Hard Mox via Perry Creek

Hard Mox (8,504ft) via Perry Creek

Oct 8-9, 2022

37 miles boating
2 miles towing boat on road
30 miles hiking/climbing

Eric and Talon

Hard Mox is considered the most difficult of the Bulgers, and is nestled deep in the Chilliwacks in the north cascades. I’d previously climbed Hard Mox in July 2018, approaching from British Columbia and going up Depot Creek. I wanted to return, though, to scout out the approach from the US side and test some new gear before a future mission. On the US side the “standard” approach is to take a water taxi on Ross Lake up to Little Beaver trailhead, then hike and bushwhack up Perry Creek. This is very rarely done, though, since it is much more difficult than coming in from British Columbia. But it is technically completely legal, unlike the Canadian approach, which requires sneaking across the border.

The water taxi only runs 8am to 5pm and must be scheduled with the Ross Lake resort in advance. It is kind of expensive, $165 each way to get to Little Beaver. It also doesn’t run all year. I have a packraft, and I’ve paddled the length of Ross Lake before, but that takes all day and is not a practical approach for a weekend trip. If I just had my own motor boat I could get in and out on my own schedule, any time of year, and not have to pay or coordinate in advance. This would make a weekend climb of Hard Mox possible from the US side. Getting a personal motor boat to Ross Lake is complicated, though. The only road access to the lake is from the Canadian side on the Silver Skagit road. But that road was washed out in November 2021 and has yet to be repaired.

From the US side access is from a 1-mile long trail to Ross Dam, or from Diablo Lake. There is an offical boat launch at Diablo Lake, but to get a boat from there to Ross Lake requires transporting the boat up a 1-mile gravel road connecting the lakes. So the boat either needs to be small enough to be carried down the trail, or light enough to be dragged up the road on wheels.

I considered getting a canoe with a small outboard motor, but the motors on the market for canoes aren’t powerful enough to get up the length of Ross Lake in a reasonable amount of time, and paddling a canoe will also not get up Ross Lake in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, a canoe is not super stable in choppy conditions. I want to be able to go up in any conditions.

After a lot of research I settled on getting an inflatable zodiac-style motor boat with retractable wheels. The boat itself is 10ft long, can carry 3 people with overnight gear, and weighs about 60 pounds. The motor is 65 pounds, 5 horsepower, 4-stroke propane. The motor and boat are each light enough to be able to be carried down the trail, then the boat can be assembled at the lake. I could also just launch the boat from Diablo Lake, then deploy the wheels and drag it up the road to Ross Lake.

A more powerful motor would be nice, but I would likely be doing a lot of boating at night to be on my own schedule, and I feel safer going slowly at night in potentially choppy conditions. The boat does have five independent air chambers and is made of very thick rubber material, which is very durable. A more powerful motor would also be heavier and more difficult to transport on land. The 5 HP motor gets the boat going at 5-7mph when fully loaded, and that feels like a safe speed to me at night in rough conditions.

The regulations on Ross Lake are that motors have to be 4-stroke so they are cleaner than 2-stroke engines. Propane is much cleaner than gasoline and I’ve been told it does better in winter conditions, so I got a 4-stroke propane motor.

I used the boat in September to climb Judge Howay in British Columbia, and determined one 15 lb propane tank had a little over a 30-mile range. So for this trip I bought a second tank just in case. I practiced using the boat a bunch in Lake Washington to get comfortable with it before using it on Hard Mox.

I wanted to do this trip in September, but the Chilliwack area in the North Cascades was in a fire closure zone most of the month. Finally on Sept 30 the closure order was lifted. Amazingly, the weather was still forecast to be dry and no high elevation snow had fallen yet, so we decided to go for the trip. Talon was coming off another climb Friday so we decided to let him get a little bit of sleep Friday night and we would start up at a reasonable hour Saturday to approach the peak, then go for the summit Sunday.

Friday evening I made it to the Colonial Creek campground just after dusk and assembled the boat. There were a lot of people camping out, and it appears winter regulations are in effect now, meaning no rangers and no campground staff. I went to sleep in my truck and Talon made it there a bit after midnight. We were up and moving a little before 6am, and loaded the boat up and dragged it down to the boat launch on the retractable wheels.

I was wearing my dry suit and a lot of layers. Talon bundled up and pulled his bivy sack over him to keep warm. We piled gear in the middle of the boat and wrapped it in a tarp in case there was spray from the water. There was enough room for both of us, and I think if we packed carefully we could have taken a 3rd person too. The boat is rated for a 1300lb load.

