 |
Kris Haskins Staff Webpage |
Merchant Peak Attempt |
| January 30th, 2010 |
Trip report by Brian
Jim, Aric, Obadiah, Kris and I attempted Merchant Peak on Saturday, hoping to catch a weather window, which never materialized. The full breakfast at the Sultan Bakery, which made Jim a bit ill, was perhaps still the high point of the day. Due to route finding complications, we failed to get very close to our objective, but still a good (if not abbreviated) day out in the mountains.
We departed Seattle around 5:30 and a bit more than an hour later found ourselves sitting before large plates of food. If you've never ordered a Trainwreck Scramble, it's difficult to understand exactly how much food a Sultan Bakery breakfast consists of. Obadiah explained that if he makes a scramble that size, it normally lasts him and Grace 24 hours. Kris managed to pretty much polish off his in a single sitting.
Reaching the end of the Barclay Creek road (no snow), we parked, exchanged pleasantries with a party attempting Baring, and headed up the Barclay Lake trail in a light mist/rain. Shortly after crossing Barclay Creek, we encountered a debris field spilling through the forest and headed upslope. The going was easy and the debris fan brought us directly to the bottom of the gully that splits the face of Merchant Peak.
Entry to the gully is barred by a short waterfall step at 2950', but this is easily bypassed on the left by a climber's path beaten in to the hillside through scrub pine. Something of a secret passage around the obstacle. The next stumbling block is encountered at 3400'. The gully narrows to a step of low angle, algae and sand slicked slabs to the right of another waterfall. This obstacle is not so easily bypassed. We booted up a fern covered slope to where we could yard off evergreens and picked up a faint climber's path through the brush. While bashing through rain soaked evergreens is not the most pleasant activity in the world, if the evergreens were not there, the step would be much more attention getting. As it was, I managed to trundle a fairly large rock down on Kris. Fortunately he was close behind, caught it, and crushed it with his bare hands.
Now above the slabs, travel eased considerably, with generally easy scrambling, interspersed with two notable class 3 steps (the second of which featured a waterfall on the best climbing route). Around 3800' we finally hit snow, broke out the axes and crampons, and continued up the gully. At 4000' the route instructions indicated that another gully would join with ours. A collective lack of attention made us think that this was a short slope coming down from the left rather than the jagged gash coming down from the right and we just continued in the gully we were already ascending. At 4900', we topped out, rather confused to find a bowl below us.
Consulting a GPS and comparing the topo map to the landforms we could see, we concluded that we had missed the gully to the summit of Merchant and were now in the basin between Merchant and Gunn peaks. The topo made it look like the NW shoulder of Merchant might go, so we traversed the upper basin slopes to a saddle below the summit of Merchant. Here, we could see Gunn Peak in the distance, but our path to the upper slopes of Merchant was barred by a series of cliff bands that none of us (well, except for maybe Obadiah) felt like attempting. We ate some lunch then retraced our steps. We gave some thought to traversing over to Gunn Peak, but in the snow and limited visibility, I was uncertain that we'd locate the climber's trail that navigates through a series of cliff bands on the peak's southern flanks.
Around 4100', we discovered the correct gully and headed up to have a look. The route took us up under a very cool overhang and then into snow and scrub pine above. Unfortunately, without the benefit of consolidation by avalanches earlier in the season, these slopes featured 8-12" of wet fresh over dirt or rocks. Worried about retracing our route in the dark, we turned back at 4200' and resumed our descent to the cars.
All went fairly well for the rest of the descent with the exception of a few well-trundled rocks and I'd feel pretty good about going back up Merchant in somewhat drier conditions this time of year. Back to the cars a little after 3pm and Seattle before 5pm. Felt very strange to get home while it was still light out.
Great crew on a so-so day. Merchant remains on the tick list.
Merchant
