It was around 9:30 pm and we were bushed. We pitched the new Hilleberg tent, unpacked the pads and bags, then paused to chow down on the cold pizza. It was disgusting! It had become very soggy and gross. I had a couple bites then put it all back. Ick. Wasted weight.
We finally hit the bags at around 11:30 pm. I no longer thought it was a good idea to get up before light and try to head for the summit while it was still dark. The trail from basecamp to the summit is very sketchy and you have to follow ribbons and cairns in order to stay on track. Based on how we had fared this evening, it didn't look like a summit attempt was in the cards for the next day.
We woke up before light the next morning to very cold weather. It hadn't rained, but the inside of the tent was drenched from condensation. Damn! It's a great tent (Hilleberg Kaitum 3) but it's hard to prevent all that condensation on the inside. Next time, we will open up the vents a little more, bring a footprint to add another layer between the tent and the ground, and bring a couple of chamois' to dry things off if necessary.
It was still dark but we decided to sleep in a little longer, then get our bearings in the light. As it so happened, we had found ourselves a groovy little spot deep in the forest.
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| Turned out to be a nice little campsite |
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| The Hilleberg in its element, with the friendly prayer flags to keep it company while we were away |
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| Is this awesome or what?? The rain forest is COOL! |
After a great breakfast of coffee (Christmas Blend VIA) and Pop Tarts, we packed up for the summit bid and headed out. We had not been in any real hurry and as a result, it was around 10 or so by the time we hit the trail.
The path to the summit goes through the woods for a while, then comes out into a field of heavy brush. Again, we misplaced the trail a few times, which cost us some precious daylight. This was getting frustrating! We would be following the ribbons and cairns, and then the path would simply disappear and we would be surrounded by this brush with no obvious path forward. It was a good thing we didn't try this in the dark - we would have been miserable.
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| Hey bro, toss me some of that GORP! By the way, do you see a trail there? Neither did we... |
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| We took this opportunity to top off the water reservoirs in case we got stranded further up where there is no reliable water source |
We finally cleared the brush and began the trek through the remains of a couple of forest fires that burned here 10-15 years ago. Once passed this part, we started up the creek bed that leads to the scree fields. I like this part because you are basically bouldering up a steep, narrow gulley so you gain elevation quickly.
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| Site of an old burn |
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| "The hills are alive...!!" |
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| The view from our turning around point, where we had lunch. This view is pointed East Southeast, looking across the canal, towards Olympia and the southern end of Puget Sound. |
There was a lot of very dry wood up there on the slopes and Chris had the wonderful idea of gathering up a bunch and bringing it back down with us for a fire that night. That was a good plan, since it started raining soon after we started coming back down, and by the time we hit the campsite at 4, it was a steady downpour. We tossed our stuff into the vestibules of the tent then crashed on our sleeping bags to wait out the rain. The tent was certainly in its element at that point - it took the rain with no issues at all and we felt quite safe and comfy in there while it was getting pretty stormy and wet outside.
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| Chillin' while it's pouring outside |
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| Tent Fever!! |
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| That's the sun rising on the twin peaks of The Brothers, as seen from our campsite |
As you can imagine, the trip back was completely different in the daylight.
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| One of four log bridges in the Valley of Silent Men. These were all covered with ice on the way back, so it was a fun game trying not to slide off |
We were able to follow the trail with no problems at all, and it took us less than four hours to cover what had taken 5 1/2 hours during the night, and that included a good half hour of sitting at the lake, eating PB&J's and soaking in the sun.
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| Lena Lake |
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| Digging that sunshine! |
Thanks, Chris F., for the journey!
KCM&DS
-Scott
