Easy Mox, Hard Mox, Redoubt, Spickard, Rahm, and Custer

Easy Mox (8,407ft), Redoubt (8,969ft), Hard Mox (8,504ft), Spickard (8,979ft) , Rahm (8,480ft), and Custer (8,630ft)

Eric Gilbertson and Steven Song

July 7-11, 2018

July 7 – Eric takes bus to Sedro Woolley, meets Steven, picks up permit, drive up to trailhead in southern British Columbia
July 8 – Hike in, climb Easy Mox and Redoubt, camp at col below Redoubt
July 9 – Climb Hard Mox, ride out rain storm in tent
July 10 – Move camp to Lake Ouzel, climb Spickard and Rahm, return to camp
July 11 – Climb Custer, hike out, Katie picks up Eric near border

Steven and I had just done a smash-and-grab ascent of Mt Fairweather in late June, and wanted to meet up for another mountaineering trip in July. We were both working on climbing the Washington Bulgers, and decided to try to climb all six of the peaks in the Chilliwacks in one trip.

The Chilliwacks are some of the most difficult mountains on the Bulger list. These are the only peaks whose standard approach is through Canada. Mountaineers must drive on abandoned logging roads in southern British Columbia to near the US border. Then they must bushwhack and follow unmaintained trails up Depot Creek to Lake Ouzel, at the base of the six peaks. Two of the peaks, Easy Mox and Hard Mox, require technical rock climbing and all of the peaks require glacier travel.

In all trip reports I’d read, climbers used multiple trips to climb all six peaks, but we figured the most efficient peakbagging strategy would be to move fast and climb them all in one trip.

The weather forecast was not ideal, but we decided to go for it in early July. Transportation was a bit complicated because Katie needed the car, Steven lives in Vancouver, and we needed to pick up a permit in Sedro Woolley. The solution we landed on was that I would take a bus to Sedro Woolley and Steven would meet me there. Then we’d drive up, climb the mountains, and I would either take a bus back or Katie would meet Steven at the border to bring me back to Seattle.

After lunch July 7 I hauled my gear onto a metro to downtown Seattle, then got on an Amtrack bus to Mt Vernon. Steven met me at the stop, and we drove a short distance to Sedro Woolley to pick up a back country permit. Many climbers I’ve talked to go in without a permit, but I’ve heard stories of rangers patrolling the area. It would be very unfortunate to go through all the effort to get to the base of the mountains, only to be kicked out for not having a permit that is easy to pick up. On the phone I had asked a ranger if there was a risk of the permit quota being filled before I got mine, and she said there was very little risk, since hardly anyone goes in there. However, I found the area to be quite crowded, mostly because only half the groups actually got permits.

After picking ours up we drove up into Canada, and stopped at Steven’s house in Vancouver for a big Chinese dinner his mom cooked. We then switched vehicles from the car to the Toyata Tacoma. From Vancouver we drove to Chilliwack Lake, where the road was rough and riddled with potholes. At the south end of the lake we turned left at an intersection where several Forresters were parked. This is where the road got really rough. It was no problem for the Tacoma, though, and after a few miles we stopped at one of the few places wide enough to turn around, where the branches hung down low enough to prohibit all but ATVs to pass. It was just turning dark, and we went to sleep in the truck.

July 8

We got up at 3am and were soon hiking up the road. We turned left at a cairn and started ascending the  hill initially through a washed-out stream bed. Eventually we intersected with an old logging road that had fresh ATV tracks on it. I’m not sure how the ATV got there, but there may have been a track farther down the road from where we started walking that connected.

We turned right at the ATV track, which followed an old road grade. The hiking was pretty easy, and before long we reached the cleared-out US-Canada border. On the opposite side of the border we signed in at the North Cascades National Park kiosk, and proceeded on an unmaintained climbers trail into the park. The trail ascended Depot Creek, and was difficult to follow in the dark.

Eventually the sun rose and we had better luck staying on the trail. At one point the trail reached a big waterfall, and we used a fixed rope to help with scrambling up the steep, slippery rocks. We ascended very steeply up the trees next to the waterfall, then reached a flat plateau. At the edge of the trees I switched from trail runners to Evo Nepals and hung my trail runners in a tree to retrieve on the hike out.

The standard approach to these peaks generally involves hiking up to Lake Ouzel on the first day and establishing a

base camp there. But for our expedited schedule, we planned to climb a few peaks that day and camp high on the Redoubt Glacier. Since we weren’t camping at Lake Ouzel, we could take a shortcut directly up to the Redoubt Glacier from the edge of treeline.

