Our camp, with Mount Maude in the background. The icefall is to the right of the pyramidal looking peak (Marmot Pyramid).
Elain and I had been talking about doing a three-day climb over the Labor Day weekend. After much discussion, we settled on the Northwest Face of the North Ridge of Forbidden Peak. Then we discovered Darin Berdinka's trip report for the Entiat Icefall route on Mount Maude, and were inspired. So at the last minute we changed our minds and decided that we would rather go to Mount Maude. We felt that this route would have more ice climbing and would have the advantage of not requiring a carry-over. However, we were sobered by the thought of doing the 16-mile approach to get to the north side of Mount Maude, in our brand-new boots.
We made the 4.5 hour drive to the Entiat River Trailhead on Saturday morning, arriving at the trailhead at 9:30 AM. By 10:00 AM we were walking. The Entiat River Trail was very dusty, and we were coughing from the dust throughout the day. I kept wishing I had a 3M mask to filter out the dust. At the five mile mark we came to a stream crossing. I stupidly chose to walk across the log rather than rock-hopping. Halfway across I fell off the log, painfully bruising my leg and straining my calf muscle and ankle. The 16-mile hike to the meadow just below the moraine took about 8 hours. We saw very few people on the trail beyond the Icy Lake trail turnoff, which gave a sense of remoteness to the area. We selected a campsite on a flat spot about a quarter mile from the moraine, and set about making dinner. From our camp site we were able to observe the lower part of the Entiat Icefall. It appeared to be very broken up. By 8 PM we were sleeping. We awoke at 4:45 and started preparing for our ascent. By 5:15 we were walking. The approach took us over the moraine, and up a couple of low-angle snow fields separated by rock bands. Eventually we reached an ice face extending from the toe of the South Entiat Glacier. The face steepened to 45 degrees at the top, so we front pointed up the face, eventually exiting right into a steep, wet, 4th class gully. This gully contained a great deal of loose rocks and precariously perched boulders. It was smooth and steep enough that the large rocks rolled down it as if on a bobsled run. We dubbed it the "Gully of Death" and climbed through one at a time. As I ascended the gully, I accidentally discharged a volley of widomakers that crashed spectacularly down the gully and the ice face below. Elain's eyes were wide when she followed up the gully. Once above the Gully of Death, we climbed slabs and choss, angling right until we reached the icy edge of the Entiat Glacier.
We put on our crampons and started climbing up the glacier at about 9:00 AM. After ascending for a couple of hundred feet, we reached the lower slopes of the Entiat Icefall. We simul-climbed through much of the icefall, weaving our way around crevasses and often climbing down into and out of them. At a couple of points we were forced to back-track a bit, but for the most part we were able to make upward progress. Our line tended rightward, and eventually reached a steep ice slope with few crevasses, leading up to a bergschrund. The schrund stretched the entire width of the icefall, with steep rock on either side. We appeared to have two options. Option "A" was to down-climb into the schrund on the right edge, jump to a snow-fin on the other side, and climb up a small diagonal left-tending ledge underneath the overhanging upper wall of the schrund. It looked like it would eventually lead to a small breach in the overhanging upper wall. Option "B" was less appealing-- we could go left, to where the lower schrund wall had a large, thin overhang approaching the upper wall, and attempt to step or jump across the gap to the vertical upper schrund wall, then climb the schrund wall for about 25 feet before the angle kicked back. We decided to try option "A" first. The jump across to the snow fin was easier than it looked. On the ledge, I had to crawl a bit to get underneath the overhanging schrund wall and reach the breach. Once at the breach, it was just a bit of steep climbing to get past the schrund. Elain soon followed with no difficulties. We were congratulating ourselves and feeling optimistic for the next two pitches up the ice face, until the slope angle kicked back and revealed there was another huge schrund just below the col, stretching all the way across the icefall. We climbed up to it and peered over the edge. On the right-hand side, the moat appeared to be at least 30' deep and too wide to get across, making a rock bypass difficult. Just left of the right-side moat was a nearly vertical snow fin that extended up for 30', arcing rightward in a thin overhang. We leaned over the edge to look around the snow fin, and it appeared that there was a small snow ledge inside the moat that would yield access to the upper schrund wall. The problem was how to get to the ledge. The plumb line from the base of the snow fin took us deep into the moat, about 8 feet horizontal from the ledge. So I took out my adze and started chopping a notch in the snow fin. Elain looked at me as if I was crazy. After the first few whacks with my adze, I heard a big "whump" and saw a fracture line extend all the way below where I was standing. I swallowed hard and continued excavating, but the progress was slow. After a while, Elain took over the excavation, while I started preparing a pair of V-thread anchors for a rappel. Eventually Elain had enlarged the notch enough that we felt we could reach the ledge on a rappel. I was a bit nervous about the overhanging ice collapsing under the weight of the rap rope, so I chopped another small notch for the rap rope to feed through, just on the uphill side of the fracture line. I hoped this would prevent the rope from slipping over the fractured section of overhanging ice and pulling it down on me. Elain volunteered to rap first. She rapped a short distance down to the snow ledge, and scrambled onto a rock slab on the uphill side of the schrund, and out of sight. After confirming with Elain that the upper wall of the schrund was climbable, I rappelled down to the snow ledge and pulled the rope. We scrambled up rock slabs, then climbed a step of steep ice and were past the schrund. From there, we climbed a single pitch of moderate-angle ice until we reached the col between the Marmot Pyramid and Maude's East Ridge, about 750' below the summit. At the col, we put away the crampons and ice tools, and got out the rock pro.