Unfortunately a forest fire had started in Thunder Creek a week earlier and the smoke was thick on Diablo Lake. There was no moonlight to help at that hour, and shining my spotlight didn’t help either. We could really only see about three feet in front. So I went really slow and we just navigated by GPS.

We had to pass through a fencline with a gap on the right, then rounded the corner up towards Ross Lake. Up in the canyon the smoke cleared a bit and I could finally get us up to max speed. Around sunrise we reached the dock for the takeout to get to Ross Lake.

It’s possible during business hours to call up the Ross Lake Resort from that dock and pay to have a resort worker drive down with a pickup truck to help portage boats. But my goal for this trip was to test out the approach being fully self sufficient, so we planned to do everything on our own. The trucks get to the road on a barge from Diablo Dam, but personal vehicles are not allowed to do that.

I was hoping the road went into the water, but it just ended at the dock with no loading ramp. I was happy to learn this important detail. On one side of the dock we found a small metal ramp that we lowered down into the water. It was just barely wide enough for the boat. I pulled the motor up, deployed the wheels, then we pulled the boat onto the dock.

To get from the dock to the road was a narrow bridge with railings. Unfortunately the boat was a few inches too wide to squeeze through the railings. So we took off the motor, unloaded gear, and carried the boat over our heads up the bridge. Then we reassembled it on the other side.

I suspect there is a proper boat launch ramp farther up the lake that might be easier to use, but I still need to do more research into that or do another scouting trip. It’s not obvious from satellite images.

The next stage of our journey was perhaps the most strenuous. We loaded the boat back up, put the motor on, and rigged up my climbing rope to the front. Then we each looped a rope end around our shoulder and started pulling. The road was steep and it was very difficult to make progress. I tried to shift the weight as much over the wheels as possible, but we were still lugging up several hundred pounds. I was happy to not have a 10hp motor, which would have added more weight.

We took a lot of breaks and made steady progress. Within about 30 minutes we crested the top of the road and soon met up with the trail. Then we changed the rigging slightly to allow for downhill travel, and we walked the boat down to Ross Lake.

In all it took about an hour on the road, which was approximately what I’d estimated. We easily wheeled the boat into Ross Lake, then I paddled out into deeper water before putting the motor in and turning it on. I picked up Talon from a small dock there and then we were off.

By then there was an excellent sunrise over Jack Mountain and visibility was great. We squeezed through the gap in the water fence on the left, then I cranked the motor up to max and we started cruising up the lake. I steered us left around Cougar Island and we waved to some campers hanging out on the shore.

From there we maintained a constant 5.4mph speed in mostly calm water. There were two other boats on the water, and they looked like the rental 14ft 10hp boats that the resort rents out. (I’ve called the resort and those boats are only available when the resort is open, though, so not after late October).

We cruised up the middle of the lake, passing Roland Point, Ten Mile Island, and Cat Island, all familiar places to me from my previous paddles on the lake. By 11am, after about 3 hours on the water, we made it to Little Beaver, and luckily the water level was high enough that the dock was still floating in the water.

Nobody else was there, and we pulled the boat up slightly onto the shore to move it out of the way of other docking boats, then tied it up.

We quickly unpacked and I changed out of my drysuit. We ditched the life jackets and other boating gear in a big waterproof bag and rolled that up in the tarp in the boat. Then we distributed the climbing gear and started up the trail by 11:30am.

The trail had been logged out in early August and was in excellent condition. We made fast time to the Perry Shelter and stopped there for a break. I’ve heard there used to be a trail up Perry Creek, but it has been long-abandoned and retaken by the forest.

Based on satellite images we determined the north side of the creek was covered with many avalanche paths, which meant dense slide alder bushwhacking. The south side looked like it had basically no avalanche paths, and might even be old growth forest. That would be much easier bushwhacking, so we decided to target that side.

To start, we headed directly up the creek. This late in the season the water seemed a lot lower than it might be in the summer. In fact, staying in the creek made for very easy travel with fun scrambling up rocks on the sides. We only occasionally had to cross to the other side to get around difficulties.

As we got higher the creek narrowed and we had to occasionally bushwhack around waterfalls. At one crossing Talon took a slip and got soaked, but was otherwise mostly ok. Around 3600ft it got choked enough with slide alder on the side that we decided to leave the creek and find some old growth forest. We bushwhacked up the left (south) side through some slide alder and soon found nice open forest.

