[Yana]

Disclaimer: as I don’t have a working camera right now, I have shamelessly stolen dicey’s photos to spice up this report. (consequently, pics labeled "me" are actually dicey, not me... ) The weather was horrible! We got lost! We got snowed on! We had to rappel with the whippets’ 25’ utility cord leash! 6 times! We had to use one of the whippets as a rappel anchor! We had to eat the other one! We epicked big time! We climbed Fernow by accident instead of Greenwood! Who could find the summit of Greenwood in these hazardous conditions:

Terrible conditions on Greenwood

Well, okay, not really. I had heard for years of the much cooed over Spider Gap/Meadows/Lyman Lakes area, but had somehow failed to go anywhere near it until this past weekend. Dicey and I decided on an overnight trip to the area with the hopes of summiting a couple of peaks. Schmidt Alti-Dude and Schmidt Alti-Babe really wanted to join us for this trip but had an immutable commitment in southern Washington on Saturday, so they decided to make it a day trip and meet us at our camp on Sunday morning. The Chiwawa River Road is in mostly good condition, as is FS road 6211, but the drive to the Phelps Creek Trailhead is interminably long, though scenic, due to the excessive length (30+ miles from US-2). We arrived at the trailhead at around 9 am on Saturday morning to find about 15 cars. Given the popularity of the area, this was expected but still a little shocking (don’t people work during the week anymore?). Luckily there’s lots of parking available. We meandered up the generally flat trail a little over five miles to Spider Meadows, passing the turnoffs to Carne Mountain and Leroy Basin on the way. We were a little surprised to only meet one party of two just before Spider Meadows, and to a deserted camp area in the meadows. I guess everyone had packed up and hiked on up by this point? After some of the places I’ve hiked around this year, I found the meadow very charming in its size and stunning flatness.

spider meadows

It is currently mostly covered in dead, dried out flowers that make the loveliest sound when you run your trekking poles through them! After a brief rest, we continued through the meadow to the turnoff for Spider Gap. Most people continue up and left to the Gap, but if you take the right fork, you end up in Phelps Basin – a surprisingly scenic area full of fall colors, happy, cheery brooks, gentle terrain, and even ripe huckleberries!

phelps basin 1

The trail fades in and out, and we lost it a few hundred yards into the meadow where it crosses to the east side of the stream (though we would occasionally find faint bits here and there). There are numerous flat spots one can camp on, though no “established” (read: dirt) sites like the ones in Spider Meadow and right before the Phelps/Spider Gap junction. After setting up our bivies and lightening our loads considerably, we decided to wander on up to Spider Gap. Not only did we want to see the famous sights, but we were hoping to study our approach route for climbing Dumbwood the next morning. I was a little weary because the only recent trip reports for that area described great navigational difficulties and inadvertent climbing of the wrong summit (and Dumbwood has LOTS of sub-summits). Granted, those trips took place in pretty crappy visibility, but I didn’t want to take any chances as the route is not entirely obvious from Phelps Basin. The trail past the Phelps Basin junction steepens considerably and gains elevation efficiently to Larch Knob – a beautiful destination with many fine campsites (all empty at the time!). This area is heavily used with social trails going all over the place. We even found someone’s illegal campfire still smoldering (the campers were gone). We put it out with dirt and continued on, cursing at having to ruin our impeccable manicures. Soon, the path terminates into the Spider “Glacier,” a very low angled snowfield leading to Spider Gap.

me hiking up to spider gap

Once at the Gap, we enjoyed views of the north face of Chiwawa Peak, the beautiful Lyman Lakes, and some other further summits.

A group heading down to Lyman Lakes

lyman glacier snout and upper lyman lake

lyman glacier

We saw several parties of various sizes near Spider Gap, including a man who was climbing the snowfields around the gap and skiing down them with skiboards, which I’d never seen or heard of before. We lounged about for a couple of hours and entertained ourselves by practicing map and compass skills (marginal success) and also by reading the wilderness medicine book that comes with my first aid kit. I can now say with confidence that if someone gets shot with an arrow, gets bitten by a venomous lizard, or contracts fish handler’s disease, I will know exactly what to do! Next, we wandered over to the ridge that makes up the west side of Phelps Basin. From our high perch, we were able to look almost directly down on our bivies, and – more importantly – at the route to Dumbwood and Greenbell.

