[Guiran]

Ways to be sure you're having a good time in the Cascades: 1. A 2000 ft alder and steep heather bushwhack is the easy way to reach the start of a scramble 2. You spend the better part of 3 days at 6000 ft 3. You keep nearly falling off the trail because you're too busy looking at Glacier Peak Six of us (Gary, Josh, Lindsay, Stephanie, Boyd) climbing Buck and Fortress Mtn over the weekend. Had an exhausting, but spectacular three-day trip in the mountains. Not sure about the trip stats, as much of our travel was off-trail. On Saturday morning we left Seattle, headed to the east side to avoid rain. After setting up a car ferry at Trinity, Lindsay, Steph, Boyd, and I forded the Chiwawa River (cold!) to reach the start of the Little Giant trail. Gary and Josh headed in from Trinity up the Buck Creek trail. Our destinations were the same - the basin at the head of Louis Creek, but our routes would be different. Saw a bear about a quarter mile away on the slopes below Little Giant Pass, which was a Cascades first for all of us. There's a neat looking cave near the pass that we might have been inclined to check out if not for having seen the bear headed in that direction when we lost sight of it. Topped out at Little Giant Pass and, after a lunch stop, headed down into the Napeequa Valley. Gorgeous! Reminded me a lot of Alaska. The Napeequa Valley trail is brushy in places, but easy to follow and makes for an amazing, isolated, valley walk. We crossed Louis Creek around 4 PM and took a bit of a rest at the base of the spectacular Louis Creek falls. The next part of the hike would be the hardest of the day - bashing uphill through alder and brush to reach Louis Creek basin (2000' above us). We ended up following bear tracks for part of the route, which led to some wondering about the rules of the road when you meet a bear coming downhill through an alder thicket. Which party yields the right of way? After a solid bit of being molested by slide alder, we broke free into scrub and discovered that we'd basically managed to follow a finger of alder up from the creek bed. For anyone else trying this route, I'd recommend trying to bushwhack up Louis Creek after walking ~5 minutes past the creek crossing. Once on open slopes, our rate of progress increased and by 6 PM we were standing below the last heather headwall separating us from Louis Creek basin. When our two groups had split up earlier in the day, each had taken and radio with an established protocol of turning on and signaling for the first ten minutes of every hour. We'd signalled (largely psychologically) from the Louis Creek falls at 4, and missed the 5 check due to a particularly nasty alder patch, but we managed to contact Gary at 6. He and Josh were camped at the north end of the basin, utterly exhausted from their ascent of the west shoulder. For the next two days Josh would occaisionally mutter, "4th class slab, wet." Glad to hear that they'd made it, we pushed on, reaching the Louis Creek basin a bit before 7. Very cool to find an area for amazingly flat at 6500'. I'm sure it would get more traffic if there was any good way to get to it (but there's not). We set up camp about 3/4 of the way up the basin on grassy bar near the west edge, ate a welcome dinner, and retreated to our tents for much needed rest as the light waned and winds came up. Sunday dawned clear and cool. As we were packing up camp, Gary came out of nowhere (well - at least we didn't see him coming) and wished us a good morning. He'd climbed Buck already - capturing the sunrise from its summit. He gave us some beta and wished us well. We loaded up our packs, walked ~10 minutes up to the head of the basin, and unloaded msot of our gear for the summit push. The route up Buck is very mellow - low angle snow or easy, solid rock. Even with Gary's advice, we made a route finding error, climbed too close to the south summit, and had to downclimb steep snow to get back to the route to the middle summit. The ridge scramble is easy class 2, but wow, AIRY! The north and east aspects of Buck are near vertical walls and one couldn't help but feel a little vertigo when looked over the edge. The Buck register dates from 1980 and is only ~2/3 full. It'll be 25 on the 10th of September of this year. Enjoyed a great standing glissade down Buck back to our gear. Repacked, ate lunch, and headed up one of the western shoulders of the basin to meet up with Josh and Gary on a ridge at 7800'. Found them sunning themselves like marmots and swapped stories about the horrors of the ascent to Louis Creek. Decided that the bushwhack up from the south was easier than the route in from the north. As Josh put it, "I had a vegetable in my hand the entire route. I'd grab five wildflowers at a time and think, 'Well, maybe it'll take 30 lbs'." There is a cairn on the ridge marking a pretty easy descent route south of where we met up (which was 3-4 minor points south of Berge). Descended easy, but loose rock to snowfield and traversed over towards High Pass. At one point, we had to lose and then rapidly regain about 500' to avoid a nasty 5th class move that only Josh and Gary had the stomach for ("Yeah, there aren't any feet, but the crimper you match on is totally bomber.") We decended very steep (but fun!) snow down to the High Pass basin where we pumped some much needed water. From here, we joined up with the High Pass high route and were treated to some amazing views of Glacier Peak. Triad Lake (for those who are dying to know) is about 80% melted out. Reached Buck Creek Pass around 7:30 and ended up sleeping down at the horse camp because the sites at the Pass were pretty much filled up. Had the entire horse camp to ourselves, so I guess it worked out just fine. Our plan for the last day was to summit Fortress, traverse over to Chiwawa, and descend the Chiwawa river trail. That didn't really work out. We ascended to Pass No Pass in good time. Had some marmots posing for us - one walked to about 3 ft from me and stood up on a rock - and saw a pair of hummingbirds zooming around the top of the pass. From there, climbed moderate loose dirt and heather to the start of the snow on Fortress. We followed tracks from a previous party that spent a fair bit of time of very loose rock, but ascending the snowfield would work perfectly well. Had an enjoyable scramble to the summit block where we found the new register left by Mike Collins (interesting choice of notepaper) and hundreds of ladybugs (very reminiscent of Mike's report from Whittier Peak). The ladybugs really seemed to like us and were quite insistent about trying to land on us as we ate lunch. We had hoped to continue NE on the ridge to the SE face of Fortress, but the wet snow cornice on the ridge didn't seem particularly safe. Will have to try again in later season. We tried to walk down the ridge to meet up with some scree slopes, but couldn't find a good place to cross and settled for a nice glissade back down towards the Buck Creek trail. After busting down some steep heather, we intersected a very obvious trail on the eastern slope of Pass No Pass. With some reservations, we headed south on it, hoping that it would connect to the Buck Creek trail somewhere. The trail was very well maintained and had a number of established camp sites. Offered spectacular views fo Buck and Berge and a great display of wildflowers. The route forks at a few points and we probably should have taken one of the more defined downhill spurs. Has anyone taken this high route? Does it meet up with the Buck Creek trail? As it was, the high route petered out into deer track at some point and we decided to inflict on ourselves a 3000' bushwhacking descent back to Buck Creek. I choose to forget the next hour of miserable downhill travel. We exploded out of the brush onto the Buck Creek trail around 5:30 and put on the afterburners for the hike out to Trinity. Good times, great views, awesome trip. Pics to follow.

