Matt, Jim, Rod, Tina and I met at the Eastgate Park & Ride on Friday night. We drove out to Leavenworth where we grabbed dinner at Los Camperos Mexican Restaurant. In addition to his dinner Rod ordered a vegetarian burrito to-go for the following day. I followed his suggestion and it would turn out to make for a tasty lunch on the trail. Eileen and Tom met us at Tina and Rod's cabin later that evening.
On Sunday, Matt, Eileen, Tom, Tina and Jim took off early for the Phelps Creek trailhead. Their plan was to scramble Seven-Fingered Jack on Saturday and then scramble Mt. Maude the next day. Rod and I left somewhat later and arrived at the trailhead around 9:30am where we met up with Claire, Zhong, Pat, Sunny and Geoff. The trail starts off as a shady flat pleasant road hike and then abruptly changes to a steep climbers trail. We reached the lower Leroy Basin around 2pm and received a message passed via a day-hiker that the scramblers had changed their plans to target Maude on the first day.
The original plan of we the climbers had been to camp at the lower basin but as it was still early in the day and we were feeling strong so we decided to push on. We headed up to the saddle at the south side of the basin. Instead of pushing on to Ice Lakes we stopped at the flat area below the saddle to the south of Maude. This would save us from having to backtrack when we descended the following day. We set up camp and hung out. Around 7pm that evening the figures of the scramblers popped out on the horizon and they descended to our camp. It was a jovial meeting.
The following day we were moving by 5am in warm conditions with a light breeze. We ascended the scree to the saddle where we stashed trekking poles. From there we traversed hard snow and then scree above the Upper Ice Lake and then crossed boulder fields to the snowfield at the edge of the Entiat Glacier. I roped up with Zhong; Claire and Sunny teamed up and Rod and Pat tied in together with Geoff traveling solo. We crossed the short snowfield to the rock buttress at the south edge of the Entiat Icefall. We looked into rappelling onto the glacier from a notch in the rock buttress but it turned out to be easy to descend and skirt the base of the rock buttress.
The route looked to be in great shape. There were crevasses and bergschrunds but there appeared to be a way to bypass these and other complicating terrain features. I started up the first pitch. The ice had a fair amount of air mixed in making it softer but it appeared to take screws solidly. Zhong had belayed me up one rope length and then we started simul-climbing with a plan of my setting up a belay at the next good spot and swinging leads. We had taken in coils such that we were only spaced about 40 meters apart on our 60-meter rope.
Soon after we started simul-climbing I heard Zhong call out that he was falling. It was a good thing that he yelled because I was just starting up a short steep step. One of my tools was hooked in a natural horizontal slot in the ice and I quickly place the second tool in the slot just as I felt the rope going taught. The initial force on the harness pulled my feet off of the ice and the load went to my arms in my leashes. I thought that the force would pull me off and cause me to take a nasty fall, perhaps after yanking my arms out of my sockets. Fortunately, Zhong's fall was a sliding fall and the rope dissipated enough of the force that I held the fall. I was now hanging by my tools holding the body weight of two people. I tried to get my feet into the ice to take some of the load. Where I was hanging there was not much I could do with my right foot but I was able to kick in with my front points with my left foot. There was a flat spot a couple of feet below me where I could stand comfortably but there was no way I could step down in control with the rope pulling me down.
I knew that Zhong might be hurt and not be easily able to do anything but I yelled down to him and asked if he could unweight the rope. It didn't take him very long to do so and with relief I stepped down to the flat spot. Rod was near Zhong and spoke with him to find out what had happened. A grapefruit-sized chunk of rock, flying like a speedball, had nailed his shoulder and knocked him off his stance. Our climbing route up the middle of the icefall was purely ice. The rockfall must have come from the ridge at the top of the route or from the rock walls on either side of the icefall. It must also have come from high up to have had enough force to cause Zhong's shoulder to be incapacitated to the point where he could not raise his arm without feeling sharp pain (a visit to the hospital would later reveal that no bones had been broken but there was severe bruising of the muscle).
Zhong indicated that he did not feel like he would be able to complete the climb without full use of his left arm. We considered whether he might be able to continue on without leading any pitches but Zhong did not think it was practical. I prepared to down-climb with the plan that Zhong and I would turn back and return to camp. Zhong then generously suggested that he could return to camp by himself. Having someone with an injury, even a minor one, travel alone in remote terrain would normally not be something we would consider. However, Zhong was a strong climber with good judgment. Zhong had just started climbing the icefall when the accident happened and below the icefall the return route to camp was fairly benign with respect to exposure and difficulty. There were a couple of places with some scree but otherwise it was relatively easy hiking and route-finding was trivial. Zhong insisted that he would be fine so we agreed to have him return by himself.
I then called out to Geoff who was soloing the route a short distance above me and arranged for him to wait so that I could climb up to him and tie in with him. The alternative would have been for me to tie in as the third person on a rope team which would have worked but would be awkward.
Geoff and I climbed the next pitch which had an interesting problem with a bergschrund spanning most of the route. There were two possible crossing points: a snow bridge leading to a short vertical step and a section of broken up ice blocks. I chose the latter and it turned out to be fun climbing. There were several mildly gymnastic moves to get over the blocks but there was never anything too difficult and after each move was a comfortable resting place. The Entiat icefall had the most interesting and enjoyable climbing I have seen on an alpine ice route. The only downside is that it is fairly short. Route descriptions in climbing guides described seven to nine pitches. There may have been that many pitches counting all of the sections of uniform low-angled terrain but there were only two and a half pitches of real ice climbing. Perhaps some of the ice climbing pitches have disappeared as the glacier has melted out in recent years.
The top of the ice fall presented the final interesting problem. A second bergschrund spanned the route from rock wall to rock wall. As with the lower bergschrund there were two possible crossing points: a thin snow bridge and a rock island. We opted for the rock island because the snow bridge was too thin and the bergschrund would present a bad runout once on the other side. The rock island had the advantage of not having the bad exposure once on the snow above it. Geoff led the rock pitch and dry-tooled it, placing a cam and a nut. It was easy climbing and I chose to climb with bare hands but having crampons on the rock made it non-trivial. We kicked steps in the snow above to reach the col.
Some of the trip reports I had seen had talked about horrible, exposed and unprotectable climbing up the ridge. Curiously, we had brought light rock racks with the idea that we might need rock pro to ascend the ridge from the col. We had not thought it would come in handy before that. At the col I looked at the rock ridge and became fairly apprehensive because the ridge looked like it would be difficult and ugly even in rock shoes, let alone climbing boots. Fortunately, the traverse across ascending benches described in some climbing guides exists. From a distance it doesn't look like it will go but there is just enough in the way of handholds to make it across each ledge without feeling too sketched out. The traverse to the SE Ridge to hook up with the scramble route is long but once there the climb to the summit is short, especially after having dropped packs.
At the summit we took our summit photos, ate our summit treats and read the summit log entries written just a day earlier by the scramblers. By that afternoon clouds had rolled in and we could see some storm clouds off in the distance. We looked across toward Bonanza and Fernow and Glacier Peak. From our vantage point the crags of Seven-Fingered Jack looked pretty dicey. We wondered how the scramblers had fared.
We left the summit by 2:30pm. The descent to camp was uneventful. We made it back to camp by 4:30pm and we started heading out by 5pm. Zhong had left camp and had left behind a note saying that he wanted to have a leisurely hike back to the cars. On the descent below Leroy Basin, Sunny's ankle started bothering her so we traveled slowly and reached the cars by 9:30pm. Zhong was there and in good spirits in spite of the mishap.
