Mount Kent - North Face - January 27, 2000

The north face of this peak has been on my mind as a project for a while now. I first noticed it two winters ago while skiing across the valley, on Mt Defiance Ridge. All these gullies - good for skiing? Even that winter, in a big snow year, none of the gullies quite connected. Would it make a good climb? There was nothing in the Beckey guide about this "garbage" peak next to McLellan's Butte.

The north face of Mount Kent (our route in red; water ice smears in blue)

On January 27th, Dave and I set out to climb it. Dave, perusing old AAJ's, had found a reference to it from Dallas Kloke, who climbed the "obvious gully" on the N face of Mount Kent in 1994, claiming the first ascent. Finally, I was able to lure someone into climbing it! (Dave had previously expressed confusion at why anyone would want to climb this "tree-sy" face).

There isn't really an obvious gully, but who collection of interconnecting gullies. The most aesthetic line appeared to start in a gully that angle left from the bottom center of the face, then climb to another shallow gully that angled slightly right and continued straight to the summit, in center face. It looked there there was a cliffband or two to overcome, but the rest looked like snow - probably not too hard. However, the topographic map revealed the face had an average angle of 55 degrees. Eeek.

As we pulled off I90 at the Tinkham exit, we got a good view of the face. It seemed less 'snowy' than we remembered, with more rock and ice. It was looking formidable. At about 8:15, after 10 or 15 minutes of hiking up the McLellan Butte trail, we intersected the Iron Horse trail. It was here that Dave asked if I had the rope.

Oh crap. I am a doofus. The first "perfect sunny weekend" in forever, we were going on an adventure up an unknown face, and I had forgotten the rope. Arrgghhh! After some discussion over what to do, we drove back to Seattle, fetched the rope, and drove back. It was now 10:30. We resolved to keep climbing in the dark if necessary! We would not let this screwup screw us up. We had also grabbed a few more ice screws in Seattle, after seeing the condition of the face.

The view from the basin below the north face. Dalls Kloke climed the "obvious gully". Which obvious gully? The only obvious one is the wide gully on the left.

We bushwhacked up Alice ck, starting from where the logging road crosses the creek. It wasn't all that bad. In 1.5 hours from the car, we reached the open basin below the peak.

The face was decorated with water ice smears - quite a lot of them. They looked ok, from far away. And since none of the snow gullies on the face actually "touched down" into the basin, it looked like these ice smears were the key to overcoming the steeper lower section of the face. One notable chunk of ice was the long, thick-looking vertical column, halfway up the right side of the face. Not that we'd be over in that area, but it was impressive to see.

We had already decided not to try the entrace to the main gully, which looked like a long steep section of thin ice. We would start one gully over to the left, and attempt to traverse over. There were a few short steps of ice, leading to steep snow - didn't look too bad. But would we be able to cross the sharp ridge to enter the main gully?

On the slog up the endless slope to the base of the face, I heard a whining motor sound off in the distance. Odd. Could I be hearing I-90? I sounded like a stuck car. Weird.

At 1pm, we started up. Dave took the first lead. He got up close to the smears, and decided against them - too thin - too nasty to top out on. He headed right into some trees, banged in a piton, and scrambled up what appeared to be a smooth vertical rock face. Then some more shaking trees and snow sloughing off, and he reached a belay. I followed up, impressed at the exposed moves he had made on lead. You must have complete trust in that thin sapling handhold! The climbing was exposed and tenuous, and frankly quite scary. The pro was mostly slings on trees, because the rock was crap, and the ice, where there was any, was thin. The rope drag was considerable, he said - it made it hard to get foot holds because the force would just pull down too strongly and his feet would slip in the snow.

Artist's rendition of what the first two pitches were like

From Dave's belay, where his ass was getting cold sitting on snow, I continued up, in steep, somewhat desparate jungly terrain. My arms got pumped, dangling from tree trunks while trying to fish a sling off my neck to wrap around the tree. This was not enjoyable climbing! I reached some crumbly rock and fumbled around for a piton placement. I found a crappy one, and then some delicate moves up ice and moss, with more tree protection, brought me to a small thin snow slope below a large vertical rock headwall. I placed a picket and traversed up and right across the sketchy snow. I looked back, and saw that I had pulled by picket right out. I hooked the sling with one of my tools, pulled it up to me, and dug a more secure T-trench. I traversed right onto a rib bordering a deep gully. This was the location where a full pitch of steep ice topped out in the gully. I had 20 feet of rope left, and it looked like a little further up we might be able to traverse into the gully. At least we 'd get a good view. I continued up to a large exposed tree trunk that I straddled and set up a belay. I had certainly taken my time leading this pitch, and when Dave got up to me, it was 3pm! Two hours had passed, and we were only about 200ft up this 1400ft face. I was thinking maybe it was time to bail!

But Dave continued on, traversing 50 degree snow into the gully, then immediately going over another rib into a second snow gully. I followed, and we running belayed a couple of pitches of this gully. Perfectly placed little trees provided the pro. If we turned around now, we might have to rappel down the steep beginning bit in the dark, which would take at least four rappels, probably more because of the risk of the rope getting caught. Not a pleasant thought.

When we reached a massive rock headwall, we climbed right again, on easy snow slopes, onto a rib bordering yet another gully. This place was a maze of gullies, and we wished we had brought a photo of the face in order to try and figure out where we were. All we knew is we were far from the top, and we kept getting cut off and having to traverse.

