[puzzlr]

This Frozen Mountain report is a November version of the excellent report by Martin S from Sep 2010 before the snow season. I think it's cheating to climb this peak when the temperature is above 32 degrees, but to each his own. Franklin and Yana climbed it from the other direction in seasonally correct January. Paul, Adam and I took advantage of our Hancock permits before they expire and drove the long and winding roads to within half a mile of the North Fork Tolt river crossing where this climb starts heading uphill (another form of cheating?). The short cross-country section between the road and the river is surprisingly open forest. As Martin mentioned, there is another old logging road on the North side of the river, but Fay reported that it's brushy and that's confirmed by the short section we walked on our way out. Assuming the river crossing is reasonable, the south side roads are a better approach. We could have easily forded the the river today, but found a cluster of fallen alders to cross on.

Annotated route

First view of Frozen Mountain on the drive up the North Fork Tolt river valley

First half mile on an old logging road

Crossing the North Fork Tolt

Crossing the North Fork Tolt

The National Forest boundary is just across the river and the route passes through unlogged old growth the rest of the way. Near the valley bottom the forest floor is covered in ferns, which give way to blue berries and alder higher up. But most of the first 2000' of gain is through relatively open timber and working around the big blow downs is the main navigational problem. The other difficulty was that above 3000' the duff was frozen requiring the first one up to kick steps on the slippery slopes.

Old National Forest boundary sign beyond the creek

Negotiating blow downs and brush in the clearings

Taking advantage of log highways through the snowy brush

The ridge starts to become defined at ~3700', but it's also cliffy in that area (found that out going down). On the way up we gained the ridge at about 3880' and only stayed on it briefly before bearing right to traverse to the talus field below the summit. This is where the real brush bashing begins and we initially dropped too much. My advice is to take a satellite photo along that shows where the talus slopes are and stick to them as much as possible. An easy rocky gully connects the lower talus slopes with the one below the 4920' col of two towers.

Snow talus provides a welcome break from the blueberry and alder bushwhacking

Looking up the final talus slope to the col. The summit is out of view to the right.

Hoarfrost on the trees near the col

Two towers guard the col

After passing between the two towers, the summit comes into view and presents an impossible looking smooth slab. But as you continue around the tower the terrain looks much more like the 3rd class scramble that it is. Unless there's 6" of new snow on it adding risk of slippage at every step. We all scrambled up with varying use of veggie belays, but chose to reduce the risk on the way down by setting up two short raps. Frozen had emerged from the clouds sporadically as we were climbing, but was socked in during our brief summit stay. We did not find the register.

1 label

Paul on snow covered slabs just below the summit

Final steps

Blue skies everywhere except on the summit of Frozen. We saw nothing.

Adam rapping down the summit block to avoid a potentially dangerous slip

Traversing below the upper tower

We mostly retraced our route heading down with two exceptions. To avoid the bad alder patch traverse we walked up the talus slope to get on the ridge 250' higher, thinking we'd enjoy the more open ridge walking we had lower down. This plan didn't work out. The trees on the ridge above 4000' are all small and closely packed, but probably still preferable to the steep side-hill alder we went through going up. But either way, this brushy section was relatively short compared to what we expected. The other difference was that we stayed on the ridge longer going down but it got cliffy so we dropped off to get back on our GPS-up-route. The descent was one of the more enjoyable ones I remember, and we appreciated the light snow falling through the ancient forest, and stopped to admire the biggest trees.

A fallen log provides convenient passage past a small cliff

Bushwhacking through annoying small trees on the ridge at 4100'

One of many large old growth trees, probably 7' in diameter

Frozen bushes (and fog on the lens)

As we left the skies cleared, of course, and Frozen glowed above the valley. Back at the car Paul pulled out a perfectly named beer to celebrate a successful climb of Frozen Mountain.

The mountain teases us by emerging just as we leave

This climb sponsored by Slippery Slope Ale

[Magellan]

Looks tough. Glad you fellas enjoyed it.

[Bedivere]

How do you guys walk on those snow covered logs? Microspikes? Crampons?

[LadyÆsa]

Awesome trip.... Pretty pics. Woo-Hoo! Ale!

[n16ht5]

cool!

[iron]

great quote:

[Gimpilator]

A great day in the mountains. Glad I could be a part of it.

North Fork Tolt

Brushwhacking

Monty On The Summit

Paul Rappelling From Summit

Descending From The Col

Paul Takes A Tumble

[Cyclopath]

Looks like a great trip. How did you make that map?

[puzzlr]

re: How did you make that map? 1) GPS track to Basecamp (where I archive my GPS tracks) 2) Basecamp "view in Google Earth" to get track as GE path 3) Draw simplified up and down path in Google Earth using GPS track as guide 4) Add 50% transparent GE polygon to block distracting background 5) Save GE screen image as jpg 6) Add annotation in Photoshop (or other image editor)

[Matt]

Looks cold. Nice job on the map. Thanks for the info on how you made it.