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Morgan and Robert on mossy rocks
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Gunn Peak is a striking rock peak rising above the North Fork
Skykomish River valley just east of the town of Index. At 6,245
feet elevation, it is the highest summit in the vicinity of
Index. I climbed it last summer with Morgan and Robert.
We had a great time.
The weather was not promising. We chose Gunn Peak because we
figured it was close enough to home that if it started raining, we
could just bail out and be home in an hour. Robert drove, and was
late picking us up, which didn't really matter because we had already
decided that, given the weather, we probably wouldn't get very far
up the climb before it started raining. Besides, this was really
just a reconnaissance trip, to figure out the correct approach
to the peak. Michael had been up there a couple of weeks before,
and had gotten lost trying to follow the approach described in
Beckey's guide. According to Cramer's new
Sky Valley Rock guide,
there was a road leading to a parking area where a trail began. I
wondered how, if there was a road and a trail, Michael could have
spent two hours bushwhacking around and not found the trail. Of
course, since Gunn Peak was going to be in my new guidebook,
I had to climb it anyway, and if we didn't summit, well, that was
okay because Doug had climbed it years ago and at least knew how
the last bit went. He just couldn't remember the approach.
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Robert approaching Gunn Peak, Baring Mountain in background
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According to the guidebooks, the approach trail followed a road
that forked off the Barclay Creek Road after 3.6 miles. We had been
past here the week before, when we climbed Baring Mountain, and saw
no road at 3.6 miles, although there was a car parked exactly
there. However, there was a very obvious road at 4.0 miles, leading
us to believe that Beckey simply had his mileage wrong. Stranger
things have happened. This would explain Michael's inability to
find the trail. So this day we parked at 4.0 miles and started
hiking down the road, expecting it to lead across Barclay Creek
and up to the parking area mentioned in Cramer's guide. It was
sort of like that.
The road ended at the creek. No bridge. No footlog. No parking
area. So we hopped across boulders, figuring we'd pick up the
road on the other side. Nope. We thrashed into the brush hoping
to find a trail. Not here. So we fanned out, upstream and down,
looking for some evidence of a trail, or at least the footlog
crossing described in Beckey's old guide. Morgan found it, a short
distance upstream. By the time I got there, Morgan and Robert
were out of sight in the woods, on the trail I assumed. I yelled,
and they yelled back, "Follow the flagging." There were a few
bits of pink flagging on the hemlock boughs, and I followed.
It was a crude path, very brushy, soon lost. Morgan and Robert
had stopped. "Where to now?" "Beats me." Stumped, we decided
to follow the line of least resistance through the brush. Beckey's
guide mentioned that the trail was left of a waterfall. We could
hear a waterfall off in the distance. If we got to the base of
the waterfall, we reasoned, we would find the trail. Assuming it
was the right waterfall. So we forged a path through the devil's
club and salmonberry, ferns, hemlocks, and alders, over slimy
logs and mossy talus. After much of the same, we found a rocky
streambed, and followed it, hoping it would lead to the waterfall,
which was much louder now. Morgan found a pair of bright pink
ski poles. Robert needed them, but didn't want to carry them. I
didn't need them, but couldn't pass up booty, and brought them
along. They were very useful for whacking at the bushes. Eventually,
after a whole hour of wet bushwhacking, we reached the waterfall.
It was pretty. We were happy to finally be "on route". There was
no trail, but we figured since there was no road and no parking
lot, there was really no trail either. Confident of returning
to this spot, I left the ski poles at the base of the waterfall,
figuring I would retrieve them later. We clambered up the rock
and dirt slope, skirting the waterfall on the left, and headed
up through the woods.
"Trail," Morgan called out from above. Sure enough, there was
a trail. It was steep and strenuous, but it lifted our hopes
that we were finally on the route. We had found the trail;
our success was assured. Indeed. After a lot of steep hiking up
the trail, we reached the base of a gully just below a big rock
buttress. Morgan remembered something about this buttress
mentioned in Beckey's guide, but didn't remember exactly
what was said. So we scratched our heads, wondering if we went
up the gully and a ramp to the base of the cliff, then up a higher
gully, or what? Morgan poked around and found a trail leading
the other way. It had taken so long to find the trail, we weren't
about to leave it. And since it was a trail, we figured it must
be the route. So we followed the trail. It led along some cliffs,
then vanished at the edge of a steep rock gully. Dead end,
we thought at first, but I found a steep ramp leading down
into the gully, and we picked up the trail on the other
side. The trail kept going, up through thinning trees, and out into
the broad gully leading up to the Gunn-Barclay divide. Yes, we
were on route. This was a piece of cake.
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Robert in the "crux" gully
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Then the trail vanished. One moment we were on a trail, the next
we were standing waist deep in wet bracken ferns, gazing out over
a river of brush. The downsloping slide alder everywhere looked
especially uninviting. We backtracked, looking for the trail, knowing
we must have missed a turn, but there was no trail to be found. M
organ assumed a leadership role and started up the steep slope to the
left, pulling himself up cedar limbs. Robert and I shrugged our
shoulders, and resigned ourselves to following. The slope was
slippery and steep. Morgan upset a bees nest, causing Robert
some alarm but no harm. I made a wide detour. The going was
very brushy, but the brush made the going easier I guess because
we could batman up tree limbs and grasp clumps of heather and huckleberry.
