Trip Report: 12 day complete North to South traverse of the Picket Range, North Cascades

Contemplating 12 day's worth of food

So after losing ourselves in guidebooks and kicking around the idea for close to three years, Joel and I finally mustered the courage and enough time off from work in early August of 2011 to venture into the mythical Picket Range of the North Cascades. For years, we had listened to stories from friends, read excerpts from the Fred Beckey guide, and craned our necks, nearly causing car accidents, along Washington's Highway 20 in order to catch brief glimpses of the staggering sentinels of the southern cirques. This year was finally our turn, and we meant to do it in style. This was not going to be a quick trip into Terror Basin. The night before leaving we loaded our packs down with 13 day's worth of food- a respectable 22 lbs per person- and a meager rack of rock gear, meticulously working to cut down on any redundancies in our packing. The result was a pair of packs hovering right around the 60 lbs mark, reasonable, if not light, for nearly two weeks of technical travel we rationalized. With nervous banter and hollow reassurance, we voluntarily bit off more than two vegetarian, seasonal outdoor educators could possibly stomach, waved goodbye to a group of friends that had agreed to see us off, and began an expedition that will be difficult to shake from memory.

The intended route

The Pickets are renowned by climbers for not only their incredible ruggedness but for the sometimes near Herculean efforts they demand just to access the fringes of the range. Much sleep in the early parts of the trip was lost reflecting over an excerpt from Fred Beckey:

"Because of the rugged terrain, the Picket Range has remained the wildest and most unexplored region in the North Cascades. It is not and area for the wilderness novice; its isolated brushy valleys and jagged ridges are a test for the most seasoned mountaineers.The length of the climbs, combined with steep mixed terrain and variable conditions, demands all-around competence and fitness."


Day one:
After an hour long boat ride from the Ross Lake Resort to Little Beaver trailhead, Joel and I began our  fourteen mile hike to Twin Rocks at noon. The hiking was easy despite the miles and full packs and we rolled into camp with time to soak our newly formed blisters in the river before dinner. Joel had picked out a special book to accompany the dice I brought just to round out our forms of entertainment. The book was titled "Remember Me?" by Sophie Kinsella (you might recognize the name from other such masterpieces of literature such as "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "Shopaholic takes Manhattan") and the cover praise promised it to be a "delicious page turner." Utilizing our astute grasp of basic division, we deduced that we would need to read two chapters aloud to one another each night in order to complete the book before exiting in Newhalem, thereby extinguishing any interest or investment we might have accumulated. Let the fun begin. 

Day Two:
Day two concluded the 18 mile approach to the northern boundary and included a climb up to Whatcom Pass, which would be our jump off point into the Picket Range. After climbing steep switchbacks for a few miles, we finally began to be rewarded with views of the Challenger Glacier and the Northern Pickets. Originally planning on carrying over the North ridge of Whatcom, we opted to contour around its eastern glacier after considering the prospects of exposed ledges with full packs surprisingly didn't seem as appealing as it did during the planning stages. We camped near Perfect Pass and enjoyed a beautiful sunset as the remoteness of the region began to sink in.

Day Three:
The morning started with a mellow scramble up to the summit of Whatcom peak. It was shrouded in low clouds that gave the summit ridge an eery but truly alpine feel to it. We decided to move our camp past Perfect Pass onto the rock slabs that border the Challenger Glacier higher up, where we would be better set up for our anticipated big day four. We spent the rest of the day rolling dice, bouldering and clambering around in a large crevasse that one could easily access from the rock.