checking out the route to Dumbell across phelps cr. basin

The approach route is very obvious from above, and can be easily located once you’ve seen it from there. From our “areal” viewpoint, Dicey also discovered that the Phelps Basin trail picks up again literally from our bivy site (which was NOT obvious when we were at the bivy site). We were also dismayed to note that there were two tents higher up nearer the gully entrance. So much for solitude! D’oh! Instead of taking the snow back down, we opted to follow a trail back down to Larch Knob – it’s a very well beaten path but also marked with excessively large cairns every 3 feet or so (okay, I’m exaggerating, but just slightly). By this late point in the evening, the hordes had arrived en masse and were camped all across the lovely terrain. We skedaddled down the trail to answer the siren call of dinner and enjoy the late evening light on the summits of Dumbwood. After stuffing ourselves silly, we prepared ourselves for the rigorous and exhausting task of watching the nearly full moon rise. It came over a high, sparsely treed ridge – making it look like the trees were on fire. It was pretty ugly, not to mention kind of blinding, so we decided to retire for the evening and avoid further suffering. Dicey and I usually like to get ridiculously early starts, but today we were waiting for the Schmidts to join us before heading up. As they had to start out at the trailhead, we told them we’d wait until eight am. As we waited, a party of three passed us on their way to climb Dumbwood and Greenbell! Boy, it was getting crowded up here! I didn’t realize these peaks were so popular. Around 7:50, we decided to head out as we could not see the Schmidts (they would have been visible for at least 10 minutes before arriving at our camp). Lo and behold, right as we decided this, dicey spotted two tiny, fast moving forms coming up the basin. Behind them were their owners, who were also going up the trail at an alarming pace!

morning visitors

We were so overjoyed to see them that we allowed them a 5.43 minute break after their 2.5 hour death march from the trailhead before setting off again. On the way up to the approach gully, we passed yet another tent that we had not seen from above the evening before! Yikes! This would make a total of three parties already in front of us. Despite their early start, the Schmidts were quite energetic and we made good time up the gully and to the talus, passing the group that had walked by our camp earlier. When we got to the talus basin, we talked about what to do. Originally, we had planned to climb Dumbell first, then Greenwood. However, with two parties in front of us and at least one other group not far behind, we decided it would be safer to reverse the order, so off we went to the infamous ledge!

Yana, Tisha, and Jeremy reach the ledge

The ledge is awesome – a relatively easy path through an otherwise mostly unbroken and steep cliff face. We carefully walked across, assured by the plentiful but mostly unnecessary handholds. We walked down the permanent snowfield on the other side (pretty icy early in the morning but mostly very low angle). There is a curious tarn here (not on the map) that had large chunks of ice in it, but more interestingly, the entire thing was covered by a thinner, transparent sheet of ice!

Yana wants to swim in the tarn

Anyway, we walked up talus and dirt to the summit of Greenwood, which has the famous original summit register can but the original register is gone. I was super bummed to not get to see it in person. We enjoyed the views for a while and observed some people on the summit of Dumbell – our next destination.

My giant head blocking Bonanza behind

dumbell from greenwood

We entertained thoughts of meeting other climbers on the ledge on the way back and who would get to back up, but luckily we narrowly avoided this as a party of three from the Skagit Mountain Club got off the ledge just a few minutes before we arrived there! The ascent of Dumbell involved skirting between two fairly steep and icy snow patches, through a cliff band, up some loose stuff to an obvious fault. While negotiating the cliff band, some climbers coming down above us knocked some loose stuff down (not on top of us, just nearby), which cause Alti-Babe to go chasing after the plummeting rocks and made Alti-Dude whimper and whine a bit. This made Keifer and Rowena a little annoyed and they had to scold ‘Dude and ‘Babe for their behavior… uh… I may have mixed something up there. We ran into more traffic as we had to wait for a party of three downclimbing the fault. Luckily, we found convenient perches out of the way to wait and soon we were on our way up once more. The fault steepens and becomes more trenchlike as you go up. The Schmidts and whippets exited the fault about 50’ early to avoid the steep class four section near the ridge (the whippets can climb well, but this was a little too steep) while dicey and I took the direct route up. Very fun scrambling with solid holds here. The ridge to the summit is easy slabs and talus and we were lounging on the summit in short order.

glacier peak

bonanza peak and the isella glacier

There was a solo climber here named Bill, but he soon left to join the throngs on Greenwood. We didn’t linger much as we still had a long way to go (and also, food supplies were dangerously low). The descent was mostly uneventful and after the tedious talus, we were once again strolling through very low angle slopes enjoying the sometimes alarming fall colors.