Occasionally Morgan would say "I think it opens up over there," and
we would go over there and whack some more brush. Eventually the brush
did thin out some, and we scrambled up some wet Class 3 rock and
heather clumps. This wasn't "the route," we were sure, but at least
we were getting somewhere. Finally, the slope eased up, and we hiked
easily across rocky heather meadows, feasting on huckleberries.
Clouds drifted across the valley, alternately obscuring and revealing
the Baring nordwand. A faint path emerged here and there, leading
upward to the divide.
From the divide, we could finally see Gunn Peak, a big, wet,
dark hunk of rock. It was not, in present conditions, a particularly
inspiring peak. But here we were, and there it was, so we would
climb it. We descended snow slopes and rock and wet moss ledge to a
subalpine basin dotted with tarns, then traversed the basin to a
broad talus slide below Gunn Peak. From here the route was
straightforward. We scrambled up the talus, then up a wet rock gully
and through some mountain hemlocks, and across a talus and snow shelf,
and finally up a scree gully to the notch in the summit ridge.
From the notch, a dirt ledge led along the very exposed north side
of the ridge. The last bit to the summit was up big blocks.
From the top, we could see Index and the Skykomish River valley,
and a few surrounding peaks amid the clouds. Very nice. We read in
the summit register that Heinze Graupe (an Index local, it turns out)
had climbed Gunn Peak about five hundred times. According to the
register, he had summited on three consecutive days just a couple
of weeks before our climb.
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Descending the summit ridge on Gunn Peak
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The descent was really fun. At least, we made it back to the divide
with no trouble. Since I was writing a guidebook, I convinced the
others that we should try to find the trail leading down the gully.
After all, I had to explore all the options, and this was the most
obvious option. Unfortunately, Morgan and Robert thought it was a
good idea. So what happened next was really their fault for agreeing
with me. We started down the gully. Big mistake. At first it
was easy going, through soaking wet ankle- and then knee-deep huckleberry
bushes and heather. But before long, we were waist deep in rhododendron
and ferns, then neck-deep in salmonberry and slide alder. It got worse,
so bad that Robert blurted out, apropos of nothing, "This is f-----d,
and you can quote me on that." (This is a direct quote, but he will
probably say I took him out of context.) Amen. But it got worse. We
thrashed through the brush as long as we could tolerate it, until I
saw a rock formation that looked like the one we saw where we had lost
the trail. We weren't sure, but we didn't want to go too far down the
gully and get lost in the cliffs above the waterfalls, so we headed
over that way. Naturally, it wasn't the right place, but we decided
this was as good a place as any to traverse, thinking we'd cross the
heather meadows and follow our route of ascent back down to the trail.
Good plan, except it didn't work that way. We got into a rock gully,
and climbed it, since it was the path of least resistance, then traversed
through dense brush that led nowhere. Like fools, we persisted, and
eventually found ourselves at the top of the gully above the rock
buttress. We thought about going down the gully, but thought better
of it, and traversed back toward the brush gully we had fought so
hard to escape. (Of course, the gully is the correct route, according
to Beckey's guide, although we still aren't convinced.) Luckily, this
led us back to our trail. Things were going really well. At least,
none of us was bleeding.
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Into the void. "I think it opens up ahead..."
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So we hiked down the trail, and followed it into the old clearcut
mentioned in Beckey's guide, then onto the old logging road. So this
was the right way to go! We figured we'd have a leisurely walk down
the road, come out at the 3.6 mile mark, and have to hike 0.4 miles
up the road to the car. After the hell of fighting through brush for
the last hour, that was a welcome prospect. Of course, it didn't work
out that way. The road kept going and going, and got harder and harder
to follow. Alders had grown up everywhere, and other brush had closed
in, so that in places it was hard to tell you were on a road at all.
This is what Michael had reported, following a road that seemed to
go nowhere and take a long time getting there. He spent two hours
wandering around the old logging roads before giving up. The farther
we hiked on the road, the less confident we were that it was the
right road. At one point, there was a fork leading toward the creek.
We took it, hoping it would lead us to the main road. Nope. It ended
in about 50 yards. Undeterred, and completely impatient, we crashed
straight through the brush, and in about 15 minutes came out at the
edge of the creek. We climbed up the stream bank, over big, slippery
boulders, then found a spot that looked good for heading up to the
road, which we knew must be close. Morgan, being from a family of
loggers and having a strange affinity for dense timber, cruised on
up and mysteriously vanished amid the fir saplings. Robert and I, city
born and raised, struggled through the tree limbs, which seemed
to purposely lash at our faces and snag our packs. It could have
been worse, of course. It could have been raining. (Oh, I forgot
to mention that it was raining now. Very refreshing.) We struggled
valiantly, though, and soon were on the road. How far down the road
from the car, we did not know, but it turned out that the car was
only a two hundred yards up the road. Our ordeal was over.
Well, not quite. On the drive home, Robert got a flat tire. Naturally,
he didn't have a jack or a lug wrench. So we sat there beside the
highway, wondering what to do. Morgan had AAA, and called for a tow
truck, but while we waited, some kind men stopped and produced a
jack and lug wrench, so we got the tire changed and managed to make it
home without further incident.
Morgan and I went climbing again the next weekend. We invited Robert
to go with us. He said he had something else to do that day. I never
did find out what it was.
Later, using the trail information we discovered,
Michael Stanton
and Peter Chapman
had an easier time by going in June when brush was covered in snow.
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