We'd been checking the weather models every 6 hours or so and decided that we'd have dry weather until 3 p.m. on Saturday and all day Sunday, which would be just right for a 7 mile approach on Saturday and a climb and de-proach on Sunday.
It turns out that weather models aren't always spot-on.
For example, when we pulled into the parking lot just before 11 a.m., it wasn't raining, but it started doing so almost as soon as we opened the door. Sigh. After getting ready much more slowly than usual, and putting on our boots while snug inside the car, and even reading some comics in the newspaper, we finally decided that the rain had tapered off enough that we should start our trek to camp.
I decided that it was the perfect trip for an umbrella, so I stuffed a leopard-skin-print one in my pack as we headed out.
We were pleasantly surprised to not be rained during our trip to camp; it didn't rain while we set up camp, did arts and crafts, napped, or cooked dinner, either. In fact, as we got ready for bed, we could spy hundreds of stars through the trees above us.
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| Arts and crafts time at camp |
The next morning it seemed to take forever for the sun to rise; it was just light enough to start our bushwhack uphill at 6:40 a.m.
According to most reports, one can avoid most thrashing about if you head straight uphill from the junction of the Ingalls Creek and Fourth Creek trails and stick to game trails. Apparently we were following game who stuck to only one topo line for their entire lives, for we seemed to find innumerable trails that traversed, but only one or two that actually went uphill at all.
In the end, we ended up doing some thrashing. My hopes of ascending anywhere near Charlie's estimate of 1000'/hour were dashed. (After our last trip together, my estimate was a fair bit slower than that). However, the thrashing didn't last too long, and after that the going was quick all the way up to ~7600', where things steepened a bit.
The crux was, advertised, the 50' up to the east ridge. We didn't rope up for its ascent, but we did for the way down, and as the wind howled and the route started to look even steeper on the way down, I was glad we did. (For some reason, it was quite windy in just that section). The summit block itself was good fun; the only disappointment was the complete lack of views to the north. And much to my surprise, we had still averaged 1000' hour (for a total time of 4 hours), despite our thrashing!
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| The summit block. You can't see the deep hole to Charlie's right! |
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| Charlie descending the summit block |
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| Charlie rappelling down from the east ridge |
Other than cranky knees, the way down was relatively smooth.
We decided that we had time to spare for a shortcut, so we took a different way back down to the Ingalls Creek trail with the hopes of avoiding slide alder. We were relatively successful for much of the way, but no bushwhack is complete without at least some of it. Let's just say that if you end up on our descent route, you might keep an eye out for a pair of thin OR gloves in some slide alder. They weren't attached to my pack very securely....
We ended up swinging a bit further east than intended (the fall line led us that way), but still ended up getting down faster than our way up (which is often not the case for us when the going is steep or tricky). It took us 3:40 to get back down to the trail (and then another 15 to get back to camp).
The weather had treated us relatively well so far, but at about 5 p.m. we noticed the skies getting significantly darker. Yikes. A few minutes later the skies opened up. Thank goodness I had my backcountry umbrella!
The ranger in the parking lot sounded surprised when we told him we had done Argonaut. I don't think he's used to seeing climbers carrying umbrellas!
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