Permits: Sulphide camp
Difficulty: Moderate
Route Name: Sulphide glacier route
Snow Level: 6000 ft
Elevation Gain: 6000 ft
Total Miles: 15.00 mi
Gear: Standard glacier, trad rack included extra slings, single rack, and tricams
From Camp to Summit: 10.0 hours
From Summit to Camp: 8.5 hours
Weather: Nice for most of it
Mt. Shuksan – June 14-16
Juliet, Delfi, Clare and I set out from the Shannon Ridge TH on Sunday at about 8:30 am. It was a long, hot slog with heavy packs up to camp. On the way to camp, we came across 2 of the climbing rangers who let us know they had dug out the lower composting toilet at about 6200 ft. We camped on snow a bit higher than the toilet. There was a great water source nearby so we didn’t have to melt snow, yay! Don’t worry, it wasn’t next to the toilet…
Monday we left camp at about 3:30 am, roped up for the glacier, and reached the rock on the SE ridge at about 7:30 am. Sunrise was gorgeous! To reach the rock, Juliet did some sketchy, unsecured moves on icy rock. We followed and then got ready to climb, putting on our harnesses, etc. I then had an acute, immediate need to use the wag bag. I desperately exited my harness, located the wag bag in my summit pack, dropped the pants, and used it right then and there to avoid a disaster! Thankfully crisis was averted, but all dignity and decorum was lost! Delfi literally saved my ass by giving me some Imodium, which enabled us to continue with the climb…. 🤣🤣🤣
We all agreed the ridge was a fun climb! Both Juliet and I had brought climbing shoes to lead in, but we ended up just keeping our mountaineering
boots on. Delfi and Clare also climbed in mountaineering boots as well as climbed with some heavier summit packs!
Happy we chose to climb the SE ridge rather than climb the gully. We heard some people climbing the gully avoiding rock fall caused by those rappelling down….
Rappelling down took us quite a long time. As the gully was partially filled with snow, only some of the rap stations were melted out. They were on opposite sides of the gully, the 70 m rope did not get you to the next rap station, and because of our timing we sometimes had
to traverse over to the next rap station on shitty, soft, steep snow. As the snow had a defined and more consolidated boot pack lower down, we opted to skip the last rappel and use our ice axes to get down to a more mellow, flat spot and rope up again for the glacier.
During return to camp, it started to rain a little so Delfi put the rain cover on her pack. There were some pretty strong winds that came thru and took the rain cover away….Juliet
did a football dive while roped up to us to save the rain cover, which was impressive and
successful! We eventually made it back to camp at about 10 pm. Luckily we got back when we did as Delfi and Clare’s tent was just about to blow away! They were able to re-secure the tent and at that point we were all too exhausted to go collect water and boil it for our meals so we just snacked and went to bed.
Tuesday we woke up to zero visibility, misty/humid air, and colder temperatures. We packed up, headed out, and made pretty good time back to the car. On the way out, there was some new rockfall and so we crossed that area one person at a time to mitigate risk. Once off the snow, we were no longer in the clouds, and the weather was more pleasant.
This climb had a little bit of everything – glacier travel, exposed snow above rocks unroped, rock climbing, and rappels. All in all, we had a great but exhausting trip! Definitely type 2 fun with an amazing group of ladies!
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