We ascended a scree and slabby slope, and soon emerged on the glacier. It was early in the day, so we decided to climb Easy Mox first. Surprisingly, we saw two other people traversing across to Easy Mox also. We soon reached their footprints, and continued traversing high over a north-trending rock ridge. We dropped our overnight gear on the ridge to pick up on the return, then continued over to the base of the saddle on the northeast ridge of Easy Mox below point 7647.

The other party was already climbing, and luckily the transition from glacier to rock was no problem. I had brought rock shoes, while Steven went light with his single pair of boots, so I took over the leading duties. I led up the easy slab section on a 30m rope, putting in a micro-traxion at the end of 30m so we could continue simulclimbing. Unfortunately I wove around an overhang, but because I kept the rope tight as I climbed and the progress was captured by the micro-traxion, this forced Steven to climb directly over the overhang. It sounded tricky in his mountaineering boots.

After two 30m ropelengths we reached the crest of the ridge and put the rope away. We scrambled up the ridge to the right, eventually catching up to the other team. Somehow they recognized us from a previous peakbagger post, which was kind of surprising.

We were moving a bit faster, so went ahead up the ridge. Once the ridge started to look technical we dropped to the left at a cairn, scrambling along a ledge until we were almost underneath the summit under a big white area of rock. This appeared to be the crux of the climb.

I slung a horn and led up again on a 30m rope. The climbing was low or mid 5^th class for the 30m up to the ridge crest, where I found a rap anchor. I clipped the microtraxion to the anchor, and we continued simulclimbing. The terrain was class 3+ from the rap anchor to the summit, and I belayed Steven up to the top.

We had a clear view over to Hard Mox and Hardest Mox across the ridge of gendarmes, and got our first grasp of how truly remote we were. The other two climbers soon summitted, and it seemed odd being so remote, but still sort of crowded on the tiny summit. This was only the third Bulger out of 80 or so I’ve climbed where there was another party on the summit.

Steven and I downclimbed to the anchor unroped, then tied together our two 30m ropes for the rappel. We retraced our route down the ridge, and found a rap anchor a short scramble down from the saddle. We did a diagonal rappel to prevent loose rocks from falling on the rope, and soon returned to some stashed gear on the glacier.

The glacier looked very crevasse-free in the early-season conditions, and we traversed unroped back to our stashed overnight gear on the rock ridge. From there we ascended to the 7400ft col at the south end of the Redoubt Glacier and dropped our gear again at a good flat campsite on the rocks. It was still mid afternoon, and it appeared we had plenty of time left for another peak. We considered climbing Hard Mox, but it sounded like too big of a risk of getting stuck out in the dark, given the route-finding challenges we’d read about.

Redoubt sounded pretty straightforward, though, so we packed up our climbing gear and set out. We crossed a

saddle southeast of the summit, traversed below a big cliff, and then ascended the broad southeast snow slopes. Around 8800ft we reached the top of the snow and diagonaled right into a rocky gully.

We scrambled up the 3^rd class gully, following occasional cairns, and then climbed up a snow-filled notch passing underneath a chockstone. Above here the terrain was a bit exposed on the north face, so Steven led up a short pitch to the summit.

We read a few summit register logs of terrible smoke the previous year, and were glad we’d come before fire season. There was still plenty of daylight left, and we rapped from the summit to the notch, and did one final rappel down from the notch. We then retraced our route, scrambling down the gully and downclimbing the snow back to camp. Luckily there were meltwater pools on the rocks, allowing us to cook a quick dinner before bed.

July 9

We rose early and soon traversed across snow slopes and ascended scree to the Col of the Wild. From there we turned right and followed cairns and a climber path up to the Ridge of Gendarms, where we crossed to the south side.

After crossing we traversed east following cairns and got our first view of Hard Mox. It looked steep and intimidating, even though we knew the route up shouldn’t be too hard. The traverse was generally easy, except for one brief 10ft narrow exposed section. Immediately after the exposed section we descended to the top of a snow gully with a rap anchor around a boulder.

I backed up the anchor and we rappelled to the end of our rope (30m down), then downclimbed a bit farther until we

could traverse to the next gully. This next gully presented the routefinding crux of the trip. I switched to rock shoes and started scrambling up class 3/4  terrain on the right side of the rightmost gully. However, since Steven had only brought his climbing boots, the scrambling was a bit sketchier for him. We decided to rope up.

I at first led straight up the gully and cut left at a chockstone, but this looked trickier than 4^th class, so I descended. I next went up the right side of the gully and found easier 4^th class terrain leading back into the gully above the chockstone.

