After our trip to Luahna, where everything went according to plan, and we got back to civilization in time for burgers and shakes at my favorite diner, I was feeling pretty competent at this business of mountain meandering.
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| Charlie on the Fisher Creek Trail |
And perhaps it's the mismatch of expectations and reality that kills me.
After just over a thousand feet of bushwhacking through what was advertised to be "open forest", I was already grumpy. In hindsight, the sub-par mood had started at the car, when my climbing partner had decided that he was going to bring an 18 liter pack for the trip. It's true that I didn't need, strictly speaking, every item on and in my forty-ish liter pack that weekend, but I don't tend to call a hat and gloves "optional" when planning on bivying at 8000'. But I digress.
That "open forest" had already applied pine needles over every square inch of my body and a goose-egg sized bump to my shin. And the flies and heat were starting to drive me mad.
To add to the stress, the gully where my ever-optimistic climbing partner had predicted water contained zilch. This on one of the sunniest, hottest days of the year as we headed up the 4000'/mile incline for another 3000' of southwest facing fun. And no, we hadn't refilled our bladders at the river.
Well, 3000' doesn't take fit people all that long to ascend, and we were pretty sure that we'd be able to access the glacier at the top of this gully. So we continued upward.
My climbing partner, who in addition to being the most optimistic one I've ever had is also the kindest, gives me credit for espying the trickle of water we found at 5400'. And when I say trickle, I'm not kidding. It took about 10 minutes to get 1.5L into my water bladder. Drip, drip, drip.
The Optimist was reluctant to take his bladder out of his pack to fill it because he would have to completely re-pack his pack, and getting everything into and out of a stuffed-to-the-gills 18-liter pack is apparently the climber's equivalent of flossing your teeth: something you'd really rather not do more than once per day. So he proceeded to perform what I can only describe as the "avian parent" to his water bladder. Yes -- he extracted the water from a pool not much bigger than his face (we're waiting for the giardia to hit any day now...) with his mouth and then into the bladder via the hose. Not something I've seen done before, and even slower than waiting for the trickle to fill. (Drip, drip, drip).
The luck with the water heartened us and helped us through the next 1500 feet. We even stumbled across an even bigger trickle (still not big enough to call a stream) where we loaded up on more water.
But the heat, the flies (and horseflies! I swear I've never seen any horseflies in the Cascades, but between the two of us we killed at least a dozen during the trip), and constant fear of slipping took its toll.
"This isn't fun," I declared at a particularly low point.
"I'm sorry," the Kindest Optimist replied. "You're right. We don't have to do this."
I'll plead the fifth and avoid providing an accurate description of my state at this point, but my lower back had already been rubbed raw by my pack; my left food couldn't get an edge at all on this stupidly-hard-packed dirt because an achilles problem had forced me to wear a trail running shoe on that foot; the flies continued; the sun only intensified through the afternoon. Maybe you can guess.
"I guess I'm willing to go up to the col, at least."
Our plan was to bivy at the col just east of the summit of Cosho, where the Kimtah Glacier reaches the ridge. We just had to continue up another 1500' of frustration to get there.
There were all sorts of rocks on the way up that gully: vertical strips of softball sized-sized rocks that all moved when you tried to traverse them, covering your ankles and making you wonder if you would escape. Hard-packed dirt-sand that wouldn't hold an edge unless you kicked steps repeatedly. Solid rocks whose only edges were covered by small, loose rocks. If I'd been in any sort of mood to do so, I would have taken pictures to remember all the different ways in which rock could be so terrible.
Keeping all muscles tensed throughout the ascent was exhausting: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
When we finally reached the col, we sat and ate and in subdued conversation. Only after 45 minutes did we even think about heading up to the summit. It certainly didn't look like class 3 from our position. Would we be able to make it up there and back before dark?
Fortune smiled upon us at this point, however, and given us a very pleasant trip up to the summit from the col, the best 400' we'd had all day, containing just one "move" that gave us pause.
And the sunset and moonrise that we got to see from the summit might have made it all worthwhile.
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| Moonrise over Kimtah Peak at sunset from Cosho's summit |
"We don't have to climb Kimtah tomorrow," I said, even though that had been the original plan.
"Nope, if it's not fun, we shouldn't do it. Unless that's what we want to do," said the Kindest Optimist, in his usual accommodating manner.
Since I'm usually willing to get up earlier than my climbing partner, I asked him when he'd be interested in waking up on Sunday.
"Any time after 5 a.m."
"All right; I'll wake up you up when I'm ready to get up."
Generally I'm in favor of getting an early start; whatever's needed to accomplish the next day's objectives, as long as I get at least five or six hours of sleep. But sometimes exhaustion and sleep deprivation trump summit ambitions,. And despite having a very nice evening, I still hadn't forgotten the day's suffering. I didn't set an alarm for the next morning, but I knew that I'd be able to wake up around 5 without one.
But I hadn't accounted for our visitor.
From within my bivy bag bed, I heard some bustling about outside. An animal? We hadn't seen so much as a marmot since we'd left Easy Pass. It was the Kindest Optimist, responding to an invasion by one "large rat." My sleep-infected brain knew this didn't sound right, but nevertheless was mortified by the thought of a rat running around and nibbling on our gear.
I might get up pretty easily in the morning, but the middle of the night is a different story. By the time I became fully conscious after feeling what I thought was a rat trying to nibble on my wrist (?!), Optimist had already secured our helmets on top of trekking poles, his pack on top of two poles, and all of our boots and his water bladder in his bivy bag.
The maybe-not-always-Kindest Optimist was blathering something about the morality of trying to kill a rat that was after our gear with an ice ax. I wasn't convinced that the likelihood of death was great enough to merit debate, but in the end he decided to refrain from violence.
I pulled my pack into my bag, turning it into something resembling a pillow and got a few glimpses over the next few hours of the "rat", which looked much more like a pika to me. As the restless night progressed I swung from "no need to do Kimtah" to something like "well, maybe if we can bandage up my back somehow..."
When I looked at my watch around 5:30 a.m. I felt like I'd barely slept; when Charlie pointed out the beauty of the sunrise a bit later, I caught a glimpse, grunted, and went back to sleep.
It wasn't until almost 7:30 a.m. that we started getting out of our bivy bags, a very late start indeed. Fortunately the damage from the pika was minimal: a few nibbles from the handles of my trekking poles, a small hole in the Optimist's pack, and a bit of chomping on the bite valve for my water bladder (which, lucky for me, didn't prevent me from drinking any of my water).
I won't bore you with the rest of the details except to say that we opted for back bandaging and optimistic time projections, which added up to a trip to Kimtah's summit. We probably should have taken the glacier route across to Kimtah, as it might have saved us two or three hours or more of travel time (although carrying glacier gear would have slowed us down on the rest of the trip...). But as it was, we were ropeless and decided instead to we descend 1000', then traverse under Thieve's Peak and back up 1000' to the col between Thieve's Peak and Kimtah. Then a traverse across ledges, and up more terrible slope to the top. The route we took gave us some exposed class 3 scrambling on the summit block, but nowhere did we find any class 4 scrambling (the route up to the Cosho col had had some class 4-ish sections, but it was only rated class 3 for some reason?).
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| ABD Combination Pad = awesome. (And no, I don't wear my pants that low except for bandaging!) |
I was very happy, if emotionally exhausted, when we finally reached the trail. And even happier when, at 10:30 p.m. we decided to get some sleep before heading 10 miles back to the car and 3+ hours back to Seattle.
Thank you, Optimist. For patching my back, for your patience, and for miraculously fitting the stove into your pack for the return trip.
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