Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

October 10, 2019

1861m

North Cascades Highway, WA

Sourdough Mtn. itself is probably not as famous as the fire lookout on its broad south-east ridge. The lookout is one of the first few built in US more than a century ago with some historical significance, and offers some of the finest views in the North Cascades, but the lookout itself isn’t on the summit of this mountain. The true summit lies about one mile to the north-west and is more of a “bump” on the long, undulating Stetattle Ridge and has a prominence of under 100 m. The ridge can be traversed on mostly open terrain with some up-and-downs from the lookout site. The hike to the lookout is strenuous with whooping one-vertical-mile of elevation gain, but because of the excellent views this hike is fairly famous in the state of Washington.

My original plan of Sourdough Mtn. was to hike the “winter route” on snowshoes in a gorgeous winter day, but I knew such bluebird weather in winter is a rare thing, so the hike didn’t happen in the last couple seasons. Then it came to October this year when a unseasonably cold winter storm dumped a foot of snow in the Cascades. The system left and a high pressure ridge kicked in granting three bluebird days but I was struggling to find a worthwhile objective. I had to be back home by mid-afternoon for work, on all three days but because of the weather and the fresh snow I wanted something with grand views. After messaging a couple friends Mel and Vlad agreed to join on Thursday. The original plan was Hidden Lake Peaks but I pulled the plug because my concern of driving on snow-covered logging roads. An ascent of Sourdough Mtn. (and the fire lookout) isn’t quite a half-day outing but I figured with an all-nighter push we could still make it happen by ascending all night and watching sunrise from the summit.

It took me a while to convince them that an all-nighter was indeed required by showing them backwards mathematics. Mel rented a Mercedes SUV on Wednesday afternoon, picked up Vlad from Richmond at 12:00 AM midnight and then me from White Rock at 12:30 am. The border and the drive was uneventful sans a speed ticket delay and we made to the trail-head at the north shore of Gorge Lake at just past 3 am.

It took us a few minutes to locate the trail in dark as it’s behind a house. The trail was in an excellent shape and the grade was very good – not too steep and not too flat neither. We made progress in good time. I on purposely kept our pace down because we had about 4 hours till sunrise and didn’t want to freeze our asses off while waiting on the summit. We started encountering fresh snow at around 1000 m elevation and the snow became continuous at around 1300 m once starting the traverse into Sourdough Creek drainage. It was here that the trail condition also degraded but for someone coming from BC this was still considered an “excellent” trail. The fresh snow was about boot-top and the brushes were wet. We took our one (and the only) break along this section. The crossing of Sourdough Creek was a little bit confusing in the dark but we came prepared with a GPS track so no big deal. After a good while of traversing we came to a large opening area (although nothing to see) and more switchbacks.

The grunt to the upper south-east ridge took longer than expected, that by the time we got there the sky was already getting a little bit bright. We turned left to ascend the true summit first, and right off the bat we encountered knee-deep wind drifts. There was no trail anymore and the post-holing was slow and tiring. Thankfully we could stay on the bare ground for at least half of the distance. The ascent required traversing over a few subsidiary summits including a major dip with more than 30 m elevation loss and route-finding. That drop also required some 3rd class bushwhacking (with fresh snow) and was annoying to say the least. Beyond that we raced to what we thought was the summit, post-holing as fast as we could in order to be there in time for alpenglow. We did manage to get there in time and watched an incredible sunrise, but another bump down the ridge definitely appeared higher.

After taking in the views we reluctantly traversed to the next bump, and actually found a summit register. The register was frozen that we couldn’t open it, but looking back we could definitely confirm that the far bump was the true summit, and that further meant the dot on peakbagger.com was wrong. The temperature and wind was definitely more winter-like and I was very glad I brought the storm-degree parka on this trip. I was cold even with the parka..

As the sun warmed things up we slowly started the return hike, taking a shit ton load of photos on the ridge. At the trail junction Vlad suggested we should also tag the lookout site. I wasn’t sure about that because we were in a time constraint, so agreed only if someone else offered to break trail. Vlad volunteered to break trail and in about 20 minutes we were on the lookout site. The structure was locked but the views were worthwhile. We got to see a bit of different things including the double-summits of Hozomeen Mtn., the north face of Davis Peak and the deep valley that the North Cascades Highway travels westwards into.

It was past 9:30 am and we had to hurry up. We made quick work down to the trail junction and then into the south side basin. The opening area with switchbacks offered excellent views of Diablo Lake with Snowfield Peak group behind as a backdrop. After that we were in the woods, and the plod seemed never-ending.. We got back to the parking lot in about 2 hours after leaving the lookout site, making a total round trip time just over 8 hours.

Mel did an excellent job driving all the way back despite the zero sleep she had. I slept for most of the time on the back seats and I was really glad that I didn’t have to drive, because I had to work till 8 pm that night which would surely be exhausting, even with that extra hour of sleep while driving back. I got back to White Rock by around 2 pm with barely enough time to cook lunch, have a shower and make some preparation for work…