Tupshin Peak, Devore Peak, and Flora Mountain

Flora Peak (8,320ft), Tupshin Peak (8,320ft), and Devore Peak (8,360ft)

Eric and Katie

July 20-24, 2018

July 20 – Eric meets Katie at Lucerne, take ferry to Stehekin, packraft across lake to Weaver Point, hike up to Bird Creek camp
July 21 – Climb Flora, return to Bird Creek camp
July 22 – Climb Tupshin, bivy at base of climb
July 23 – Eric climbs Devore (solo), hike back to Weaver Point
July 24 – Packraft across lake, eat sticky buns at the bakery, bus back to Stehekin, ferry to Chelan, drive to Seattle

July 20

I had just finished doing a Dark-Bonanza traverse with Duncan and climbing Martin Peak and Copper Peak solo afterwards. After Copper peak I camped in the woods outside Holden, and headed into the village on the morning of July 20. After filling myself up at the buffet cafeteria breakfast and paying for the food and bus fare, I hopped on the morning bus headed for Lucerne.

The bus is an old school bus and was quite full. Most other people on the bus had come to Holden as part of the Lutheran retreat and were returning to Chelan. After about 45 minutes we made it to Lucerne, and the slow ferry soon made a stop.

Katie was on the ferry and had brought a bunch of food, climbing gear, and packrafting gear for the next trip. Our plan was to climb Tupshin, Flora and Devore. These mountains seemed like tough ones to find partners for – they require a long approach by taking a ferry, possibly a bus, then hiking in to base camp. Then the peaks themselves require non-trivial amounts of bushwhacking, and Tupshin has a reputation for sketchy rock climbing on the summit pyramid. Unless you’re working on the Bulgers, these peaks probably aren’t on your radar. I was pretty lucky Katie agreed to join, even though she’s not officially working on the Bulgers.

We planned to make the trip a bit more fun and efficient by involving packrafts. The normal approach for these peaks is to take the ferry to Stehekin, then wait for a few hours until you can catch a ride on the NPS bus to the Harlequin bridge. Then you hike 3.5 miles to Weaver Point and start hiking up Devore Creek. The problem with this itinerary is you are constrained by the bus schedule on the approach and while hiking out. Additionally, you have to hike between Harlequin and Weaver Point twice for the round trip.

Weaver Point is not far line-of-sight across the lake from Stehekin. Katie and I planned to use our packrafts to paddle across the lake from Stehekin to Weaver Point and back again after the trip. This way we would not be constrained by the bus schedule, and would save a few hours of hiking. Most importantly, though, we could go packrafting on Lake Chelan, and increase the fun factor of the trip.

We unloaded our gear in Stehekin and noticed that the lake was very choppy, and the wind had picked up. This didn’t bode too well for our plan to paddle across the lake. Packrafts are designed for maneuverability in white water, but this means they are slow in large flat bodies of water. It would be tough to make much progress in wind, and we could easily be blown out farther down the lake. However, it looked like if we hugged the shoreline the wind would be calm enough to paddle. This would make the paddle much longer than cutting directly across the lake, but it would still be fun.

We walked our gear up to Purple Point and started packing up the boats. There was a lot of gear with the rock climbing and camping equipment, but I managed to fit just about all of it for the both of us in my boat. I have the waterproof zipper that allows me to put gear inside the boat, and it actually has a very large capacity. I was riding pretty low in the water, but it still worked out.

I led the way paddling up the shoreline, and before long we’d rounded the head of the lake and made it to Weaver Point campground. There we took out on a dock, unpacked, and put all the packrafting gear in a bear locker. From Weaver Point we hiked up the Devore Creek trail, which switchbacks steeply up from the lake as it avoids a canyon around the creek. The trail started out pretty well-maintained, but soon became quite overgrown in places.

After a few hours we made it to the Bird Creek campsite and pitched our tent there for the night. We weren’t sure which mountain we wanted to do first the next day. Tupshin would definitely be the hardest, Devore somewhere in the middle, and Flora the least difficult. We decided to warm up by doing Flora first.

July 21

The next morning we got started around sunrise and hiked up the Devore Creek trail until about the 5200ft contour

at the start of the Fourth of July Basin. Flora doesn’t really get climbed enough for there to be a user trail through the woods, so you kind of just have to find your own way.

We bushwhacked through mostly open forest to the east, aiming for the saddle between Enigma and Pt 7716. The bushwhacking eventually eased up as we broke into a meadow around 6400 ft. From there we could see the saddle and made a beeline for it. A bit of talus hopping and scree led us to the saddle, where we got our first view of Flora Peak.

The summit looked steep from a distance, but we knew mountains are usually less steep in reality than what they look like from afar. Unfortunately our route required us to descend down to Castle Creek, meaning we would have an uphill component on the return.

