Jack Mountain Circumnavigation by Packraft and Ski

Jack Mountain Circumnavigation by Packraft and Ski

12am April 11 – 12:30am April 12 (24.5 hours moving)

35 miles (25 hiking/skiing, 10 packrafting)

Last November I did a big hiking and packrafting loop around the Prophet Massif, hiking up to Little Beaver and paddling back down Ross Lake. At the time I wondered if it would somehow be possible to combine skiing and packrafting in the same trip. It seemed like involving Ross Lake was a logical choice since there’s plenty of skiable terrain nearby and the lake is great for paddling. I was inspired by reports from Luc Mehl of his big Alaska traverses involving skiing and packrafting, such as his Mt Logan and Mt Fairweather traverses. On glaciers he pulled gear in a packraft like it was a pulk, and on rivers strapped the skis on the side of the packraft.

After looking over a lot of maps I decided a big circumnavigation of Jack Mountain in the spring or winter would actually make sense to use skis and a packraft. The east side of Jack Mountain has a long flat section on a plateau called McMillan Park that would work well for pulling the packraft like a pulk. Devils Creek looked like it would have good skiing on a gradual north aspect that would probably hold snow to low elevation. I’d already established Ross Lake works well for packrafting. If I could do the loop counter clockwise that would mean hiking up the Jackita Ridge trail on a steep south face to gain McMillan Park. The south face would likely be melted out in the spring making for quicker progress on trail. The other advantage of doing this trip in April was that the Ross Lake Resort has not yet opened, so it would be very likely I would be the only boat on the whole lake. That would make for a fun wilderness experience.

I just needed to wait for a weather window that lined up with either calm winds or north winds on Ross Lake. Doing the loop counter clockwise would mean paddling south along Ross Lake, and I wanted a tail wind. Packrafts are designed for running rivers and can be slow going on ocean or lakes if the there is a headwind. Back in November I’d paddled south on Ross Lake with a strong tailwind and made good time, but if that had been a headwind it would have been faster to just hike out.

Sunday the stars aligned, with clear weather and calm or slightly north winds predicted on Ross Lake. Recent satellite images showed most of the trail up to McMillan Park melted out on the south aspect, which was good for fast progress. Snow coverage was much better on Devils Creek, which I hoped meant a quick ski down. There was some uncertainty, though, in the difficulty of the bushwhack on Devils Creek. I couldn’t find any reports of people going in there, so it could be nice and open or dense and slow going. Back in 2018 I’d bushwhacked nearby up May Creek to climb the north face of Jack Mountain, and the bushwhacking there was pretty tame. So I was optimistic it might be ok in the next drainage over.

Still, I decided to build in a lot of safety factor in timing for that section. Also, if the wind forecast was wrong the 10-mile paddle out could be slow, so I needed to build in buffer time for that too. I hoped the trip might be a 20-hour push, but figured it could be a bit longer.

Saturday night I drove to the Ross Dam trailhead and slept in the car for a few hours. I got up at 11:30pm and was moving by midnight. There were a handful of other cars in the lot, and I suspected they were skiing Ruby Mountain the next morning. To start I had considered hiking down to Ross Lake and paddling Ruby Arm, then bushwhacking up to the trail along Ruby Creek. But this would require significant paddling in the dark, plus bushwhacking, which would add time. I didn’t want to have to bail early because of delays at the beginning, and there was already a lot of uncertainty in my speed, so I opted to instead walk the closed section of Highway 20 from the gate to the canyon creek trailhead. This would be fast and reliable to start the day.

I made good time on the partially-snowed-over road. I carried my packraft packed up in my pack, skis and boots strapped on the outside, and hiked in hiking boots. I chose hiking boots since I expected a lot of bushwhacking, and they were more robust than trail runners for the bushwhack and more comfortable than ski boots for the long trail sections.

