Climbing Mount Jackson
Mount Jackson had been in my sights for a while. It is pretty much the deffinition of a peak I am interested in. It is big (7,000 vertical foot climb), long but not too long (around 20 miles round trip), and generally pleasant (no bushwhacking or boulder hopping). Although it was on my list, I didn’t have any specific plans to climb it. A few weeks previous I had crashed my mountain bike and was still feeling near constant pain from the resulting cracked rib. Working in the woods all week felt okay, and I thought it was time to try my first big hike since the crash. So, I texted Kat and tried to make some plans for the weekend. It was starting to get late in the season for big climbs, considering the shortened days and more unpredictable weather, but this also results in delightful temperatures, incredible color combinations and reduced crowds. Looking at the forecast gave me a bit of pause, though. There was a weather system moving in and we could easily see the start of it before getting back to the car. I knew I was up for it, and tried to warn Kat and the others that we invited along, but I definitely prepared myself mentally for not making it to the summit and retreating due to weather.
We decided to meet at the coffee shop in Columbia Falls the morning of the climb. I was a bit appalled by the late meeting time (6:00 AM), given the big day ahead. If I were alone, I probably would have been hiking by 6:00 AM. After what seemed like an eternity waiting for everyone to chat, go to the bathroom and get coffee, we finally left for the trailhead. The first couple hours of the hike were quite boring, at least for me, but nice and quiet. We had not yet run into any other hikers and the others in our party were keeping a good pace. When we reached Gunsight Lake, a lake I had barely been able to reach during a family vacation when I was 13, I was already a bit concerned about our timing. I forced the group to decide on a time when we will turn around, regardless of where we are. The group agreed and we headed up the climber’s trail to the base of the mountain. The dew was heavy that morning and we got completely saturated in a matter of 15 minutes. But when we reached treeline, there was a patch of low huckleberries that were somehow still ripe and tasted impossibly good. I returned to a good mood, and for the first time thought we could actually make it to the summit. The weather system was nowhere in sight and the climbing seemed straightforward. The 4,000 scramble seemed effortless to me after a long summer of biking, running and hiking more than I ever had previously. Plus I spent a lot of time waiting for other group members to catch up which, although slightly annoying for a moment, was a blessing since I appreciated the scenery more than usual. The final push to the summit includes a couple of easy but frightening traverses on ledges that hang over crevasse-filled icefields. With about 1,000 feet to go, we reached the time where we decided we would turn around. I suggested we should stick to our plan, but that is a hard pill to swallow when you are that close. I made sure everyone had working headlamps and understood we would be hiking miles in the dark and they all acknowledged and wanted to push on. I led the pack once again, but this time Shayla stayed close. About 50 feet from the summit, I had made a routefinding blunder and was faced with a terrifying, exposed sheer cliff in front of me. I saw an easy move to get to safety, and out of laziness and without thought sideclimbed the cliff. I remember scolding myself saying the right thing to do would have been to find the safe route, but what was done was done. Then Shayla came into view and had been following me. Before I had a chance to warn her she was halfway across the sheer cliff and couldn’t find the next handhold. She was hanging over a 600 foot drop that would result in certain death. She immediately began hyperventilating and, having had that exact experience before, I knew what she was experiencing. You imagine falling and dying. You imagine letting go and dying. You imagine holding on for hours until a helicopter makes its way to you. None of those outcomes bring you solace, yet somehow it is more scary to move that to stay still, so you freeze. I kind of panicked for a second because I thought there was a real chance I was about to watch someone fall to their death, but then I sprung to action and made way way to the cliff edge to try to find a handhold she could reach. I could have given her my hand but that seemed more dangerous that finding her some rock to grab. I tested a handhold and it pulled out of the cliffface. It happens, but this didn’t help cultivate confidence in a good outcome for the situation. I grabbed a second handhold and the same thing happened. Shayla was not enjoyering herself. I reached for a third and determined it was solid. I then suggested she grab it and pointed to a ledge she could fit her foot on. She did precisely that and made it to safety. There were never any words spoken between us about it.
