East Fury Survey

East Fury Survey

Oct 5-6, 2024

54 miles, 15kft gain

Eric Gilbertson, Ross Wallette, Saulius Braciulis

Results: East Fury elevation 8321.5ft +/-0.1ft NGVD29

Icecap has melted 30ft since 1980 and is no longer the summit. The rocky outcrop SW of the icecap is currently the summit.

I’ve been surveying icecap summits in Washington this season to measure how much they are melting down as a result of climate change. I thought there had only ever been four icecap summits in the lower 48 states (Rainier, Liberty Cap, Colfax, and Eldorado), but I just learned that a fifth peak, East Fury, was until recently an icecap summit. East Fury was already on my surveying to-do list. A few months ago Lidar data from 2022 was published online that covered all of the remaining mountainous areas of the state. That meant that all the WA Top 100 peaks and contender peaks are now covered by Lidar measurements, which are accurate to within a few feet.

I’m working on a project to determine an accurate list of the WA Top 100 peaks using ground surveys and Lidar. Interestingly, this new data set resulted in a three-way tie for number 100 on the Top 100 list. The tie was between Mount St Helens, East Fury, and Switchback Mountain, which all came in at 8,321ft when rounded to the nearest foot. This means they are all within the error bounds of Lidar, and a more accurate survey is needed to break the tie.

I’d previously measured East Fury with my theodolite in October 2022. On that trip I hauled the theodolite up to the false summit of Luna peak, and took angular measurements to Luna, East Fury, and West Fury. I measured relative heights of East Fury and West Fury to Luna Peak. Luna peak was surveyed at 8,311ft on the quad, so I could use that height plus my relative heights to calculate absolute heights of the peaks (assuming the Luna height was accurate).

The new Lidar results showed Luna peak is actually 8,286ft, so the surveyed point on the quad was in error. That meant my absolute height for East Fury was off by about the same amount. My theodolite measurement of East Fury was taken from such a far distance that even my corrected absolute measurment would have error bounds of +/- several feet. That wouldn’t be sufficiently accurate to break the three way tie for number 100. The only way to break the tie would be to measure the summits with accuracy better than a foot. If I brought my dGPS up to the summit of East Fury I could get accuracy down to +/-0.1ft, which would be sufficient to break the tie.

On my previous East Fury survey trip I’d gone with Nick and Talon and we did it as a 27-hr car-to-car trip without sleeping. We used my zodiac boat to motor up Ross Lake to shave off some hiking miles. For this upcoming trip I decided to do things a bit differently, though. It turned out using the zodiac didn’t actually save much time for that short of a distance (since we had to haul it from the parking lot to the lake on a mile of trail, then back up). So this time we would just hike the trail. Also, because this trip would be longer going all the way to the summit of East Fury, we decided to do it as an overnight trip.

The first snows of the season started in early October, but it looked like the weekend was supposed to clear out. Ross and Saulius (of Seattle-to-Mt-Si tire drag fame) were interested in joining. Friday night we carpooled to the Ross Dam trailhead, got a few hours of sleep, then were moving by 5:30am Saturday.

We made fast progress up the trail to Big Beaver camp, then continued to Luna Camp after about 5.5 hours. I was using trail runners to Luna camp, but switched into sturdier hiking boots there and hid the shoes in the woods. Trail runners have been fine for me in the past going just to Luna Peak on car-to-car trips, but continuing to East Fury would require glacier travel through fresh snow, so this time they wouldn’t be sufficient.

We hiked another mile up the trail then cut left into the woods following my GPS track from my previous trip. There was a short stretch of bushwhacking before we found the log jam that was in about the same place as in 2022. We easily crossed, then bushwhacked up to the north side of Access Creek where we picked up the climbers trail.

I seems like this trail gets better every year, and is now generally easy to follow. We took turns leading up to the edge of the woods at around 4000ft, then crossed Access Creek to a talus field on the south side. We followed talus to the base of a north facing gully near the head of the valley.

We followed the gully up steeply, encountering fresh slippery snow around 5600ft. We kicked steps up to the col above, and we greeted with an amazing view of the southern pickets. The red blueberry leaves in the foreground made for colorful pictures.

From there we traversed on a good snowy climbers trail, then hiked up talus to Luna Col by 6:30pm. It had taken about 13 hours to there. We considered pushing farther, but the ledge above us on the SW ridge looked sketchy covered in snow in the dark. So we opted to camp at the col. There was even a melted pool of water, so we could save time and not need to melt snow there.

We set up our bivy sacks and enjoyed the sunset over the pickets. That night was supposed to be clear based on pretty much all forecast models. But, we were in the pickets, so of course it rained for about 20 minutes. Luckily we stayed dry in the bivy sacks.

The weather cleared after 2am and we headed out at 2:45am. The route essentially was to follow the ridge southwest from Luna col over three humps, then either traverse along south slopes to the fury glacier or stay on the ridge and do some 5th class climbing to avoid the lower glacier.

Matt Lemke on summitpost recommended avoiding the glacier late season because it would be icey and instead recommended following the ridge. We were late season, but a bunch of snow had just fallen. I suspected this would have bonded to the glacier ice by now and made the glacier mellow. But it would make the direct ridge kind of sketchy. So we opted for the glacier variation.

We traversed around the first hump on a good ledge on the north side. From camp this ledge looked intimidating, but it turned out to be wide and easy. We then followed easy broad talus slopes down to a col and up to the top of the second hump.

