[raising3hikers]

This past weekend, I met Iron, Hotpantz, dicey and B00 at 7:30am on the Suiattle river road. I followed them up the Grade Creek rd and over a bumpy side road to the start of the fisherman's trail to Bluff Lake. I had to drive myself because I had to be back by noon the next day. The boot path to Bluff Lake was much better than I had thought it would be. There were a few big blow downs but the path was fairly brush free and heavily flagged. B00 lead the way soaking up the dew from the small brush like a sponge, the rest of us stayed fairly dry! A few hundred feet below the lake, we noticed the blueberries were still fat and firm. We started stuffing our mouths as we slowly made our way up. By the time we hit the lake, my fingers were purple from the blueberries. We took a break watching the fish swim in the lake. The low flying dragonflies were taking a big chance as the fish were jumping.

Bluff Lake

a butterfly pic I had to take for my daughter

We followed the ever fading boot path along the side of the lake looking for another path to Cliff Lake. We never found one, so we had a little bush to battle on the way to the upper lake. We arrived at Cliff Lake early enough that everyone was convinced to go higher to make camp. More blueberry eating was had on the way up to our camp at 5800', just below Petit Chaval.

mossy slabs

Chaval from near camp

Everyone set up their camp and decided to go for Chaval. We dropped a bit of elevation to traverse under a buttress at 5600'. More blueberry eating and we could see the saddle we were going for at around 6000'. On the other side was a nice icy glacier. Even though it wasn't steep, blue ice was showing and it was slick. B00 and I had steel crampons and dicey braved her aluminums through the blue icy part. Iron and Hotpantz decided to see if the South side route would be doable in the remaining given daylight. They at least would scout it out for the next day.

glacier on the North side below Chaval

dicey and B00

Snowking

We stayed on the snow for most of the easy mellow slopes and once the summit ramp was in sight we stayed right and walked easy but steep heather slopes to above the snow in the ramp. From there, it was easy enough walking to the top of the ramp. Then another 150' to the summit which had a small 4th class section thrown in. A rap sling above it showed that some decide to rap it but we didn't need to.

an icy pocket on the S side of Snowking

looking West, Dome upper right

Glacier Pk

dicey reaching the summit

We didn't stay long as we wanted to get to camp before dark. We made it and was able to watch the sunset over Darrington far below. Iron and Hotpantz decided to leave Chaval for the next day and Iron did Petit Chaval and gave me some great route info.

downclimbing Chaval

small pond

Chaval and the obvious ramp

Chaval

Dinner and shots were had as the sun set. The sky got darker and soon the stars were as bright as I've ever seen. Jokes and stories were told as another fun day in the mountains came to an end. I woke later than I wanted but it was still only 6:20am, I headed off for Petit Chaval as Hotpantz and Iron went to finish the South route on Chaval. B00 and dicey slept as their goal was to get down to Cliff Lake at their leisure. I reached the Petit Chaval summit after some exposed climbing to see the sun rising over the Ptarmigan traverse. It was nice to be on a pk that early in the day. I headed back to camp to pack up and say bye to everyone. I made it home by noon and got to watch the nail biting Seahawk game.

sun rise over the Cascades

14.5 miles 7200 elevation gain 2 days a fun group and trip

[Redwic]

Awesome-looking trip and great beta. Thank you for sharing.

[puzzlr]

[b00]

great trip report eric! it was so great getting out with you, iron carrie and dicey. glad your seahawks won too! here are my notes from the trip: chaval 9-20 + 9-21-2014

great trip! we originally planned an olympic trip with a camp at lake lillian, but could not get permits. so at the last minute, we chose chaval. the road was not great, but not as bad as i expected. i thought we were going to camp at cliff lake on day one and then summit on day two. good thing we did not do that, as you will soon see. the trail, although it rugged and had some blank spots where you needed to pay attention, was not that hard too follow. we made bluff lake pretty quickly and i was surprised how little brush we encountered, there or on the whole trip. mostly it was some not too dense blueberry bushes. but what brush we did encounter, was wet on our way in :<(. we walked around bluff lake looking for a trail up(we never found a trail above bluff lake) and by the time we consulted our maps, we realized we had walked too far and back-tracked to the inlet. we took a slightly more difficult route than we needed to on our ascent to cliff lake, but reached there 4:12 from the car, much quicker than a previous t/r's time of 6:25. we decided to camp higher, so on we went. we passed an excellent camp at 5242' and continued up to 5744', where found a place to camp. at first carla and i were going to hang at camp and go for the summit the next day, but iron and carrie gave carla and i their extra socks(although you probably would not worry iron, i will fumigate the socks you loaned before returning :>), so we could have dry feet. this convinced carla to go for the summit on day one, which turned out to be a great idea.

