Acme, WA - Mythic Wall

Day two of our extended weekend adventure took us to the east side of the Twin Sisters just outside of Bellingham and near the town of Acme. I think that is the place where Wile Coyote orders his stuff for his attempts to trap the Road Runner - Beep Beep! The goal was to climb a little known wall called the Mythic Wall. I had read about it on Cascade Climbers but had little more information than that. It was supposed to be a nice 6 pitch gear route around 5.10 but the approach was going to be a bit exploratory. ...that means bush whacking here in the Cascades...shhhhh...don't tell Kathy...

The images that lured me in...

Beautiful Green Creek with Baker to the east

Options for the Olivine type rock

Looks so good...doesn't it?

Gear and all!!

Where it all begins...

A late departure from Index, getting caught in the Everett Fair traffic, a great Thai dinner in Monroe and waiting on Hiway 9 for a transport being towed out of a ditch got us to the trail head rather late in the evening. The energizer bunny hopped into her jammies early and bedded down since she doesn't drive stick. I'm going to have to fix that issue sometime soon. Eventually I found Mosquito Lake Road and then after crossing the Nooksack River FSR #38 which is also called the Middle Fork Nooksack River Road. I went about 10 miles to a nice pull off and we crashed there hoping for an early morning start. We were up around 6am and drove the last mile to the signed Elbow Lake trail head. KC made a brew and I got us some oats ready. A quick packing and we were on our way.

We hiked down to a washed out bridge and the first challenge was crossing the wide and fast flowing Nooksak on some thinner logs. Once on the other side we regained the trail and made our way easily to the first major switch back at ~2700 feet. At this point it was time to drop into the gentle forest and make our way up towards the head of Green Creek while paralleling the creek at around 2750'. When we met the creek at this elevation we would see the talus slopes and should be able to spot the wall. At first the forest was gentle but it didn't take long before we has to cross Hildebrand Creek and beat our way through Devil's Club and some seriously slippery rocks. This was definitely ankle wrecking territory and I didn't intend to hurt myself in anyway so I went carefully through the creek area. I also had the forethought to bring flagging tape and mark the "trail" we were using so that we could hopefully pick our way back easy enough. Unfortunately I underestimated KC's ability to suffer through bush whacking. Let's just say this was a challenge for her and she had her moments. I tried to enjoy the givings of the gentle forest and as we made our way up past the creek we ran into very thick huckleberry. Those things are tasty and I would stop every so often and pack my mouth full of them. It kind of made up for the lack of trail. Eventually we made our way down to the creek, crossed on some logs, through dense fir and out into the talus. What a relief! Unfortunately what was fore casted as 20% chance of showers had it's 20% focused on this area. We discussed options, ate a power bar and Kathy swore that she was not going back through the bush we just came in by. The clouds descended so quickly that we couldn't see the route(s) what so ever. After 3.5 hours of bush whacking we had no choice but to turn back and head for the trail head.

A Green Creek Waterfall

A brief moment of bush whacking relief

Find my happy place, find my happy place, find my happy place...

We decided to cross the creek by following the talus down and hopefully find a better path on the other side. What I didn't know is that my altimeter was going fritzy and as we made our way up the other side to the 2750' mark we would end up much higher on the slope than indicated. As we bashed our way back, things didn't look familiar and we weren't coming across my flagging tape. Kathy was growing more frustrated and said something about the worst experience of her life. I had a hard time believing her because it wasn't raining or snowing...yet. The elevation mistake left us way too high up slope and traversing more difficult slopes than we initially came in on. Kathy was predicting we would never find the Elbow Lake trail and that we would bash our way to the van. I was a little more optimistic and kept consulting the topo map I had bought a couple of nights before. We of course eventually found the trail and that is when I discovered the altimeter was way off. As I stood on the trail and called down to KC she asked if I was on the trail. I gave her the affirmative and she told me to "shut-up"; I don't think she believed me until she was standing beside me. A hug, a smile, tears of joy? and we were on our way to warm drinks, dry clothes and to see Westieeeeeee.

Maybe next time!