(Below: view from Mount Jackson, September 2019)
We were surprised to share the summit with someone. I asked which route he had taken and he said he started at a different trailhead and took a route but made some routefinding errors and ended up on some loose class 5 terrain. I find it remarkable how many people like him I run into in the mountains; more fit, more bold, more skilled. It doesn’t bother me, I just have a hard time imagining how they find the time to spend more time in the mountains to build those skills than I do. However, one thing I have learned this year is that I am all of those things, I just defer to my mental blockers when I reach the edge of my comfort zone. I am proud of what I have done and understand I can push it further, but am also proud at my good judgment and ability to quantify and mitigate risk.
(Below: view from Mount Jackson, September 2019)
After a brief and shockingly pleasant summit rest, we headed down. I reminded everyone to keep up the pace given impending nightfall. At one point, I was frustrated enough that I couldn’t stop and wait for the party to catch up every 5 minutes and descended the last 2,000 feet of the off-trail section in a matter of like 15 minutes. I waited for over an hour at the bottom. But it was kind of a delightful hour, as I watched the clouds roll through, the sun set, and came up with a plan for the upcoming work week. Immediately after the group caught up I slipped and fell on my cracked rib. The pain was excruciating. I knew the next few hours would be the least pleasant hiking of my life. As we slowly descended the trail, I was trying every different walking stride to try to alleviate the pain. Then I heard what I though was a human scream. Nobody in the group seemed to notice so I continued on. A minute later, another one. I even asked Kat if she had heard it, and she said no. I decided it was in my head. But of course, there was a third and I told the group someone was in trouble. We stopped and listened, and sure enough, someone was yelling ‘HELP!’ off in the distance. My attention left my rib and all I could picture was the gruesome aftermath of a grizzly attack. We moved down the trail a bit further to try to pinpoint the yelling and eventually came to an opening where we could yell back. A couple had attempted to climb Jackson and had turned around and descended the wrong route. They were at the top of a cliff-band, and the vegetation was so thick it wasn’t clear if they could safely descend back down to the trail. The rest of my group seemed relatively unconcerned, and after telling them the trail was a few hundred yards lower than the cliffband they were content to move on. I told the rest of the group to continue on down the trail and that I was going to find a safe route through the cliff band and lead the climbers back down to the trail. It was getting dark and a storm was rolling in that night. Spending a night up there in freezing rain or falling off the cliff could easily have a tragic outcome. The brush between the trail and the cliff band was as thick as I have ever seen it. Most people who read that line don’t quite understand what I am trying to say. Working as a forester for years in the Washington rainforest has earned me the coveted brush-rating badge. And in some sadistic joke from mother nature, the brush species was mostly devil’s club. Devil’s club is more at home on the coast, a significant reason that I wanted to flee the rainforest and move back to Montana a year before this hike. Devil’s club is probably my least favorite plant to encounter in the world. And there was a quarter mile of it, thicker than I have ever seen, between me and the lost hikers. When at work, I wear thick gloved and clothing to protect me from this devil plant, but today I was wearing paper-thin, high tech clothing and had no gloves. It was excruciating. But there probably couldn’t a better fit to bust through the brush to rescue some hikers than I was. So I pushed through, found a route up through the cliffs, and led them down to the trail. He was a park employee who did no trip planning before attempting the climb and she was trusting his judgment. I gently explained to them how this could have gone much worse, and how the chances someone would hear their yelling was slim to none. After ensuring they had working headlamps and enough food and water to make it back to the road, I left them to catch up to my group. It was dark now, I remembered my rib really hurts, and after doing some basic math I knew I had to run for about 6 miles to catch up with the group before they would have to wait at the road. I tested out a running cadence, and found it less painful than I was anticipating. So I ran. It felt good. Not because I wasn’t tired or in pain, but because I could. I remember times in my life not all that long ago when running 6 miles would have been too much for me. And now I am running 6 miles after climbing 7,000 vertical feet, in the dark, in grizzly country, by myself. I wasn’t nearly as scared as I should have been, but I was kind of in a good mood. After several close calls with wildlife I have had since this day, I am certain I wouldn’t do it again, but that night it was awesome. Right after the moon came out, I herd some elk bugles echoing through the valley. It gave me chills. It is such a bizarre, prehistoric sound and it reminds you Glacier National Park is still a wild place, even if full of tourists. Around midnight I caught up with the rest of the group and they gave me a round of applause and I told them the story, and we finished out the nigh hike together, talking constantly to hold back the inevitable creepyness of the Montana wilderness night. When I got home, I was too tired to eat or shower. I collapsed on my be and fell asleep immediately. I will never forget the mountain we now not-so-jokingly call The Beast, Mount Jackson.
