Spider Mountain North Face attempt - June 19-20, 2004
There was still enough snowcover to justify taking the direct route to Cascade Pass, although Bill and I didn't end up taking the easiest line:
Four hours from the car, we arrived high on top Mixup Arm, where we finally put skis on to make a descending traverse across to the Cache Glacier. The snow here consisted of almost a foot of slush, and I sent many slushy slides down as I crossed.
The Cache Glacier was straightforward, and we made a nearly continuous descent on snow to Kool Aid Lake. There were other ski tracks we were following, and it looked like they had continued on to do the Ptarmigan Traverse.
In the hot sun, we continued up to the col below Art's Knoll - 8 hours from the car! I was guesstimating it would take us 5 or 6 hours... but the extra 3 road miles, plus the glacier and overnight gear, and the hot sun, really slowed us.
I tried to relax and enjoy the surroundings and the rest of the afternoon/evening, but I couldn't quite, because the north face of Spider looked pretty scary from here.
With Bill's 200mm camera lens, we analyzed the 1972 route. First it was the bergschrund that looked daunting. Then it was the runnels. How deep were they?? In the end, we decided "it's all about the runnels".
Due to the cold breeze at the pass, we dug out spots to sleep 50 feet below, on the snow. At 9:30, when we hit the sack, the ice worms were still out in force... there was probably a hundred of them per square foot in some spots.
We got up at 4am - it was cold, but the snow had not frozen, except for a thin crust. The ice worms were still out.
The descent down the other side of the pass started with some clumsy antics as Bill and I dealt with breakable crust on slush. A couple hundred feet lower though, and the snow was actually quite nice... good corn at 5am? Hmm....
The skis came on and off at a few dry spots, and soon we were climbing up the Spider Glacier... the snow became more and more sloppy. Any steep north-facing slope, and we were post-holing almost to our knees in slush. The north face of Spider mountain is steep - and north-facing!
Part of me wanted the snow to be bad so I wouldn't have to ski it - it looked steeper and more serious than anything I'd tried before!
Every few minutes I'd look up, craning my neck... the steepness kept changing. Hmm... looks steeper now. Hmm. Looks less steep now - looks ok! Hmm... looks insane!
I think Beckey's statement of "40-45" degrees is a bit of a sandbag.
The closer we got, the less deep the runnels looked, but the more serious the bergschrund looked.
Just before the bergschrund, I was floundering in 2 feet of slush on icy crust.
The 'schrund. It actually looked possible to get around it on either side on detached snow blocks - which probably would have been fine given solid snow - something to pound a picket into for a belay. But all we had was sloppy slop. As we were standing around, pieces of the bergschrund were collapsing. Bill probed the upper lip with his pole... slush.
Well, we were going no higher.
Time to go down.
We enjoyed a nice run down the west side of the Spider Glacier.
As we reached the end of the ski descent and changed into "uphill mode" (skis back on pack), the first of several avalanches spilled down the north face.
The mountain started going off, with avalanches every few minutes.
The ascent back to the col below Art's Knoll was "brutile". Hot sun, no wind. Brutile is a new term that Bill coined, which so accurately portrays ascents slow tedious ascents like this.
We relaxed for an hour or so at camp, then packed up headed back over to Cache Col. The ascent from Kool Aid lake to the col took forever! But not as forever as the ascent back to Art's Knoll this morning.
At Cache Col, I asked Bill if we should check out the basin to the east. We hiked up to an overlook, and liked what we saw. A nice steep headwall led into the glaciated basin. A good pitch, but not so steep that it would be trouble with a heavy overnight pack.
So here was probably the best skiing of the trip. Halfway down, we traversed on a bench back over to the snout of the Cache Glacier, and continued down a gully to Pelton Basin.
Another strenuous hot ascent brought us to Cascade Pass, where Bill managed to convince me we should ski back down, instead of taking the trail.
It worked out fairly well... we found just the right snow patches to connect, and it only took an hour and 10 minutes, including a break to go from "ski mode" to "hiking with ridiculously heavy packs mode".