From there the travel was very easy. We would generally either be in open forest with no undergrowth, or pushing through knee-high blueberry bushes. It started getting late in the afternoon and I really wanted to reach the upper basin before dark so we could scout the route for the morning. So kicked it into high gear. We were averaging 2.5-3mph plowing through the bush, which is a really good speed for bushwhacking.

We soon reached open meadows with game trails, then we pushed through a small patch of slide alder to the left to gain the base of a talus field. From the field we got our first view of the peaks above the basin, still in the daylight. The smoke was thick but we could make out the huge east face of Lemolo, then see across to Spickard and Tombstone.

After another short stretch of slide alder we reached a nice flat bivy site next to Perry Creek at 7pm. We called it good and layed out our bivy sacks there. In the waning light we were able to barely make out a doable route to cut through the cliff band to the left of Lemolo and reach the Perry Glacier.

I cooked up some ramen and we planned out our timing for the summit push. We wanted to summit as early as possible in order to have time to get home Sunday night. But some navigation would likely require daylight. I would be comfortable following the upper rock pitches in the dark (since I’d already done them before), and navigating the perry glacier in the dark. However, the topo map showed a cliff band at the head of the Perry Glacier just below the normal route, and I was unsure how easy it would be to get through this.

The only report I could find of people passing through that was from the first ascent team of Lemolo. They had climbed the east face then descended down the Perry Glacier. It was unclear to me if they rappelled that cliff band or downclimbed it, and I anticipated some routefinding difficulties. Thus, we wanted to time things to hit that cliff band at sunrise. That meant leaving camp around 3:30am.

By dark a brilliant red moon rose and we could see very well even without headlamps. We got to bed soon after sunset in our bivies.

Sunday we were up and moving by 3:30am as planned. Unfortunately the moon had set and we had to navigate by headlamp. We crossed the talus field and traversed to the right edge of a cliff band to hit the main water drainage from the glavier above. The talus and scree were extremely loose there, and we were careful to scramble away from each other.

We soon reached the basin above, and had to thread the needle between a few cliff bands. Shaded relief maps on caltopo were very helpful for this. At the toe of the glacier we decided to cut right up a steep rock slab to avoid transitioning into crampons. We scrambled up some exposed 4th class slab, then up easier low-angle slab to the edge of an upper snowfield.

There we put on crampons and crossed to another cliff band that we scrambled through. Our timing was pretty good, since the sun was just rising then as we came within view of the upper cliff band that I was worried about. The skies were much clearer now, though we could see lots of smoke settled in the valley below. The smoke made for a really colorful sunrise.

Above us it looked like two gullies cutting down the cliff band, but they looked steep with big moats at the base. I wasn’t sure we could make it up them, and thought maybe we had come too late in the season. I’m not aware of any ascents of Hard Mox in October.

We decided to go check them out, though. This upper snowfield was much steeper and icier, and I was happy to have my whippet. Talon managed with just his hiking pole and crampons.

I kicked steps up to the left gully, then carefully inched my way to the edge of the moat. I was worried it might be thin and overhanging at the lip. Miraculously, though, there was an easy snow ramp on the other side that led to a big scree ledge. To my left and right the snow was thin and overhanging, but that exact spot allowed very easy passage. Moreover, the gully above looked like loose class 3 and very doable. I felt lucky to have found such favorable conditions.

At the head of the gully I recognized the normal route I had done in 2018. So our route indeed connected, and our prospects of summiting were looking good. We ditched crampons and poles in the moat then scrambled up the loose gully to reach the normal route. This was at the spot where on the normal route you have just descended a snow gully then traverse around to the base of the next gully.

Here we ditched our shoes and packs and put on harnesses and rock shoes. We made our two 60m ropes into backpacks and scrambled up the gully until it turned into the short 5th class step underneath a chock stone. I was happy to have already done this part, since I remember getting a little off route before here, and this is where I’ve read other parties also get off route.

I built an anchor below the chockstone and Talon led up the short 5.5 step to the right. This then gained a big ledge that led into the gully proper. He belayed me up to a wide section there to avoid dragging the rope higher and kicking rocks down.

From the belay we unroped and soloed up the 3rd class terrain. We passed a good rap anchor at a boulder that we planned to use on the descent. Above the anchor the terrain was steep, loose class 3/4 that we made good time up. We then reached the notch at the top and I clipped in to a slung boulder.

Talon wanted to lead the next pitch so we flaked out the rope. When I had done this before with Steven S we had two 30m ropes and I had done a 30m pitch up to a slung pedestal anchor and then another 30m pitch to the upper anchor, before soloing the last 4th class bit to the summit. This time we hoped to link pitches together since we had two 60m ropes.

