Numine.com: Seattle working-class blog

by Kat

( Pictures from Attempt on Heaven's Peak )

I finished editing the last of the Glacier photos. They're split between two days, Day 6, wherein we attempt Heaven's Peak, and Day 8, which was our last day in the park (we left midmorning).

Our Heaven's Peak attempt is an interesting little story. We've always wanted to try climbing Heaven's Peak. It's one of the more scenic mountains in the West Glacier area, mostly because it's not clustered together with the rest of the Logan Pass peaks. It sits, long and low, across from the Garden Wall. Climbing Heaven's Peak means starting about 2,500 feet lower than any of the peaks at Logan Pass-- but skipping the 45 minute drive up there.

There are three main routes up the mountain. One is an overnight that takes hikers from the loop on Going to the Sun road down into the river valley (that was decimated by the Roberts Fire Complex in 2003) and up the long shoulder of Heaven's Peak. This route is 12 miles one way with an elevation gain of 4700 feet. Needless to say, we didn't feel like hiking 24 miles in 2 days.

The route we took was up either up the "south ridge" or the "east face." We really can't figure out which one it was supposed to be. Anyway, the route is obvious and begins just a few miles up the road from the Speyer Cabin. You start the day by fording the creek, which is pretty easy in late summer, and an invigorating way to start a climb of 5,000 vertical feet in under 4 miles.

We knew we'd have to start hiking early and out of the car by 7am. Amy had decided not to attempt the summit (she hiked at Logan Pass with the goats instead) and was worried for our safety, but we told her that we'd set a strict turnaround time and not to fret. Little did we know that we'd come home over an hour past the time we told her to start worrying (and, due to a "slight" miscommunication, several hours after she already had).

The day of the hike was INCREDIBLY hazy due to smoke from all the fires. It didn't clear all morning or afternoon, which resulted in an odd, pinkish sort of light all day. The majority of the terrain was solid stream bed with intermittent cliffs and pleasant, if somewhat monotonous views. The stream we followed was consistently beautiful, however.

When the stream became impassible, we were forced to bushwhack through thick, entangled underbrush for the better part of an hour. As we got higher, the rock became less solid and smaller, eventually leading to large talus slopes in the basin below the peak. It was excruciatingly slow going.

When we reached the basin, we were somewhat torn on whether to attempt the summit because we still had so much altitude left to gain and we were rather unsure of the correct route to the ridge line. We decided to attempt the ridge and see what it was like. After crossing the unusual, barren and cracked moon-like terrain, we ascended the ridge via a cleft that appeared steep and impassible but was actually quite easy to climb. Once on the ridge-top we were treated to terrain I've never seen in the park before while climbing-- steeply sloped slabs of rock, which we carefully traversed. (And then perched on when we reached the ridge top.)

At this point, we hit against our time limit and had crossed Tom's comfort zone. The summit was in sight and less than a mile and 1,000 vertical feet away. It was heartbreaking. If photographic evidence is worth anything, it was a good thing we didn't attempt to go any farther up the mountain. As Justin and I were ogling what we thought to be the summit cairn, it moved... repeatedly disappearing and reappearing on the summit ridge. Whatever it was, it was obviously big-- and pictures seem to reveal the outline of a grizzly bear. We had been seeing big piles of fresh bear shit all day and grizzlies are known to eat ladybug hatches on top of summits. We might have just barely avoided catastrophe.

Oh, another cool thing was that I saw an ice fall. There was this small glacier in the bowl below the summit, and while I was standing alone on the summit ridge I saw a large chunk break off of the top and fall down into the detritus below. It made a sound like thunder.

We rested in the basin and Tom took a chilly bath before our descent. Coming down is where we got really screwed.

Somehow, we thought it a good idea to attempt a bushwhack farther up ledge where we had ascended. Probably the idea was that it would be at less of a slope. It was, but also twice as dense and twice as far, spitting us out up a slick creek bed thickly lined with underbrush. We clawed our way through the brush, cursing and struggling, losing hiking poles and sanity, while it gradually got darker.

The only plus side of this time-consuming misadventure was that we got observe firsthand the climbing skills of a bear. When we broke free of the brush and climbed down to the main creek bed, a black bear popped out from the bushes on the opposite side of the canyon, climbing down the mountain too! It was much to small to be our summit friend, and safely far enough for us to watch. They're speedy little buggers, bears!

Anyhow, the end result of the bushwhacking disaster was that we were forced to hike for over an hour in complete darkness (though we had headlamps) and didn't make it back to the house until 10pm, by which time Amy was in tears and on the phone with Justin's dad. :( It was an exhausting and frustrating climb, but one I would attempt again, just to finally complete it. Check out the photos in the Day 6 Gallery.

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