Basic Alpine Climb - Huckleberry Mountain/East Face

Participants arrived camp at Ridge & Gravel Lakes at various times.  It took most about 3.5hrs to reach camp.  We could see our destination once around Kendall Katwalk.

It was a nice evening with few other campers and few bugs.  After a couple treats for Rena's birthday, we called it a day at about 8pm.

The 7 of us started down the PCT for Huckleberry at 6am.  It was a lovely morning with perfect temperatures for hiking.  The views were beautiful and the hiking easy as we were mostly descending while passing Alaska and then Joe Lakes.  Around 2 miles after departing our campsite and not too far past Joe Lake, we arrived on the east side of Huckleberry.  Here we left the PCT after a break and hiked on mostly meadows of heather and alpine blueberry aiming for the grassy shoulder at 6000' where the scrambling/climbing would start.  (Shoulder is on climber's left in this photo.)

We scrambled the first 10' or so and then set up a fixed line.  It would have been nice to do a running belay, but the rock quality was too poor to set much protection.  I belayed Sonja and asked her to go as far as she could.  She used almost a full rope length, mostly slinging a couple trees and a rap ring.   Then all members prusiked up this easy climbing route except me. 

We had 4 rope leads and 2-60meter ropes so we sent the rope leads up first so they could set the next fixed line.  Being last, I got belayed up.  (Rena belays me up.)By the time I reached the anchor, I noticed the group had already scrambled maybe 40' up and Sergey was already leading off on the ridge.  Once the fixed line was set, I tried to pruisk this line but felt uncomfortable making the starting move with approach shoes so backed off.  (Sergey leading off on second pitch in this photo)

I found a ramp that would lead to the same place and decided to go that way.  The rest of the group followed me while 1 Basic was belayed up in order to clean the route.(Scrambling the ramp.  Photo courtesy of Danielle Graham)

From the ridge it looked like a steep 20' drop off to reach the notch where the last pitch started. But there is a ramp that can take one down easily. (Photo of us zigzagging down the ramp from the ridge.)

 Looking down at the notch where the last pitch starts.  (Photo courtesy of Danielle Graham)

I led the last pitch on pretty solid rock.  Up 20' to the slanting ledge (where I used a couple cams on the ledge)  and then traversed over about 30 feet, missing the  class 5 crack totally.  Before I knew it, I was on the south face and up the easy class 4 finish to the summit at around 10:30am.  (Leading off.  Photo courtesy of Danielle Graham) 

It took a while for everyone to prusik up one by one.  The last member was belayed up.  We spent at least a hour on the summit enjoying the stunning views and relaxing.   The rappel anchor was kind of sketchy.  Basically runners around a rock with piles of rock on top.  We added a new sling  and I kept an eye on the anchor as each rappelled back to the notch. (Photo courtesy of Rena Chinn)From the notch we scrambled back up the zigzag ramp to the ridge and then down again the ramp I found and cont'd down to where a last rappel was set to get us to where we started our climb. (Photo of people scrambling down to the last rappel anchor)From there it was back down to the PCT and camp.  I being one of the last to arrive at camp got there around 4:30pm where Sean M's group were waiting for our sites.  Broke down camp and back to our cars around 8:30pm.   Rena and I finished our Mountaineers Snoqualmie 20 on this trip.  Very special and a great group made it all that much better!