(Below: Bim Ewok himself. Thanks Kat Gebauer for the photos)
We decided to meet at the coffee shop in Columbia Falls the morning of the climb. I was a bit appalled by the late meeting time (6:00 AM), given the big day ahead. If I were alone, I probably would have been hiking by 6:00 AM. After what seemed like an eternity waiting for everyone to chat, go to the bathroom and get coffee, we finally left for the trailhead. The first couple hours of the hike were quite boring, at least for me, but nice and quiet. We had not yet run into any other hikers and the others in our party were keeping a good pace. When we reached Gunsight Lake, a lake I had barely been able to reach during a family vacation when I was 13, I was already a bit concerned about our timing. I forced the group to decide on a time when we will turn around, regardless of where we are. The group agreed and we headed up the climber’s trail to the base of the mountain. The dew was heavy that morning and we got completely saturated in a matter of 15 minutes. But when we reached treeline, there was a patch of low huckleberries that were somehow still ripe and tasted impossibly good. I returned to a good mood, and for the first time thought we could actually make it to the summit. The weather system was nowhere in sight and the climbing seemed straightforward. The 4,000 scramble seemed effortless to me after a long summer of biking, running and hiking more than I ever had previously. Plus I spent a lot of time waiting for other group members to catch up which, although slightly annoying for a moment, was a blessing since I appreciated the scenery more than usual. The final push to the summit includes a couple of easy but frightening traverses on ledges that hang over crevasse-filled icefields. With about 1,000 feet to go, we reached the time where we decided we would turn around. I suggested we should stick to our plan, but that is a hard pill to swallow when you are that close. I made sure everyone had working headlamps and understood we would be hiking miles in the dark and they all acknowledged and wanted to push on. I led the pack once again, but this time Shayla stayed close. About 50 feet from the summit, I had made a routefinding blunder and was faced with a terrifying, exposed sheer cliff in front of me. I saw an easy move to get to safety, and out of laziness and without thought sideclimbed the cliff. I remember scolding myself saying the right thing to do would have been to find the safe route, but what was done was done. Then Shayla came into view and had been following me. Before I had a chance to warn her she was halfway across the sheer cliff and couldn’t find the next handhold. She was hanging over a 600 foot drop that would result in certain death. She immediately began hyperventilating and, having had that exact experience before, I knew what she was experiencing. You imagine falling and dying. You imagine letting go and dying. You imagine holding on for hours until a helicopter makes its way to you. None of those outcomes bring you solace, yet somehow it is more scary to move that to stay still, so you freeze. I kind of panicked for a second because I thought there was a real chance I was about to watch someone fall to their death, but then I sprung to action and made way way to the cliff edge to try to find a handhold she could reach. I could have given her my hand but that seemed more dangerous that finding her some rock to grab. I tested a handhold and it pulled out of the cliffface. It happens, but this didn’t help cultivate confidence in a good outcome for the situation. I grabbed a second handhold and the same thing happened. Shayla was not enjoyering herself. I reached for a third and determined it was solid. I then suggested she grab it and pointed to a ledge she could fit her foot on. She did precisely that and made it to safety. There were never any words spoken between us about it.
(Below: view from Mount Jackson, September 2019)
We were surprised to share the summit with someone. I asked which route he had taken and he said he started at a different trailhead and took a route but made some routefinding errors and ended up on some loose class 5 terrain. I find it remarkable how many people like him I run into in the mountains; more fit, more bold, more skilled. It doesn’t bother me, I just have a hard time imagining how they find the time to spend more time in the mountains to build those skills than I do. However, one thing I have learned this year is that I am all of those things, I just defer to my mental blockers when I reach the edge of my comfort zone. I am proud of what I have done and understand I can push it further, but am also proud at my good judgment and ability to quantify and mitigate risk.