From the saddle we traversed left for a few hundred feet until we found a class 2 scree gully do descend down to the trees. Once we reached a flat bench we cut back to the right, making a descending traverse through open forest until we reached the pleasant meadows at the valley bottom. We crossed Castle Creek

and then started ascending the opposite side. We had to trend up and left to get around some cliffs, and soon popped out above treeline.

We gained the southwest ridge of Flora, then ascended the talus and scree to the summit. We could see Lake Chelan down to our east, and picked out what we thought were Devore and Tupshin to the northwest. I made sure to take a long break with my shoes off to ward off any blister issues. I’d been having trouble on previous big trips and figured drying out my feet and socks frequently ought to help.

We descended the same route, back down to Castle Creek and back up to the saddle. Descending from the saddle was a bit trickier since the rocks were about fist-sized – too big to scree surf down, but small enough that they weren’t very stable. The bushwhack down seemed to take way too long, but we finally hit the trail and hiked back to our camp at Bird Creek by dinner time.

July 22

Over the next two days we planned to climb Tupshin and Devore, though we had some debate on the ideal schedule.

Some groups do them in the same day from Bird Creek Camp, but we wanted to split them up to do one each day. We considered moving camp up to the basin between the peaks, but this would require hauling our overnight gear up the Bird Creek bushwhack. We weren’t sure how difficult the bushwhack would be, and it could be tough with big packs.

Instead we decided to keep the same camp, and make two independent trips up. Thus we would climb Tupshin, return to camp, then climb Devore the last day. We left at the leisurely hour of 8am and started bushwhacking up the right side of Bird Creek. The terrain was actually pretty open, and we only had to cross one nasty section of slide alder around 5,000ft.

From the flat basin at 5400ft we ascended following Scott Rice’s GPS track from peakbagger. The terrain was at times dense with trees near the bottom, but soon opened up to easy meadow walking. We crested the skyline ridge around 7200ft and got our first view of Tupshin.

Tupshin is one of the few mountains I’ve seen that very clearly has a summit pyramid (Shuksan is another one). A talus field on the east side of Tupshin leads to a big cliff all the way to the top. We traversed through the talus around 7,200ft, then ascended to a snowfield at the base of the cliff.

I wasn’t really expecting a snowfield this big that we couldn’t skirt around, and in hindsight we should have brought crampons and ice axes. Luckily the snow was pretty soft, though. I switched into rock shoes and left my trail runners at the edge of the snow. I built an anchor and Katie belayed me as I made a diagonalling ascent, kicking deep steps with my rock shoes until I found a good rock horn on the other side.

I belayed Katie over, and we got a good look at the rest of the route. The description we read made the route sound

mostly third class, but in my opinion it was exposed enough that you wouldn’t want to fall in the wrong place. We decided to rope up, and I traversed right across a ledge, putting in a piece or two before reaching the end of the 60m rope. We roughly tried to follow the summitpost route, though I traversed too far on the first pitch.

I then continued to the edge of a deep gully, then climbed up the top of the gully to a rap anchor around a bush. It looked like we were back on route. I climbed up another rope length to another bush rap anchor, and then climbed up 20m to the bottom of the 5.hard variation described on summitpost.

From there I traversed right to the edge of the ridge, and backtracked up and left until I was above the 5.hard section. Another short pitch on a descending leftward traverse led to a slung tree beneath the crux 5.4 pitch.

The 5.4 pitch was short and the rock pretty solid. Most of a rope length led to another good rap anchor. We were finally close to the summit. I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed from this anchor, so I went up and right, hugging the skyline ridge to the right. Unfortunately this went through lots of loose rock, which I was careful not to dislodge.

By 7pm we were both on the summit. The climb had taken a bit longer than expected, since it wasn’t really third class as we’d thought it might be. So we didn’t stay too long on top. To descend, we decided to go down the gully on climber’s left from the summit, which looked a lot more solid than the one we’d climbed up. It was still kind of exposed, though there was no rap anchor on top. I guess everyone just downclimbs this (as well as much of the rest of the route)?

I slung the summit block and left an anchor that we rapped off. We couldn’t make it all the way to the next anchor (this would become a common theme on Tupshin), so I built an intermediate anchor. Unfortunately I had assumed Tupshin was popular enough to have a rap line down, and I did not bring enough gear to leave my own anchor every ropelength without leaving a lot of cams, which I didn’t want to do.

So I belayed Katie down to the next anchor, then downclimbed to her. We then rappelled the 5.4 crux, and again the

rope did not reach the next anchor. So I again built an intermediate anchor, belayed Katie down, then downclimbed myself.

I had memorized all the anchors locations as we climbed up, so we had no problem with the next three rappels to the

lowest ledge. It was dark by the time we reached the ledge, and enthusiasm for the climb was waning. Unfortunately there was no good way to diagonally rappel the ledge. I gave Katie some gear and belayed her down, while she put a few pieces in to protect from penduluming. I then downclimbed to the edge of the snow.

