Climbing Adventures in Canada: Snoqualmie Pass, WA

With the weather calling for a deteriorating pattern for midday on Sunday, I sent Michael a quick email Friday evening to give him a few options for what looked like the best day of the weekend. One of them was to go do Mount Thompson up in the Snoqualmie Pass region. A smallish 6500+ ft peak with a reasonable approach on the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) seemed like a doable car-to-car adventure.

I expected he would call early Saturday morning but when I didn't hear from him by 9am I figured he was off doing something else. So I had a leisurely time cleaning house, drinking coffee and catching up on some reading. Around 11:30am my phone rang and Michael was asking if I was ready to go? "Go where?", I replied. "Mount Thompson." "Ahhhh dude, it's 11:30am and no I am not really ready to go and we should have been on our way by now." Michael's reply was something like "how hard can it be, get packing we'll see you shortly."

So I sprang into action throwing this and that together and trying not to forget the essentials. I was thinking light weight since we would be running the trail; after all this did involve more running than climbing and with the route grade being 5.6 how hard could it really be??? Hydration bag, 3L of Gu2O, Gu packets, Mojo, head lamp for sure, light harness, running shoes, long top...hmmm was I missing anything? Ahh yes, sunscreen, bug juice....ok eat a bit and let's go. I got out of the house around 12:30pm with everything I thought I'd need. Going over it in my head as I drove to Michael's I realized that climbing shoes, a space blanket and water purification tablets would have also been handy. What about a helmet and climbing gear...too heavy and after all it was a ridge and some things had to stay behind.

Arriving at Michael's he seemed ready to go. I asked about a rope and he scoffed at the idea. "Too heavy" was his reply, and "how hard can this be anyhow?". I responded: "Dude, the descent requires rappels and I think we should at least have your 100' rope if anything." Learning from the last time we took the one hundred footer Michael reluctantly agreed to bring a full length 1/2 rope. He also threw in his harness and a belay device but for whatever reason neither one of us talked about gear as we were being weight conscious and both pictured the route a ridge with short steps of 5th class climbing with minimal risk of exposure. With our packs loaded we jumped in Michael's white beast and were off for the pass.

We arrived at the trail head, shouldered our packs, registered and were off around 2:10pm. At first the running felt terribly hard and I was sluggish. I figured I would stick with it since I have felt this way before and it passed (ie. Harvey Manning run). The fact that the trail starts off at a fairly consistent grade right from the parking lot might have been a contributing factor. After passing many parties the pace began to feel good and I remembered to start drinking early and often. The trail was nice for the first 2-3 miles but then became a bit rocky after we passed the Commonwealth Basin turn off. More consistent climbing took us past the Kendall Catwalk (1:45ish and ~5400 feet) - an impressive slice of trail that cuts through a rock wall and eventually to the saddle between Ridge and Gravel Lakes ~5280 feet. A bit further past the lakes we found the approach gully to Bumble Bee Notch and it took us about 2:15 to reach the Notch ~5400 feet.

A quick calculation on my part gave an estimated hour to the base of the route, 1.5 on the route and 1 down and back to the Notch. I did a sanity check with Michael and asked if he was confident that 4 hours was enough time to do the loop and be back on the PCT running; it was already 4:30ish and 8:30ish was sunset. He laughed at my question but I figured better to ask now than be sitting out there wishing I had. We dropped into the basin and quickly made our way across the talus and up towards the base of the route. I kept thinking I was hearing voices but convinced myself that no one else would be on the route at this time and that it must be echoes and animals. However, sure enough as we approached the base of the west ridge, we spotted a party above us. Michael quickly laid out the rope, we harnessed up and he set off up the ridge sans any gear. The climbing went quickly but both of us found that the rock was questionable, climbing in running shoes made things a bit more trickier and without any gear the leader had no option but not to fall. It was nice to have the rope since it made the 2nd climb much faster. We swapped leads for about 7-8 short pitches and passed the party we spotted earlier. We both found the route more exposed than we had thought and combined with the other factors later agreed that we took some unnecessary risks. If anything, climbing shoes would have added the greatest benefit and I also think 3 small cams would have also been helpful to mitigate risk. All-in-all the climb was fortunately uneventful and we summited in ~1 hour after we started climbing, ~6:20pm or so. I started the descent after a quick summit photo and we caught a second party after we down climbed past one rappel station. A quick "hi-bye" and we continued down climbing past the 3rd rappel station and were back at the Notch around 7pm - 1 hour faster than I worked out.

We hit the trail running and eventually had to turn on our head lamps. About 1.5 miles from the car I turned my ankle on a root OUCH! This is not uncommon for me so I prepared by having a compression sock, tape and Vitamin I. I took to taping up quickly and popping a few Ibu and we were back in motion. It hurt but I sucked it up and kept a respectable pace back to the car.

An awesome day of running ~19 miles and climbing ~1200' and our car-to-car time was 7 hrs. 30 min!

Michael also blogged this trip: Mt Thompson

Things I would have done differently:

(a) Leave Earlier - take advantage of the daylight. This would have allowed us to run out faster, provided an extra margin of safety and probably saved me from hitting that root in the dark.

(b) Bring water purification tabs - this was a dumb move and was precipitated by the last minute packing. Where was my "Critical Items" gear list? Need to post it on the back of the garage door!
This would have also let me pack-up less water instead of hauling 3L the whole day. I could have hauled 1.5L and refilled at the basin stream. A collapse-able bag would have been ideal to leave at the basin stream being purified while we climbed and retrieved on the way back. Saves time and is light weight.

(c) Bring more Gu and food - I didn't know this was going to be 19+ miles round trip. The guide book made it sound more like 14 miles. More food would have helped me on the way out to keep my energy up. I would have also eaten a better breakfast and food planned 2 days ahead had I known earlier that I was going. It was a good test to see what can be done without food prep.

(d) Don't underestimate 5th class climbing - I am glad we took a rope and I would take climbing shoes and a few pieces of gear if I went again. Not that the climbing was hard but the exposure is more than either one of us anticipated and it would have hurt badly had either one of us fallen. We also did not have helmets and albeit it was a ridge we were lucky with the loose shitty rock that nothing happened.