Page Type: | Trip Report |
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Lat/Lon: | 47.77437°N / 121.58037°W |
GPX File: | Download GPX » View Route on Map |
Date Climbed/Hiked: | Sep 27, 2014 |
Activities: | Hiking, Scrambling |
Season: | Fall |
I stopped after gaining maybe 500' and looked out across the valley to Cavanaugh and Puget Sound draped in black clouds illuminated florescent orange from beneath. Weather was coming in and I was moving way too slow. This was ridiculous and I was way off route. I called it quits and descended back to my bike where I realized just how fatigued I had become. Biking down was some of the scariest riding I've ever done as my brakes needed to be adjusted from burning through all that rubber. Also, I would hit a large stone, the bike would do a mad hop with the front wheel turned, severely loosening my grip and I would have to correct it before I hit the ground and re-tighten my grip on the brakes. Eventually I got smart enough to jump off the bike and just walk it down at least until I got back to FS 62. The rest of the trip was a cold windy yet fun drop back to Goldbar where I shivered miserably until the morning bus took me home. Mission failed but nice try.
A month later, I was enrolled at Everett Community College and the mundane school life was starting to settle in. Of course homework is important for the mind but does nothing to sustain my soul and I kept thinking back to that moonlit landscape. I tried to look back and see what lessons I needed to learn from my previous attempt that wouldn't rule out the adventure. Weather for one could have been better. A higher ceiling or no clouds at all would have helped me navigate around. A map of the roads would be handy- although by now I knew them well enough. Also, more snow-pack would be necessary to cover that pesky slide alder and boulder field. Would I actually find the trail this time? I didn't count on it but was hoping.
After establishing a steady rhythm with my coursework, waiting for the snow to fall and the weather to cooperate, February opened up. I picked my night and began much the same as before but this time no wrong turns. To my surprise, when I arrived at the junction for FS 6220 there was a group of guys headed down who decided to give me a ride in their pickup nearly all the way to the trail-head. I couldn't thank them enough for saving me the big road climb and was delighted when I hopped out into deep powder indicating a healthy base. I also lucked out and found the trail-head right away this time. Not many trails seem to shoot straight up like Persis does and I felt the burn. The clouds parted at some point and I gazed as the moon shone on the snowy trees. Absolute magic! Once back into old-growth the wind picked back up blowing surface snow and creating low visibility. I turned off the mp3 music to listen to nature's more finely tuned instrumentals and threw on a coat. At about 4,500' I lost the trail completely and waded through waist deep powder but it didn't matter. This was hard work but the setting was so surreal I enjoyed it. Before gaining too much higher I remembered that there is a false summit before Persis that I needed to avoid or else there would be a 200' penalty. I pulled out my ice-ax and traversed steep slopes to the west before getting to a broad bench that led to Persis upper summit lake area. The clouds were high now and the full moon shone directly above casting a blue-green light on everything with the orange glow of the Seattle area to the west and even the Olympics faintly visible with a huge brewing storm behind them. Such a beauty, I had to make a painting of that later as well.My legs were beginning to tire having broken trail all the way solo and upon summitting Persis I knew I could not finish the traverse even though I had plenty of time. Index loomed darkly purple in the distance and the traverse looked nasty with so many cornices I stood no chance. Surprising to me, I had cell reception and so sent a text to my mother that it was beautiful, I loved her and was turning around. This descent went smoothly and when I got back to FS 62 I laid down for a nap. Back at Goldbar, I waited until dawn and had a nice breakfast at the Mountainview diner before going home pretty satisfied with my summit. But in the back of my mind, Index rattled around. I needed to come back.Quite a bit of time passed before my next try. I was going to wait until next winter but a friend of Josh Lewis wanted to climb Index via the traverse from Persindex in July and invited me along. He had a plan to shortcut Persis by going to the high hairpin on Proctor Creek Road and its spur road FS 310. From there follow Proctor Creek up a nice gully to its source at the base of Persindex. Pretty simple huh? Nope. The creek running through this gully had several falls in it which forced us out onto some of the worst bushwhacking I've ever done. We managed to avoid BW4 (bush-whack 4) on the way up by looking for the path of least resistance but devil's club was always waiting beneath some friendly looking salal, huckleberry or slide alder. Eventually we found the right gully that led up a small snowy valley to the Persindex summit plateau, but only after a very time-consuming struggle with the brush. I crossed the snow fields and tagged Persindex summit, since it felt like we had climbed a mountain and just in case the traverse was too hairy, I didn't want walk away empty handed. It was a brief 100 foot scramble on steep heather and gnarled evergreen trees with nasty exposure to the East. The view was cool but I didn't stick around. I regrouped and we meandered to point 5308 where the way became increasingly less obvious. In fact, I lost my nerve here and took so long trying to figure out where to go that we timed out. Since we weren't finishing the traverse, we took a nap in the shade and soaked in the views. It was a perfect day with ideal conditions but I was disappointed in myself. |
Things eased up after half an hour and I became more positive when my feet were on solid ground. Normal bushwhacking through slide alder and the luxurious cedars felt like a great change in pace. Somehow we missed FS310, perhaps going parallel to it and stumbling upon some obvious homeless litter and old artifacts. We hit the car just as the sun was setting and so glad not to be doing any navigating in the dark. Will I return to this route? Never. I got something out of it and that was plenty painful. It's a passable route but I don't recommend it.
