[Andy D.]

Justus and I linked up again for a great 4-day trip over Labor Day weekend. We decided to go east to the Chelan Sawtooths to avoid the poor weather forecast, and it turned out to be a good plan. We couldn't have asked for better weather! Here was our itinerary:

• Friday, Aug 29: Hike into Crater Lake, climb Raven Ridge & Hoodoo Peak, camp at Crater Lake
• Saturday, Aug 30: Climb Séance Peak, Beefhide Butte, Mt. Bigelow, hike out
• Sunday, Aug 31: Climb Abernathy Peak (day trip)
• Monday, Sept 1: Climb Reynolds Peak (day trip)

Friday 8/29 Made the long drive over, hiked up to Crater Lake & set up camp. It was very windy. We scrambled up the south slope of Raven Ridge from the lake, then continued on the ridge to the west peak (Libby).

Crater Lake

Crater Lake basin

Justus on Raven Ridge

Raven Ridge pano

Libby Lake

straight down

summit from Libby

Hoodoo from Libby

Beefhide Butte & Séance Pk

Bigelow from Libby

We then decided to try the ridge from Libby to Hoodoo. It was a little tricky at the start with a short overhanging move that we decided not to try with the huge drop on one side and the ferocious wind trying to blow us off. We found a way around and made our way up Hoodoo, just as it was starting to sprinkle a little bit.

Justus trying the overhang

Justus & Hoodoo

We made our way back to Libby and down the basin to camp. Saturday 8/30 Went over the ridge west of Crater Lake, descended into East Buttermilk Creek valley and over to Séance Peak.

spires on Bigelow

Hoodoo & Libby

Séance Pk

summit pano 1

summit pano 2

Surprise Lake & Finney Peak

From Séance we tried to follow the ridge to Beefhide Butte, but it didn't look easy, so we dropped down and up to a col SE of the peak. This worked well and we followed the ridge easily to the summit.

cave on Beefhide Butte

summit pano

Bernice Lake & Star Peak

Justus & the bottle

large meadow

ridge over to Hoodoo Pass & Mt Bigelow

We followed the ridge over to Hoodoo Pass & up Mt. Bigelow. Then we found a gully down to the east and traversed the ridge NE back to Crater Lake. We packed up camp and headed out.

Boiling Lake & Cheops Pk

Upper Eagle Lake

east face of Bigelow

Justus

=summit pano

summit shot

gully

gully we descended

Bigelow east face

Crater Lake & Raven Ridge

route

Sunday 8/31 We had originally planned to join Matt's group for Clark & Luahna today, but we had decided since the weather to the west wasn't looking good and we had great weather here, that we would change plans and hit Abernathy & Reynolds. We drove up to Twisp for breakfast, then up Twisp River Rd to Scatter Creek trail for Abernathy Peak. A short ways up the trail we encountered two small bear cubs which promptly scrambled up a tree and watched us.

bears

bears

bears

We reached Scatter Lake and made the scramble up to the summit and met a few other folks doing the same. After lounging on the summit for a few hours enjoying the views, we headed back.

Scatter Lake & Abernathy

Abernathy Lake & burn zone

SEWS, NEWS, Liberty Bell, etc

summit pano

snowing where we were yesterday

North Gardner

thumbs up

Silver Star

Reynolds & Louise Lake

Monday 9/1 We joined wildernessed, Steve, & kyled for an assault on Reynolds Peak. See wildernessed's report here. We had some grub in Winthrop with the rest of the tourist crowd, then made the 4 hour drive back. Thanks Justus (and the gang on Reynolds) for another great trip! I will have to head back to this area again sometime soon! Stats (approximate): 21,000’ gain, 43 miles. Driving: 440 miles

[MLHSN]

thanks guys One thing I like about peakbagger's are the great photos they provide of the lakes I've been eyeballing. I'm especially enjoying the ones of Bernice and Abernathy.

[wildernessed]

Awesome, what did you guys do with your downtime ?

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Nice trip, fellers, that looks like a great way to spend 4 days.

[Justus S.]