From there we found a narrow steep ledge descending down and right to the next col below. We then descended on scree, traversed across on the north side of the ridge, and scrambled up to the base of the third hump.

I’d read from reports from Steven Song and Matt Lemke that this hump contained a rock step that was either 4th class or low 5th. I’d brought rock pro and a rope in case it was extra sketchy with the fresh snow. It didn’t look too bad, though, with solid foot and hand holds. There was a thin hand line in the middle that I avoided touching since it was of questionable quality.

I ended up soloing up without issue, and Ross and Saulius followed. We definitely planned to rap down on the return trip.

Past the top of the third hump we passed a lone yellow larch, then continued to the col beyond. At the col we followed Steven’s GPS track down to the south face. We then traversed a snowy talus field staying around 6600ft. There were a few sections of narrow ledges that were a bit sketchy in the thin snow coverage, but we managed no problem.

After rounding the last ridge we reached the Fury glacier. We ascended as far as we could up the right side on snow-covered rock up to 7400ft. There we roped up and started onto the glacier.

As hoped for it was covered in fresh snow making travel easy and secure. I led the way and we wove around a few crevasses that posed no problem. Higher up the crevasses were already partially filled in with fresh snow, so we could directly cross on bridges.

We gained a flat area at the head of the glacier then traversed left at the base of the summit cliffs to the south ridge of East Fury. There we unroped and followed Matt’s beta to just scramble up the third class ridge.

I took the survey equipment and hustled ahead, reaching the summit around 7:45am. I verified with my abney level which rock was the highest, then worked on mounting the antenna tripod. I couldn’t get it exactly on the highest point because there was a cliff on one side. But I mounted it on a flatter section slightly to the side. I started logging data at 8am.

I measured with a tape measure the extra height to add from the surveyed point to the highest rock. I would add this on after I processed the data. Interestingly, the former icecap summit was now very far below the rocky summit. Unfortunately I didn’t think to measure the icecap height below the rock summit with my abney level (I only learned this was a former icecap summit after I got back home and John Roper told me). There was the 2022 Lidar measurement of the icecap summit from 2022, so that is the most recent data point available.

By 9am I logged the last of the data, packed up, and headed down. We regrouped at the glacier to rope back up, then followed our tracks back down.

By then the sun was finally out and the temperature was quite warm. We carefully traversed back across the slushy ledges, then regained the ridge. We rapped down the 5th class step on the third hump, then scrambled back to Luna col following our tracks by 2pm.

We left the col around 2:45pm, and by then most of the traverse back across the south face was snow free. We got to the col above Access Creek, then carefully descended the snowy north aspect down to the valley floor. The bushwhack/climbers trail went smoothly, and we reached the trail just at sunset.

At Luna Camp I switched back to my trail runners, and then tried to hustle out. I knew we would be cutting it a bit close to get back to Seattle in time for me to make it to work by 6:30am. We decided I would run ahead and if I got to the truck early I could try to sneak in a nap just in case I had to drive straight in to work.

I jogged the flats and walked the uphills, and eventually reached the truck around 1:15am. I scarfed down some pasta and tried to sleep, but mice running around the cab kept me awake. The Ross Dam trailhead is one of the top ten worst trailheads for mice in WA in my experience (in close contention with Cathedral Driveway and Trinity). I usually bring mouse traps for this one, but unfortunately forgot this time.

Ross and Saul arrived not too long after anyways, and we were driving back by 2:45am. After dropping Ross and Saul back off in town it was too late for me to drive home to Issaquah, so I just drove straight in to work. Katie was nice enough to drive in and meet me with a change of clothes and a packed lunch. I made it in just in time to give my morning statics lecture.

That afternoon after work I processed the results. The rocky summit of East Fury is 8321.5ft +/- 0.1ft NGVD29. This is 0.8ft taller than the 2022 Lidar measurement of the rocky highpoint. This is not uncommon for Lidar to be in error this much, especially for pointy summits. Lidar has a stated vertical accuracy of +/- 0.4ft in flat terrain. But measurements are only taken every 3-6ft horizontal spacing, so they can miss the very top of a pointy rock. Thus, Lidar generally under-measures sharp summits like this.

This result means East Fury is 0.4ft taller than St Helens. I still need to measure Switchback to break the three-way tie for number 100 on the WA Top 100 list, though.

After returning home I learned from John Roper that East Fury used to be an icecap summit. He sent me pictures from 1978 and 1980. I used Edward Earl’s Geopix software to analyze the 1980 photo and found the icecap summit was about 12 ft taller than the rocky summit in august 1980. The 2022 Lidar measurement showed the icecap summit about 18ft shorter than the rocky summit then. So this means the icecap has melted 30ft between 1980 and 2022. Unfortunately I don’t have an updated measurement from 2024. Maybe I can return next year to get an updated measurement.

From the limited data in the plot it appears the rock summit overtook the icecap summit sometime around the late 1990s. Though, I’ve seen pictures from 2008 of East Fury that appear to show the icecap summit a similar height to the rock summit. So it’s possible it hung on until 2010 or so. I’ll try to find more pictures to fill in the data gap.

This result means of the previous five icecap summits in the lower 48 states, all in WA (Rainier, Liberty Cap, Eldorado, Colfax, and East Fury), only Liberty Cap and Colfax remain icecap summits.

 

 

 

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