Forbidden Peak Fail and the Tatoosh Traverse

Last summer, when I returned to the US after close to a year in India, I briefly flew out to Seattle to visit some family.  While I was out west, I was seized by a hankering for more mountaineering, and I talked Eric, a family friend from Portland, into trying to climb Forbidden Peak, a prominent mountain in the North Cascades National Park.

The plan was that we would drive up, hike to a base camp just above treeline, and then the next day hike up over a small glacier and begin the rock climbing up to the summit.  Because there was both a significant snowfield crossing and technical (trad, of course) rock climbing, we would need carry in addition to the usual stuff a tent, crampons, ice axes, harnesses, a rope, helmets, a rack, and sleeping bags- so our packs were around 40 pounds each.

Despite growing up in Portland, I had never been to the North Cascades before, and I was taken aback by the beauty of the place.  The mountains are referred to as the American Alps, and with good reason- the rugged peaks and hanging glaciers rivaled anything I have seen in the Alps.  Many of the climbs in the North Cascades are named for items and locations in Middle Earth, and the whole place has a very Tolkein-esque vibe.

We made it to our base camp shortly before sunset, and were treated to great views- and ominous clouds.

One of the reasons that the North Cascades don’t get as much traffic as the actual Alps is that the weather in most of the Northwest (and this I can attest to) is perpetually rainy. However, the summer of 2015 was one of the driest summers in the history of the Pacific Northwest.  For the first time ever, the Olympic rainforest caught fire.  Snowpacks were at a record low, and temperatures in the Seattle-Tacoma area were pushing 100 degrees F.

And yet…

for the 8 hours that we needed it to be dry, a rainstorm popped up out of nowhere and sat on top of the northern half of Skagit county, soaking us and reducing the visibility to nothing.  This photo was taken from the same place as the above photos:

In an effort to reduce the amount of weight we were carrying, we had left the rain fly at home. Classic!

We stayed in the tent – with water sluicing through the ceiling – until around 7, then packed up and bailed.  We made it back to the car a few hours later, mud-splattered and forlorn.

After spending a day drying out our gear in my grandma’s lawn, we drove down to Mt. Rainer National Park to hike the Tatoosh traverse, an extendable scramble over several of the lesser peaks within the park boundary.

Since we were both still cranky about having carried heavy packs of crap we never got to use up and down the Cascades, we opted to go ultralight on the Tatoosh traverse, carrying little besides food and water, which meant eschewing ropes on the 4th and easy 5th class summit blocks of each of the peaks.  YOLO!

The weather could not have been more different than in the North Cascades- instead of fog and rain, it was clear and blisteringly hot, even up on the ridge.  The views of Mt. Rainer were absolutely spectacular.

The trail was not particularly well marked, but we guessed that we had hiked somewhere between 12 and 20 miles, with many, many thousands of feet of elevation change.  On the drive out we discovered a railroad diner that serves excellent blackberry smoothies.