North Twin

North Twin Sister - Mt. Baker Area 6/27/11

North Twin Sister

This was a great day with a bit of a frustrating start.

We gathered all the beta we could from here and cascadeclimbers.org, including a few maps indicating the turns on the logging road. Nevertheless, we got lost en route to the trailhead (ie for this purpose I mean trailhead as the place you exit logging roads and start up a walking trail). We had one bike between the two of us as we headed out at 745 AM from the gate (which was tantalizingly open... we thought about heading up past the "walk in only" signs in the car, if nothing just to dump out stuff and then walk back, but didn't take the chance, which was a wise decision since it was closed when we got out, even thought we never came across any logging trucks or personnel) at 1200 feet.

It looked pretty straightforward which logging roads to take for the "3.5 mile" walk into the trailhead, but it became more and more confusing as we advanced up the road and came across more and more logging road intersections that didn't seem to correlate with the distance we had traveled, compounded by the fact the map we had was of mediocre quality.

The biggest problem was that, despite the description of several other posts, the distance from the gate to the trailhead is actually 4.9 to 5 miles, not 3.5. We measured this on the calibrated bike odometer on the way down, and judging by travel time relative to this and other hikes, that number actually makes sense.

We missed a turn and went up the wrong road at 9071 going more than a mile past where we should have been. The first road at which we should have turned is about 2.5 miles in (follow the main road up to this point) in the middle of a huge clear cut. It is a hard right that immediately takes you through this clearcut. we Put a Cairn on a stump at this turn.

Continue up about 3/4 mile more until you hit a dogleg left onto a smaller road gently sloping up (put another Cairn here), which is the final road (around 3300 feet, give or take) until you hit the trailhead at about 4.9 miles.

By this point, because of our wrong turn and correction (involving hauling a road bike and packs over a sticky clearcut...I couldn't help but this of FitzCarraldo), we were already at about 7 miles, but we were on the right track.

The trailhead is a walk from here, up a decommissioned logging road, advancing to the end of it and making our way left through slide alder and some bushwhacking to get onto snow where we found a bootpack taking us onto the ridge 600-800 feet of snow and soft dirt. We got the ridge about noon. Killer Class 3 to high class 4 scrambling, just as good of holds as everyone said. Be aware of rockfall issues - nothing too serious but definitely be mindful if there are other climbers on the route or if you have a larger group.

I got out my ice axe near the top for a little bit of snowy ridge travel in case of a fall, my partner didn't because it was so soft and easy to cross. There was a bit of back and forth at this point between snow and rock, so I did a lot of shoving my ice axe into a mountaineer's carry between my shoulder blades when I got back on the rock before the summit, so it's your call whether or not to use it.

hit the summit at 3, Left the summit at 320 when it started to rain on us. It had been cloudy all day, occasional sprinkles but was holding fine with a high ceiling of clouds around 9K-10K feet. But at the top it was definitely raining so we got a move on. Too bad since the view of Baker, the Puget Sound, and South Twin were all epic, a sight for sore eyes. LA is awesome, but there is nothing like the North Cascades!

From the summit we traversed west and downclimbed the very friendly north face for about 60 meters of the steepest part of the slope, then did a sitting glissade for about 900 feet, and then a combination of standing glissade, plunge stepping and easy traversing left into the avalanche runout (including getting water at a delicious creek along the way), going mostly on snow cross country back through the slide alder to the decommissioned logging road at about 4000 feet and back to the trailhead, at about 445.

At this point it got interesting. Since we only had one bike, we double loaded my friend Greg up with two packs and I ran the 5 miles back down to the car after a day of climbing. I'm training for a marathon, so it was nice to still get a run in, but even with the lightness of having my climbing boots and pack off, 5 miles of downhill pounding was not the funnest run I have ever been on. I was REALLY happy to see the car (about 610, 10.5 hours round trip, 7 hrs up with getting lost -at least 90 min down the shitter-, 2.5 down) where we had beers and I stood in the frozen creek for a few minutes to give my legs a chance to recover.

Heads up about deer on the road- we almost hit two on the way down.

Climb on!