Apex, Windy, Armstrong Surveys

Surveys of Apex Peak, Windy Peak, Armstrong Mountain

Oct 14-15, 2023

Summary of Results:

Windy 8335.1 ft +/-0.1 ft
Apex 8302.0 ft +/- 0.1 ft
Armstrong NW 8131.6 ft +/-0.1 ft
Armstrong SE 8123.8 ft +/- 0.5 ft

45 miles, 10kft gain

There are a handful of peaks in the northeast Pasayten that are edge cases for inclusion in the Washington Top 100 list. These are peaks with a quad-surveyed height within 40ft of the bottom of the list (currently 8326ft). I’ve found based on past surveys and Lidar data comparison that quad-surveyed heights can be off by up to 40ft in rare instances. I’m working to survey these edge-case peaks to see if they qualify for the list or not. The grand plan for this trip was five peaks, but it got downgraded to three peaks after the weather was a bit worse than expected.

Windy peak has a quad-surveyed height of 8333ft and Apex a quad-surveyed height of 8297ft. Both are within error bounds of list inclusion.

Armstrong is not an edge-case peak for the WA top 100 list, but is for the WA 200 list. It’s nearby so I figured I’d survey it as well. Armstrong is in the interesting situation where it has a double summit where one summit is in Canada and the other is in the US. If the true summit is in Canada, then the peak does not qualify for the WA top 200 list. But if the summit is in the US it does qualify.

I visited both summits in the spring of 2021 and measured with my 1x sight level that the canadian summit was 3-10ft taller than the US summit. But it was at the edge of the resolution of the device, so to increase confidence in the result I wanted to return with the differential GPS unit to be certain of the results.

I planned to hit all these objectives in a big loop hike. The distance was far enough and my pack would be heavy enough carrying all the survey gear solo that I planned to make it an overnight trip. This would be my first overnight surveying trip in WA, though I had done a weeklong surveying trip in Tajkistan/Uzbekistan earlier in the summer.

I would start at the Cathedral Driveway trailhead. This cut the hiking distance down by 10 miles but increased the driving time from Seattle by 2 hours. Overall it sounded like a time savings, though.

Friday evening I drove to the trailhead to camp. This was the first weekend of hunting season so I expected crowds, but I was the only one there. I brought my super bright neon green and orange surveying vest to wear on the hike just in case I encountered hunters.

My alarm went off at 3am but it was still raining, so I kept snoozing it until the precip lightened up around 4:30am. I started at 5am and made good time up the Windy Creek trail in the dwindling precipitation. I made it to the summit just at sunrise and used my sight level to determine the highest point of rock. I then set up the antenna and started the measurement.

The summit was socked in with clouds but they occasionally cleared for a good view to the east of the sunrise. There were a few inches of snow on the ground and I got pretty cold, so did a lot of jumping jacks. Finally the 1 hour clock finished and I packed up. I jogged down towards Topaz Mtn wearing all my layers and finally warmed up.

Farther down towards Sunny Pass I saw fresh human tracks in the snow and I bet it was hunters. I was happy to be wearing my bright surveying vest. I took a break at Horseshoe Pass to fill up on water, then left the trail hiking cross country up open grassy slopes. I soon entered the cloud layer and visibility dropped to 30ft. Luckily it wasn’t precipitating. On the plateau I took off my vest since it was unlikely there would be hunters all the way up there. And I didn’t need to bring any extra attention to myself near the border zone.

I crossed briefly into Canada following my GPS watch and made it to the Armstrong Mountain NW summit by noon. There was a huge cairn but I set up on the highest bedrock next to the cairn and started the measurement. It was very windy, but the tripod was strong enough not to move. I got super cold, though, so dropped down onto the north face and did a bunch of jumping jacks. I toughed it out for an hour then packed up. I had hoped to get a sight level measurement with my 5x sight level but the visibility never improved.

