I’m usually the one initiating a climbing adventure, but this time David Bayes called and asked if I’d be interested in joining him, George Pomeroy and Rick Schneider for an assault on Mt. Shuksan. The end of the question was still somewhere on a satellite when I replied in the affirmative. It’d been 26 years (1992) since I last set foot on that mountain and it was way past time to hit it again.
After loading up the Vue with all my gear (including all my spare gear) I took off from Boise at 3:00am and headed to Bellingham. As I pulled into town I got a text from David asking about a gear rental detail, and it turned out they were in Fairview sitting down for some lunch. I pulled in and met the four of them for our first get together in 36 years. We ate lunch, talked about the climb then headed to the parking lot to check the fit of my crampons on their boots.
George and Rick headed off to do some errands (including picking up our climbing permit in Glacier) and David and I headed up to his place to set up the tower for our climbing skills review. George and Rick soon joined us and had their first try at rappelling, climbing the rope with prusiks and belaying. After our gear check, and repacking my gear into my larger back pack, Rich and George took off and we crashed for a few hours shut eye.
In the morning, we found that David’s water system was drained by a neighbor leaving a sprinkler on all night (and leaving it on while they went on a weekend fishing trip). His mom was on her own well though so we headed down to her place for showers. George and Rick showed up and we through all our packs into David’s van and headed up the mountain.
On the way, we stopped at the ranger station in Glacier to leave a note with our license number (one item left off of our permit registration). While there, we saw several climbers getting ready to go, including a girl from Portland who was waiting for the station to open. She said her group was climbing the same route and camping at the base of Whinnie’s Slide just like us so we knew we’d be seeing them again.
Surprisingly, we were the first and only car at the trail head. We slung our packs on and headed off to Lake Ann. The first mile and a half or so is down hill which most people complain about on their way out, but I knew my toes would prefer the uphill on the way out over getting jammed into my boots for the last five miles.
There were several creek crossings and several rather large patches of snow along the way. The largest snow field was along the last stretch to the pass just before Lake Ann. The lake itself was still frozen over with the shoreline just beginning to liquefy.
The mountain should have been fully in view, but the low cloud cover was blocking our view. The forecast was for clear skies, but they were still being reluctant. We found where the dirt trail emerged form the snow and headed off towards Fisher Chimneys.
Getting into the first chimney was easy, and the chimney was short and easy. The trail wrapped around a point and crossed another long snow field ending at a deep mote standing between us and the next chimney network. We climbed down into the mote and scrambled around the end of the snow field and into the main chimney system.
The route was easy to follow, and was just on the edge of our rope-free comfort zone. Several parties passed us on our way up, including three groups of RMI guided climbers. They were headed to the top of Whinnie’s Slide so that settled our choice of camping at the bottom of the feature since there was little room at the top.
By the time we got to the top of the chimney it was more like reaching the summit. We crossed another easy mote to get onto the snow field, and headed up on snow. We still couldn’t see due to the cloud cover and ended up going a little too far north before turning up hill (we were following tracks so we weren’t the only ones making that mistake). It wasn’t a big deal, but we ended up crossing a few more yards of rock blocks than we needed to.
The parties that passed us on route, were all there and consuming all but one of the flat tent spots.