Mt. Shuksan Trek

Thanks to Ian and Jacob from Mountain Madness for making the trip awesome!

In preparation for climbing Mt. Aconcagua, one of the seven summits, I signed up for a glacier mountaineering course. On Mt. Shuksan in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State.

The trailhead to Mt. Shuksan started out a few hours north of Seattle. After spending a great night with my cousin and making some last minute trail bread for my lunches I arrived to eet the rest of the group.  We had such diversity on the trip but we all had the same focus to get through this great training. We had from a retired Submariner sans physics teacher to a dental surgeon (always nice to have an MD on your trip), to an attorney.

 The first day started in the forest. The climate was rainforest and very reminiscent of the beginning of Mt. Kilimanjaro, minus the monkeys yelling at us from the trees.  After a well needed break we pushed on to higher terrain to get above the treeline.  Our first camp was in the scrub on a small clear area on the trail.  Night came fast and I slept like a rock despite sharing the 3-man tent with two others.

The next day at about 0700 we started up again to get onto the real snow and ice.  To help us with this we learned how to use our crampons. They sure work great.  Not the best when you hit rocky outcroppings, but awesome for the glacier travel.

Once we got to the glacier we scouted out the best place for the tents. and took another well needed break on a clear outcrop with an amazing view of the world. Mt. Baker is predominant in a lot of these pictures to give you a little perspective.

After lunch, we started on some basic arrest techniques on how to stop ourselves with our ice axes and found it is all about getting your boots kicked in to anchor you.  We also trained on some glacier rescue techniques - anchors, and rope rescue systems.  I felt a little lost after a few runs.  I never set up a system with so much in it before.

The whole while the summit our prize of the trip was in view.  Very daunting, but sometimes it looked small, sometimes it seemed so far away.  We soon would find out how large she really is.

As part of the training we actually hauled some folks out of a crevasse.  Of course I had to volunteer to be the victim in this case.  It was pretty deep - maybe 100 ft down.  At the bottom the running water from the ice-melt was so loud that was all I could hear.

While I was waiting for my companions on my rope team to set up the anchor system it got pretty cold.  I cannot imagine how scary it would be if you fell in one and broke something.  This one was pretty narrow.  My toes and heels touched both sides of it.  If I was about three feet deeper I would be wedged in it.  THAT would have gotten super cold fast.  After an indeterminable long while one of my rope team started kicking the snow away from the edge to clear the rope so hey could haul me up. A few of the chunks were microwave sides blocks of snow.  Once the rope was clear and a pack was under it at the edge to allow it free movement they started hauling me out.  It seemed to take a long time even though only about 20 minutes passed.

The first night I froze, cursing the "zero degree" bag I had and the lightweight inflatable sleeping pad.  My back could fee the ice all night long and I pretty much shivered most of the night.  After I discussed this with our guide, Ian he recommended I put some of my clothes (jacket, shell pants etc) between my sleeping bag and the pad. What a difference that made!

We got our water from a small pool off of the glacier.  It was crisp and fresh.  At first we were pretty concerned about treating it. About 1.2 way through I stopped.  It was very good water.  We were very lucky that our guides made most of the water runs for us as it was about 15-20 minutes t get there and we were usually pretty tuckered out after a day's hiking or training.

The next day at 0700 we set out for the summit. It took a little more than 2 hours o fhard slogging up the glacier to get to the base of the Mt. Shuksan pyramid.

 The smoke increased the whole week while we were there.  There were some pretty bad fires in the west of Washington State.  This did make for some pretty cool views though.

  Once we got to the base, we were set up on assisted climbing belays by our guides.  One of our group started having chest pains from the hike up so we ended up letting him guard our rear while we continued up the pyramid. The route we took was rated somewhere around 5.5 or 5.6 so it was more than a scramble, but not too bad.  It sure is tough to climb in mountaineering boots as opposed to climbing shoes with sticky rubber on them.

On the way back to camp that afternoon one of the guides - Jacob - 'fell' into a crevasse and we wer shown a very expedient rescue technique.  More great training.

The Hike out was pretty grueling for me.  I know wholeheartedly agree with the saying, "ounces become pounds, pounds become pain." I had to bring a chair, and had WAY too much food - like t least 2.5# of extra food.  Lesson learned!

After driving to Widby Island we stayed overnight at a campground there and took some super hot showers.  They were so nice! We also grabbed some dinner in Anacortes.  I had some awesome fish and chips.  The next day we tried to do some rock-climbing on Mt. Erie but it was super foggy and the rock was wet.  I wish I'd known, and I woulda brought my new climbing shoes to smear my way up this cool face.  They also taught the novice climbers some rappelling and prussiking techniques.