Talon climbed quickly up the face, passed the pedestal, but eventually encountered too much rope drag and built an anchor. I followed up the familiar terrain, and then we swapped leads.

Just above the belay I reached the official upper anchor station. I then continued up the 4th class gully to the summit and belayed Talon up on a big slung boulder by 9:30am.

The views were great of Baker sticking up through the smoke and the pickets to the south. Towards Ross Lake the mountains looked blue and were sticking out of more low-elevation smoke. But up above where we were everything was nice and clear.

We signed in and got a bunch of pictures in all directions. It was neat to see the photo copy of Fred Beckey’s 1st ascent sign in from 1941 in the register. I also picked out my sign in from 2018. I don’t think too many people are crazy enough to climb this peak twice.

By 10am we started our way down. The existing rap anchor on the top is pretty sketchy, just a loose 0.5m x 0.5m boulder with slings around it. We slung a much bigger boulder instead and rapped off that. We made it down to the next rap anchor, then did a full 60m rappel all the way down to the notch.

From there we added a sling to the horn in the notch and rapped 60m to the lower anchor, then made a final rap down to our boots. It was nice being able to make the full length rappels, though it did mean we carried in a little bit more weight.

We scrambled down the loose gully back to the moat and put crampons back on. The snow was still steep and icy, and seemed too sketchy for Talon to downclimb without an ice ax. So I built a nut anchor in the wall above the moat and we rapped down the snow on that. When pulling the rope I forgot that it would dig a notch in the snow lip, and this made the knot get stuck. So Talon climbed back up the rope, pulled the knot through, and rapped back down.

At last we were done with rope shenanigans. We cramponed and scrambled our way down to the bottom of the basin, then scree surfed and talus hopped back to our bivy sacks. Time was tight for getting back to Seattle before Monday morning, and we tried to be very efficient.

We quickly packed up and got moving by 3pm. This time we could follow our up route on our GPS tracks on our watches, which saved some time. We were making 2.5-3mph through the upper bushwhack, which was really cruising. My pants took a beating and got ripped from knee to ankle at one point, but luckily my skin was unscathed.

To improve on our up route we decided this time to stay high in the old growth for as long as possible before dropping into the creek. This was very efficient, and we only dropped back down to Perry Crek once we hit dense trees around 3200ft.

From there we had a fun scramble back down the creek bed to the Perry Creek shelter by 6:30pm. It had taken us 5.5 hours up from the shelter but only 3.5 hours down with the more efficient route.

We stopped for a snack, then started down the trail in the dark. We were able to trail run the flat and downhill sections, though it was a little awkward with hiking boots and big packs. We made it to Little Beaver by 8pm and I quickly loaded up the boat. This time we saw one light in a tent at the campsites, so we weren’t completely alone. Interestingly, the water level dropped by about a foot and the zodiac was completely on land now.

I got on my dry suit, loaded up, and pushed off by 8:30pm. As we made it out into the main lake we noticed an active fire down on the shores of Desolation Peak. I didn’t recall that one on the way in, so it might be new. This time the moon was out and that was actually very helpful for navigating in the dark. There was still some smoke, so if we turned on the spotlight the visibility was very low. But if we turned off the lights we could see sufficiently with just the moonlight. We also turned on a GPS map on Talon’s phone as a backup.

I steered us down in the middle of the lake and Talon curled up in his sleeping bag inside his bivy sack at the bow. Some parts of the lake were completely calm, but we did encounter a few windy choppy sections. Luckily no water splashed into the boat.

Unsurprisingly we were the only ones on the water. It was kind of eerie moving through the lake at night. We made good time and reached the takeout at the south end of the lake after 2.5 hours. We quickly jumped out, deployed the wheels, rotated up the motor, and hitched up the climbing rope in front. We had to briefly pull the boat uphill to get off the lake, but then walked it back downhill to the dock. We then took the motor off and all the gear out and lifted the boat over the footbridge railings. Then we reassembled it and lowered it down the ramp into the water.

We used lights in the narrow canyon since the cliffs on the side had reflectors that helped us stay the correct course. Then back in the main Diablo lake we navigated again by moonlight. Finally by 1am we reached the takeout at Colonial Creek Campground. We quickly pulled the boat back up to the truck, deflated and disassembled it, and packed up. Talon headed back to Everett and I made it back home to seattle by 4:45am. That was just enough time to take a 45 minute nap before heading in to work to give a 7:45am statics lecture.

Video of the trip:

 

 

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