Mount Fernow had been on my list to climb since my first trip to the Entiat, mainly, as George Mallory famously said, “because it’s there.” It’s the eighth-highest peak in Washington State at 9,249 feet. My research of the route itself suggested there was a reasonably high price of admission in the form of cross-country travel from Leroy Basin, loose scree, and a route that looked to be mainly 3rd class with a small bit of 4th at the top. Recovering from getting COVID two weeks prior, I wasn’t sure if this climb would set me back or make me feel better. It was a bit of a roll of the dice.
Mitch and I drove out on the Sunday evening of Labor Day weekend seeing that the best day for it was on the holiday itself. We crashed at 11pm in a tent at the surprisingly quiet parking lot at 3,500 feet with alarms set for 4am and got moving in the morning just after 4:30am.
Having been back in the area for the North Face of Maude earlier this summer, the approach to Leroy Basin felt all too familiar, but it helped to bang much of it out in the dark. It took us exactly 2 hours to reach the camping area in Leroy Basin. From there, we made it to the 7,800-foot col on the shoulder of Seven Fingered Jack in another hour or so.
The view from this col was a bit disheartening. The descent looked really loose and it didn’t look like things would improve much all the way to the summit. We made our way down and it wasn’t quite as bad as it looked most of the way, but it was certainly unsavory. At 8:30am, we had finished losing vertical down to 6,600 feet or so.
The route itself was a lot less steep than it looked from the col and wasn’t as loose as the approach until the top where it was equally shitty. We reached the summit at 10:25am, just shy of 6 hours after we’d started. The views were thankfully stellar, with Glacier Peak feeling like we could reach out and touch it. We had lunch and then retraced our steps. It was painful. A huge amount of loose rock made for quite the ankle workout, including plenty of near misses, slips, and falls. By the time we made it back to the col, we were very much over the loose rock.
We made it back to the car before 5pm for about a 12-hour day, which felt reasonably quick for the amount of cross-country travel we’d done on loose terrain as well as the nearly 8,000 feet of up and down. Thankfully, I felt a better over the course of the day. I’m glad I’ve done it, but I have absolutely no desire to go back. Not recommended.