After a few hours I reached Canyon Creek and started hiking up the Jackita Ridge Trail. I’d been on this trail in 2019 and remembered a bridge was broken but still passable. Last October some friends of mine had climbed the south face of Jack Mountain approaching via this trail, so I figured the creek was crossable. When I arrived around 3am, though, the old bridge I remembered was completely gone. I looked around and concluded I just had to ford Canyon Creek.

I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants, and waded across the knee deep water. The crossing was long and I got the screaming barfies in my toes on the other side, but it worked out. From there I followed the trail up to about 3,000ft where continuous snow started. I switched to skis and roughly followed the switchbacks up until the terrain started leveling out around 5,000ft. The sun was just rising and it felt like winter again up there with deep snow, cold temperatures, and snow-covered trees. It had just snowed about 8 inches the past few days, so conditions were 8 inches of dry powder on top of a firm layer of hardened snow.

As the terrain leveled out more I stopped and inflated my packraft. I tied some paracord to the bow and looped some webbing around my shoulder, then put my backpack in the boat. It was nice to not have the weight on my back, but was a little bit harder to pull the boat than I’d hoped. I pulled through nice powdery snow on level terrain. It has a bit more resistance than a regular plastic pulk, but that’s to be expected since it’s not designed to pull gear on snow. I think optimum packraft towing conditions would be on a flat smooth glacier without tree wells and bushwhacking to navigate, with at least one other person so you can take turns breaking trail.

I pulled to the edge of the plateau where the terrain started dropping downhill, then packed everything back up in my backpack. Just above the Nickol-Devil saddle I dropped down and skied some fun turns through open trees. The snow was cold and powdery on the north aspect. As I descended the powder depth decreased and the tree wells got icier. By 3,700ft I got my last few icy turns in before the terrain leveled enough that I transitioned back to skins.

I skinned down on the east side of the creek, crossing many challenging tributaries that were melted down to deep canyons of snow. I generally managed to find thin snow bridges to balance across on my skis, but they were at times precarious. The snow eventually got icy enough and the tree wells deep enough that I just carried my skis on my back and booted through the open forest. The terrain got considerably more difficult, though, as I rounded the northeast corner of the Jack Mountain massif. There the right side of Devils creek became south facing slopes that were melted down to ground. I had to cross several challenging avy paths full of slide alder with patches of deep slush. I needed to cross the creek to get around them, but the creek was now deep enough that the crossing was non-trivial.

I decided that instead of carefully taking off my boots and wading across, I needed to be quick and efficient, so I just marched through the shin-deep water in my ski boots. I had to cross back and forth a few times to get around some cliff bands, then stayed on the right side. As the snow melted out for good I strapped my ski boots on my skis on my pack and switched to hiking boots, wringing the water out of my soaked socks. This meant my pack was now about 2 feet taller and 2 feet wider than normal, which of course makes bushwhacking challenging.

The next five hours were a tough bushwhack. The terrain could be broken into three distinct categories – dense bushes and slide alder, dry open forest, and matchsticks of 1-ft diameter trees densly strewn over the ground between shin and waist height. Unfortunately the dry open forest was not common, but crawling over, around, and through bushes and fallen logs was very common. I got some pretty bad battle scars on my forearms and ripped up my pants, but I managed to stagger out onto the Devils Dome trail at 3,000ft by 6pm.

From there it was easy cruising down, with only occasional blowdowns to negotiate all the way to Ross Lake. Ross Lake looked a lot different than I’d remembered in November. In November the water level was up to the edge of the trees on the shore, but now it was at least 50ft lower! The docks were resting on the ground and tree stumps were sticking out of the water even in the middle of the lake. There was also essentially zero wind. This was, of course, much better than a headwind, but much worse than the modest tail wind that had been predicted.

I took a short food break, then inflated the packraft, strapped the skis and pack on, and pushed off into the lake around 7:30pm. I had really hoped to avoid paddling in the dark, but that wasn’t going to happen. I had a 10 mile paddle back along half the length of Ross Lake, but only 30 minutes of light left. My plan was to hug the shore as close as possible, since I was a little nervous about paddling an inflatable boat with skis with sharp edges strapped on.

