[dicey]

After coming heartbreakingly close to the summit of Challenger 3 years ago, I jumped at the opportunity for another chance at it. Our team, which I will refer to as team exane (so named by Doug) consisted of: Shail Yana dicey Doug Our team would use the easy ridge to perfect pass route in and out. Our goal was to climb Challenger and Whatcom. We would be travelling with another team of four (team insane) for the first part of this trip, and they would continue a traverse of the picket range from north to south, exiting via stetattle ridge. Doug and Shail would move their car to their proposed exit point on our way out. Team insane consisted of: Mario Seth Sandy Keith Just to make things interesting, we were sure we would meet up with yet another team of 4, coming in from whatcom pass via the little beaver. This team had a route plan similiar to that of team insane. Confused yet? Day 1 Team insane and team exsane find the proper ranger station to get permits at, and leave with not 2, but 3 seperate permits. Since Yana and I wouldn't be participating in the car shuttle duty, we figured we could spend an extra day and do Ruth and Icy on the way out. I think we confused the hell out of the rangers at Glacier, but we finally all made it out of there with our permits. Since we would be late getting started, we opted to only go as far as Copper Creek camp the first day. I didn't keep track of the stats, but the first day consisted of hiking up and over Hannegan Pass, down past boundry camp, to Copper Creek camp. Had an interesting encounter with a backcountry ranger, but other than that, we didn't see anyone past Hannegan Pass.

Ruth on approach

Day 2 Hiked down to the Chilliwack, crossed it, and started up the climber path leading up to easy ridge. The path is brushy at the start, and there are some blowdowns to manuever on the way up, but we gained the ridge in good time and took a nice break before continuing on out the ridge. It was nice to have views on easy ridge, and not just fog and rain like I had previously! Getting up and over easy peak consisted of steep snow with a bad runout, then dirt and rocks to the top. The views continued to astound, which slowed progress a bit due to shutter delay.

crossing the chilliwack

easy ridge 1

easy ridge 2

easy peak ahead

Whatcom peak and Challenger from Easy Ridge

Mineral mtn Shuksan and Ruth from easy peak

Mt. Blum from Easy Ridge

A peek into the pickets

We dropped off the ridge eventually and bootskied down towards the high crossing of the impasse, below a buttress coming down off of Whatcom peak. Keith scouted ahead for a viable route across, while the rest of us rested, looked for suitable campspots, or went in search of Keith. Eventually everyone was rounded up, and Keith reported that the high crossing was pretty sketchy for 8 people to get across safely with overnight packs. Since we didn't have time to drop to the lower, safer crossing and make it up to perfect pass at a reasonable hour, we chopped out some tent platforms in the snow below a waterfall. For various reasons, we dubbed this the camp of shame. It was less than ideal, but workable.

Keith

Seth, Keith, and Mario at the camp of shame

Day 3 We dropped to the low crossing, and walked across the impasse. Yana and Doug spotted the disembowled stomach of some animal, which was pretty creepy! Climbing up to perfect pass was as difficult as I remebered, but at least having come down this way, I had an idea of where to go this time! Steep boulderfields, steep grass and heather, and steep slabs past some rappel slings, then finally to a bench, where we could rest and pick out a route to the pass which consisted of a couple of steep snowfields, more steep waterfall slabs, steep rock and dirt, then some more steep heather right before reaching the pass. I could hardly wait to descend this route on the way out! Dropping packs at the pass, we headed up Whatcom peak to get some great views of the challenger glacier. The ridge to the summit was sharp and exciting, but there was room for all of us to hang out on the top. No register. A careful down climb and quick boot glissade brought us back to the pass where we set up camp and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Morning light hits Blum

challenger glacier and Luna from Whatcom summit

Doug attempts a handstand near Whatcom summit

perfect pass camp with whatcom behind

Shail at camp

challenger glacier alpenglow

Day 4 We graciously let team insane start out first in the morning for Challenger. They had their full packs and would stash them on the glacier, retrieving them after their climb to continue on with their traverse. Thanks for kicking such nice steps team insane! After giving them a nice head start, we got roped up and started up and across the glacier, which is about 15 miles across (not really). We would catch glimpses of team insane ahead of us from time to time, and when we finally reached the rocky area below the summit block, they were belaying their last team member up. We ate and relaxed while they belayed team members to the tippy top, and then all rappelled the route. Yana was volunteered to lead the summit pitch for team exsane, and will hopefully add her beta since the rest of us just top roped it while she patiently belayed us up and then out to the true summit. No register (?) What a great feeling it was to finally stand on top of Challenger! We watched a team of 4 sweep around below Whatcom peak to perfect pass, and then ascend and descend Whatcom. We suspected it was the third team we were expecting to run into, and they were right on schedule. We watched team insane begin their descent of the glacier, then we all rapped, returned to our packs, and roped up for our descent. When we reached team insane's gear stash, all that was left was their footsteps leading up and away....goodbye team insane, and good luck! The third team of 4 were making their way up the beginning of the glacier, and we all stopped at a nice campspot above perfect pass. We chatted for a while as they roped up to continue on. I was sad that they wouldn't be camping at perfect pass with us for the night, but had elected to move on to complete their traverse. Team exane would have to get used to being a team of 4 alone for the first time! We continued on and down to perfect pass to enjoy our evening.

