Well, here we are again…weather forecast cancelled any chances of seeing the North Cascades, so ended up with one good weather day for the weekend. Emma hasn’t been on 3FJ, so for the second time this season, here I go again…
After a pleasant evening at the cabin Friday night, we hit the trail Saturday morning at 6:30am. This time of year it’s all trail, and no snow. The weather for Saturday was forecasted to be mostly sunny, with a system moving in Saturday night. We made pretty good time, getting to The Crawl by 11:00am. There we found we were behind two club groups…The Cascade Mountaineers (Bend), and the Santiam Alpine Club (Salem). The good thing is that they left their fixed line through The Crawl, helping us speed things up by not having to set one up ourselves…the bad thing is they took FOREVER to climb the chimney and summit block, and rap back down. We were literally on hold for about 4-hours+. Good thing it was a nice day…although by the time we finished the summit block (4:20pm), the weather was deteriorating rapidly. We ended up descending in thick fog and windy conditions. We dropped down below the fog as we were descending the scree slope, and had a nice hike back to the car…partially in the dark.
Was a great climb…can’t wait to do it again! I think Emma might do it again too…