A Pile of Rocks

June 21, 2019, summit on the Summer Solstice

Sheep Camp to Happy Camp

This is the ascent and pass day. It starts with rolling your shoes (feet and ankles worst for the wear) over medium sized rocks. Then as the ascent sharpens the rocks get bigger and sharper and angry. Then we reach the scales, and it’s straight up a face of boulders.

I was thankful I had seen Free Solo. It was much the same except we had boulders instead of a wall. But the fact the we were wearing packs, added to the difficulty. There were times I twisted and felt like the pack would pull me down. But as my fingers searched for any kind of a hand hold, I saw myself in the movie with the camera shooting my gloved fingers hanging on for dear life.

The snow obscured many bolder fields and actually made the hike easier. But I slipped and fell a couple of times and twisted my foot and knees. There are two false passes before the real summit. The trail ranger at Sheep Camp thankfully warned us about these fakes. Both of them seemed easy after the crawl. I was surprised to see the pass and the Canadian flag on the hut at the summit.

Five people passed us without packs. Making us look like we were standing still. Which we were. It dawned on us that they were doing the one day run through the trail. This is 38 miles. I thought OMG! Then I recalled we had attempted the same thing 17 years ago. Our dog Mukluk was so frightened, as was I. The difference was that Terry had to carry him, all 63 pounds, over the whole boulder field. When they reached the top, Mukluk had the nerve to strut, prance and howl like he did it himself.

Meanwhile I was so afraid that I repeated, “Don’t let me look down.” It was a good thing that Terry had to tend to the dog. Mukluk made me look good.

We lost so much time getting over the pass, we didn’t have enough time to run out to the road where we had parked the car. So we had to stay in the hut at Lake Lindemand. We had no food, no tent, and no sleeping bag. There were only wooden benches. This would be one of many times on a three dog night we only had one dog.

Seventeen years later, I realized I basically remembered nothing about this hike accept the climb. I can’t image how we ran as much if it as we did. The whole thing has it’s difficulties. But backpacks don’t help.

It was only about four miles of downhill from the summit to Happy Camp, but it took forever with sore legs. We stopped briefly for a lunch break, but the bright sunlight, an oddity which allowed us to fully appreciated the emerald and jade colors of Cater Lake, melts snow. This creates avalanches, snow bridges and serious post holing. To reduce these risks, rangers require that hikers summit before noon.

Happy Camp, like all other camping spots on the Chilkoot, offer pit toilets a cooking shelter, and raised wooden platforms to set your tent on. It rained much of the night, but we were out of the mud.