I hugged the eastern shore, weaving around all the dead trees sticking out. By 8pm it started getting dark, and by 8:30pm I could no longer avoid the dead trees without turning on my headlamp. Paddling by headlamp is actually kind of challenging. Every time I switched paddling on a different side of the boat the paddle got in front of my headlamp and I was momentarily blinded by the reflection. So I had to look left when paddling on the left and look right when paddling on the right. My head was moving back and forth a lot more than I’m used to when paddling.

Once in a while I’d turn off the headlamp and just float. It’s amazing how many stars I could see, and that’s one of the best star gazing locations I can think of deep in the north cascades on a lake with minimal trees blocking view of the sky. I started getting cold, though, as water slowly seeped through my spray deck. It would have been nice to bring my drysuit, but it was too heavy to make sense for the rest of the trip.

To stay warm I really just had to keep paddling. I paddled pretty continuously for a few hours around Rainbow Point and down to Roland Point. Interestingly, all the islands I remembered from November like Tenmile Island and Little Jerusalem Island were now connected to mainland since the water was so low. By Roland Point I decided I needed to cross to the west side of the lake to minimize distance back to Ross Dam. This was a little intimidating in the dark. Luckily there was no wind, since back in November the wind had been strong enough to almost tip the boat over. If I turned off my headlamp I could see the silhouette of Pierce Mountain on the western shore, so I pointed the boat that direction and started paddling.

If the boat deflated in the middle it would have been pretty scary swimming to shore in the dark, so I paddled hard and fast, hoping that wouldn’t happen. I soon reached the other shore and breathed a big sigh of relief. Somehow the builder bar I’d eaten a few hours ago was burning strong and I’d been paddling almost continuously, but by then my arms started getting tired. Every 10 minutes I’d take a 30 second break and that seemed to do the trick.

I hugged the western shore, paddling around Cougar Island and down towards Green Point. I occasionally heard rockfall from the steep cliffs to my right, and made sure to keep my distance from the shore. I was getting pretty cold then and considered bailing and hiking out on the trail on the right to warm up, but it was actually non-trivial to even get out of the water there up the cliffs.

It was then that I realized how tired I was. If I briefly paused for more than 10 seconds I would start to fall asleep. I think this was the combined effect of only sleeping 2.5 hours Saturday night, then pushing hard for the last 23 hours, then not eating for the past 4 hours while paddling.  Luckily I found a cliff bar stashed in my pocket, and eating that boosted my moral a bit. I also tried to paddle harder, and that warmed me up a bit more and kept me alert.

I soon rounded Green point and saw a few lights of the Ross Lake Resort. I was happy to have already paddled this area in the daylight in November, so I knew there was a wall of floating logs on a cable and just one opening to cross. Luckily at night this opening had a flashing red light. I also knew exactly where the takeout point was, so could find it in the dark. I’d been using my GPS watch to navigate the whole trip, but it appears it only has enough battery to record about 23.5 hours of moving, and it died before I was done with the paddling. (I assume this battery life is probably sufficient for most trips of most users, even if it wasn’t enough for me on this trip).

The takeout point was now a cliff with the low water level, but I looked around and at midnight on the dot I found a sandy level area to takeout. I quickly jumped out of the boat, threw off my soaking wet jacket, and put on a dry mini puffy jacket from my pack. That helped quite a bit. Another cliff bar also helped boost moral. I quickly rolled up the packraft, not concerned with all the sand that was getting on everything and making a mess. That was a problem I was happy to put off til later. I was soon packed up, then hiked the mile back up to my car by 12:30am. The total trip had taken 24.5 hours, mostly moving.

I had lecture later that morning, so really needed to drive home immediately. I quickly changed into dry clothes, scarfed down a few pieces of pizza, cracked open a Red Bull, and started driving. I managed to make it almost to Darrington, nibbling on skittles and sipping Red Bull, but had to stop and take a 30 minute nap around 2am. I then continued, surprisingly much more alert, and made it home by 4:30am.

Video of the trip:

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