[ngie]

… couldn’t quite believe the rock~fall, yesterday. Hey hey hey! Some slight exposed scrambling, out on Robinson… A little bit of snow would have made a better go… Whoa whoa whoa! Whoa whoa whoa… ["aka Simon and Garfunkel go Bulger Scrambling"] It's Bulger season and after tagging the Craggies the week prior, I decided to head out to the Pasayten again with a buddy to try and tackle Robinson. I was hoping for snow, but there wasn't a ton to work with (more on that later). There was some good information up on the SummitPost page, but a number of unknowns about the current state of things given that it'd been almost 3 weeks since the last TR on PeakBagger. We did our best to prepare by gathering old tracks and my buddy did an awesome job (as usual) getting historical beta from old trip reports. Knowing that it'd be a long day, we camped overnight at Ballard Campground; we were originally aiming for another one closer to the SR-20, but after running into a lot of full camps, Ballard seemed like a very good choice. We were worried that the spot was taken when we rolled in after 8:30, but it turns out it was just an old permit from the prior occupants (yay!!). We woke up at a somewhat civilized hour (6am) and hit the trail around 7am. The first part of hiking in via the Middlefork Methow River Trail was quite nice, albeit steep. It got a bit brushier, but nothing too terribly gnarly apart from the periodic brush scraping in shorts (ow...). After hitting the second bridge, we went about <30' past and found our next way up alongside Beauty Creek. Beauty Creek Trail reminded me a lot of Fourth of July Creek Trail out around Leavenworth: it was steep, sun exposed, and quite brushy in areas (again, not a fun place for short wearers, like myself). Definitely not a fun part to get caught in the middle of the day, but given that the sun was just rising over Scramble Point, it wasn't horrendously hot [yet..]. Once we started ducking into the semi-dense pine forest up the trail, the temperatures dissipated a bit. There were some talus fields that separated the forested sections though, which made for warmer travel. Fortunately it was still early enough that we weren't roasting on trail. We encountered some annoying blowdowns along this section, but many were easy to hop over/under or bypass uphill. After crossing a few amply flowing streams we came across a semi-obvious cut in the meadows that ran uphill towards the tarn fed by Robinson. We had to do some routefinding uphill, given that there wasn't a set track in a lot of areas (very confusing deer trails) and some spots were brushy and obstructed. It wasn't a great spot to go off-trail given how fragile the vegetation was up to the tarn. It took a bit, but we finally found an unobstructed path up to the tarn where we happily submitted to the cool snow-fed waters with our eager water filtering gear. After I filled up another 2L and we both ate some snacks, we carried on ahead uphill towards the saddle north of the tarn. The way up was quite loose chocked scree, but there were a number of sections where past travelers made dents in the hillside, making it easier for us to get up. This worked reasonably well for a time, but we both got tired of the scree and tried edging towards the more obvious stable ribs. At a point we had to jump off the rock: I elected to go right because the rock looked better, and my partner went left because he preferred that route up. Turns out his choice was better: I ended up doing some harder class 3~4 moves and had to do some iffy/exposed class 3~4 down climbing (loose rock was the main concern) with super questionable holds. I was lucky to have him guide me around my gendarme on the south side through a slot up to the col, then met him further up the ridge. I was a bit gassed from the mental gymnastics/anxiety with dealing with the loose rock and he was tired from the heat, so we stopped for a bit and rested. After about 10 minutes or so we continued on up the right, biasing left, as suggested in the SummitPost page. Most of the traverses sent well, but there was some loose rock that we encountered and since we were paralleling, I needed to pause, duck, and cover periodically to avoid getting hit by rocks. In summary, the way I went seemed like less work at first, but involved a bit more danger and I would probably refer to my buddy's track when traversing up the ridge where our tracks diverge. We finally got up to the SE peak, enjoyed some more snacks and took a break, then marched northwest towards the true summit off in the distance. We did a fair bit of traversing again, bypassing gendarmes, but (in some respects), my traversing lower paid off more than before (I was lucky and