Mount Shuksan — Saturday, Jun. 12, 2021

We successfully summited Shuksan on 6/12.

Got to the trailhead the night before. Road in is a bit of an adventure. Definitely some large potholes that needed to be avoided. It’s continuously rough as soon as you pull off Baker Lake Rd.

We set up a tent in the parking lot. There were ~10 cars there that night. I wished I had packed earplugs as there were people moving around all night.

We were up at 5am and off just before 6am. The first 2-3mi of trail were straightforward. Alternated between skinny, overgrown trail and double-wide trail. We encountered snow at about the 2.3mi marker and transitioned to skis and ski boots at the first ridge (around mi 3) to start skinning.

As we ascended, we slowly approached an ominous cloud layer. Once we crested the col at about mi 4.1, visibility started to rapidly decrease. By the time we reached the glacier, it was almost completely whiteout. We carefully tracked our path on a few different GPS devices. Having checked multiple weather reports, we knew it’d be cloudy in the morning with increasing sun in the afternoon, so we soldiered on. Every half hour or so, the clouds would blow away completely and we were treated with unobstructed views. These gave us hope that the forecasts might hold true and it was worth continuing.

The glacier overall was in fantastic shape. We didn’t see any cracks/signs of weakness and the trip up to the base of Shuksan was incredibly uneventful. We reached the base of the summit pyramid around 11am. It was still mostly a whiteout with temporary sunbreaks. We bunkered down behind a large rock, snacked voraciously, and did various calisthenics to stay warm!

A little while later, we were joined by a group of 4 that we think was guided. Our two groups waited patiently as the weather began to slowly cooperate more and more. It was only after an hour or so of waiting that we finally caught a glance of the summit. Man! This thing is vertical! I was glad I didn’t have to look at that on the way up or I for sure would have wanted to bail.

By 1:10pm, the weather had completely cleared and we knew it was a go. We stashed our skis and began to ascend, roped. The other group decided not to make a push for the summit and stopped just before the main gully. We booted up the consistent snow with crampons/ice axe, taking note of various anchors on the way up.

There was a bit of a tough move towards the top on some steepish rock. My buddy carefully climbed up, attached to an anchor, and then belayed me up. From there, we easily climbed up to the summit. We summited around 2:30, enjoyed it for a little while, and began to prep for the downclimb. We followed the same route down, making use of every anchor possible to rappel on the descent. Having only learned some of these skills this season, we took a ton of time to double and triple check our safety systems before continuing.  It was great being the only group on the summit pyramid so we didn’t feel overly rushed.

We got back to the base of the pyramid around 5pm, donned our skis, and enjoyed some sticky turns down the glacier. We paused frequently to capture killer shots of us skiing down the Sulphide with Baker in the background. Views were sublime in every direction with the descending sun casting cotton candy hues over endless mountain ridgelines. We were able to ski to about 2.4 mi from the car, transition to a-frames, and walk back to the parking lot. We returned at about 8pm.