Yana and whippets in red

descending through larches

Rowena fall colors

The descent to camp was blissfully short, despite the shutter delay, and the deathmarch back to the trailhead was made slightly more bearable (for me, anyway) as I forced the Peak Game onto the rest of the party. This is a very scenic area and deserving of its popularity (though I was surprised by the amount of parties on Greenbell and Dumbwood). Two thumbs up! This trip can be done in a day a la Schmidts, but is much better enjoyed over two days if you have the time. It is also popular with hunters (at least right now) and stock up to Spider Meadows. P.S. How to find the approach to the correct basin under the true summit of Dumbell: Go into Phelps Basin, following the creek up toward the head of the valley. The trail crosses over to the right side of the creek and stays there. It gets faint in the grassy flatter lower areas but is fairly easy to pick up where the sides of the valley steepen just a bit and get more heathery. Follow the trail until it peters out around 5700’. Make a sharp right turn here and head uphill. You should reach a fairly flat area around 5800’ – lots of potentially good camp spots. The gully is now visible in all its eroded, crappy glory. The slope steepens here. Stay on the left side of the gully on the heather/huckleberry slope. Go up. At around 6000’, the gully once again steepens to lovely waterfall slabs and angles to the right. Luckily, you can stay out of the slabs on somewhat grassy slopes (obvious trail at this point). Around 6500’, the gully forks. It is best to exit onto heather and low angle slabs and continue up. We chose to exit right onto very gentle and scenic terrain and followed the right fork of the gully up (staying out of it and to the side until a talus basin around 7000’ became visible). It also looks like you can gain heather and slabs between the two gullies (more direct), but we chose the very mellow/gentle approach instead. At around 7000’, you will hit the talus. Follow it up to under the summit block. Work up and left under the summit block to the very very very obvious fault (loose and occasionally exposed class two/three to this feature). Climb up the fault (fun scrambling, particularly if you stay on the left side). If you aren’t excited by solid class four scrambling, you can skip the final steep bit by exiting left to exposed but easy ledges to gain the summit ridge. Turn right, scramble exposed class two slabs and talus to summit. To Greenwood – from talus basin, go to the obvious notch in the ridge (just right of Dumbell summit block). It really IS obvious, made moreso by the fact that there’s actually a trail up there. Turn the corner. Be amazed at the significant exposure and this marvel of a ledge that allows you to cross a complete cliff. Class two – a couple of awkward moves, but class two. Wide ledge. Lots of happy holds! The route after the ledge is obvious.

[Schmidt Alti-Dude]

We'd had this trip on the back burner for a while and this was to be our first foray into the Spider Meadows area but as soon as the date was set we had a family function that we couldn't skip out on. We thought we were going to miss this adventure until dicey mentioned that Randy and company had done this trip as a dayhike. Well, if Randy could do it, then so could we ! We left Jeremy's grandparent's place in Bickleton (very small town about 45 minutes south of Sunnyside) as soon as we could but it was still 8:00PM before we were on the road. No problem, since we were already in Eastern Washington right - wrong! After stops for snacks and gas plus taking a wrong turn, we arrived at the trailhead around 12:30AM. We decided to arrange our packs now instead of in the morning and it was well past one before we settled under the blankets in the front seats of our Nissan Altima.

Night, night, Babe

It seemed like we just had closed our eyes when the alarm was waking us up at 4:45 . We slowly ate breakfast and put on our boots in the car before hitting the trail at 5:30. We blasted the 2.5 miles to the Wilderness boundary in 45 minutes and then had a little incident in a meadow right before the turn at Leroy Creek that leads to Maude and 7FJ. The whippets, who had been in perfect "trail formation" (Babe in front, whippets following, Dude in rear) until this point suddenly perked up and went tearing through the meadow. That is when we saw the llamas picketed on the far side of the clearing. A load shout from Tisha stopped the dogs in their tracks and they came back immediately but I felt sorry for the people in the tents being woken at 6:30 by our cries .

Heading up the trail at o'dark thirty

It's a little frosty out

We had no other incidences and made it to Spider Meadows at 7:10AM. The temperature was noticeably cooler as we crossed the meadows and everything was covered in a layer of frost. Our pace slowed a little as we started taking pictures. We headed up to the junction with the Phelps Basin trail (spotting an orange clad hunter in the hills along the way) and arrived at dicey and Yana's camp just before 8:00 .

Reading the Spider Meadows sign

Spider Meadows

Yana picked up the story from here so there is not much else to say. We had a great day of climbing and the whippets summited their first two top 100 peaks (we're on 9/8)!

Pausing by a waterfall on the way up to Dumbell

4 labels

Looking back from the head of the talus field

Whippets eat the snow while the humans do the climbing

The start of the ledge around Dumbell

Babe plays peek-a-boo on the ledge

Babe on the snowfield with Bonanza behind

Yana describes the route up Bonanza

11 labels

Glacier to Bonanza from the route up to Greenwood

The original summit resigter can (but no register)!