[Andrew]

Thank you for the detailed trip report. Stories of reaching the Louis Creek basin are quite reminiscent of my trip last year hooking up with Buck Creek from the stream NNE of Buck Mtn. But the beauty of the area more then pays off the frustration that comes with hours of slide alder. Look forward to seeing the images!

[Mike Collins]

I had hoped to stop at RiteAid and buy a small spiral notebook for the register but was running late. The pharmaceutical notepad was all that was in my car. I forgot which med it was advertising and I hope it wasn't one of "those".

[Guiran]

It wasn't "one of those". Was the register at one point connected to that metal pipe wedged in the summit cairn?

[Mike Collins]

No. I surmise the metal pipe is leftover from a old survey. The mountain or highpoint being surveyed would be marked with a flag or cloth to help distinguish it from away. I figured the pipe held onto a wooden flagstaff. It is a future rainy day activity of mine to review the early practices of surveying at the library.

[Guiran]

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gyngve/Chiwawa/ Trip pictures courtesy of Gary.

[dicey]

Wow! Those were worth waiting for very nice

[Tom]

Nice, looks like Gary has an eye for photos. Did any of you by chance peer down on King Lake from Buck Mtn?

[Guiran]

We did peer down, but I don't know if anyone took pictures. I'd say it was about 3/4 melted out.

[#19]

[Trevor]

Some very accurate and quality images. To satisfy my curiousity, film or digital on those?

[Guiran]

Digital. Gary does some pretty advanced touching up, though.

[Andrew]

Beautiful!