challenger am

Whatcom am

heading out

team insane

a crevasse on the challenger glacier

Luna cirque

final snow arete to summit area

Luna, luna lake and lousy lake

Mario raps the summit block

glacial green

Doug on the summit of challenger

shail on the summit

team insane start their descent

me on the summit

Yana on the summit

mother crevasse

Matt's team heads out onto the glacier

Doug calculates his remaining food supply

Day 5 We awoke to a whiteout, so we took our time heading out, hoping things would clear, and not looking forward to our descent. Things began to clear above us, but we would be heading down into the thick of it, and it was...thick....as we carefully descended, the fog got increasingly thicker. We decided to make use of the rap slings to rap the slabs, and volunteered Yana to go first to make sure the rope would reach. It did Well, we still had to downclimb through a dense mess of amorous trees, but the rappel worked out great. We made it to the low crossing (disembowled stomach was still there), and began working our way back up to easy ridge, which we couldn't see at all. We went too high in the fog and had to blindly bump our way along the bottom of several buttresses before we were finally able to gain the ridge in a reasonable spot. Not having visibility for this portion of the trip was very trying for our team. We had agreed at the beginning that we would make camp on the far side of easy peak in order to have all of the difficulties behind us, so we trudged along the ridge to the top of easy peak. We volunteered Doug to kick steps down the dirt, rock and snow on the other side, which he did a super job of! Now we could all breath a sigh of relief. Easy from here on out - right?! Found a great campsite near a lovely tarn and turned in for the night hoping for clear skies in the morning. We drifted off to sleep in the moisture-laden swirling mist, wondering how team insane was faring.

swirling mist on challenger

brushy slab rappel

shail on rappel

spectre 2

Day 6 Morning found us still enveloped in the wet fog, which soaked our tents, including the inside of Yana's tent (!) - bleck! We packed up and made our way down the ridge, wandering around with no visibility, searching for the key spot where we would need to find the climbers path down to the chilliwack. After a few false starts and compass work, we were able to get on track, and found our descent spot - whew! Back down the switchbacks we went, getting closer to the chilliwack with each step down. After the chilly ford, we put ourselves in uphill grind mode all the way back up to Hannegan Pass, where Shail finally looked up from his boots and exclaimed, "Wow, we are here already?!" We were back in the cold, dense fog that seemed to hover around 5-6 thousand foot level. Yana and I decided to pass on doing Ruth and Icy in these conditions even though we had enough food left and the time. Not much point in climbing peaks with awesome views, if there are no awesome views to be had. We met several interesting groups on our descent to the trail head, including a work crew working on the trail washouts - thanks guys! Made it back to the trail head by 5pm - Yay! Shail and Doug left to perform their car shuttle duty for team insane, and Yana and I headed back to Seattle, after a gorging party at the Bellingham Taco Bell.

[Opus]

Great effort and an awesome pay off! We were probably watching you guys far below from our perch camped on top of Ruth. Too bad we didn't cross paths at some point.

[Schmidt Alti-Babe]

I really love the names of your teams. Quite fitting. I'm glad you finally made the summit of Challenger and that the weather held at least until then. Beautiful terrain and excellent TR. Thanks for sharing your adventure with us.

[SlowWalker]

Awesome! Congratulations and thanks for writing a TR for this one. Must have been hard to condense all that action into a nice, compact TR. I'm really glad you guys timed it right to have your summit day be before the two days of fog rolled in.

[Schmidt Alti-Dude]

Entertaining trip report dicey. Way to be exsane!

[Don]

Awesome Dicey! Glad it worked for you this time! And thanks for all the great eye candy too!

[DIYSteve]

So, why did you not exit via Eiley/Wiley (which goes down so much easier than up) and make it a traverse? Oh, yeah, the hellish car shuttle and planning the boat ride. Never mind. That rap runner on the scrub cedar above the Imperfect Impasse lower crossing looks very familiar! Did you see parts of the crashed military helicopter below Perfect Pass?

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Heck yeah! Challenger is really getting climbed this year. Sweet TR, Dicey!

[silence]

way to go shwhackers, etal .. doug and handstands .. must be all the snickers ha ha .. awesome pix dicey .. you make me proud girl!! o ... and yana .. you rock too!!!!!!

[GeoTom]

Very nice.

[dkemp]

Oooo that Challenger! I'm gonna get you someday sucka! dicey, glad you were successful this time! Ah, extreme + insane = exsane. I get it!

[Guiran]

Very nice

[Tazz]

OMG! She wrote a report!! NICE!

[cartman]

Beautiful area, thanks for the pics!

[wildernessed]