Last month my friend Brian and I set out to climb Glacier Peak, in Washington state, which has the distinction of being the most remote of the major cascade mountains. A more direct route up used to exist, but a massive mudslide a few years back obliterated roads, bridges, trails and, sadly, Kennedy Hot Springs, where I had the pleasure of soaking in 2002 while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I’d reached the spring after a day of hiking through cold rain. Maybe someday it’ll find a new place from which to seep.
So Brian and I left the trailhead on a drizzly day carrying terrible heavy loads, including crampons, rope, harnesses and pickets. We weren’t in the best shape, so were slow in making nine miles to a fog-shrouded high pass. We set up camp, convinced the usual route started from yet another pass that we’d missed the turn for. After a marathon sleep, the weather still sucked. We went to scout the route without packs, finding steep snow traverses along the way on which we both fell and self arrested. When we reached camp a couple hours later, however, a group was descending through the fog directly above, informing us we were actually on the usual route. Alas, it was late afternoon and we were tired again, plus we’d told our womenfolk we’d be back by a time that’d be difficult to make at that point. Like softmen, we descended. The clouds started to break on the descent. By the time we reached the trailhead, blue skies reigned.
We went back a few days later. The weather was hot and sunny. Descending the summit pitch the snow was so soft I sunk in to my waist, necessitating a long butt slide down the upper mountain. Again, we lugged the rope and other climbing gear, this time nearly fifteen miles to the basecamp, where a few other climbers with featherlight packs mocked our freight. We succumbed to peer pressure and left most of the gear at camp on summit day. I hauled my crampons to the top without putting them on. That night we camped under massive cedars along a river raging with clear water from the rapid, hot weather caused snowmelt, or as Brian said, “there’s probably some of my piss from basecamp in my drinking water.”
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