[b00]

third mother 5-12-2018

quick and dirty route info: bike the abandoned carbon river road to ipsut creek campground. hike south on wonderland trail to just before creek coming down from 3rd mother at 2780'. head uphill (ese) avoiding brush and downfall, following game trails to open basin ~3600'. head se and sse and then se, avoid ascending to quickly, to saddle climber's right of summit. pass through saddle to the se side of saddle and take first main gully climber's left(slings in trees), that gully leads to summit. the t/r's we read said "brutal," "brush," "route finding is a challenge." that worried us. all the way up, we kept expecting problems that were just not there. i don't think we did anything special. we just tried to walk where the contours on the map looked friendly and where there was not brush nor obstructions. we did stay on the north side of creek(which is incorrect on the map) because it just looked better there. we found awesome game trails, many as pronounced as built trails! we did see lots of brushy places you could go if you wanted to be miserable, but we were not into that. we heard there was some special ramp near 3600' that we needed to get to. i guess we got to it, as the major game trails led there. from reading t/r's we assumed that there would only be one place you could get through the cliffs and although we did not try other ways, other ramps looked easily as reasonable. i pretty much spent the day boosting ian's ego, beginning with the bike riding. since he rides every day, i thought it would be embarrassing if i was ahead of him, so i decided to go slower than him by a lot. and after i kicked steps in the easy snow, when it got to more physically challenging and steeper, he took over, while i pretended to be slower than him on that too. boy did i have him fooled :>) after getting to the saddle, the gully that looked obvious to me, was the correct gully and it was obvious quickly, with slings in trees. it was a little wet, which made us pay attention on ascent. i had brought this 30m 6mm static rope that i had never used, but was kind of curious how well it would work and ian wanted to practice doing saddle bag raps, so he did 3 raps. i did two – i got bored rapping and it was pretty easy down-climbing that 3rd rap. the top two raps, sort of made sense, as it was wet and a little tricky. dry, the rope would not even have been a thought. crazy how mellow the scramble actually was: a bike ride, a short hike on a nice trail, quite reasonable off-trail travel, a reasonable scramble to the summit. since everything went so easily we looked over at 2nd mother and thought about it, but we just did not have enough time. psychology is funny. maybe if thought this trip would be easy, it would have seemed hard. the most difficult part of this trip was the punishment i took from my friends who are members of the prominence police and who issued me a citation for even thinking of doing something without 400' prominence. i have set up a gofundme page to help with the costs :>)

17.09mi 4082' gain(7.18mi 3576' gain hiking/scrambling) (9.91mi 506'gain biking) 0:55 bike road 0:12 lock up bikes 4:41 road to summit 0:52 summit stay 3:34 summit to road(including 1:04 to descend and rap summit area) 0:11 unlock and load bikes 0:37 bike road 11:02 car to car equipment: ice axe, harness, helmet, 30m static rope equipment brought, but not used: snowshoes, crampons

[raising3hikers]

the old carbon river road is about the only bike trip I like, such a nice forest in there. glad you guys had a good trip

[iron]

[Scrambler]

Great report. I especially appreciated your documentation from the register. I see my name as Trip Leader from the Seattle Mtnrs in 1984 and 1985 (Clarke Stockwell). Seems like awhile ago now. I just turned 80 years and am still doing fine except for a collapsed arch. Get your hikes in while you can! Things can change quickly. Our route was a bit South of yours. A little brush and lots of steep ground. We found a perfect slot through the lower cliffs below the basin. Then basically the same route. Did the climb several other years too and also 2nd Mother. It is a good snow climb early in the season. Obviously longer! Thanks again for the memories.

[meowich]

I too am glad you posted the register photos. I signed it June 9th 1985. Your report makes me want to repeat it.