Crdbond, nice summary tr. Those are some great pics, and thanks for a great hiking weekend. I was working on a report but just hadn’t had time to post it up yet. Here it is. August 29-Sept 1 Destination: Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness Summary: Teamed up with Cdrbond007 and spent four days hiking on the east side north of Lake Chelan. Weather was very good. The first day we hiked up to Crater Lake and climbed Ravens Ridge and Hoodoo. We spent the night at Crater. Day two we hike over and did Séance, Beefhide Butte, and Bigelow. Day three we enjoyed a good breakfast in Twisp then did a day hike up Abernathy. We saw two bear cubs on the way. Abernathy had what I think were the best views of all the peaks we did. Day four we teamed up with Wildernessed and gang and climbed up Reynolds. Had a great time. Day one: Well before I delve into the first day perhaps a little background. This was a pretty spur of the moment trip. Sure I had planned in advance to take a few days off work to tack on a few days to the three-day weekend. The constantly changing weather forecast reeked havoc with any plans I tried to make. Finally, the only thing that seemed prudent was to head as far east as possible and pray for the best. And so it was the Chelan Sawtooth area was chosen and 007 was in for the ride. We began the trip with the long drive over. We parked at the trailhead for Crater Creek and assembled gear. The hike up went smoothly and we arrived at the lake in a few hours. The lake was not exactly pretty compared to many of the other lakes in the area. It was actually a bit swampy looking. We found a nice campsite on the south shore. After setting up camp we set out for Ravens Ridge. We took a direct route up from the lake. We reached the summit of Corax much quicker than expected. We took in the views and took off for Libby.

Crater Lake and Corax

Swampy Crater Lakes

on Corax

Bigelow from Corax

Libby Lake and Hoodoo

Libby from Corax

South Fork Lakes

Seance, Star, Courtney, Buttermilk

Bigelow from Libby

Corax from Libby

Libby

Hoodoo from Libby

After reaching Libby we set our sights on Hoodoo. The weather looked like it might be changing for the worst and the wind was picking up so we hurried. The ridge over to Hoodoo looked a bit dicey and we hoped it would go without having to drop to far off. Not far from the summit of Libby after a third class scramble across a short narrow section of ridge is the crux of the traverse. There is a sling around a horn above a step. I took a few tries at climbing up the step but wasn’t able to maneuver up. We then dropped about thirty feet to the west and climbed up a little gully to get around the step( maybe some fourth moves). From there on we were able to make our way along the west side without too much difficult. We had a few snow pellets fall on us while on the summit of Hoodoo. The traverse back seemed much easier than the way over. We were buffeted by some pretty good gusts of wind at times. We opted to drop off the step on the way back.

Scrambling down on the way to Hoodoo

Approaching Hoodoo

Rainbow from Hoodoo

on Hoodoo

Storm and Star

Heading back

Scrambling the ridge on the way back

Wind blowing across Libby Lake

Stormy Star

Notes: Peaks ~6hrs round trip from lake. Corax (8572) is supposed to be the true summit though marked lower than Libby (8580) look here Day 2: That night it got down to just about freezing. We were up fairly early the next morning and set out for Séance (Peak 8030). Our route went up to the saddle between Bigelow and Libby then dropping and traversing over toward the Buttermilk trail. Encounter some brush just before reaching the trail. Hiked the trail for maybe a few hundred feet then jumped off and began traversing toward the high pt just to the southwest of the summit. We traversed around the point and reached the ridge just above the saddle, dropped to the saddle, and headed up to the summit.

Bigelow's northern face and spires

Seance

Hoodoo

Beefhide's ridge with Seance

From the summit of Seance we took a good look at the ridge to the summit of Beefhide. It looked steep just before the summit. We headed over traversing again around the side on the northern side of the ridge top. As we got a closer look at the upper section of the ridge we where still not sure it would go so we opted for a sure bet and dropped several hundred feet to the valley and headed up a loose slope east of the peak. After we reached the ridge we dropped packs and made the quick jaunt over to the summit. Enjoyed the little tribute reg to Norm.

on Beefhide

Bigelow from Beefhide

Star and Oval

We then set out for Bigelow but not before making the trip up to Pt 8010 cause it looked equal in height, just had to be sure. It was then on to the summit of Bigelow. One can’t help like the rugged ridges of Bigelow and view down to Upper Eagle Lake. The plan was to drop off Bigelow to the east and work our way back to Crater Lake avoiding a long way back. Luckily, just to the south of the summit was a small gully that took us to an 8ft step. We dropped off the step and made a scrambly traverse in the direction of the lake. Crested the ridge and dropped back to the lake. We packed up camp and hiked out. Nice thing about this trailhead is there are a few little campsite complete with picnic table. We spent the night here.