It was 11pm now and the snow was not soft enough to downclimb without crampons and ice ax, which we didn’t have. So I slung a horn at the top of the snow and rapped down. I started a diagonal rappel since I didn’t think the rope would reach the bottom. When I reached the edge of the snow, I walked the rope so it was directly beneath Katie, and luckily it was only about 10ft from the bottom of the snow. So Katie rappelled straight down, not having to do a scary diagonal rappel.

We got back to our gear at midnight, and decided it didn’t really make sense to bushwhack all the way back down to camp, only to bushwhack all the way back up the next morning for Devore. We really just wanted to go to sleep right there. So that’s what we did.

I spent about 30 minutes leveling out a bivy site at the base of the cliff near an overhang, protected from rocks from above. I laid out a garbage bag on the dirt, and we laid on our packs as pads. We put on all our layers and used the rope as a blanket. I think I actually managed to get a few hours of sleep. I would wake up shivering periodically, but after eating a handful of chocolate-flavored chips (different than chocolate chips), and doing a bunch of situps, I would eventually warm up enough to fall back asleep.

July 24

At last, the sun finally rose around 5:30am, and we left our cozy little bivy site. We retraced our route down to around 6,000ft. Katie decided she would be perfectly happy not doing Devore, and I said the technical parts sounded short enough that I would be fine rope soloing them if needed. So Katie bushwhacked down to camp while I took all the climbing gear and headed towards Devore.

I bushwhacked down to meadows at 5800ft, then found a nice gully leading up to the broad bench east of Devore. From the bench I cross a small flat snowfield, then scrambled up rocks to the saddle just west of point 7657. I scrambled west on the ridgecrest until I reached the bottles. There was a huge snowfield on the east side of the bottles that would be easy to cross with crampons, except that I hadn’t brought crampons. I briefly tried the squeeze up the moat on the left edge of the snowfield, but this got too sketchy and I retreated.

I took a more careful look at the snowfield, and it wasn’t as steep as I’d thought. The snow was pretty soft, so I ventured across in my trailrunners. I managed to kick steps and scramble back up to the ridge west of the Bottleneck. From the ridge I traversed across the southeast face of Devore, then scrambled up to class 2/3 terrain to the edge of the summit ridge. I saw a rap anchor on this edge, and it seemed like a bad idea for someone to be rappelling such long angle and loose terrain.

From this rap anchor I followed cairns along the left side of the ridge until I reached the crux pitch of the climb. It’s an unavoidable 20ft tall rock face that you have to climb. It looked like it had good holds, and was short, so I decided to solo it instead of rope soloing.

I changed into rock shoes and quickly climbed to the top. There was a rap anchor on top, which I planned to use for the descent. I remembered the beta for the route, and from this rap anchor I traversed left on a good ledge system, scrambling around a class 3+ exposed corner, then continuing on the ledge until I was in a gully just below the summit.

The gully was class 3 at the bottom, with a short bit of class 4 at the very top, which I soloed. I looked around for a summit register and found a broken metal can with some shards of paper amongst the nearby rocks. A chipmunk scurried away in the distance, and it looked like he was the culprit of this deed.

I carefully put the contents back in the broken metal can and wedged it under a rock, though I don’t think it was chipmunk proof anymore. This is kind of unfortunate since I later learned the register had entries from back in the 1940s.

After a short break I scrambled to the edge of the summit block and found a good rap anchor, which I used to rap

back down to the ledge. I then scrambled around the ledge, and rappelled back down the 20ft crux to my stashed gear. In hindsight I could have left all my rockpro behind, since nothing was steep enough to require rope soloing. Also, a light 30m rope would be fine for the rappels, instead of my heavy 60m rope. But I had that gear because it was necessary for Tupshin, so couldn’t complain too much.

I made good time scrambling back down the ridge to the Bottles, then glissading down the snow slope. I eventually scrambled all the way back down to Bird Creek. On the bushwhack down to camp I took a nasty fall and earned a deep and bloody gash in my left hand, which would leave a permanent scar. I wrapped it up with my hat and some duct tape, and continued down to camp.

I rolled into camp around 4:30pm, and woke Katie up from a nap. I think she was expecting me a lot later. We had plenty of daylight left to pack up and hike back down to Weaver Point campground for the night. It felt good going for a quick dip in Lake Chelan to clean off before bed.

The next morning we inflated our boats and paddled back across the lake, which was completely calm. We only had to make the 12pm ferry, so had plenty of time to stop at the bakery for a celebratory feast. At the road we packed up our boats and gear and walked up valley the short distance to the Bakery.

Several sticky buns and pastries later we caught the ferry shuttle back to the ferry launch, and took the fast ferry back to Chelan. It was 100F in Chelan, and we had the air conditioning blasting much of the drive back to Seattle that evening.

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