Domke Mountain

Domke Mountain (4,067 ft)

Oct 15-16, 2022

46 miles boating, 14 miles hiking

I was looking to practice the boat approach to Lucerne to prepare for some winter mountaineering trips up near Holden. In the winter the ferry schedule is not very conducive to climbing any peaks in that area in a regular weekend. Holden is one of the most isolated villages in the lower 48 states, and the standard way to get there is to take a ferry up lake Chelan and then a bus up a 12-mile road. The road only goes between Holden and the lake, though, and doesn’t connect to other roads. With the ferry at best it’s possible to arrive Saturday afternoon and then have to leave Sunday morning from Lucerne, the landing site on the shore. That’s not much time to climb a mountain, and if anything causes delays it would be bad to miss that Sunday ferry out. The only reasonable way to squeeze in a big mountaineering objective in a regular weekend is to have your own boat.

I have a small zodiac with outboard motor, which I got specifically to access peaks around another lake, Ross Lake. That lake requires either hiking or towing the boat in, so the boat and motor need to be somewhat light. The boat is not necessarily the best for getting up Lake Chelan, though, which requires more mileage of boating and would benefit from a faster vessel and bigger motor. The boat might still make trips up Lake Chelan to Holden possible, though.

This weekend I hoped to do a practice run on the approach, and tag a small peak along the way. Lily would join me, and this was a good trip for her since she does pretty well in the boat and on short hikes. To reduce mileage we would put in as far up lake as possible, at Twenty Five Mile State Park. This would make the boating mileage about 23 miles. I’d previously been averaging about 5-7 mph on other trips, but still wanted to collect some more data on speed for a long trip. I also wanted to scout out the put-in place and assess how feasible it would likely be in winter.

We drove up Saturday morning and assembled and inflated the boat near the put in. Lily made sure to try to scare away any other dogs that dared come too close. She’s small enough that I’m pretty sure they were not intimidated.

By 11:30am I put Lily in the bow, then rolled the boat into the water on the deployable wheels. I rowed out into deeper water, then retracted the wheels, dropped down the 5hp propane motor, and started up. We started out averaging 5.7 mph but I found out if I put the weight as much forward as possible and sat near the bow I could get it up to 6.1 mph. I think this was helping the boat plane a bit better.

I hugged the left shore, and a handful of other boats zipped by up the lake. I was happy to not need to worry about submerged tree stumps, which is an issue on Ross Lake but luckily not in Lake Chelan (as far as I’ve heard). I recognized the Lady of the Lake ferry going by at one point, but I never saw the Stehekin Ferry. I later learned it was out for scheduled maintenance.

We took one potty break for Lily after an hour, and it was pretty easy to land the boat on any random patch of shore. I think it would be more difficult for a bigger vessel, but I just needed to motor close, then pull up the motor and paddle to shore, then get out in my water shoes and pull the boat in.

We continued up the lake a few more hours, and I recognized Cloudcomb Peak sticking up to the left, then eventually Domke Peak. I had to get out of the way of the Lady of the Lake blasting down, but then I rounded the corner and pulled in to the boat launch at 3:30pm. It had taken 4 hours, which was a bit faster than I had anticipated. It would be nice to get there even faster, but I think that still makes a Holden weekend trip possible without relying on the ferry. Of course, if I left Friday evening I could get there late Friday night and have most of a full weekend for mountaineering objectives. This weekend would be a bit tamer since I had Lily along.

I wheeled the boat out, then dragged it up the road a bit and hid it in the woods. Then I packed up and Lily and I started hiking up. We hiked past Lucerne, then followed the trail up to Domke Lake an hour later.

There are a lot of burned trees from the Wolverine Creek Fire a few years ago, but I found a safe camping spot near the old Domke Resort where all the trees are alive and no hazard trees are within striking distance. I pitched the tent there, and it seemed a little late to go for the summit. So I got out some food for Lily and cooked up some Ramen.

There was still some daylight left so I decided to take Lily up the side of the lake for some more hiking. But as I got a bit farther the summit looked tantalizingly close. It seemed like we could get up there for sunset, so I decided to give it a shot. We bushwhacked up to the left to intersect the trail, then followed the trail up.

The trail is in kind of tough shape, though someone has recently gone through and cut out much of the encroaching bushes. I got some nice pictures looking north over Lake Chelan as the sun was setting. Lily was having a good time and we ran up parts of the trail, making it to the lookout site just as it got dark enough to need a headlamp. The true summit was a bit farther, and Lily was kind of tired out by then, so I carried her the rest of the way to the top.

I wished I would have brought my backpack, since she fits nicely in it, but I hadn’t brought anything. So on the way down I just carried her in my arms. We eventually made it back to camp by 9pm and soon crawled into the tent. She was happy to squeeze in the sleeping bag to stay warm.

In the morning we packed up a bit after sunrise and hiked back down to the boat. Nobody had disturbed it, and I wheeled it back ino the water and started the engine. This time there was a slight head wind and even with all the weight in the front I could only get around 5.6 mph.  I saw the Lady of the Lake, the catamaran Stehekin Ferry, and a handful of other boats. I bet it’s crowded in the summer, but wasn’t too crowded this weekend.

After a bit over four hours we made it back to the state park and took out. Lily had slept most of the way in the bow, only getting up once half way to request a potty break.

Interestingly, the 5 gallon propane tank lasted the whole trip without me needing to hook up the spare. I later found it took 4.5 gallons, and we had gone 46 miles, so it gets about 10 miles per gallon. This is consistent with the trip last weekend on Ross Lake where it took 3.5 gallons for 37 miles. I still need to determine if that mileage changes much in colder conditions, so I think it’s still wise to bring the bakeup tank. Overall it seems like the boat will make weekend Holden trips feasible now.

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