I started my season of climbing with an attempt on Glacier Peak (from now on known as GP). We (Bob, Steve, and I) were climbing the Sitkum Glacier, so we approached by Kennedy Hot Springs. There were problems from the get go. First of all, the last 2 miles of road to the trailhead were closed. That wasn’t really a problem, but it was a BITCH! It added on to our 7 mile approach so it turned out being somewhere around 9 miles that we had to hike. So, It was 2 in the afternoon and we had 9 miles to hike. We had planned to start earlier, but you know it always takes longer to get started. That and the fact that Steve had cost us an hour by telling us to go left instead of right at one corner. By the time we figured that one out we were closer to Mt. Baker than GP. It was a hot day. I remember putting my pack on and looking up at GP which looked tantalizingly close, right at the end of the road, and then start hiking. So, we’ve been going for what seems like years because were on this gravel road that never changes and I look up and nothing has changed. It was like the mountain was mocking us. There was no shade and the rocks were really reflecting the heat back up at us. We got cooked pretty well. To pass the time Steve and I were really dissing on the Forest Service. We figured it was their fault - it had to be somebody’s. In addition to the heat my boots were killing me. I had rented a pair of Scarpa Invernos for the climb and for some reason they were really killing my feet. Every step I took was painful. Needless to say, I slowed us down a bit. Once we got in the woods the heat was not a problem. We misread the map and thought we were about a mile ahead of where we actually were. Bob had warned us that when he had done this before it had been the longest 7 mile hike he had ever been on. With the 2 extra miles it was the longest I ever hope to do (not long distance, long and boring). We finally limped into the Kennedy Hot Springs campsite maybe a half an hour before dark. We didn’t have a watch with us so we had to guess the time.
We set up camp and started dinner. Steve and I went over to the “Guard Station” to fill up our water bottles from the stream there. While we were there we read the literature posted on the station wall about bears. Something to the effect of “NOTICE: Bears in the area - be very careful with your food, do not burn garbage, hang food from trees, etc.” So after we had filtered our water and gone back to camp we told Bob all of this. I figured we were toast because we had Steve’s dog, Barney, with us. I thought the bears would come after him. As a result we let Barney sleep in the tent. Before we let him in we took him over by somebody else’s tent and had him pee there - to throw the bears off. When Barney got into the tent he went and laid down putting his legs straight out. He took up 1/3 of the tent! We tried to get him to move but he wouldn’t budge. I was ready to throw him to the bears. We were tired and going to hike up to Boulder Basin the next day so the next morning we slept in and missed all of the excitement. When we had told Bob about not burning things he dismissed us and we burned our stuff anyway. I figured that since Bob had been a Smoke Jumper for the USFS in college, he would know what he was doing. So we burned our food scraps. Well, we get out of our tent the next morning and here comes the Wilderness Ranger! He asks us if we had burnt food the night before because early that morning a family of bears had gone through the campsite. Of course we denied burning anything. The ranger turned to walk away when he saw our breakfast scraps on the fire pit. He turned back around and asked us about the scraps. We lied and told him that it was just where we were keeping our garbage. He knew this was BS and gave us a lecture. It turns out that the bears were outside of his cabin (the Guard Station). He was pissed!
Immediately after departing from Kennedy Hot Springs you climb about 800 feet in 8/10 of a mile. This was torture because of my boots. A tip - don’t hike in plastic shell boots. Use approach shoes, the extra weight is worth it. So, needless to say, I was dragging some ass. The trail we were on met the Pacific Crest Trail and we hiked North along the PCT for maybe 1/3 of a mile to where the trail crossed Sitkum Creek. We stopped for lunch and to refill our water bottles. By the time we arrived there we were taking a lot of breaks and the breaks kept getting longer. Basically, we were sitting more than walking. We also dropped our packs and searched for the climber’s trail that follows Sitkum Creek up the mountain. Once we found it we returned for our packs and started up. A few minutes off of the PCT the climber’s trail gets very steep. It was at this point that Bob stopped and we had a meeting. Bob basically said that my boots were killing me and Steve was sick (bronchitis). He wanted to know if we thought we should go on. I said that I was ready to turn back, but I would go on. I didn’t want to be the guy to say lets turn back. Steve admitted that he wasn’t feeling well but he thought we should try the trail for a bit more to see how it was. We agreed and continued up turning around 2 minutes later. On the way down I caught a huge snob (sharp knob) in the leg. I was limping pretty badly due to this and the boots.
We got back to Kennedy Hot Springs sometime in the afternoon and re-claimed our campsite (it was a good one). Throwing our stuff down and stripping to our underwear we immediately went to the hot springs. The springs were excellent. We must have stayed there an hour until some clouds and a fat naked man chased us back to camp. After the tent was set up I threw my sleeping pad down and read Escape from Kathmandu by Kim Stanley Robinson for the third or fourth time. The book is great and I would highly recommend it to anybody (think Yetis, Hash, and Everest). I finished the whole thing which is an indication to how early we turned back.
That night it rained big. We had seen the clouds blowing in but had been too tired to really think anything about it. I didn’t sleep well because it felt like the tent was closing in on me (it was) and because Barney took up lots of space again. It was probably better that we had turned back because it was a whiteout 3000 feet up in Boulder Basin where we were going to camp. Our tent probably would have collapsed under the snow. The rain made me feel better about turning back - it gave us an excuse (Man! We would have DIED in that snowstorm!). Everything was wet and we had to walk out in the rain which really sucked. I also had to carry the rain fly which was soaked and weighed a considerable bit more than the day before. When I got to the car I took off my boots and then stepped in a mud puddle, so the mountain got the last laugh. The mountain always gets the last laugh.