[Yana]

EDITED TO ADD: I'm not sure why some of the photos are displayed sideways - they are correctly rotated in flickr. 

These two peaks are located near the Canadian border north of Mt. Baker. Matt has been wanting to go up there for a while, so in August he, dicey, and fwb2 went for it. Unfortunately, that attempt was thwarted before it could begin due to a meeting between a pesky rock and the oil pan of fwb2's car. 

This weekend, Matt and dicey returned for try #2 and I joined them. Unfortunately, fwb2 was not able to come. 

The approach for these peaks begins at the Twin Lakes Trailhead, seven miles up a charming dirt road. All of it is rough and bumpy and the mile after the Yellow Aster Butte Trailhead features several entertaining dips that caused some worry. When we got to the lakes, I noted that there were very few low clearance vehicles there. It is certainly possible to take a normal car (I drive a Geo Prizm), but not the most advisable method. However, parking at the YAB trailhead adds 2.5 miles of road walking each way. 

Twin Lakes was a happening place already on Saturday morning, full of car campers enjoying this beautiful locale.


The first part of the trip is easy, short, and glorious - up to High Pass on excellent trail that offers great views.

We dropped our heavy overnight packs full of climbing gear at High Pass and scrambled up Larrabee, passing a group of four on the way up. Larrabee is not a particularly difficult summit by scrambling standards, but it is a chosspile of epic proportions. Bring a helmet and travel in a small group. There will be rockfall, no matter what you do.


What the ascent lacks in pleasantness, the summit makes up for with excellent views.

There were plenty of views to the south also, but the light conditions were not conducive to adequate photography.

After a brief summit stay, we returned to our packs, occasionally stopping to graze.


Now the more difficult part of the trip began - the hike into camp and our climb of American Border Peak. I will not bother describing the route as Paul Klenke has already done a masterful job of that on summitpost. Suffice it to say that the route to camp involves much traversing on talus and heather, with a steep forested rib thrown in for good measure, and some loose scree and talus ascent and descent on steep slopes. Very tedious and tiring, especially on a rather warm day like Saturday was.


Though it seemed endless, in fact the approach is only a few hours long and we found ourselves in camp with a couple of hours of daylight to spare. It was a weird place, windless and quiet, and quite warm. We lounged about waiting for dinner time.


There weren't really expansive views from camp (which is surrounded by higher mountains), but there was a good view toward sunset, and the evening light turned the already red talus an even more interesting shade.


Inconveniently, my camera batteries died at this point, so the rest of the photos I will be including came from dicey's camera.

After sunset, we saw an amazing sight - perhaps a meteor, perhaps another object burning up in the atmosphere. It was larger, slower, and much brighter than any meteor I've ever seen, and it seemed to have two separate parts. Maybe a satellite? It was very visible, despite the fact that it wasn't really dark yet and it was in the west - precisely where the sky was lightest. Whatever it was, it was glorious.   

The stars were spectacular and the silence in camp during the night was only broken periodically by the sounds of falling rock. 

Expecting a long day, we headed out of camp at 6:15. The route to the summit starts out steeply and remains so pretty much all the way to the top, with a few flatter areas for comfort. However, one of the belay stances was pretty comfortable!


The first 1200' of gain from camp involve gaining the ridge of American Border by way of gully crossings and steep talus and heather.


Then the real fun begins - alternately traversing steep terrain and going up gullies. American Border Peak is much like Larrabee in terms of rock quality, only with the added bonus of being a lot steeper.


The ascent was made more exciting by lingering snow from last weekend's storm. This was especially an issue up the last gully, where snow and moisture from snowmelt had turned into a steep wall of mud ineffectually gluing together some rocks. After some tense minutes, Matt was able to top out of this disaster of a gully and set up a handline for myself and dicey. Whew!

Once atop this gully onto the final summit ridge, the going is fairly easy to the summit block, where some interesting mantle moves are required.
Downclimbing them turned out to be still more entertaining.


As it had taken us a much longer time than anticipated to get to the summit, we did not linger to enjoy the views for very long.