Bad picture of the top two thirds of the intended route (intended before we ever got on the face and got scared) - steep thin snow crossed by inumerable rock bands with thin ice

However, this third gully appeared to be the main, left-angling gully on the face, otherwise reached more directly by a few pitches of rotten-looking ice. We knew this because we had intersected it where the direct summit route I had originally wanted to take, veered off from the gully. This shallow summit "gully", our original intention, looked pretty heinous. Probably like 50-60 degree snow-covered rock and moss, interspersed with several cliffbands. Many more than were apparent from the road. Maybe with good snowcover it would be feasible, but not for us, on this day, at this late hour.

Phil, at the start of the third (final) snow gully

I traversed into the main couloir, and we started making good time up the relatively firm 35-45 degree slopes. In places it narrowed to just 10 feet wide, sometimes with high walls on either side. We were feeling pretty committed at this point. Would the gully just end below a massive rock headwall? What then? The climbing here was fun and easy, but the curving nature of the couloir meant we couldn't see more than a pitch ahead. I kept an eye on possible escape routes off the side, but then, that would just lead us to exposed rock I suppose.

The snow grew deeper and crusty, and worst for step kicking, the higher we went. But we were gaining elevation fast, which was good. Several hundred feet later, there was a branch. Going left meant hitting the ridge top lower down, less satisfying. But the right branch had a large rock headwall as a backdrop. Impossible to tell from here if the couloir simply stopped there, or curved around it. So we headed left. I placed the only ice screw we had used all day in a patch of solid ice on the side of the couloir. Finally, the ridge top came into view - snow all the way!

Phil resting in a little nook while we switched leads in the upper couloir

I crawled into a little nook under an overhang, and brought Dave up to me, so he could take over for the last bit. Really, I just wanted a rest, since it was very tiring step kicking up the gully trying to beat the dark. He continued up, and the last bit was pretty cool, steepening to 50 degrees or more before hitting the ridgetop. We "ungeared" as we watched the surrounded peaks bathed in alpenglow by the setting sun. The sky was pink! It was 5pm.

We travelled up the ridge a little more, and saw where the right branch came in. I would have been a slightly more direct finish, but it ended with about 10 or 15 feet of vertical or overhanging cornice & rock. That would have been a scare.

Due to the lateness of the day, and that fact that we were exhausted, we didn't bother summiting. The descent down the south east side was quick. Beautiful, contstant 30 degree open slopes perfect for plunge-stepping. We rounded the mountain, practically travelling 180 degrees around it, back to our snowshow stash at the bottom of the basin below the north face.

Looking down the couloir, and the setting sun, a short distance from the summit ridge

It was pitch black by this time, and we needed to find our snowshoes, stashed by "a rock". Luckily, Dave had brought his new GPS, and we had marked the spot. However, the waypoint was not accurate, and the snowshoes were nowhere to be seen! Hmm.... isn't this GPS stuff supposed to be accurate or something???

We wandered around a bit, finally picking up our uphill tracks, and finding the rock in question (and thus the snowshoes). We ate food, and gained strength for the bushwhack out. The stars were beautiful.

In a hypnotic exhausted state, we tromped through the brush. At some point, I started hearing that whiny motor sound again. Very softly, off in the distance. It would be present while I was walking, and the crunch of my snowshoes on the crust was loud, and then it would stop when I stopped. Dave though I was crazy. Then he finally heard it. "Grouse", he announced. Grouse do make weird sounds, but I've never heard them like that. Nonetheless, I took this as fact, and we continued our tromp out, listening to the grouse.

A while later we emerged from the Devil's Club-y brush onto the logging road. We let out yelps of satisfaction. A second later, our yelps were answered by "Are you in a truck?", and we saw a headlamp a few hundred feet down the road.

Here was a guy and his girlfriend, sitting in their truck, hopelessly stuck, as they had veered off the road. The snow on the road itself was probably almost two feet thick - why were they driving on it? sigh...

They said they had been here, stuck, since 11am this morning (we must have just missed them on the way up). The guy said we were the first "civilians" they'd seen all day. We offered them food, which they took, except the guy's girlfriend didn't take Dave's offer, because she's a "cookie kind of girl", and Dave was offering her yoghurt-covered cranberries, where as I had mint Milano cookies.

We were way took exhausted to help them unstick their truck, but we offered to walk them out to the road (45 minutes away) and drive them to North Bend. So they came with us, and we got to know this guy and his less-than-legal girlfriend. The girl said many interesting things, like:
"So do you guys love to mountain climb a lot?"
"Mah mom's gonna have a hell of a time bleaching the dirt out of mah pants!"
"When I get home, the first thing ahm gonna do is take a hot shower. If my brother's in the shower, well he better get out! If don't come out, ahm gonna go in there and drag him out bah his nuts!"
"Ahm wish ah had mah fuzzy purple blanket which is made of the same stuff as the sweater ahm wearing right now - it's a nice sweater, I told mom she shoulda got wun - just like those gloves she got .....[blah blah blah]"

On the way down, we tried to keep up the conversation with them, but we realized that we had absolutely nothing in common with them - except for the fact that we were both up in Alice Creek valley today. Boy, were they lucky there happened to be someone climbing Mt Kent today!

Dave noticed his feet were in extreme pain from overtightening his boots, and all the stepkicking. Also, his lower back muscles were in pain, probably from the jungly climbing. He was a mess ! :-)

We dropped our two newfound friends off at the North Bend Chevron, and found a restaurant to gorge ourselves after this exhausting, satisfying day.