i had led the way to bluff lake, but from there on, the real men, iron and eric took over. they scouted out the way from camp

and the rest of us followed all the way up to the ridge above the glacier. iron and eric found ways for us to get to the glacier. a recent t/r said, you did not need crampons for this glacier. from my personal experience, it is rare to find snow with a north aspect mid-september, where i would not want crampons. this glacier was another case in point. not only was i glad i brought crampons, but i was really glad i brought my steel crampons. a fall on this glacier, may look to some like it had a good run-out, but to my eye, looked to be fatal. we all walked very carefully. carrie tried a few feet of the glacier with her aluminum crampons and did the smart thing, she said no way. so her and iron returned to camp. the next day carrie and iron would head up this incredibly cool alternative route(in which carrie scouted and found the crux move :>) that did not require travel on ice. eric, carla, and i continued across the ice in our 'pons. could someone have done this without crampons? possibly, but the risks would have been off the charts. the ice eased to just firm snow with a thin layer of soft on the top. we took this snow to the base of chaval and then, so we could avoid the steep snow in the obvious ramp, eric led up the face on heather to intersect the ramp mid-way up. the ramp was steep and had some slick spots, where some care needed to be taken, but was relatively easy. from the top of the ramp, we each took a slightly different rock scramble to the top.

approximate route up chaval

i found an exposed class 3 way up, and descended eric's class 4 route. neither scramble route was difficult enough for me to even bother stowing my ice axe and poles, i just kept them in my hands up and down. i was much slower than carla and eric, getting to the summit at ~5:15pm. we were in danger of running out of daylight, so i quickly ate, drank, shot a half dozen pics, had them sign the register for me

and then we started down. eric, always the nice guy, hung back and made sure carla and i got through any difficulties and we all made it back to camp just before dark. good thing we did this on day one as that glacier would have been bullet hard everywhere if we had tried it in the morning and none of us, would have wanted to do it. iron had scrambled le petit chaval upon returning to camp. eric did it in the morning before carla and i even got out of the tent. eric headed down early so he could make his commitments and catch the seahawk game. carla and i slept in and then strolled down to cliff lake to hang out and swim while iron and carrie climbed chaval. neither of us had ever had such a leisurely non-rain day in the mountains. the swimming was nice. i was incorrectly skeptical about iron and carrie's planned route on chaval and worried about them taking a very long time and them having trouble reaching the summit.

cliff lake

my worries were obviously mis-placed as iron and carrie not only reached the summit, but did it easier and quicker with his route, than we did with the standard route. i should have figured. getting back to the car was pain free and soon we were back to seattle in plenty of time to enjoy dinner. thanks guys and gals for another fun time in the mountains! i was very lucky you guys invited me to join you! :>) quick and dirty route info: drive suiattle road ~6.4mi, take left on grade creek road, go ~4mi and then angle right on the unsigned fs2643, drive up road as far as you dare and look for place to park. hike up road, turn off onto obvious trail, follow the flagged, rough trail to bluff lake. traverse 2/3 of the n side of bluff lake, then head uphill nne to ~4600, then traverse west to cliff lake. head up nne from the west end of cliff lake to ~5200, do a slightly rising traverse e(excellent roomy camp with flat ground and running water at 5452') aiming for ~5600 above(n) of pt5282, traverse ne and then up to top of ridge(~5900) to find a spot to get on glacier(glacier is not shown on maps) on n side of ridge. take glacier generally ese to base of chaval, ascend easy heather up to gain the obvious (lower left to upper right) ramp. take ramp to its apex and scramble class 3 rock to summit.

chaval glacier

5:16 car to camp (3:05 car to bluff lake, 1:07 bluff lake to cliff lake) 0:45 set up camp and hang out 2:47 camp to summit 0:07 summit stay 1:59 summit to camp 10:55 day one total 10.19 mi 5836' gain 0:52 camp to cliff lake 3:39 swimming and hang out at cliff lake 3:40 cliff lake to car 8:11 day two total 5.73 mi 300' gain 14:41 car to car (not including camping, swimming and hanging out) total for trip 15.92 mi 6136' gain equipment: ice axe, crampons, helmet references: nwhikers.net t/r and http://www.mtnvista.net/Mountains/Mountains%202005/05%2009-24%20Chaval.htm

[b00]

[Backpacker Joe]

Nice hike and pics. Is it difficult to find the Grade Creek road?

[iron]

[the Zachster]

Such a beautiful area. Looks like a really fun trip! I've looked over at Chaval from Snowking a couple times, always wondering about it... Thanks for the great report!

[Backpacker Joe]

Wise guy.

[b00]

ps - it is not without a touch of irony that i learned my original notes on this trip were incorrect. i erroneously attributed carrie and iron's route to just iron and assumed that iron had just led carrie up. fortunately i was corrected. the ironic part was that i had been talking ceaselessly about the book i was reading and it's section on stereotypes, like routefinding and mountaineering = male. from "Blindspot" (by Mahzarin R. Banaji) "A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene and the son, badly injured, is rushed to the hospital. In the operating room, the surgeon looks at the boy and says, “I can’t operate on this boy. He is my son.” How can this be? (Continue reading when you either have an answer or conclude that you have none.) If your immediate reaction is puzzlement, that’s because automatic mental associations caused you to think “male” on reading “surgeon.” The association surgeon = male is part of a stereotype. In this riddle, that stereotype works as the first piece of a mindbug. The second piece is an error in judgment—in this case a failure or delay in figuring out that the surgeon must be the boy’s mother."

[gb]

Now that sounds like an appealing destination but maybe not enough brush for my taste.

[iron]

[b00]

[Magellan]

Sounds like a great time. Iron can you elaborate on Carrie's route?

[iron]