We made several rappels on the descent, each of which had some exciting qualities. This one, for instance, through a tiny "keyhole":


This one, down a gully where the rope constantly dislodged a river of rocks:


The low point (for me) on the descent occurred in a spot where we had to scoot down on unpleasant, compact, wet scree on our butts. 

Despite these charming events, we made decent time back to camp, where evening was setting in. We quickly packed up and headed out, hoping to finish the more annoying parts of the traverse before darkness fell. Unfortunately, we weren't quite quick enough and hit the forested rib just as the last of the daylight faded. This area can be a navigational challenge even in daylight, as cliff bands lurk about in the trees, but in the dark it was even more difficult. Each of us had visions of spending the night tied to a tree in this forest, but luckily we eventually found a safe exit by losing a few hundred extra feet of elevation (which then had to be regained to get back to the trail, of course). Whew!

The rest of the way was easy, though we still had some off-trail plodding to do in the dark. Once back on the trail, we were amazed at how much easier travel was. 

About a mile from the trailhead, I heard some rustling just off the trail - it turned out to be a porcupine which had climbed a small tree! Pretty cool and it helped break the monotony of hiking in the dark.

We arrived back at the car at 10:40, then I had the unfortunate task of driving the endless dirt road in the dark, followed by more pleasant but also seemingly endless roads back to Seattle, finally getting home at 3 a.m. Oops!

Overall, I would say that American Border Peak and Mt. Larrabee share many things in common - both have lots of loose rock, and both offer excellent views. However, the former is much steeper and harder to approach, which might explain the fact that only about one to two parties per year climb it (if the summit register is anything to go by).

For those of you that want to enjoy the views without all that work and loose rock, take heart! Winchester Mountain, a short, easy hike on good trail from Twin Lakes offers many similar views, which begs the question: why, WHY, WHY climb those other things? If someone has the answer to that question, please let me know right away. 

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PLAY SAFE! SKI ONLY IN CLOCKWISE DIRECTION! LET'S ALL HAVE FUN TOGETHER!

[joker]

Thanks for confirming my quick take from back when I took a walk up to High Pass and asked myself "is that climb as nasty as it looks?" And my take that making it further out to the Border Peaks was even crazier. Thanks for helping me feel even better about my feeling of contentedness at having merely summited Winchester in addition to the side-trip to High Pass  .

They sure are pretty peaks to look at during sunset from a nice perch over by Yellow Aster Butte, anyhow.

[Jason Hummel]

Thanks for the report! The Pleiades are so cool looking from that area.

BTW, you need to try Larrabee in the winter/early spring.

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Photography: Alpine State Of Mind! | Trip Reports: Cascade Crusades! | FACEBOOK

[Sadie's Driver]

[BigSteve]

Nice work, great TR.   

But my neck is stiff from looking at those damn sideways pics. 

[GeoTom]

Looks steep. Sometimes really steep. 

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This space for rent

[iron]

[wamtngal]

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Nice looking trip, people!  Thanks for a great report about two peaks on my imminent list.

[the Zachster]

Nice report! Whenever I'm in that area I look at those peaks and wonder who could enjoy that steep loose (and apparently sometimes wet!) stuff. Now I now!
We were over at Yellow Aster Butte for the weekend (did you see us )

We shared the same lovely sunset...

And we saw the meteor thing too...AMAZING!!!

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"May I always be the kind of person my dog thinks I am"

[faelynn]

[EastKing]

Great TR and photos!!        Mountains I hope to be trained enough to do in the next year or two.

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I am addicted to summits! I can't eat, drink or breath without them. Life without mountains would really suck.

http://www.myspace.com/climbandsurfmackg | http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=894

[fwb]

Great TR. Glad everyone made it.  I'm still bummed I couldn't go (and bummed as well... just got the bill from last time -ouch).  My mind says I gotta' go, but the docs are keeping a close eye... I'm getting tired of baring a cheek...

[Randy]

Nicely written TR, Yana.  One for the list.

[pimaCanyon]

Yana, you, Carla, and Matt sure know how to have a good time!

Great TR, Yana, as always.  Informative but also very funny in places.  The one that had me laughing out loud though was when I clicked on the picture with the caption "Carla expresses her feelings about the descent to camp".

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It's never too late to have a happy childhood