Nooksack Tower; attempt

7/24-7/26/09

So, the Nooksack Tower…..  One of the most complex, time consuming, beautiful and scary summits in the Cascades.  This thing looks so intimidating…..but somehow I was able to get Mark on board for an attempt.  Of course Mark had to add another element, a hard route up it.  Taking a day off from work, we made our attempt.

Mark and I started planning this trip a few months back, more of just a thought.  Then another TR came in our inboxes from a friend and it was on.  We needed 3 days of perfect weather.  As of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday our forecast was looking pretty solid.  With a 30% chance of t-storms on Friday night, we figured we’d be good to go for our summit attempt on Sat.  Little did we know the forecast had a mind of its own and mother nature had other things in store.

We arrived at the closed road leading to Hannigan Pass and the Nooksack Cirque trail.  We figured bikes would save some time….boy were we right.

We cruised down the road and decided to take our chances on using our bikes on the trail.  Yup, I know, its totally not allowed, but its an old logging road and why not.  We ditched them in the trees at the Wilderness boundary after a wild, hilarious ride.  I just wish I had gotten a picture of Mark’s flip over the handlebars..

We dropped down the river and after eying the infamous log crossing we decided to take our luck with a ford.  It was pretty interesting and even higher on our return.  Mark sacrificed a Teva to the Nooksack Gods on the return trip.

Once across the river, its pretty tough to locate the climbers trail right off the bat.  Instead we headed over to Price Creek and then back into the woods, finally finding the trail about 100yds from the Nooksack and only 40ft from Price Creek.  I have to admit, the trail is pretty steep and really overgrown.  We did some fancy math and figured that maybe 5 parties a year come out this way.  It didn’t take us too long to climb the 1,500ft to the lake and we were pleased to be away from the hordes of blackflies and have views of our objective.

After an interesting bush-schwack up the ridge, we scrambled across some amazing granite slabs and reached our bivy site at about 5,800ft.  Probably the most incredible bivy spot I’ve been in yet in the Cascades.  The view of the Tower and Price Glacier were amazing, not to mention the views off in every other direction.

We started to set-up our base camp, organize our gear and discuss whether or not we have tried to bite off more than we could chew….  At some point we even said to each other, “boy, if it rained, our decision would be easy.”  At first we were both leaning towards backing off, then after a few hours of looking over the route through my monocular and zooming in on some pics I took, we started to become more and more confident that “yeah, we could do that”.  We started setting ourselves up for the morning; packing packs, flagging out rope, counting calories, etc.  Then mother nature decided to make the decision for us.

Well, the clouds opened up on us and it rained for the next 2hrs….  We made ourselves safe in our bivy bags and traded the flask of whiskey I brought along.  Thunder and lightening surrounded us and made this eastcoaster a little nervous, especially being on a high ridge.  At some point we stuck our heads out of our bags and this pretty much made our decision:

Eventually the storm passed and we were able to stretch and look around.  Knowing that the route would probably not be dry by 5am when we’d be on it, we were fully relaxed and ready to sit back and enjoy the rest of the night.  Little did we know that mother nature was going to give us one of the most amazing evenings in the mountains.  I went through 250 pics that night.  We had a little more rain, some sun, clouds, rainbows, lightening, more thunder and just amazing weather phenomenon.  Here’s a sample:

We woke up around 7 on Saturday, had a little coffee and talked over our options.  Go back to Seattle and relax?  Or, hang out there and explore the area.  We decided that the effort to get there was totally worth hanging out for the day and looking around.  We looked around for a good set of cracks to either FA or TR and were just amazed by the surroundings, the Nooksack Cirque is amazing!!!!

After a little rain shower (about the same time we would have been on the crux pitch) we headed back to camp and decided to set-up a top rope right out of our camp and just goofed around on the granite.  Nothing all that exciting was climbed, but it was still fun to try and to play on such amazing granite.  Of course, another t-storm rolled in and we got nailed pretty hard with more rain (yup, about the same time we would have been starting our descent of about 12 rappels).  As that day progressed, we were even more and more happy we decided not to climb.  A few pics of our wanderings:

The second night brought more rain and more clouds and more cool weather watching.  We decided that we’d head out early the next morning, grab our beers out of the river and get another one with lunch at Grahams in Glacier.

Yeah, we didn’t get to summit.  But the trip turned out to be pretty fantastic nonetheless!!!  Mark was even lucky enough to get cell phone service and let his wife know we were safe….oh to wish her happy anniversary!!!

Nooksack Tower and the surrounding area is pretty amazing!!  Its tough to get to, the mountain is complex and serious climbing.  We figured we’d have to be “on” from 20 minutes outside of camp to 20 minutes before we got back.  Whether or not we’ll go back, that’s a tough question and one that won’t be answered right now….but might if things all came together