The summit ridge of Challenger

Day Four:
After an alpine start, we traversed East along the Challenger Glacier in a dim sunrise glow. Because of the late winter this year and the massive amount of snow, the glacier was extremely sealed up for August and made for a quick approach to the final rock pitches of Mt. Challenger. A fun 5.7 in boots, past a handful of rusty old pitons, leads to the summit blocks and staggering views of Luna and Mt Fury. Although the summit was beautiful, we forced ourselves to make the visit brief as we planned on descending into Luna Basin and up to Luna Lake the same day. After traversing past Challenger Arm and into the the upper basin, we were met by tedious route finding through cliff bands teeming with cascading waterfalls and snowfields undercut and rotted by sun and streams flowing underneath. Here we ran into the only people we would encounter for the entire trip, a group of 3 friends from Bellingham on the last days of a week long trip. We ate lunch nearby, dodged a small avalanche, waved goodbye to the last signs of company and continued our descent. At the bottom of the basin we came across a massive moraine surrounding Lousy Lake. Seventy degree walls of car sized boulders blocked our way to what looked like gentler slopes up to the lake. After a few hours of careful tiptoeing around creaking rock we decided to take a direct line up to the lake via what seemed to be an easy gully. It turned out to be a heinously loose terrain trap that looked like a perfect funnel for the debris that shear off the ice cliff above. After what could qualify as our best display of poor decision making, we arrived at Luna Lake to be greeted by clouds of mosquitoes come to congratulate us on our 14 hours of travel.

Day Five:

The next day turned out to be one of both the highest and lowest points of the trip. The plan was to hike the two thousand vertical feet in less than a mile to Luna col, drop our packs and take bivy gear to the top of Luna peak to watch the sunset. All seemed to be on schedule when we finally reached the col, dripping with sweat, and consulted the map. In our excitement to set ourselves up best for the following days and through blatant inattention, we had managed to arrive at the wrong col. Accessing the real Luna col required about 700 feet of descending and another 1000 feet of gain which we tried to convince one another would make the summit of Luna that much sweeter. The view from Luna is one of the most impressive in all the Picket Range and arguably, the North Cascades. One can trace the skyline from Whatcom all the way south to the McMillan Spires. The fading light and wild spectrum of colors made for dramatic finish to the day as we climbed in our sleeping bags and watched light trails of meteors streak the sky.

The bivy on Luna

Day Six:

The alarm went off at 5:00 am, in time to watch the sun rise out of the cloud filled valleys and bathe the jagged peaks in a ghostly brilliance. Ultimately, this was the reason Joel and I had decided to venture into the Pickets. The summits were just an added bonus, but the real objective was to experience a moment like that sunrise on Luna. For an hour and a half we didn't speak but just watched the evolution of light taking place around us. The most difficult part was convincing ourselves to finally descent and give up our hard earned panorama. The rest of the day was spent napping, hiding from the sun, basecamp shenanigans, and generally enjoying our first layover day of the trip.

Day Seven:
The day began with a descent off of Luna col to the Southeast and a short climb to gain the steep heather slopes leading towards Fury's Southeast glacier. The late snow pack assisted our progress but crampons were needed on the vegetated cliffs more than once. At one point I took a bad fall, punching through the rotten snow, snapping my trekking pole and twisting my knee on the way down. I was able to arrest a few feet above some rocks but from there on out it was 800mg of ibuprofen a day for me. The route took a fair bit of maneuvering up and down a few hundred feet but we reached the glacier and finished off the day by making camp at the notch between the glacier and Outrigger peak.

Day Eight:

Southeast route on Fury

The morning started with low clouds cutting visibility to a few hundred feet as we started up the steep snow towards the summit of Fury. The snow slopes on the Outrigger side of the glacier is much steeper than the typical route and have several short, very steep sections that elicited both downpours of sweat and giggles from both parties. A final wild snow arete let to the summit where we scoured the register for familiar names and similar expeditions and added our names to the log along with a birthday note to my mom (We summitted on her birthday and without doubt she was worried sick).  After descending back to camp we headed to the summit of Outrigger as we had planned on carrying over onto the South ridge towards Picket Pass. Outrigger is possibly the chossiest of the mountains in the Pickets. At one point, when the clouds had moved in, we mistakenly were lured into a gully in order to skirt what looked to be an impasse on the ridge. The next hour was spent in absolute terror as handholds broke away above a terrible runout, trying in desperation to gain the ridge again with full packs. In the end we had to backtrack the same terrain and climb the exposed knife edge section on the ridge and into camp at Picket Pass.