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Greenwood summit pano

Copper, Fernow, 7 Finger Jack, & Maude from Greenwood

13 labels

Looking west from Greenwood

Greenwood summit shot

5 labels

Dumbell Lake and Greenwood Lake below Dumbell Mountain

Traversing the 'Baby Carriage' ledge

Yana on the ledge

Heading up to the class 4 section of Dumbell

Dumbell summit ahead

Babe and the whippets reach the summit

Dumbell dumbells

Fun in the class 4

Back on the talus field

Yana leads the way through the fall colors

An example of what this area offers

Down, down, down, to the Phelps Basin

Whippets survey the colorful basin

Fall colors in the Phelps Basin

Just another lucky trailhead shot

On the way out we passed three different groups of hunters heading in for "High Mountain Buck" season so be prepared to share the area for the next few weeks to come.

[Schmidt Alti-Babe]

Beautiful area. It was nice to see the views we missed on Clark and Luahna. I'd definitely go back! I especially loved the fall color display.

Dude and the whippets asleep in the car

Phelps Basin ahead

Yana awaits our arrival

Camo Dicey

Yana tries to explain something important to Dude, Dude finds better things to do

Splash of orange

Dumbell false summit

Talus time

Dude checks on the other party's progress

It's "Baby Carriage" time, whippets

Hold on tight!

Dude on the ledge

Ledge walking

Rowena and Bonanza

Slick descent down the snow

Icy Greenwood tarn

Why are you guys stopping again???

Greenwood summit just ahead

Extreme Yana!

Dude with Lyman Lakes behind

Dumbell summit

Dude on Greenwood, Bonanza behind

Glacier from Greenwood

A quick whippet nap

Descending from Greenwood

Cool x 3

Dude on the class 3-4 rock

Yana makes everything look easy

Nope. No exposure here.

Dude on Dumbell ridge, Glacier in the distance

Dicey tackles the summit register

Dude and the talus basin

Rowena says, "Well, I just wait until they give me water, but if you want to do it that way, okay."

Whip posse posing

Leaving the Dumbell basin

Red on display

Crimson glory

Enjoying the soft heather and huckleberry

Spider Gap across the valley

Lone larches

Chiwawa across the valley

Kiefer in the heather

Who me? Just call me Bat Dog!!!

Waterfall from Spider Gap

Dude in Spider Meadows

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Nice trip, dudes and dudettes. Was the original summit register still on Greenwood? Ralph Titerud's 1937 FA of Mt. Fernow was still there when we climbed it about 10 years ago. Recently someone told me it was gone, but I see Dicey (er... Yana) holding up the red cinnamon can.

[Matt]

Wonderfully entertaining writing, Yana. Where's the "whippets on the ledge" photo? Edit: Of course, Babe edited in her photos above after I'd already posted this comment.

[kleet]

[wamtngal]

Nice! And great that you guys got to visit that area with views this time. I was just discussing that area with a friend earlier this month when we were over in the Leroy area. Looks like it is indeed a good trip to add to the list!

[goats gone wild]

Fall colors are outstanding. And the Dumbbell(s) picture made me laughed. Wish I could climb like you guys. I didn't know there could ever be too many handholds. We just did a 10-day traverse in the Olys that followed the Alties' (Dude & Babe) path from a year ago. I was hanging on for dear life while at the same time imagining they were smiling and happy-go-lucky on the same route. Great summits everyone. Glad you had a good time.

[yukon222]

Spectacular trip and pics. Looks like the weather cooperated very nicely. So the Schmidts no longer need to even camp out in the woods for long trips? Just get up early and go all day and then back out?

[cartman]

[gone]

Wonderful! Those ledge/exposure shots made my palms sweat!

[twodogdad]

Doom Rain (or is it Pain?) Hail: perfect tags for my alpine pursuits. Your Bulgarian bottom line reminds me of something I can't recall the source of: gori tilileiski. Must be a fairy tale. Does it ring a bell? tdd

[twodogdad]

This caught our attention: whippets summiting their first two 100. We thought you were way ahead of us (Boon has 3 summits; Docs only 1). Do the pics give a fair sense of the worst terrain--from a dog's point of view? Thanks, the Doodles. Great photography, as usual tdd

[John Morrow]

Thanks for the awesomely detailed route descriptions, Yana. First time I've got the sense of how fun the scrambling looks on those two peaks. Can't wait to get up there! John

[Yana]