[b00]

pershing 8-15-2020

quick and dirty route info: park a few feet north of jefferson creek. find trail and stay on it(some challenge). trail traverses west ~.75mi then heads nne uphill. flagging becomes less higher up. watch out for ~3900' where trail heads climber's left across a creek drainage and then heads uphill. at ~4550 drop into and ascend nnw up broad gully(do not go to vegetated slabs). at ~4800' continue up gully wnw(then w) to its top ~5300. traverse wsw to basin below summit. look up at pershing s ridge. 3 gullies look like ascent candidates - a gully with a phallic symbol, a gully immediately climbers climber's left of the phallic gully and the one we took, the small but broad gully quite a bit climber's right of the phallic gully.(another way to describe the gully is it is the first thing left of the summit that looks climbable and it looks harder than it is from below) ascend broken rock and then steep dirt/gravel to the gully. at the headwall either ascend exposed class 3 rock straight up or take the class 2 ramp on the climber's left side. with proper route finding, along and next to ridge, take nothing harder than moderate class 3 to summit(anything harder, you are off-route). (watch out for many olympic mt maps - instead of 200' contours, they are 400') lots of ways reported to go wrong on pershing - numerous bees nests, exposed class 5, deceptive flagging ... we really prepared ourselves to avoid the difficulties - we brought a rope, harnesses, pro, traveled a good ways apart in case of bees, paid careful attention to the route. fortunately we did not encounter any of the enumerated problems. taking our time, when we reached the summit, we were very surprised by how much easier the trip was than we expected. it did take us 6 hours to the summit, but they were easy hours that were made considerably easier by an early start(we car camped) and the pleasantly surprising mosquito free environment. the scrambling was nice, especially by olympic standards. also we really could not see why anyone would head up the vegetated slabs, when the broad easy gully climber's right worked so well. modern was on his game and everything he figured that mattered was correct. after reading the t/r's talk about tons of problems with pershing, we brought a rope, harnesses, pro, ice axes. i could definitely see how that would be needed. the route finding was the crux. if you did not nail that, one could easily get into tough terrain. as it was, we nailed the route and never even considered getting out the rope, as it was super easy class 3. easier than stone, but with more scrambling and much more route finding. throw in a lot of rugged terrain and you have a full-meal-deal. still when we were on the summit, we were both amazed out how easy it was for us. yes, there was some steep hard dirt coming down we needed to deal with and some class 3 downclimbing, but we were feeling pretty good... that said, we are pretty accustomed to drama free trips. mod and i have done over 200 peaks together and neither of us searches drama out. so if everything was so great, what went wrong? we assumed quite wrongly that the creeks shown on the map were year round. wrong. we hit one small creek/spring, a seasonal one, barely flowing, at ~3450' and did not fill up because we figured there was more above. wrong. fortunately we found snow in the upper basin. modern employed the old gallon zip lock bag under the dripping of the snow. he placed the bag on our way up, so that when we (it was a very slow drip) returned it was full of cold tasty water. when we realized the creeks were not running, we hoarded our water and used what we had left to mix with snow and drank at the rate the snow melted in our bottles. this worked perfectly. following the "trail" required a lot of patience and paying attention, as it was more of a route than trail. but it was much easier than we had read. the terrain was quite rugged, which took time and required care. although there were no mosquitoes on the route, we were driven off the summit by the usual culprit, flying ants. feeling quite happy with our outing, we descended quite carefree. well, as carefree as you can in rugged terrain. in no rush to get back to the car, we continued down. then, some big piece of talus modern stepped on, that looked like thousands of other non-troubling pieces of talus, flipped and slammed his shin into a sharp rock and also smashed his calf :<( after a he rested, he tested it and felt he could walk on it. barely. i took all of the rock gear, the rope and most of other stuff out of his pack and we worked down. we did not have far to go, but it was really rugged terrain, especially with a hurt leg. we were both worried about running out of daylight, as there was no way we could have continued by headlamp and we did not know if we spent the night on the trail whether mod could have been able to walk in the morning. modern really sucked it up and fortunately we made it back to the car just before darkness. he wanted to car camp again saturday night, so i stayed too. there was no way i was going to leave him on his own. in the morning he was doing a little better, but was definitely hurt and limping. we then drove home separately, after i made sure he made it back to the highway and he seemed to be doing reasonably well, all things considered. we both felt happy with the scramble, even with the painful ending, because it could have gone a lot worse. lots of ways to go wrong on pershing :>) ps - with so many olympic climbs starting altitude well below 1000', there is something to be said for pershing starting higher than 2500'!!! modern and i did a car camp on a friday night. we saw a ton of people car camping all along the way at so many sites that, how can i say this? they were driving that far for that?. note to self: leaving at 3:45 friday afternoon is a terrible idea. the drive proved to be the crux :>)

water: although there are creeks showing on the map, none were flowing when we were there except a barely flowing one at ~3450'. found snow in upper basin. 7.81mi 4013' gain 6:05 car to summit 0:20 summit stay 6:40 summit to car 13:05 car to car equipment: helmet equipment brought, but not used: ice axe, rope, pro, harness references: mountie t/r, a couple of cascadeclimber t/r's, martin's nwhikers t/r

[JasonK806]

Nice one! I need to get up that one to complete the Ellinor Washington Pershing Trifecta. Thanks for the details.

[meck]

Nice TR and thanks for posting those pics! I was wondering which direction go out of that upper bowl a few years ago in February, your pic of the route out is particularly helpful. What did you think of all those nooks and crannies among the forested boulders in the first ~0.5 miles? Those dark holes everywhere spooked me on the wayout at dusk.