I followed my GPS through the whitout to the southeast summit, also marked by a cairn. There were several large boulders around and I found with my sight level a boulder 30ft to the east of the cairn was the true highpoint. I set up the tripod on the top and started logging data again. It was still super windy so I paced back and forth a lot to stay warm.

By 2:30pm, after another hour measurement, I packed up and hustled down. Once I dropped off the summit plateau the wind died and I was much more comfortable. I soon hit the Boundary Trail and started cruising west. The trail was in excellent shape, with no blowdowns at all. It did pass through a few recent burn zones from this summer, and I bet by next year the burned trees will fall over the trail.

I passed one solo hiker who had already set up camp. He said he’d been out for 12 days already, carrying all the food with no resupplies!

I continued west trying to make good time. My plan was to ideally get to Apex Peak a bit after sunset, take a measurement there, then continue to Cathedral Lake to camp. However, by 5pm it started raining and the fog was thick enough to make visibility bad. I continued through the dark, and considered bailing to the Tungsten Mine cabin to ride out the rain. But then I remembered there would be a ton of mice there and I wouldn’t be able to get a good sleep. So I continued on to Apex Pass by 8pm.

I couldn’t really survey in the rain since it might damage the equipment and the GPS signals aren’t as good in a storm. So I pitched my tent at the pass. There was just enough snow there to melt for water, and I went to bed in the cold 35F rain. I knew the forecast was for the rain/snow to end around sunrise. Unfortunately given my pace, if I started at sunrise there wouldn’t be enough time for my other objectives. So I decided to just survey Apex and then cut back early.

By sunrise the skies were completely clear and I started up. There was fresh snow on the ground and I followed the north ridge to Apex by 8:30am. Interestingly, there was a huge solar panel and tripod set up on the north summit with some sort of antenna sticking up. I’m not sure what that was for.

I got to the southern summit with the register and verified with the sight levels that it was indeed the highpoint. I brushed off a bit of snow then mounted the antenna. This was my first summit with a view and it was great. There were tons of golden brown larches just below me at snowline. Cathedral Peak loomed to the northwest and looked very impressive from that angle. I saw my other objectives to the west, and they would have to wait for another trip.

I paced around a lot, but luckily the sun helped warm things up. I found a register on the summit and signed in. There wasn’t a pencil in it, but I had a pen with me. I’d previously climbed Apex in 2019, but I think it had been covered in snow then and I hadn’t found the register.

After an hour I headed back down and packed up camp. I then returned east on the boundary trail and briefly checked out the Tungsten Mine cabin. Indeed, there was mouse poop everywhere, and I suspect hantavirus would be a concern for sleeping there.

I made good time back along the trail, and encountered a few hunters on the way. I made it back to the truck by 3:30pm, ready for the long 6-hr drive back to Seattle.

At home after waiting 24 hours I processed the results. Windy Peak was 8335.1 ft +/-0.1ft. That’s just 2ft taller than the quad-surveyed height, so the quad was pretty accurate.

For Armstrong the NW summit in Canada is the true summit, 8.2ft taller than the US summit. This is consistent with my sight level measurement in 2021 that it was 3-10ft taller. If you average my sight level measurements, that gave the Canada summit 7.5 ft taller, which is quite accurate. The final results were Armstrong NW 8131.6 ft +/-0.1 ft and Armstrong SE 8123.8 ft +/- 0.5 ft.

The Armstrong SE summit had higher error, likely related to the worsening weather on the summit when I took the measurement. All measurements were for taken one hour. Because the Canada summit is the true summit of Armstrong, that means it does not qualify for the strict WA top 200 list.

The quad only had the SE peak surveyed, at 8140ft, so the quad was in error 16ft too high.

For Apex peak I measured a height of 8302.0 ft +/- 0.1 ft. The cutoff for WA Top 100 inclusion is currently 8326ft, so Apex is not on the list. The quad-surveyed height was 8297ft, so the quad was in error by 5ft too low in this case. Apex is still on the strict WA Top 200 peaks list, though.

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