The time was about 2:30 when we set out to climb the East Ridge. I climbed up to the ridge crest, reaching a small notch about 30' above Elain. Above me was the 5th class rock step mentioned in several route descriptions. I couldn't figure out how to climb the featureless slab above me, so I ventured around the corner onto the south side. At first the climbing was easy, luring me into a traverse out onto the south face. But as I started to climb up towards the ridge crest, the rock because steeper and very loose. A half pitch of steep mid fifth-class climbing on friable, unprotectable rock got me back to the ridge crest, trembling and panting. The rope drag was terrible as I belayed Elain up to me. I faintly heard some complaints about the quality of the rock as she followed the pitch, but I was mostly focused on taking in the slack, which required pulling with all my strength. Eventually Elain made it up to the notch where I was belaying. She agreed that the pitch was terrible. We vowed to stay on the ridge crest. We simul-climbed our way up the ridge crest for another hour and a half, mostly slinging rock horns for protection. The climbing on the ridge crest was mostly exposed third class on generally decent rock, with the occasional 5th class move. We climbed up over a gendarme, and down into a notch below the summit. At that point we discussed whether to tag the summit or start the descent. Since we were so close, we decided to go ahead and climb up to the summit. From the notch, we traversed left, out onto the south ridge, and followed the scramble trail for a few minutes to the summit.
We reached the summit at 5:45 PM, ecstatic but also sobered by the scant remaining daylight. After a brief stop to eat and hydrate, we were on our way back down the South Ridge at just before 6 PM. We made reasonable time down into the Icy Lakes basin. The traverse around the basin was long but straightforward, and at 8:00 PM we reached the saddle between the Icy Lakes basin and the South Entiat Glacier. We crossed over the saddle in the fading daylight and put on our crampons, resigned to a problematic descent in the dark. Descending the glacier was straightforward for the first 500', at which point it was totally dark and with no moonlight. From there, the glacier got steeper and very broken up, and we had to do some tricky down-climbing to make progress. Eventually we reached a point where the down-climbing was too difficult, so we set up a double V-thread and rappelled blindly down the hanging glacier. A single rap got us down off the toe of the glacier, and onto a chossy ridge on the climber's right of the toe of the South Entiat Glacier. Because of the darkness we were unable to determine which direction to go, in order to reach the descent gully. In addition, we were both tired and decided it would be a good idea to get some rest. So we sat down on the choss for our bivouac there. It was a bit windy and we were concerned about the possibility of rockfall from a large buttress at the top of the ridge, so after an hour we started climbing / sliding down the ridge in search of a better bivy site. A couple of hundred feet below, we found a series of down-sloping rock slabs that took us to a flat, dusty ledge. We huddled there and shivered for a couple of hours. Eventually I managed to get my Petzl Zoom headlamp working again (it had inexplicably gone out during the bivy), and I was tired of shivering, so I went out exploring. Miraculously, I found what I thought was the start of the descent gully. I ran back to Elain and reported the good news. We packed up and climbed up to the spot, but when we got there and looked at it again, I started to have second thoughts. Somehow on closer inspection, it didn't look quite the same as I had remembered from the previous morning, perhaps because I was fatigued and not thinking straight. Elain however, was convinced that it was the correct descent gully. In any event, it was by then 4:00 in the morning, and within 90 minutes we would know for sure. So we searched around for a nearby spot to sit, eventually finding a down-sloping ledge. At some point Elain's helmet accidentally got bumped, and it crashed several hundred feet down the side of the mountain, taking the Tikka headlamp with it. By 5:30 AM, it was light enough that we were able to see the full extent of the gully, confirming we had ineed found the Gully of Death. We descended the gully one at a time, exercising extreme care to minimize rockfall. The gully was steep and wet, and despite our precautions we discharged some frightening rockfall. Eventually I exited the gully onto the ice face extending from the snout of the glacier; I front-pointed out onto the ice face to get out of the line of fire. Once Elain joined me, we constructed a double V-thread and rappelled down the ice face. After a single rappel, the angle of the face moderated enough to permit down-climbing. At the bottom of the ice face we had to descend across a short band of talus. At one point a large boulder shifted onto Elain's leg, but luckily only caused a painful bruise. We finally made it back to the campsite at 9:15 AM. After a short nap, we packed up camp and were walking by 12:15 PM. The hike out was very long, and our feet were in a lot of pain by the end. We reached the car at 7:45 PM. While we were staggering across the parking lot to the car, a pair of horseback riders sauntered by us in full cowboy regalia, with shotgun and chaps. One of them looked us over and said (with a degree of understatement he would never know), "Boy, you look like you've had a long walk".
As a result of the many miles of walking in new boots, the nerves in my toes were damaged, causing numbness that has lasted for six weeks. In addition, my left ankle was injured, perhaps in the fall during the creek crossing on the approach. Nevertheless it was a great trip.
Gear we used: ice tools; crampons, 50m x 8.5mm rope; 1 picket; 8 ice screws; small passive rock rack to 2"; 10 single runners; 3 double runners; 20 feet of 5.5mm spectra cord for making V-thread anchors; V-threader.
Things we learned:
Our camp, with Mount Maude in the background. The icefall is
to the right of the pyramidal looking peak (Marmot Pyramid).
Sunrise on the mountain
North side of Mount Maude
Steve, with Seven-Fingered Jack in the background
Steve climbing through the icefall
steep ice in the Entiat Icefall
Steve climbing through the icefall
Steve climbing the East Ridge
Steve, on the summit
Elain, on the summit
Elain downclimbing snow slopes towards the moraine