Destination: Jumbo Mountain 5840
Date: April 26, 2009
Party: Matt, Carla, Yana, Guiran, Franklin, Iron, Cartman, Puzzlr
There is a confusing array of route descriptions for Jumbo, but the variations are fairly minor and they all end up following about the same path. Basically we took the Squire Creek road to 1450 feet, ascended on trail and in woods to 3700, ascended a hard snow gully to 4300, then traversed right into the main bowl below the summit, curved up through the bowl to the North-Middle summit col, and walked up the crest to the Middle (true) summit.
A key for Jumbo is to have enough snow for travel high up, but stable conditions for the big avalanche bowl. With the very hot weather earlier in the week, followed by cooler temperatures recently, we had a good layer of consolidated snow – crampon hard going up, barely soft enough to kick steps going down.
The photo below shows our approximate route and also at left see the huge landslide that took out the Squire Creek Road.
Jumbo Route
I pretty much utterly failed to take pictures of the first 3000 feet of the approach, but I know some of the others have good photos, which they've been patiently waiting to post while I lagged on getting the report done.
We parked at the current, truncated end of the Squire Creek Road, 1150 feet. About a third of a mile up the road we crossed the big 2002 landslide. It’s quite impressive, stretching thousands of feet uphill, hundreds of yards wide, and filling the stream basin with debris. At the last stream gully in the slide, we had to go up about 50 feet to re-aquire the road. Puzzlr posted some good info on the landslide here.
At 1450 feet, about 100 feet before a stream crossing, we found the way trail to Jumbo on the left, marked by a pink ribbon, but no cairn. The trail was vague at first but then very clear, with even steps cut into some logs.
About a hundred feet uphill, we found an impressive cluster of cedars growing on a root mound that seemed to stand 8-10 feet above the hillside. Couldn’t figure out what was underneath there.
Big Tree Cluster
Between the trees
Log with Steps
The trail petered out in a minor stream gully circa 2450 feet. We moved rightward up onto the ridge, found occasional ribbons, and continued up through mostly open forest, paralleling another gully that was on our right. Below and behind us, the Squire Creek wall dominated the opposite side of the valley, while higher summits hid in the clouds.
Circa 3400, we hit snow, donned crampons, crossed the very hard snow in the gully, and traversed rightward till we reached a more definite gully at 3600, with an open bench and rock face visible above. We went up this gully, traversed into the forest on the right before the top, and came out on a ridge overlooking the main Jumbo bowl at 4300.
Squire Creek Wall
Cramponing Fun
The clouds were slowly breaking up, and we could see the rest of the route. Drop about 50 feet, traverse to a distinct gully through a rock step at the base of the bowl, angle right in the lower bowl, up a step to the upper bowl, then angle back left to reach the North-Middle Jumbo col (left of the summit), and follow the crest back right to the top.
At the far side of the bowl, a goat was wandering on the snow.
There was lots of avalanche debris in the bowl, but none of it was fresh, indicating it was from the hot weather earlier in the week. A couple inches of fresh snow covered a thick crust underfoot.
Goat
Summit bowl, with route marked
Traversing out toward the gully
The gully below the bowls
Lower bowl, above the gully
In the upper bowl there was a set of bear tracks, which Eric followed. The tracks led right up to the cornice at the col.
Along the way up, Whitehorse finally poked its head out of the clouds.
Upper bowl, with Eric diverging to follow the bear tracks
Whitehorse comes out
Higher on the debris fields
Bizarrely warped stitch of summit area, but I sort of like it
Just below the Middle-North col
The summit ridge was exposed but easy rock, forming a photogenic progression of curving cornices.
Below the summit
At the Middle-North col, with bear tracks at edge of cornice
Looking down the summit ridge
Looking up the summit ridge
We did the usual summit things for an hour.
Summit tea
Summit group
Me at summit
The views got better and better. Three Fingers finally revealed all three of its summits.
Going down, the snow had softened just enough to allow kicking steps and occasionally glissading.
Departing the col
Down Escalator
My shadow on the cornice watching someone go down
We followed our same route all the way down, pausing briefly to throw fish and basketballs at Yana.
