Fisher Peak and Mt Arriva

Fisher Peak (8,040ft) and Mt Arriva (8,215ft)

Sept 14, 2022, 5:30am – 6:30pm

20 miles, 11kft gain

Eric and Nick

Nick and I were planning to climb Johannesburg Mountain, but at the last minute we concluded the weather forecast was a bit too uncertain. We needed an absolutely solid window for that peak, so we planned to do a few different top 200 peaks instead. Interestingly, Wednesday the weather was supposed to be slightly drier west of the crest with a risk of thunderstorms to the east. That’s very unusual. We decided to go for some non-technical peaks wednesday in case it rained on us, and a technical peak Thursday in the better weather. Fisher and Arriva fit the bill well.

I’d read Fred Newman’s report from a previous year and was a bit intimidated by a quote he wrote of some “attention-demanding” climbing. But I think that was on a traverse from Greybeard, which we would avoid. We planned to follow John Porter’s route up and down the 4th class west ridge of Fisher and up the 3rd class south side of Arriva. Both of those ought to be ok in marginal weather, we reasoned. I hadn’t heard of people doing both of these as a day trip before. Most groups camp at the very scenic Silent Lakes situated between the peaks. But we didn’t want to deal with the hassel of getting an overnight permit, so we planned for a day trip.

We slept at the Easy Pass trailhead Tuesday night and were moving by 5:30am. It had rained all night and the bushes were saturated, so I went in my rain pants. We made good time to Easy Pass in clear weather and descended the other side down to Fisher Creek. I expected to be bushwhacking up the creek, but we were able to follow a very nice climbers trail up the north side of the creek. I think that area must be a popular backpacking destination, as is Silent Lakes.

I was drenched from the waist down from the wet bushes, but we pushed on above treeline in Fisher Creek. We passed one group coming down and soon reached the head of the valley. From there we passed an obvious ascent gully and started up a SW-angling ramp that went up to the right. I’m pretty sure this is the standard route since we found occasional cairns and followed foot pads in the heather. We took a short break at the pass and decided to go for Fisher Peak first. There was a chance of afternoon thunderstorms and we figured it would be safest to climb the 4th class section of Fisher when it was still dry and leave the 3rd class route up Arriva for when it was potentially wet.

We followed a faint climbers trail up the ridge and soon ditched our poles. It turned into fun 3rd class scrambling, where we occasionally moved to the right side to get around gendarms. Eventually we reached a steeper section that turned out to be the 20ft 4th class crux. I was very happy it was dry. It was a bit exposed on the north side, but there were generally good holds. We got up with no problem, and then the terrain eased. We followed easy 3rd class terrain from there to the summit.

Dark clouds were building to the east, but they looked far enough away that we were not yet concerned. We found a standard Fay Pullen orange summit register, but it hadn’t been signed in a few years. Luckily Nick had brought a spare pencil we could leave in there and sign in with.

We got a bunch of great pictures looking deeper into the cascades towards Logan and Goode, then headed down. The 4th class downclimb demanded a bit more attention, but we made it down no problem. We then scrambled back to the pass and took a break at the northern Silent Lake to top off water. That would indeed be an awesome place to camp, with great views of Goode and Storm King to the south looking towards Lake Chelan.

From the lakes we followed beta from John Porter and Jake R and traversed at around 7000ft. It’s tempting from the lake to just scramble straight up the east face, but the summit is actually very far west and not visible from the lake. Then the summit ridge has some steep cliffs in the middle. So the southern traverse is indeed the way to go.

We traversed easy open terrain, wandering up to 7300ft,  then descended a chossy steep gully that we vowed to avoid on the return. We then hit the southwest ridge of Arriva. We scrambled up a chossy gully to gain the ridge at a 7600ft col, then scrambled directly up the ridge on 3rd class terrain. Soon we hit a huge, wide ledge going up to the right. It felt like a highway carved through the rock and is the obvious ascent route. The ledge goes all the way to a col on the summit ridge.

From there we followed cairns traversing the south face of arriva, then scrambled directly up the south ridge to the summit. It had hailed on us briefly on the ascent, but didn’t last long. By the time we reached the summit the weather had cleared out. (We later heard hikers east of the crest on the PCT had gotten soaked in thunderstorms, which we luckily avoided).

The views were great, but surprisingly there was no summit register. Nick had come prepared, though, and left a Dan-Lauren-style geo cache register that was very sturdy and waterproof. We hung out a while admiring the views, then retraced our route back. I added a few extra cairns to help future climbers, and we made good time back to the south face. This time we decided to avoid the steep chossy gully and we dropped to 7000ft to do the traverse. I would say this is the ideal route to take up and down. We made an easy traverse back to the southeast ridge and even stumbled across a big natural arch! I’ve never seen an arch like this in the north cascades. The only one that comes to mind is in Goat Rocks near Ives Peak.

At Silent Lakes we passed a group of backpackers, and I think they might have been going for Arriva the next day after camping at the lakes. I wouldn’t have minded camping there that night, but we had to make it back to the trailhead. By then the summits got socked in the clouds and we were happy to have already made it up Fisher. We made good time back down, though took a few long blueberry breaks. Interestingly, we just saw two yellow larches around 5600ft. By this time last year lots of larches were turning yellow on a trip I did near Stehekin. I guess this varies slightly year to year.

It was kind of tough climbing 1400ft back up to Easy Pass at the end of the day, but we powered through it and made it back to the truck just before dark.

 

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