[twodogdad]

RichP, Bruce and I completed a Clark-Luahna-White River loop in 48 hours, starting at the White River TH Thursday night and armed with a secret weapon. (The map of Roald’s honorable scars provided invaluable clues towards finding the mythical sheep path from Clark Basin to the White River.) Highlights: abundant berries in Boulder Creek basin, easy navigation up, delightful summit scrambles, spectacular views of peaks, glaciers, basins, starry skies, happy goats. Bruce climbed Clark with us, then went back. Rich and I moved on to Luahna via a steepish gully off the south flank of Clark, followed by a long crappy traverse to the base of Luahna. We climbed Luahna on Saturday morning, traversing west under the south face of the mountain, then contouring WNW around a huge buttress (which obscures the summit), and aiming for a steep dirt gully which leads directly to the summit. This gully is recognizable by a peculiar rabbit-ears rock formation just to the left of the buttress (photo below: aim for the opening between the buttress and rabbit-ears). We found the summit register on Luahna but no register on Clark (Clark has two USGS plaques). Going back we did a descending traverse of two basins SSE, made good progress through steep timber, then hit 1500 ft of abominable brush on our way to the White River. Having bushwhacked my way through the burn on the NW flank of Cannon Mtn I thought I’d seen the worst of NW slide alder and indeed the slide alder here was of unremitting viciousness but nothing compared to the clinging evil of vine maple. Once near Thunder Creek we completed the descent bolder-hopping our way down the creek (and a couple of dry-stream beds) to the White River trail. Thanks Rich for your good cheer when the going was good--and when we got smothered, whipped, scarred, impaled, suffocated, baffled, and humiliated by Mother Nature who will always have the last laugh.

001 Boulder Basin: route goes to notch over Rich's left shoulder

003 Rich and Bruce

008 Clark Summit, Nodogdad

009 Clark USGS #1

011 Clark USGS #1

012 Rich on Top of the World

014 Luahna from Clark Summit

016 Twodogdad, again (for those who don't know: one of my boys is white, the other one black)

019 Clark from Luahna summit

025 Rich signing Luahna register

028 Rabbit Ears left and Summit Gully

029 Buttress and Rabbit Ears (left)

030 Goats Eden

031 Luahna from basin (summit at far left)

034 Clark from basin

[mntsun]

Sweet! Awesome work! I would have loved to have been able to get the time to head out there (although it was fun to see RichP's signature in Corax summit register).

[TrailPair]

Wow, what an exciting two days! We would like to do Clark someday.....

[wildernessed]

Good stuff !

[RichP]

Thanks Niko and Bruce for a fun, though arduous trip. This is one to remember for me. The basins along the Clark High Route are all splendid. I was sorry to not have crossed over the next ridge in order to visit Thunder Basin. But alas, time limitations prohibited that. Perhaps next year.

Traversing to Clark

Looking down to the White River

The walk up route of Clark

Alp slope below Clark

The guys cool their jets below Clark

Dried moss

Basin Below Clark

Kololo Peaks

Glacier Peak

The traverse

Our descent route

Luahna and Glacier

twodogdad making his way to Clark summit

Nice meadow and Lake below

Lake in meadowy area below Luahna

Buck, Maude, et al

High Pass

Looking down Clark

Richardson Glacier

Richardson Glacier

Point 8373 and Walrus Glacier

Twodogdad and Like2thruhike on Clark summit

Our traverse to Luahna

Point 7970 and Luahna

Traversing around point 7970'

The morning view of Luahna

Niko on route to Luahna

Chalangin Peak

Chalangin Peak

Pilz Glacier

Clark Mtn from Luahna

Twodogdad happy to be on the summit of Luahna

Glacier Peak

Kololo Peaks and Suiattle Glacier

Down through the "rabbit ears"

Key gully to Luahna summit

Niko traversing around basin below Luahna

Entering basin Below Clark

Basin below Luahna

On the way down

In the midst of the bushwack down to Thunder Ck

Boulder hopping Thunder Ck in order to avoid Vine Maple hell

A bit of forest walk along Thunder Ck

[twodogdad]

[Yana]

Very nice! Hopefully I'll get into this area sometime soon.

[twodogdad]

Thanks, mome: it's the Bulgarian way Here's a passage for you from a book I translated into Bul ages ago which would apply to the goat legion we saw if the goats had braved the bush as we did: smradno skotsko sataninsko skopishte na pohotlivi kozobradi besove (it's a vision of hell as you might have guessed, courtesy of James Joyce). tdd

[DIYSteve]

Great work! Gotta luv the Dakobed Range.

[Roald]

What a cool trip - wish I coulda joined you. Except for this part: "...hit 1500 ft of abominable brush on our way to the White River..." Speaking of which, I recognize this pic:

[Dansjolseth]

We took the same "shortcut" down when we climbed Clark and Luanha in about 1990. We made the decent in the height of nettle season and came our with stings all over our bodies. It's not the worst bushwack but close to it.

[RichP]

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Nice TR on a really scenic spot. That sheep herder's path wasn't easy to follow when we were up there, I can imagine it's not much better 6 years later. Klenke and I did Clark and Luahna as a day trip in August of 2003, going up some steep watercouse below Luahna, then out the herder's path. The crux of that trip was the drive home after 13.5 hours on the trail and a flat tire in Klenke's POS Honda!

[puzzlr]

Brave trip -- Roalds report will keep me out of that area for a while, till I forget. Can you elaborate on the route you took in, and why you didn't retrace it going out?

[cartman]

Strong work, guys. Reports like this and having already done Clark make me think that Luahna via Little Giant Pass and the Pilz Glacier is a good option...