Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

September 17, 2023

2134m

Baker Area / Twin Sisters Range, WA

Not to be confused with the mighty South Twin on the Columbia Icefield of Canadian Rockies or the various other peaks named “Twins” in the U.S., this one is the highest peak in Twin Sisters Range in the close proximity to Mt. Baker in Washington. The Twin Sisters Range dominates the skyline and is extremely visible from White Rock where I currently live in. It’s quite a surprise for most that I hadn’t done South Twin until recently but I did do the adjacent North Twin back in 2015. The required biking approach was the major deterring factor but I own a bike nowadays and I no longer suck at biking as back in those days. The scramble via the west ridge is well written in Matt Gunn’s Scrambles in SW British Columbia even though these peaks aren’t technically in British Columbia. The unique type of rocks in this range makes these some of the finest scrambling classics in the region.

About two weeks ago Matt J. was starting to assemble a group to tackle South Twin together. I decided the trip to be Sept. 17th because I would still be in Taiwan prior to that. A few of us changed that to Sept. 18th which was fine for me, but the weather eventually made the decision for us. The only good window was on Sept. 17th. Iliya had to drop out because of that, but Shayan joined the team at the last minute to make a total of five of us, plus Twig. The required biking approach made the logistics tricky as we now needed 3 vehicles to transport all of us and the gears to the trail-head. Thankfully the drive was reasonably short. Elise and Sean showed up in White Rock at 5 am and all of us made to the trail-head at 6:30 am. To bike or hike past the gate on Twin Sisters’ approach we technically should have obtained a permit from the logging company, but this is in North America and the standard way to deal with the “red tape” is to play ignorance. Nobody I know would abide that rule, neither did we.

The first challenge was to actually lift our bikes over the gate as some of the bikes were too chunky to be slid underneath. Matt fortunately had the upper body strength to provide help to a few of us. I anticipated pushing the bike for most of the way up as that’s exactly how I suffered through that 2015’s North Twin trip, but things have changed over 7 years. I ended up pedaling the enter way up to the actual trail-head and I was never exhausting myself. I don’t think my muscles could have grown by that much as this was only my 2nd or 3rd time on a bike in this year. This illustrates the importance of owning some high-end gears. The bike that I got from Matt’s shop surely made me liking this activity, but prior to that I used to hate biking even more than skiing for many years. In any case Matt, Sean and I got to the end of the bike ride in under 1.5 hours and within another 15 minutes everyone showed up. The few kilometers of the trail approach was the most boring part of this route. The trail was annoyingly overgrown and I nearly post-holed into mud puddles a few times. Thankfully the approach was short and the forest gave way to some boulder fields higher up. We somehow missed the correct turn-off and ended up doing a “high traverse” over some 3rd class terrain to descend into the valley. There’s a water source in this valley and we completely relied on that to refill our water bottles. In terms of the footwear I opted to wear approach shoes for the entire day from biking to the scrambling.

There are a few ways to gain the W. Ridge of South Twin and we picked the rightmost option so we could stay on the ridge longer. To gain the ridge was very straightforward but we had to deal with some bushwhacking and some up-and-downs on the ridge. A few short scrambling steps and dips later we traversed climber’s right onto some easy and grassy slopes, which led us back towards the ridge crest. From this point onward there exists multiple route choices and we mostly just picked our own way. Matt had to stay with Twig and Twig isn’t capable doing 4th class pull-ups, whereas Elise and Shayan was more keen on hands-on scrambling. I’m generally okay with whatever, but eventually opted to stay on the ridge crest for more climbing. The final steep rise to the summit is usually bypassed on climber’s right by traversing across a scree slope and ascending a series of shallow gullies. The three of us who opted to stay on the ridge had to deal with some high-end 4th class climbing with lethal exposure. Serious route-finding was needed to stay on 4th class terrain and even so, we probably did some 5th class moves here and there, though not sustained. The rock quality on South Twin was not as great as on North Twin. There were quite a lot of loose rocks on some parts.

On the descent we all decided to follow Matt down the standard route as we were all tired and just wanted to get off the mountain. It turned out that the standard route was quite straightforward and involved at most 3rd class scrambling. Lower down we also used ledges on skier’s left side of the ridge crest to bypass as many towers as possible. Matt and I paid close attention to make sure we stayed on the easiest possible path as the objective now was to get off this peak as efficiently as possible. We also made a spontaneous decision to descend a chossy gully to take a short-cut down into the bowl between North Twin and South Twin. I don’t know if this was the better idea or not, as the rocks were quite horribly loose and rock-fall was definitely a concern in a large group, but it definitely saved us some time. After dashing to that water source to load up our water bottles we had an uneventful descent back to the bike stash. The ride back to the trucks was as good as one could expect. This road, though unpaved, was very smooth. Our round trip time was under 9.5 hours including doing all of those harder-than-necessary stuffs, but I felt more tired than I should after a sub-10-hour outing. I was also unable to drive us home and seriously needed some sleep. Thankfully Sean was able to take over the drive. I ended up sleeping from 11 pm all the way to 1 pm in the following day.