From there the terrain eased to 3^rd class and we scrambled all the way up to the ridge. It was comforting to see a rap anchor up there to indicate we were still on route. Next came the technical crux of Hard Mox. From the notch I led up a face to the right all the way to a pedestal anchor with a dozen rap cords wrapped around it.

Steven took over the next lead, continuing up and slightly left on the face to another good rap anchor. From this anchor we unroped and scrambled class 3/4 terrain all the way to the summit. Interestingly, the summit register had a photocopy of the original Fred Becky first ascent log from 1941. I looked through a few other old photocopies, but unfortunately the wind blew some of them away.

After a few minutes we descended to an anchor on a slung boulder and rapped back down. The rope got stuck, and Steven scrambled back up to get it unstuck. The next two raps went smoothly, and we scrambled down the gully to the chockstone. I found another anchor on skiers right of the chockstone, and that brought us down to my stashed boots. From there we kicked steps up the snow gully, the retraced our route back to camp.

It was mid afternoon, and we’d originally planned to move camp that day and see if we could climb Spickard before it got dark. However, we saw ominous clouds moving in, which were consistent with the bad weather that had been forecast for that night. We watched Challenger and Fury in the Pickets gradually get enveloped in clouds, and decided to stay put and ride out the weather in the comfort of the tent.

It soon started raining hard, and we were happy with our decision to take a rest afternoon at camp.

July 10

It rained throughout the night, and we slept in, hoping the weather would clear. By 8am it had stopped raining, though we were socked in the clouds with low visibility. We still packed up and descended down the Redoubt Glacier to Lake Ouzel, below the clouds. There we met a group of seven climbers who had just arrived and were planning to rest at the lake for the rest of the day.

We set up our camp, cached our extra food on a boulder, and started up for Spickard. We ascended to just below the col leading to Silver Lake, then cut to the right. Luckily for us a group had just summited Spickard the previous day, so we could follow their tracks in the low visibility.

We ascended up steep snow slopes to the south ridge of Spickard, then crossed a small notch to gain the east face snowfield. We traversed on the snowfield for a few hundred feet before finding a gully that we climbed back up to the south ridge.

From there we roughly followed the ridge, traversing below a few false summits, until we scrambled up to the true summit in the early afternoon. It was unfortunately still a whiteout, so we didn’t stay long. We followed our route back down, all the way to the col leading to Silver Lake. There were still plenty of hours of daylight left, so we decided to climb Rahm Peak.

From the col we scrambled up the rocky face to the left to gain a large bench. We hiked northeast on the bench, at times traversing snow slopes, and occasionally getting views through the clouds down to Silver Lake. Eventually we reached a series of three gullies dropping down from Rahm Peak, and we aimed for the lowest one, which was supposedly third class.

Interestingly, we had to climb over an au-cheval snow ridge to gain the base of the gully, and then we could easily scramble up loose rocks to the head of the gully. From there we gained the southwest ridge of Rahm, and followed a well-defined climbers trail to the summit.

Amazingly, we were treated to a partial undercast to the north, and

saw a few other mountains sticking out of the clouds. We briefly considered following the west ridge over to Custer, since it was on the way back, but we were concerned about the exposure on the route. We’d read reports of groups getting part way along the ridge and turning around due to sketchy, narrow, loose, exposed sections. It was only a few hours before sunset, and we didn’t want to have to turn around and navigate the whole way back in a night whiteout, so we decided to save Custer for the next day.

We made it back to camp around sunset, just as the skies were clearing.

July 11

We had one mountain remaining, and the plan was to tag Custer then hike out. Our friend Jake Robinson had warned us against trying any route on Custer but the southwest slopes. The standard route according to online reports appears to be the south ridge, but there is apparently a very narrow, exposed, and loose section on the ridge that has turned groups around. The southwest slopes sounded like they were safe, but just loose and annoying to ascend.

We left camp around sunrise, and traversed left around Point 8205 to gain the basin to the southwest of Custer. In the basin we ascended snow as high as possible until reaching screes about 1/3 of the way up the southwest slopes. Steven is a choss expert from all of his climbs in the Canadian Rockies, so he found a good way up in the lead.

Once at the crest of the west ridge we traversed right until reaching the summit. It had been sunny all morning, but for some reason the summit just then got socked in with clouds. Custer is definitely unique among Bulger peaks as being the chossiest, and we nicknamed it Chosster.

The descent was a bit easier since we could occasionally scree surf, and we soon returned to the snow. From there we retraced our route back to camp, and started packing up.

The hike out was much easier in the daylight, and we reached the truck by mid afternoon. After a food stop in Chilliwack Steven was nice enough to drive me down to Bellingham, where Katie picked me up for the drive back to Seattle.

 

 

 

 

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