Hoodoo and Ravens Ridge

Boiling Lake and Cheops

Martin etc

Martin etc

heading up to Bigelow

on Bigelow

Looking toward Martin

Star to Oval

Upper Eagle

Ravens Ridge from Bigelow

Old Maid from Bigelow

Cliffs

Bigelow from east ridge

Crater Lakes from Bigelow's east ridge

Notes: Trip time camp to camp 9.75hrs Day 3: We had considered joining Matt’s trip to Clark and Luahna but just didn’t feel the weather would be nice enough over there. The plan was now to make a daytrip up Abernathy and another daytrip to Reynolds. We drove to Twisp and had a fine breakfast at the café in town. Boy it was most excellent and much needed after a few days of hiking food. After a little confusion as to how to get on the Scatter creek trail (old maps) we were on our way. We set a quick pace up the trail to Scatter Lake but stopped to take some pics of some bear cubs up a tree. We didn’t see mom.

Cubs

Turns out we passed Trailpair but weren’t sure if it was them. Here is their TR. Scatter Lake was nice. It was chilly out with the wind and all though. Took a look at the map to make sure we went for the right summit. Saw some people coming off 8160+(red) and heading for the true summit. The slopes up to Abernathy look steep but are not as bad once you are there. They are annoyingly loose thou. Andy saw a mtn goat on the way up. Arrived at the summit and enjoyed this amazing view point for several hours. Nice place. I saw the mtn goat on the way out. Some horse people came up to spend the night and cut out the only blowdown on the trail, yeah! We headed over to Reynolds Trhd.

Reynolds from trail

Silverstar and peaks

Stormy toward Oval

on Abernathy

Kangaroo Ridge

Reynolds from summit

Gardner Meadows

Twisp pass area

Gilbert

Gardners

heading down to the lake

Abernathy center

Day 4: As things would have it we awoke a bit later than we wanted and had just hiked up the trail a few hundred feet when I hear a car drive up. Run back down and see that it was Wildenessed, Steve and Kyled, Sweet. It was really cool to get to meet up with them. Hiked up the trail and looked for the correct place to cross the creek for the approach up the creek basin route. I had my doubts about the purposed route as it mentions brush and slide alder. Andy and I opted to hike up a bit further and cross at a different spot. Spotted some flagging on the way and as we hiked up the south fork. We came across the other guys and yelled over to them on the other side of the creek. They were on the east side, probably on route. We were on the west. We took the east side on the way down, guess it is a bit better. A back and forth game across the creel is played especially further up as one tries to find the easier route. Anyway, we didn’t see each other until in the open basin up valley. The route is supposed to go up a nice grassy looking gully. We were a bit high and didn’t want to drop. A more direct route was chosen. Boy, it is on long way up from the valley floor some three thousand feet of gain in just over a mile. The last bit there is some loose scree. Our route had us gain the summit ridge from the east side then join the normal route which comes from the south. Summit was chilly. We stayed on top for about an hour for the views.

Strange bug

looking up to the summit

Valley

approaching the summit

Guys approaching

more views

Gardners

Looking toward Silver Star

Kyled scrambling up

Wild scrambling up to the top

Valley below to the south

McAlester and peaks

Tupshin etc

On top

Coming off Reynolds

Reynolds

Reynolds from below

Notes: Trip time 9.75hrs Wildernessed’s TR here

[wildernessed]

Nice pics Justus, glad to get together again. That's a tougher trip than you might expect.

[Andy D.]

Great pictures and write-up Justus.

[Backpacker Joe]

Really great report guys. Youre strong, Ill give you that. Nice pics too. Im going to get up in that area again this fall.

[Dayhike Mike]

Wow! Really nice work guys... Great pics and TR. Thanks for posting!

[Magellan]

Strong work gentlemen. Thanks for the show!

[fettster]

Good work. Mama Bear every make her presence known? Cute buggers there.

[Justus S.]

Fettster, never saw mama bear. It might not have been as cool to watch them with mom there. Hope some of you can get over there and enjoy the area and not just see it through our pics. It'll be larch season in a month!

[wildernessed]

[Justus S.]

I don't know of this gully route you speak of. We just headed up from Crater Lake, no difficulties approaching from this side. Check out the map posted. We did not encounter any snow, but I'm sure there will be some soon.