Downclimbing Otto-Himmel col

Day Nine:
Day nine was to be the day that we finally broke into the southern pickets via the Otto-Himmel col. For the third day in a row, we awoke in a cloud and to poor visibility along with a generally exhausted mood. The constant stress of the route was beginning to take effect and neither one of us had had much sleep in days. The damp haze made going a bit slow but we at least managed to stay on route. The route took two pitches of 5th class climbing to gain a step on the ridge before rapping onto the Mustard Glacier. As usual, the crux of the day was not what we had anticipated. Getting onto the soft snow with a gaping moat below us easily provided the mental crux while the physical crux was downclimbing the several hundred foot, steep couloir on the southern side of the col. The light was fading as we hiked into camp, each of us making mental notes to return (once the memory of much of the suffering has dissolved) and climb the Wild Hair Crack on the Himmelhorn, a beautiful set of 5.7 cracks visible from the col that we sadly had to pass up. Per routine, two chapters of our trashy novel was consumed that evening.

Summit of Terror

Day Ten:
We awoke early and headed up towards the couloir leading towards the notch west of Mt. Terror, planning on climbing the West Ridge. The firm, steep snow was almost as fun as the route and we made quick work of the lower sections, reaching the notch below the summit and simul-climbing the remainder on good rock to the summit. From the top of Terror, in the sunshine, nearly our entire route for the past ten days was in view. It was our sixth peak and what would turn out to be our final Pickets summit.

Day Eleven:
We had initially intended to attempt to cross The Barrier high along the flanks of the McMillan but after spotting what looked like an easy route from our camp in Crescent Basin we ended up closer to the Chopping Block. It didn't take long to realize that making our way into Terror Basin was going to be harder than we anticipated. The Barrier drops off steeply into Terror Basin, making up a 500 foot cliff with very little in the way of weaknesses. It does look very possibly, although extremely tedious to pick your way down sketchy 3rd and 4th class ledges, possibly rappelling parts but it was not going to be straight forward in any sense. Eleven days of constantly being challenged, mentally and physically, by no fall zones, weather, steep terrain and long days, along with very little sleep in the same time period was starting to wear on us. After a short deliberation, we decided to make camp at the top of The Barrier and follow it down and out to Newhalem the next day by a route I had remembered reading about.

Day Twelve:
Although our Pickets adventure was coming to an end, they weren't quite ready to let us go yet. The descent off of the Barrier turned out to be a very steep sufferfest through 1500 feet of vine Maples and cliff bands. At times Joel and I used our ice axes on forest duff and moss to avoid cartwheeling down the slope. Just before reaching Terror Creek, we bushwacked through an area so dense we failed to touch the ground for probably 15 minutes. The rushing waters of the creek were a welcoming sign for weary travelers. After another stint of shwacking, we reached the climbers trail and subsequently, the 4.5 mile Goodell Creek trail. I can barely remember the last miles as Joel and I ran in our approach shoes towards the trailhead. Our expedition concluded with a short stint of hitchhiking until a local woman from the Methow offered us a ride back to the Outward Bound Basecamp in Mazama. We arrived in time for dinner. And without reading the final and only remaining chapter of our book.


It is hard to portray exactly how we felt during those 12 days. I struggle to communicate the moments of fear or relief or exuberance to their fullest extent and have trouble explaining when people ask exactly how the trip went. How can you sum up a trip that you have been dreaming of for years and finally complete? Surreal? More than I expected? Fucking hard? It probably easily qualifies as the hardest thing I've encountered in the mountains and certainly, in my mind, as the most significant accomplishment given the esteem to which I hold the Pickets. But it's more than that. And less. Mark Twain summed it up best when he said, "I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again."