Anderson Creek approach is an established route but doesn't have any trail on it. My only concern was all the brush this late in the season without snow-cover. Luckily my climbing partner had a plan to shortcut part of the creek by using the Lake Serene trail and then go across moderately steep woods to an old logging road that led to a pass and old logging camp then a faint boot path that led to a brook that fed into Anderson Creek. Got it? No? Me neither. But we did it anyway and it actually worked quite well with a pre-dawn headlamp start. We made excellent time getting to Anderson Creek and then followed its mostly dry rocky bed up to an open debris meadow at 2,600' where it split up into three distinct falls. Here is where the trouble started. We couldn't agree about which way to go so we tried each one. According to the route description it never gets above class 3. Well, maybe it was true but the terrain had horrible wet holds and green things on every place you wish you could put your foot. After attempting the first two on the right and making it quite a ways up the second, I had to turn back since it was looking sketchier by the minute. Scrambling on rock can be fun but this was mud covered in thorns. Or rock covered in slime. No thank you. We made one last go for the falls to the left which had dry and dirty rock all around it. It looked like it might have went in early season with enough snow to bridge the gap to the upper benches but when we got to it, there was nothing but trouble.
It is on this one, the Persis-Index Traverse that we finally made it. I have to hand it to Josh's friend: he is tenacious and not easily deterred. We agreed that since the West ridge requires a ridiculous bike ride and the East is somewhat technical, that Persis is the only way to go. Adding fuel to this was Jacob Smith's recent posting on Summitpost of the Persis-Index traverse. More-over, we have been all over the area and have enough beta that we were sure to get this. Afterall, this is the last nice day of the year.
So at 6 am on the 27th we headed for Persis packed light with the intention of doing the whole traverse in a day. Some construction on 522 set us back a little but not much. The rest went down easily until 6220 where it deteriorated to scree. Since he is borrowing the car from someone else he decided we will not press our luck and park at a pull out before the road ends. At 8:40am we got moving quickly and flew up the trail at a generous speed getting soaked by dew from the recent rains. I had a camera this time and made feeble attempts to document our journey. Near the summit of Persis I took off most of my clothes to dry them out, a common theme for this trip since it never got above 65 degrees. Soggy boots couldn't be helped. I don't know why but I decided to go for a swim in one of the tarns, something I'd never done before. It was cold but tolerable, at least for a few seconds. I dried out and we pushed onas it was now 10:40am.The summit register contained a list of many familiar names. We took pictures and panoramas. I ate some of what little food I had brought. My water tasted like plastic which was because I failed to clean the bladder properly before leaving but tried to get it down. I was beginning to feel a head-ache coming on and suspected the second half of the trip would be much less pleasant than the first half. The changing colors as the sun was setting provided some relief.
The rest was all the same adrenaline in reverse since we were fighting daylight to get back to the meadows below Persis before sunset. Naturally, I had to take some photos since I won't be back there anytime soon. Fall colors were stupendously red and there was a sea of clouds at about 3,000'. The views from Persindex were especially grand and I couldn't help but try to capture some of it. The sun dropped below the horizon all too quickly and the faint trail we followed in was hard to spot in the dark. We took a break before we got to the boulders and made a feeble attempt to dry socks one last time. My partner generously donated some food and I layered up. I admit I may have over done the photos and put us on track to be in the dark as we headed back up the boulder field on the South side of Persis. I was feeling really fatigued by this point and moved as if at high altitude: support weight with arms on one boulder, take one step, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, repeat. He was getting concerned when I stopped to break and take a picture of the moon so I put the camera away for good.We made it back to Persis summit area sometime around moonset which was something like 9? Anyway it felt like forever getting down. I was feeling lost and thought we were going the wrong way. But my partner was not leading me astray and found the trail back down. My confidence renewed I found some spring in my step and hurried down until about 4,500' where he had us take on last break. He had plenty of motivating things to say. Truly a decent fellow. Occasionally I would have to stop and say, “I can't believe I actually did it” with very limited energy. The road walk down felt much longer of course but we arrived at the car at 11:04pm Days later I'm still sore and can barely walk. Was it worth it? I don't know but I'm glad to have achieved such a difficult goal after so many tries in good company, good weather and a fun story to reflect on.