found a semi-clear bootpath along the south side). This allowed me to get past most of the gendarmes, but I had to get up and over a final gendarme before the crux move up the ~60' ridge. This section seemed straightforward to me. I tried going off right up the loose class 2 gully with bad runout, but in retrospect, going up the exposed ridge spine would have been better. From lower sections of the ridge spine I carefully chavaled and leapfrogged over the boulders, getting up to a nice seat 20' from the next level. I waited for my buddy to get up, helping coach him along the exposed ridge and we both continued on and over to the true summit. The last 50' or so was a pretty nice walkup with no exposure and great 360° views of the Pasayten and North Cascades: we could see everything from Loup Loup to Windy Peak and Remmel Mountain to Shuksan, Kulshan, and Jack, all the way over to the Inspiration Glacier, Ragged Ridge, and other points in-between! Moreover, the views of the closest Bulgers to the north (Lake, Osceola, etc) was inspiring for many future backpacking trips to the area (if only the drive wasn't so far...)! After signing the register we started working our way downhill. It took a bit of work to get back down the crux portion of the ridge due to exposure concerns, but we eventually got over it and down along the path bypassing the gendarmes. When we got to the southeast peak we decided to ad lib a bit and go straight down the gully in the northwest portion of the basin which wrapped the tarn. It was a good idea, but in retrospect the timing was horrible. The rockfall was piss-poor and the steps were just large enough that tripping and falling could result in a hazardous tumble down to snow and rock below, so we did our best to exercise care and go one at a time downhill. Unfortunately I kicked down a small boulder which went towards my buddy, split in two (thankfully the rock was softer..), and a piece hit him in the elbow . So, in order to avoid kicking down more I decided to cut hard right (south) towards the west face of the bowl, and boot ski down the snow, while he made his way down the sunnier slopes. My path down was quite slick since it was in the shadows, and the first couple hundred feet I had to self-arrest a few times. Fortunately I got down low enough that I could start successfully boot ski my way down towards the tarn. I picked up a lot of speed and got within a 100 or so vertical feet of the tarn. I needed to get more water: this was our last water pit stop for the trip, so I got it as much as I needed to. I tried to be quick about it as well because the mosquitos and flies were insatiably hungry since it had cooled down. Continuing on we tried finding a low-impact path around the tarn, but eventually gave up and returned the way we came up. It had cooled down and I wish I could have savored the walk down, but I had a cloud of d*mn mosquitos following me the whole way down to the Beauty Creek Trail. Fortunately the bugs died down the further away from the creek we got, which allowed us to get some rest on the steep descent down to Robinson Creek Trail. We had some time to get a final rest before continuing on further down. The rest of the walk was long and fairly uneventful, but it was very nice to enjoy the flowing creeks and great smelling flowers..

• Peakbagger

[John Morrow]

Thanks for the TR, ngie. I have a question but I likely know the answer. In fact, folks probably ought to tell me to shut it since I have never been there. The scree is infamous, and I am wondering where the blockage is on the South Ridge that prevents folks from quickly accessing a rock ridge from the tarn instead of a big loose scree field? Is it visible in the photos below? Maps and GE don't tell the whole truth...

[ngie]

Hey John! The big issue with going directly up from the tarn to the rock ridge is that you'd be fighting a ton of scree heading uphill and depending on the time of day you'd be dealing with a ton of potential rockfall with all of the loose crud that hasn't been kicked down by people. I would personally only head up there if there was consolidated snow all the way up the back of the basin.

[b00]

[ngie]

Hahaha! No problem b00 !! I don't know when you went up, but there's actually a pretty decent switchbacked bootpath with fairly deterministic rockfall concerns, whereas I felt like the gully in the back I came down was like gambling for your life .

[ngie]

John: I might have misunderstood your question, by the way: the entire rock ridge is loose shale, minus some "stable" ribs a few hundred feet above the tarn. Gaining the south ridge is actually kind of worse because it hasn't been "cleared" by earlier travelers .

[John Morrow]