Mount Shuksan via Sulphide (Solo C2C)
Trip Date: August 15, 2020
Distance: 14.33 miles
Elevation Gain: 6,443ft
Fees/Permits: Northwest Forest Pass or America the Beautiful Pass
Over the last month, I kicked it into high gear in an attempt to salvage my summer and climbing season. I started working out consistently during the week with HIIT workouts and filling my weekends with long ~20 mile trail runs (High Divide-Seven Lakes Basin Loop in the Olympics and the Enchantments being the most recent ones). Jason is on a work trip for a couple of weeks so I decided to embark on my first solo trip since 2018 over the weekend.
The first time I climbed Mount Shuksan was via the Fisher Chimneys route with Peaks of Life in 2018. Sadly, our summit bid ended at the base of the summit pyramid after a very long wait and too many people to make it up and back to the car in time. I went back two weekends later with a few of my friends via the Sulphide route to ski it. Both trips were two-day trips.
From either route, Shuksan has probably some of the best views to effort ratio in Washington. With the weekend weather looking absolutely perfect, I pinned it as my objective. Because I’ve been doing longer days in the mountains and building up my speed and endurance I decided to put myself through the test of a car-to-car (C2C) mission.
I left Gig Harbor at 12:15am and drove straight to the Shannon Ridge Trailhead. The snow has been receding quickly, and with only 2000 ft of skiable snow, I decided for the first time in two years on an alpine climb to not bring my skis on this trip — lightening my pack considerably.
About a mile out from the trailhead around 4:15am, a Jeep was tailing me aggressively so I pulled over to let them pass. I arrived at the trailhead a whole two minutes behind them. When I got out of the car, the guy driving the Jeep was seriously flustered. He was supposed to meet his group at the trailhead at 2am but had accidentally driven to the trailhead for the Fisher Chimneys route instead. He then asked me if I was climbing alone, to which I very nervously and cautiously responded affirmatively.
He requested to tag along for the forested section and I told him that was okay with me but I would be parting ways by the ridge line. He ended up trailing quite a ways behind me anyways by the time we reached tree line, so I gratefully put my AirPods in and turned on some music to start cruising solo.
I put crampons around the campsites on the Sulphide as the snow steepened. Before I knew it I was joining up with Hell’s Highway and making good time all the way to the base of the summit pyramid.
There were a lot more people at the summit pyramid than I thought there would be so it ended up being rather time consuming from all the waiting around. I managed to top out between groups coming and going and had a nice few minutes up there solo to take in the views and sign the summit register.
Time was of the essence to I didn’t spend too long up there and began downclimbing. There was a lot of waiting in between groups but most parties were friendly and courteous and generously let me get past them. The summit pyramid took the longest portion of my time on the climb. I spent nearly two hours trying to weave up and down between groups.
The descent was quick and easy. A bit of boot-skiing and plunge stepping down and I was quickly back down to the trail where I changed my soggy socks to a fresh pair and back into trail runners for the remainder of the way out.