Silver Peak II -- Andreas

Where: Silver Peak, Snoqualmie, WA
When: Sunday May 24th, 2009
With: Andreas
Goal: Summit the peak we missed with BoeAlps


Silver Peak Summit

I had a weekend off from BoeAlps so Andreas and I decided to use this as an opportunity to re-climb Silver Peak (well, a re-climb for me, a first for Andreas). When our BoeAlps team attempted the summit, we only made it to the ridge because many of our steps where through 3 feet of new powder! No BoeAlps teams made it to their true summit that weekend.

We got a late start, not getting to the trailhead until after 9am (probably closer to 10am!). When we got to the official parking lot I couldn’t believe my eyes—there was no snow! When the BoeAlps team did this trip we couldn’t even get to the parking lot, and there were between 2 and 4 feet of snow covering the lot (2 feet in the sunny spots).

We were also surprised to find many cars at the trailhead. The car that pulled up next to us, a few (overweight) men got out, donned their fanny packs and were on their way in jeans.

Rather confused we still continued to strap our snowshoes onto the back of our packs. We were weary and thought that they were ill-prepared or we were drastically over-prepared. This led us to leave some snow gear in the car that we later regretted (such as my snowpants). Fortunately, we survived.

We started on the Annette Trail and headed towards Annette Lake. It took many switchbacks before we actually got to the snow. We think the jean-hikers must have gone a different route because we were packing a solid pace and never caught up to them. We passed quite a few gully’s before deciding to go straight up one. (In retrospect, we should have gone to the Lake, and then come back to the closest gulley to the Lake). Also in retrospect, Ron tells me from the "right gulley" you can see the ridge/summit and it opens up at the top. Ours didn't.


Going through the trees

The gulley we choose closed up before the top and we made our way through some rocks and trees, trying to avoid significant rock cliffs. We knew we were close to the ridge but we had to keep winding our way for the terrain was rather steep. Also, we didn't want to hit a rock cliff by the ridge making it so we wouldn't be able to top out on it. Fortunately we were able to find a good spot, and scramble up some rocks to make it to one end of the ridge--the end furthest from the summit.


The ridge leading to the summit

We made it to pretty much the same spot as my BoeAlps team had before, and deemed it lunch time. We were tempted to walk the ridge to get to the summit but decided it would be safer to traverse into the bowl and walk back up to the ridge when we were much closer to the summit.


The bowl and the summit in the distance

We downstepped from the ridge and once we got to the bowl we adorned our snowshoes (kicking steps with just two people and post-holing was not on our agenda). Andreas couldn’t stop wishing (and complaining) that we should have come from the other side of the mountain and brought skis to skin up the trail instead. (I don’t have skis/skins [skins being kinda like sandpaper that you attach to the bottom of your skies so you can go straight up the mountain without slipping/sliding back down], so I thought it was a terrible idea).


Andreas on the ridge

Once we traversed the bowl Andreas led the steps back up the steep ridge. Moments before I topped out, I slipped and fell about 15 feet down, I was just thankful I didn’t fall more. The sun made it quite hot out, so it was kinda relieving falling through the cold snow, but at the same time, I would have been quite content if it never happened.


We were glad we didn’t traverse the ridge because we saw a lot of cornices.

On our way to the summit we went on/off of what we presume is the summer trail to the summit. I think this trail starts from Annette Lake.


I’m wondering “Where is the rest of my BoeAlps team?!”

The summit provided some great views and we enjoyed the sun’s heating rays and slight breeze. Although I was really sad when Andreas pointed out the clearcutting on the neighboring peaks.


This mountain reminds me of those bald cats/dogs that you think are totally gross but you can’t stop staring at.

Not long after we got to the summit the hills rang with the devilish motor sounds of snowmobilers. We were totally bummed out – our solitude was ruined. Fortuantely we couldn’t see these snowmobilers from our spot on the summit, but I did not-so-secretly wish they’d fall in Annette Lake.


The view from the summit after the snowmbilers had full “high walling” the ridge. (Enlarge the photo to really see how high on the wall they got)

On the way down we decided to avoid the ridge, bowl, gulley, ridge route and went down the other side of the mountain towards Annette Lake. We figured we’d hit the summer time trail eventually. This was a slight mistake on our part—we should have either gone back the way we came, or traversed further to the right instead of heading more straight towards the lake. Further to the right would have given us some nice downsteps but we also would have avoided any runouts to the Lake and ended up in a gulley which would have guaranteed our safe arrival back to the main trail.


Annette Lake from the summit

Either way we were able to get really fun lofty steps down, and seemed to be down the hill in no time. And by in no time I really mean, once we got most the way down, we had to walk precariously through the steep woods, avoiding streams that were only covered in inches of snow/ice, and navigating through a lot of brush, hoping we didn’t find any runouts to strong for us to cross.


Holy crap we were just up there?!

It was getting late (since we had spent at the very least an hour, probably closer to two, on the summit) so we didn’t stop much at Annette Lake, we were still a few miles from the car.

On the way back I couldn’t help but comment, multiple times, how insane it was that 4 feet of snow had melted in the month since I had visited with BoeAlps.


When we crossed this bridge the first time (with BoeAlps) we could see the top of the railing a few inches below the snow we were walking on.

