North Face of Mt. Buckner

A few weekends ago I spent some time with a couple of new friends; One that I had met recently rock climbing near Seattle and the other his long time climbing partner. It was the first time I had been in the alpine with these two and I have to admit I felt a bit like an outsider at first, but things turned out great. Our destination was a climb of the North Face of Mount Buckner just north and east of Cascade Pass in the North Cascades National Park Complex. I have to say that it was quite the endurance challenge, especially with Alex cracking the whip.

After I got home from work on Friday afternoon, I finished packing up my gear and was surprised at how I finally was able to get my pack so light. I weighed it several times in disbelief that I was able to get it below the 35 lbs mark. It was by far the lightest pack I have ever carried on a weekend trip. I left the house at around 9pm and met up with Gene and Alex at the Park and Ride just before 10pm. We all piled into Alex's car and zoomed towards the trail-head, only stopping briefly in Marblemount to register ourselves as required.

During the week before, I had learned that the Gate to the Cascade Pass trail-head was closed, requiring an extra few miles hiking on the road to get to the Diamond Mine trail-head that leads to Boston Basin. When we arrived at the gate, we were pleasantly surprised to find that it had been opened, ironically only a few hours before we arrived that evening, which was an added blessing to our excursion. Once at the trail-head, we all threw out the Bivy sacks and slept on the ground by the car with several other parties who had the exact same idea as we did. It was 12:30pm, and the night would be short.

Alex smacked me around 4am and I popped my head out of the hole in my bivy sack yawning and pawing for the Zipper of my cocoon. I got up and started to get the final things packed for the journey we had ahead of us. Alex fired up his Pocket rocket stove and I cooked a quick breakfast of three packs of oatmeal, a cup of yogurt, and a bagel with cream cheese. With the whip cracking in front of me, at 5:15am we were hiking up to Boston Basin behind two groups that had already got the jump on us.

Looking Down at Gene in Boston Basin

I had hiked into Boston Basin for the first time only the year prior to this. Being that I was out of shape at the time, memories of the slow and horrible grind began to flash before me. At that time the area where an avalanche had wiped out a large section of the trail had yet to have an established path from one side to the other. Silently, I was dreading doing this crossing again, not to mention the belly crawl underneath a section of slide alder that had left me aching and bruised the year before. This time though, was entirely different as I was now infinitely better in shape and my pack did not weigh 60 lbs.

The trail went by quickly and uneventfully.

Looking up at Sharkfin Col

Looking down Sharkfin Col

Once we arrived in the basin we were being chased by the sun and shadows as the bright ball of flame began to appear above Sharkfin Ridge. It was just past 9 o'clock by the time we had crossed over Sharkfin Col and rappelled down to the Boston Glacier, where we roped up. The views to the East of Logan and Thunder Creek were awe-inspiring and got me amped up to get some climbing done. Began our traverse of the glacier, first dropping below the toe of a small ridge to the south of us.

The route looms ahead

Traversing right, or ESE, across the Boston Glacier was fairly straight forward with only a few crevasse crossings necessary and even these were very well bridged. It was a long traverse which ate up about three hours of daylight as we approached the base of Mount Buckner. We reached a fairly sheltered spot near the base of the North Face around noon and stopped for a half hour to rest and eat some lunch before heading up to the top. Since breakfast, I had only eaten two power bars and my stomach was happy to have an apple, a bagel with cream cheese, and some gorp to fill it up a little bit.

Looking up the North Face

After this brief rest, we crossed under the North Face above the bergschrund and unroped on some rocks on the left side of the face. I was nervous at first about soloing up the rather steep snow slope, but was reassured by both Alex and Gene that, if needed, we could break out the rope once more if the going got too intense. Feeling fortunate enough to be traveling with such understanding companions, I continued unroped and eventually fell into a comfortable rhythm.