Solo RAMROD

August 18, 2019

Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day (RAMROD)

I’d been wanting to do this ride for years and decided this summer after putting a bit more time in on the bike than usual that it was time to fire it up. I drove down to Enumclaw early, packing up with a small running backpack full of food and some extra layers and leaving the car at 6:30am.

The first bit is on busy roads and I missed a turn near Buckley, not realizing I’d gone as far as I had. After a brief detour, I was back on track at South Prairie. The long southbound section was rolling and fun. I stopped every so often to eat an old-fashioned doughnut from my backpack, which was a great source of simple sugar and calories. With early-morning cloud cover, things stayed cool for this whole section. I made it to Eatonville in about 2h20m where I took off my knee and arm warmers.

The sun was out now and the riding was great with a nice, steady uphill to the park entrance. In Ashford, I made a stop at a gas station to load up on Gatorade, Snickers, a Coke, and an ice cream bar. I zoomed past a huge line of cars on my way into the park and then enjoyed the awesome, switchbacking road up to Paradise. I took the climb at a measured pace, knowing I would only be halfway through the day by the time I made it there. A few cyclists doing a shorter day slowly came around me at one point and I had to keep myself from following them.

I took a break at Paradise after 6 hours on the move, eating a big sandwich and putting down a whole bunch of water with Nuun in it while chatting up folks who wanted to know what I was doing up there. Then it was time for the descent! Oh, boy. None of the turns were terribly sharp, so it was really fun to just open it up. I had forgotten that there was an intermediate climb coming around the ridge before finishing the descent to Route 123 and it was a bit demoralizing, but not terrible.

From the valley, I knew one last climb would get me to the point where the final 40 miles would all be downhill. At this point, it was downright hot in the sun and I was not feeling as strong. I ground out the climb, taking one appreciable break in a rare shady spot to cool myself down and eat most of my remaining calories. I made it to the top of Cayuse Pass in a little over 9 hours of elapsed time since I’d started.

I briefly celebrated and then started enjoying the long downhill, which started out relatively steeply and then eased off to the point where it felt like the downhill equivalent of a false flat. I made one last stop in Greenwater for more drinks and calories, then motored on to the finish, arriving right around 6pm.

Corkscrew Route on Sloan Peak

July 28, 2019

From Dome Peak last weekend, Sloan stood out on the horizon with its distinctive, matterhorn-esque shape. Erica and I were able to spare one day this weekend for an adventure and decided to brave an early wakeup in Seattle on Sunday to car-to-car the route. Most beta we could find suggested at least 11-12 hours, if not longer, so we got rolling by 4:30am from Seattle, made good time on the Mountain Loop Highway, and left the car at about 1,900 feet just after 6:30am. We opted for the Cougar Creek approach, hoping that the river crossings near the start would be relatively civilized at this time of year.

After working our way through the brushy trail from the car, we quickly hit the first river crossing. A bit of searching upstream found a great set of logs to cross. From there, we battled some brush and made a couple more crossings, finding faint trails at times, but generally using our topo and GPS to head in the right direction. After the last crossing, on a large, sandy, dry stream bed, we remembered the beta suggesting a departure from the old trail, heading upstream a ways before ducking into the forest.

From there, the trail was faint at first, but became more and more established. We went sharply uphill, switching back quite a bit until reaching an awesome waterfall where we crossed the creek and continued up. At 9am, after about 2.5 hours, including some brushy sections that were a bit hard to follow at times, we made it to open views at 5,000 feet. We’d been cruising to this point and made the wise decision to sit down and eat our snack of salami and cheddar before continuing up.

After following the trail up the ridge, we followed up on scree and slabs to the saddle at 5,800 feet, neglecting to read the beta suggesting that the summer route continues up the grassy ridge. In either case, it was a direct approach and went quickly, allowing us to make the saddle just before 10am. At the saddle we headed through and turned right, following more slabs up to a pretty high access point on the glacier. A party of four had just descended the glacier and were taking their crampons off as we arrived and put ours on. It sounded like everything was in good shape.

We headed up the glacier with our gear and light rope on, following a nice boot pack around some crevasses and eventually traversing to bare rock at the Southeast edge of the summit block at about 11:15am. We left our technical gear and poles here, then continued up on the classic climber’s path for the summit. There were a few fun sections requiring hands, but it always felt comfortable as 3rd/4th class. We made it to the top a few minutes before noon and took in the crystal-clear views over lunch.

Not much to say about the descent, save that we went down the snow as far as it would take us on the glacier and made one magical stop at the waterfall to dunk our feet. We were back at the car just after 4:15pm for about 9h 45m on the day, which gave us the time to drive home via Darrington and milkshakes.

Dome Glacier on Dome Peak

July 20, 2019

Dome Peak has been lurking on my list for a long time. I expected to get back there at some point on a Ptarmigan Traverse, but things lined up to head back there with Colin as a two-day weekend mission. We were both interested in going somewhere beautiful, fast and light.

We drove up on Friday night and spent the night at the Downey Creek Trailhead in the car. With a 5am wakeup, we were on the move by 6am Saturday morning. We made it to the 6.5-mile first turn in 2 hours, then cruised up the valley, cutting into an overgrown area at about 4,000 feet and crossing Bachelor Creek into a long section of brushy trail that felt like bushwhacking at times. This area collected dew and made us really wet, soaking our pants, socks, and shoes in particular.

Things improved from about 4,800 feet on and eventually entered a gorgeous area at Cub Lake, with views South to Glacier Peak, at about 11:45am. We climbed up Itswoot Ridge at 6,300 feet and got our first full view of Dome Peak at 1:15pm. The traverse from there went pretty quickly. We were able to stay on the left margin of some snow to gain elevation and didn’t put our crampons on until we were at 7,200 feet or so. We made it to the saddle at 4:30pm and dropped our overnight gear there.

After a quick break at camp, we headed up more untouched snow to the summit at 5:30pm. It was a great view from such a central location in the North Cascades. We took it in for a while, scouted out Sinister a bit, and decided that, without a rope, it didn’t make sense to drop down and try to do Sinister as well. So we headed down to camp, ate dinner, and got in bed well before sunset.

Looking at Eldorado, Forbidden, Sahale, Boston, Buckner, Logan, and Goode

Descending from the top with Gunsight and Bonanza behind

While it was a nice and calm evening, the wind kicked up fiercely around midnight and made for some pretty challenging sleeping conditions. Colin got a hole in his pad (potentially from a snafflehound chomp), so he was in an especially tough spot. We decided to get up at 4:30am and start our trek back out. Everything went smoothly enough and we were back at the car by 2:30pm. The GPS suggested it was about 31 miles and 8,400 vertical on the weekend.