Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

June 29, 2023

2295m

Olympic National Park, WA

Mt. Clark is a pointy summit in the Olympics accessed from Royal Basin. It might be overshadowed by the nearby Mt. Deception which is the second highest and the second most prominent in the entire Olympics, but the scrambling on Mt. Clark is considerably more fun and more challenging. There exists only one route that makes sense, the “corkscrew route” that starts from Clark/Johnson col, works around the south and east sides on ledges and eventually finishes by an exposed class 3/4 scramble on the north side of the summit block. Mel had a recent fever with Mt. Deception but the only way for me to come along was to do it over 2 days with a camp in Royal Basin. Mel had never camped in her entire peak-bagging career but Elise and I somehow convinced her. We only had 2 days “home to home” so I wasn’t quite sure if we’d have enough time for a secondary objective, namely Mt. Clark, but we agreed to give it an attempt if we could get to the basin before 6 pm. I estimated that we had at most 50% chance.

Mel and Elise showed up in my home at around 8:30 am and the border crossing was without event. I then drove us down to Coupeville ferry terminal as I had already reserved the 11:45 am ride for us. The ferry was decently busy due to the upcoming long weekend but we had the reservation so we boarded the boat without a problem. We had also obtained and printed the camping permit so we drove straight to the Upper Dungeness trail-head, which was about 1.5 hours from Port Townsend. The final stretch of this access road was gravel with lots of pot-holes and that’s why I drove us there in the Tacoma. I definitely did not regret about this decision as a car could probably make it, but would definitely struggle. The trail-head was stupidly busy but most of the folks were solely interested in hiking and camping. We eventually had both Mt. Clark and Mt. Deception to ourselves. By 2:15 pm we were able to start the approach carrying the heavy ass packs. Even though we didn’t bring a rope nor harnesses we still needed to carry mountaineering boots, ice axes and crampons and those were not light.

Since the border and the ferry both went without a delay we decided to push the pace to attempt Mt. Clark. Part of me was hoping for a leisure approach hike as I was very tired from the recent trips but we are stubborn peak-baggers that could not easily give up bagging a secondary summit. I knew the girls were fast on trails so I went ahead to set a steady pace that I felt comfortable about. The trail does dispatch quite a lot of the elevation gain which I didn’t realize until I was there doing the approach. By the time we got to Royal Lake we had already gained 800 m elevation. The trail does involve some annoying up-and-downs that we sure would not appreciate on the return, but let’s worry about that later. We didn’t bother to make a stop at Royal Lake despite the scenery, but immediately carried on towards the upper basin with an additional 200 m elevation gain. This stretch was also very scenic and the trail quality was also excellent except for one creek crossing done on logs. It took us over 3 hours to get here so we were definitely pressed on time. After finding a perfect camping spot we immediately ditched the overnight gears, repacked and changed footwear to mountaineering boots. It was 6:02 pm and we had about 3.5 hours of daylight.

The decision was made to keep the original plan to ascend Mt. Clark and I assured the team that we shouldn’t worry too much about time. If needed I could lead us back in the dark, even though I’d rather not to do so. Nonetheless we plodded across the few annoying moraines at a racing pace and ascended into the upper valley where we found some permanent snow fields. The lower section of Mt. Clark’s approach was not pleasant, but the snow travel in the upper valley was very cruisy. Elise and I took turn kicking steps all the way to Clark/Johnson col. The col might seem to be close, but was actually quite far away with substantial amount of elevation to gain. That’s good because we wanted to dispatch as much elevation on snow as possible, as the travel on snow is always faster than on rocks. The clouds ceiling had dropped such that we were in some intermittent white-outs, but I could also see blue skies to the west. There’s a good chance we would not get any view, but this was the type of weather that if we did get lucky we could end up getting some epic views.

After taking a mandatory break at Clark/Johnson col ditching some gears we resumed on. The key traversing ledge was easy to locate and was very easy to scramble across. The ledge was wide enough that exposure could not be felt. The ledge terminates into a wide, chossy gully and we easily scrambled the entire length of this gully onto the SE Ridge where we faced the first “crux” of this route, the exposed 3rd class down-climbing on slabs. I immediately located the break in the slabs and dropped in. Other than one awkward spot near the bottom I did not find this to be “cruxy” at all. Elise and Mel also thought this slab to be rather tame. We brought crampons and ice axes all the way to the north side of the corkscrew route because I had read in some reports where people got turned around by unexpected snow on the ledges. June is still considered “early season” for this scramble, but on this day the route was entirely snow free. We did encounter some patches of snow on the east side ledges but the those could all be easily avoided. Upon reaching the snow-filled gully on the north side of the summit we scrambled the adjacent rocks (sustained class 3) on climber’s left side of the snow, all the way to the summit block. The summit monolith fortunately had a break in the middle offering a class 3/4 route up, as otherwise one would definitely need to rock-climb to reach the highest point. We got extremely lucky with weather and we spent over 20 minutes on the summit (barely enough room for three people).

On the descent all we needed was to retrace what exactly we did on the ascent. The down-climb of the summit block as well as the north side slopes required caution and we made sure to take our time. The re-ascent of the 3rd class slabs felt like a joke by comparison and in no time we were back down to easier terrain. Instead of rushing down to camp we opted to watch sunset from Clark/Johnson col, which necessitated over 20 minutes of waiting. Meanwhile we caught some Canadian receptions which I still do not understand how. The girls were always busy on their phones as they opted to pay roaming in the U.S. I almost never do that, but since there’s Canadian reception I also turned off the airplane mode and made some socials update. After the sun came down we rushed back to camp in under half an hour, beating headlamps time. I thought we definitely needed to descend the confusing moraines with head-lamps but that wasn’t the case. The mosquitoes that we encountered earlier in the day had mostly gone so the evening routine was actually enjoyable. I focused on cooking while Mel and Elise got the tarp tent set up. It was meant for 2 people but we managed to squeeze 3 in, easily. To travel light we also did not bring the mesh so we were very thankful that the mosquitoes hadn’t fully come out yet. On the following day we would ascend Mt. Deception, the primary objective of this trip.