(Below: view from Mount Jackson, September 2019)
After a brief and shockingly pleasant summit rest, we headed down. I reminded everyone to keep up the pace given impending nightfall. At one point, I was frustrated enough that I couldn’t stop and wait for the party to catch up every 5 minutes and descended the last 2,000 feet of the off-trail section in a matter of like 15 minutes. I waited for over an hour at the bottom. But it was kind of a delightful hour, as I watched the clouds roll through, the sun set, and came up with a plan for the upcoming work week. Immediately after the group caught up I slipped and fell on my cracked rib. The pain was excruciating. I knew the next few hours would be the least pleasant hiking of my life. As we slowly descended the trail, I was trying every different walking stride to try to alleviate the pain. Then I heard what I though was a human scream. Nobody in the group seemed to notice so I continued on. A minute later, another one. I even asked Kat if she had heard it, and she said no. I decided it was in my head. But of course, there was a third and I told the group someone was in trouble. We stopped and listened, and sure enough, someone was yelling ‘HELP!’ off in the distance. My attention left my rib and all I could picture was the gruesome aftermath of a grizzly attack. We moved down the trail a bit further to try to pinpoint the yelling and eventually came to an opening where we could yell back. A couple had attempted to climb Jackson and had turned around and descended the wrong route. They were at the top of a cliff-band, and the vegetation was so thick it wasn’t clear if they could safely descend back down to the trail. The rest of my group seemed relatively unconcerned, and after telling them the trail was a few hundred yards lower than the cliffband they were content to move on. I told the rest of the group to continue on down the trail and that I was going to find a safe route through the cliff band and lead the climbers back down to the trail. It was getting dark and a storm was rolling in that night. Spending a night up there in freezing rain or falling off the cliff could easily have a tragic outcome. The brush between the trail and the cliff band was as thick as I have ever seen it. Most people who read that line don’t quite understand what I am trying to say. Working as a forester for years in the Washington rainforest has earned me the coveted brush-rating badge. And in some sadistic joke from mother nature, the brush species was mostly devil’s club. Devil’s club is more at home on the coast, a significant reason that I wanted to flee the rainforest and move back to Montana a year before this hike. Devil’s club is probably my least favorite plant to encounter in the world. And there was a quarter mile of it, thicker than I have ever seen, between me and the lost hikers. When at work, I wear thick gloved and clothing to protect me from this devil plant, but today I was wearing paper-thin, high tech clothing and had no gloves. It was excruciating. But there probably couldn’t a better fit to bust through the brush to rescue some hikers than I was. So I pushed through, found a route up through the cliffs, and led them down to the trail. He was a park employee who did no trip planning before attempting the climb and she was trusting his judgment. I gently explained to them how this could have gone much worse, and how the chances someone would hear their yelling was slim to none. After ensuring they had working headlamps and enough food and water to make it back to the road, I left them to catch up to my group. It was dark now, I remembered my rib really hurts, and after doing some basic math I knew I had to run for about 6 miles to catch up with the group before they would have to wait at the road. I tested out a running cadence, and found it less painful than I was anticipating. So I ran. It felt good. Not because I wasn’t tired or in pain, but because I could. I remember times in my life not all that long ago when running 6 miles would have been too much for me. And now I am running 6 miles after climbing 7,000 vertical feet, in the dark, in grizzly country, by myself. I wasn’t nearly as scared as I should have been, but I was kind of in a good mood. After several close calls with wildlife I have had since this day, I am certain I wouldn’t do it again, but that night it was awesome. Right after the moon came out, I herd some elk bugles echoing through the valley. It gave me chills. It is such a bizarre, prehistoric sound and it reminds you Glacier National Park is still a wild place, even if full of tourists. Around midnight I caught up with the rest of the group and they gave me a round of applause and I told them the story, and we finished out the nigh hike together, talking constantly to hold back the inevitable creepyness of the Montana wilderness night. When I got home, I was too tired to eat or shower. I collapsed on my be and fell asleep immediately. I will never forget the mountain we now not-so-jokingly call The Beast, Mount Jackson.
(Below: Bim Ewok himself. Thanks Kat Gebauer for the photos)
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