We were about to the car when we met a family who asked us “how much further to the lake?” We hated to tell them to turn around, but we assured them there was no way they’d make it to the Lake and back before dark. They didn’t seem to have any water or food on them (not to mention head lamps!) and we highly discouraged them from continuing. Fortunately they heeded our warning. We saw their car in the lot, they were from California.

We had a few lessons learned this trip, such as bringing more gear than you see your peers have (especially if those peers are in jeans) is totally reasonable. We also learned that it’s always OK to turn back to try a new path. There were a few points where although it would have lost us time, it would have been much safer had we gone back to our original path, held our heads in shame, and tried a new route. We vowed not to be “those guys” again.


Summit panorama! (click the photo to enlarge it)

You can view more photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7372593@N02/sets/72157619126691136/

Silver Peak -- BoeAlps

Where: Silver Peak– Snowqualmie Wilderness
When: Sunday April 5th, 2009
With: BoeAlps
Goals: Navigate to the summit

Already our 4th BoeAlps outing!

I was out of bed by 4:30am. All my gear had been packed the night before; I just needed to eat breakfast and prepare lunch. After a hearty bowl of oatmeal and preparation of my banana-peanut butter-chocolate chip-tortilla, and gathering snacks, I was pretty much set.

I was 5 minutes early to meet the group at the park and ride and there was only one other person there, I couldn't believe it. This person was Mike, an instructor who also helps out with the basic rock class and intermediate climbing class. Soon others showed up and all was well. Before carpooling to the trailhead we verbally checked that everybody had their 10 essentials.

We carpooled to the tiny trail head and after putting on our gators and helmets and going over the possible routes to the summit, we were on our way. The first part of the trail had been conveniently packed down by the Saturday summit crew. We left the trailhead at 7:20am with high spirits on a gorgeously sunny day with a 45 degree starting temperature.

The team is only as fast as the slowest person, so we had them lead. About a mile in, Ken and I took over the lead and the navigation. Admittedly, we were still following the Saturday crews bootpack, but we were still taking bearings!

At one point, when the packed trail merged, we followed the trail that went straight up the mtn. Very soon after we realized that this trail seemed very odd, for it had very steep steps, I also noticed that the footprints seemed to be leading down the mountain. After informing Ken, the current leader, we took a bearing and realized we were probably on the Sat teams decent trail. We backtracked slightly to a trail that a lone snowshoer had made (instead of backtracking slightly more to the Saturdays teams bootpack). We followed this for awhile, keeping in mind our current traverse should be increasing about 6 degrees in elevation.

We crossed a few bridges that were piled up with about 4 feet of snow. One bridge had a railing; the snow was so high that you could have walked evenly on the snow and railing.

Fortunately there were no epic falls, only slightly concerning ones.

Soon we came to an impassible gully. The snowshoer had walked across a tree we deamed unstable. So, we decided to traverse up, in an attempt to go around it. This “up” meant going up a 35 degree pitch, all while we were making our own trail.

It was hard going. When you're breaking trail, you break about 30 steps and then let the next person do the same. It is surprising how hard breaking 30 steps is when you sink in snow up to your waist. We never did find a spot to cross the gully, and continued upwards, at a very slow pace.

Some of our team are amazing steppers. Ryan and Matt in particular (the youngest, most in shape guys). Mike, one of the instructors, would actually walk along side of us, breaking his own trail, and somehow still always end up in front of us, even though he never got a break (other than waiting for us to catch up). He's super tall, so I feel when I sank up to my hip, he was only sinking up to his knees.

With such slow going it was obvious the summit was not attainable. Instead, we hoped to reach the ridge and get a nice view. Slowly but surely we succeeded in this feat, and at the top, three of us whipped out “ridge treats” (aka “instructor treats”). Last hike, we neglected to bring treats for all to share and sure heard about it. This time we were trippley prepared. Ken brought chocolate chip cookies, Evelyn brought carrot cake (that is edible for those with siliacs) and I brought decadent bars (condensed milk, plus tons of nuts, chocolate chips, graham cracker base, and oatmeal) and some no-bake cookies with peanut M&M's. Every single person that had a bar said they were the most amazing things ever. I agreed. Mmm!

After some photos and a snack break, and an explaination from Ron of all the surrounding peaks, we left the summit, going north (a different way than we came up). The traverse down was much harder than last Sundays.

The snow was everchanging. Most times it would be packy snow, but sometimes there would be lots of powder, other times there would be a combination, sometimes there was a crust. You never knew what you were going to get. Either way, the packy snow meant for really hard going. We still beat our uphill time by about 3x, but we should have been able to sail down!

Every trip many of us lament that we do not have our snowboards. Perhaps after this basic class is over we'll have to organize some snowboarding trips with our new crew. Near the top of the slope the trees were so perfectly spaced for a fun ride down the mountain (especially when you hit powder!).

The other teams (Sat and Sun) had similar problems sumitting. One team climbed Guy Peak, which in good conditions will have the team summiting in about 2.5 hours. It took them over 6 hours to get to the false summit. The team climbing Red Peak had to turn back because of extreme avalanche danger (going through a big bowl). Every team really struggled with this new snow.

Our entire trip was about 2500 ft in elevation.

At the restaurant afterwards we cheered to summit treats.