We began our descent - quite a steep descent, actually, into the high basin (turns out, this was the basin at the head of Foam Creek). After the descent, we traversed around the head of the basin on a faint but reasonable footpath, until we were directly below a low point on the ridgeline above. Here, the trail turned sharply left and headed directly uphill to the col in the ridge. Starting to feel a bit more weary from the distance and elevation we'd covered so far, we stopped for a rest and snack break before tackling the ascent.
Approaching crossover point
It was only a hundred, maybe a hundred-and-fifty feet of uphill to the col - but it was steep, much steeper than any of the cushy trails we'd been on, and it was a bit of a slog. Fortunately, it was over soon, and we reached col, which turned out to be quite rounded and grassy. By now, the clouds had rolled fully back in and we could see nothing of the views on the other side [of the ridge].
Locating...
Descending from the grassy col, the terrain soon changed into a wasteland of scree and boulders, and the footpath disappeared. From here, it looked like we'd have to do full-on routefinding - something that would be made more difficult by the limited visibility.
Scree and Boulders everywhere
We were getting to the point where we wanted to start considering potential campsites. We didn't have a fixed location in mind; instead, we wanted to strike a balance between getting as close to Glacier Peak as possible while not over-extending ourselves on our first day. That point, obviously, would only be known as we assessed how we felt as the day progressed. The best-case scenario was for us to reach a point on Glacier Peak's south ridgeline known as 'Glacier Gap'. That point was still about 3km (2 miles) away, and along an unknown and unseen route and over unknown, untrailled terrain.
It was now 5pm, we'd travelled about 19km (11 miles), climbed over 4000 feet, and we'd been on the go for a full nine hours. So, we were beginning to feel a bit weary. We all agreed that trying to make it to Glacier Gap for our camp was stretching it a bit too far.
Around a bump
After consulting the topo map, we agreed to proceed a little farther towards Glacier Gap - not losing any elevation if we could help it - and stop to camp near the next body of water that had some nice flat ground next to it.
Our new home
Careful to maintain our elevation, we continued on - countouring west out of the basin of boulders and onto a grassy shoulder below a hillock. Travel over the grassy terrain was actually kind of nice - firm and grippy and preferable to the loose footing over boulders.
We climbed across the grassy terrain and then espied a sharp gravel ridge in the near distance - a glacial moraine, it looked like. According to our maps, there should be a small lake on the other side of it, and so we scrambled up in that direction. Cresting over the top, we were greeted to a view of a rather bleak-looking basin surrounded by bare-rock outcrops. A few tiny remnants of snowfields were tucked beneath some of the outcrops, but otherwise it was all bare ground. In the center was a comma-shaped body of water, draining out into a small creek. The near ground immediately adjacent to the lake looked pretty flat. Our new home?
courtesy BConnell
Heading down to Lakeshore
We headed down towards the lakeshore for a better look. Certainly the tentsite locations looked promising, but as I neared the lake itself, I noticed that its color was a light teal. That meant very fine rock particulate - so-called glacial flour - was suspended in the lake. Clearly there was a bit of active glacier somewhere above, and its grinding against the bedrock beneath was generating the material now suspended in the water. My concern with this was the implication on water purification - this stuff had the potential to make our water filtering activities very unpleasant.
I voiced my concerns to the others, but in the end we decided to camp here anyway. No one wanted to go farther, and no one wanted to give up the distance and elevation expended to get here.
Another view of camp
Clouds swirled around us, if not a bit of outright drizzle, as we set up our tents. Afterwards, I went over to have a close look at the water. It certainly didn't look all that appetizing in the flat light, coming across with a pallid sort of gray-green quality. I didn't even want to try sucking the stuff up through my filter.
Instead, I chose to explore a bit. Normally I'd expect there to be lots of snow left at this elevation at the end of June, but this year there was virtually none. Note the word 'virtually' - there *were* a few tiny patches, and I figured that if I could locate the drainage from one of those snow patches, maybe there would be enough of a trickle for us to use. The water from a snow patch would not have any glacial flour in it, meaning it would be much more amenable to filtering.
Sun at filtering time
I hopped over the lake's outlet creek and followed along its western shore, looking for small trickles into it. Sure enough, about 300 yards (300m) north of camp, I found a couple of small flows draining down to the lake from the west that seemed to have enough water and enough flow to work. I called the others over to assist.
Gloomy Upper Mountain
There was still some silt in the water, but it was far clearer than the lake. My ceramic filter element was nearing the end of its life, making pumping more difficult, but by rotating the filtering duty and cleaning the filter often, we slowly managed to refill all of our water reserves. We were even treated a few nice splashes of evening sunshine as we did so.
Warm evening glow
The drizzle held off and the sun periodically appeared as we returned to camp and made up our dinners. Looking higher upmountain, we could only see a little ways before thick clouds blocked our views. We could see a slice of the remnant of the White Chuck Glacier, ice fully exposed with no snow cover whatsoever. Above this, we examined what little of the cliffs we could see to try and decipher what our route for tomorrow would be.
Interactive trackmap with photo points - Glacier Peak South Route Day 1 - click map to view
Glacier Peak South Route Day 1 - Climb Data
Start Time:
6:56a.m.
End Time:
5:52p.m.
Duration:
10h56m
Distance:
20.04 km
(12.45 mi)
Average Speed:
1.8 km/hr
(1.1 mph)
Start Elevation:
2057ft
(627m)
*
Max Elevation:
6608ft
(2014m)
*
Min Elevation:
2057ft
(627m)
*
End Elevation:
6436ft
(1962m)
*
* : +/- 75 feet
Total Elevation Gain:
4877ft
(1487m)
*
Total Elevation Loss:
500ft
(152m)
*
* : +/- 75 feet
Elevation Graph