In the upper bowl with Whitehorse beyond
Turning the corner to drop to the lower bowl
Above the bowl gully, with the traverse to the forested ridge ahead
Parallel tracks of humans and avalanches
Coming out of the bowl gully
Traverse back to the ridge
Brief bobsled glissade in forest gully
Apparently my camera doesn’t work below 3500 feet. No photos the rest of the way down. Lucky I had lots of companions who took more photos along the way.
Stats: 8 miles, 4700 net gain, 4800 cumulative gain, 9:30 hours.
“As beacons mountains burned at evening.” J.R.R. Tolkien
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“As beacons mountains burned at evening.” J.R.R. Tolkien
Matt –
What I like about your trips are that you pay attention to the little things as well as the big, obvious ones. OK so the summit and climbing is great. No sh##, grooving on theat is not unique. Very nice, of course, but….a no-brainer.
But what I notice about your reports are wonders and pictures of neat stuff like that cedar with the pile of whatever surrounding it.
There was another photo of yours a couple years ago – of a tiny hoar-frosted flower – that you took the time to observe during an epic journey to a summit.
That’s what I liked about hanging out with Torok – he takes time to really enjoy surroundings the whole way.
Thanks for the report and photos. I’m ramping up my participation with Bushwhackers this summer, so I’ll be in descent shape pretty soon.
"...Other than that, the post was more or less accurate."
Bernardo, NW Hikers' Bureau Chief of Reporting
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"...Other than that, the post was more or less accurate."
Bernardo, NW Hikers' Bureau Chief of Reporting
Kudos to Matt for synthesizing a no-backtrack route from the various descriptions and confusing flagging. Here's a few more pics, without doing any repeats. It was a well-photographed mountain that day.
A steep snow tongue in the woods.
From the ridge we got a good look at the rest of the route. At least Yana and Matt did!
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see. Ummm The bear went down the mountain ...
Carla treads carefully
Two climbers still in posthole hell
Yana powers up the final steps to the ridge (and get's bombed with gorp for being last)
Mike leads the way down the long ridge back to the road. Sunglasses in an old growth forest?
Another perspective of the route:
Another view of the route. Picture was taken from Whitehorse on June 21, 2008. There's a lot more "down" to the valley bottom that's not visible here.
matt and all - great trip. thanks for letting me come along. to be honest, when i saw who was coming, i was a touch intimidated since this mountain had more of an alpine feel to it, and the crowd that was signed up seemed above my league. when i heard reports of 50 degree snow (which we didn't find) and the possible use of a handline (which we didn't use), i thought i might be biting off more than i was ready for. fortunately, this was not the case and it was, yet again, a thoroughly satisfying day.
and ditto to what the others have said about matt's TR's. they really do capture the little details. it's often easy to cruise up and down a mountain while missing things; this just doesn't happen with matt. it helps to have writing skillz capable of capturing the finer points.
group discussion on which one of the 29 TR's to follow
matt heading across first gully
brian heading up second gully
first views of the summit before dropping into main drainage basin
taking off from EL4400 and beginning the traverse
a rising traverse beneath the rock on the left
'pon prints
avy runout and full view of summit
upper avy area, summit centered in pic
the group making its way up
the group heading up the avy debris with whitehorse in the background
brian, puzzlr, and dicey at the col (me nearing the summit)
i really enjoyed the final couple feet up to the summit. the conditions this day created a bit of a knife-edge (more than i'm used to at least) and the southern, steepish, sun-warmed slope was really the only practical spot to traverse since the leeward north slopes were slightly undercut and not all that inviting for a first bootprint. the snow felt pretty solid, however. i imagine in a week or two, it'll all be a rock scramble from the col upwards.
summit ridge
a little more to go
brian nearing the top
a 1981 summit register
puzzlr nearing the peak
dicey's turn
a jumbo-sized group of 8
camera decides to go into color accent mode, picking up greens apparently
coming down after a leisurely break and everyone's favorite game of 'name that summit'
final shot at jumbo while standing in avy debris
for scale
black&whitehorse
a group of professional boot glissaders
eyeing up the run
great snow, sun, and summit!
moss!
a couple of trees the loggers must've missed (shh)
when you see this tree, you need to look for the flags and follow the subtle ridge into the 'trail'
where we turned off the road, approx 100-150' from the creek
from the washout area, stay left at this point (use large boulder for reference)
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P.S. The down escalator looked fun!
