As we pulled into the Marblemount Ranger Station in the U-Haul we had been living in for the last week, our excited conversations turned into nervous silence as we faced the biggest challenge of our entire trip, getting permits. We strolled through the front doors like we knew what we were doing, answered a couple questions, got our permits, and then left. “That was easy”, I said as we walked out. The strenuous permit system at places like Tallulah Gorge back home in Georgia had scared us to the point we expected to get told to pound sand due to our inexperience. Instead, they seemed excited to give us a permit. “But we don’t know what we’re doing!” I yelled in my head. Alas, it was time for the final 45-minute drive into the park. We set up camp along the forest service road just outside North Cascades National Park, set our alarms, and pretended to sleep.

Day 1

I awoke just after 5 in the morning of May 30th. I crawled into the front seat, started up our van, and began the short drive to the trailhead of Eldorado Peak. My partners for the trip repacked our sleeping pads and bags and made the final preparations. It was a cold and foggy morning in the North Cascades. We had scoped out the river crossing the day before and easily crossed our two logs of choice. Five minutes further along the trail, and we pass the sign at the true trailhead.

From this point on, flat ground was but a distant memory. With an impressive elevation gain of 2000ft in the first mile, it was game time.

We made the first 3000ft in a little over 3 hours and hit the snow line. We stopped for a longer-than-planned lunch, booted up, put our crampons on, and started chugging away. This is when we got our first taste of what our next two days would entail.

From the first step into the snow, the post-holing started. Each step I would sink to my ankles, and every third step I would sink to my waist. “Glad I saved $100 and didn’t get snowshoes”, I thought, as I dug myself out of the snow. Over the next four hours, we moved at a blistering 250ft an hour. Just after 2pm, we were working. We sat just below the ridgeline of the Roush Creek Basin and put our horrible routefinding skills to work.

I started up the most direct line up to the ridge, fighting through the waist-deep postholing, and very quickly realised this was not the ideal path up. One of my partners and I continued trudging up this hellscape, while the other escaped to the right. An hour would pass before we would hit the ridgeline that was a mere 100ft above us.

“That was fucked up,” was all we could muster as we collapsed on the first flat spot we found. Just after 3pm, we were ready for bed. With just one more descent into the basin, we were worked.

The short walk across the ridge was a welcome reprieve from the agonising elevation, but it was not without its own challenges. The snow descent into the basin was much steeper than anticipated. It ended up being a full-on downclimb in what felt like a no-fall zone. There was a large gap that spanned the width of the descent at the very bottom, with only a narrow line of snow that connected to the top of one rock near the bottom of the gully. The brutal snow conditions made it all the more sketchy, as each step had the chance of breaking through to your hip and sliding down the gully into the abyss. Once we were standing just above the gap, deciding how best to proceed, the best option seemed to be jumping. While a horrifying prospect in my head, it ended up being the easiest option, which I learned while watching my partner go across the narrow band and down the awkwardly protruding boulder. At long last, we made it to a campsite. It may have been a couple thousand feet lower than we were hoping for, at 5400ft, but after the last five hours of horrid snow travel, we could not care less.

Day 2

My morning started off just after 3am, when the unceasing urge to urinate took over my body. I struggled to put on some pants and climb over my climbing partner to get my boots on, then stepped outside the tent. My annoyance at being awake was quickly replaced by amazement at the visibility of stars in the sky. I have never experienced so little light pollution in my life. Unfortunately, this excitement led to my never falling back asleep, and I anxiously awaited my partners to get up for our 5:30am “alpine start”

With the sunrise as my backdrop, I went to light my stove to melt water for the day, but after furiously striking my lighter dozens of times, I accepted the fact that it must have gotten wet, and I had lost the ability to light my stove. Since we are such an intelligent group of prepared climbers, I asked my partners for their lighter. This was a waste of time, though, as we had all forgotten to bring extra lighters/matches. Luckily, one of them had a carabiner with a gear-like attachment at the top that was able to create a spark, and after multiple desperate minutes of spark-creation, we had fire again.

We melted just enough water to get us to the next ridgeline and started off. This was the first of the two big mistakes that would, unfortunately, stop me a mere 300 feet from the summit.

After around 30 minutes and a couple of hundred feet of gain, our group of three shrank to two as one of our partners was having foot problems and decided to stay back at camp. We decided on a turnaround time of 2pm, took the fuel and stove from him, and set out on our way. Notice how we did not grab the carabiner we used to start our stove?

After an hour and a half, we hit the next ridgeline a little over a thousand feet above our camp and just before the glacier. We stopped here to melt the next batch of snow, as I was down to ~8 ounces of water. After a brief exchange consisting of multiple “I thought you grabbed it!”, we switched our topic of conversation to whether we would be able to summit with our limited water supply and our inability to heat up our food. We decided we would rope up, check the glacier out, and turn back for the long hike out.

We packed some snow in our Nalgenes and strapped them to our bags in the hopes they would eventually melt into some drinkable water. We had no glacier experience, so we decided we wouldn’t risk crossing since we did not have a good idea of the path to take, but as we started moving, we saw a guided group ahead of us. We figured the guide must know a good path through, and followed exactly in their footsteps. It was around this time that my severe lack of fitness and the sun poisoning taking over my entire face started to wear me down.

The glacier was the only flat section of walking we would experience the entire day. After around an hour, it was time for the final section of the mountain. There was around ~1300ft of gain to the summit, easy, right? As soon as we started gaining elevation, I knew I was in trouble. The 6 months of sedentary office work and constant take-out were working their magic on me. Add to the lack of water and intense burning taking place on my face, and I knew it was futile. I decided I would go up as far as I could get by 2pm, but I secretly gave up on going for the summit.

My partner was faring significantly better than me. As we approached the summit, I kept feeling worse and worse. It had been hours since our last sips of water, and we had turned to pouring liquid electrolyte mix onto snowballs and eating them. To add salt to the wound, it was around this time that we got passed by two ski mountaineers on a 1-day ascent, having the time of their lives. Bastards.

I continued trudging along for a couple more hours, but around 300ft from the summit and just before the knife-edge pitch, I decided to call it. I didn’t want to ruin my partner’s trip, since he was feeling strong, so he made the decision to continue up alone while I rested just below the summit. It was still a long way down.

While resting, I was barely able to stay awake and was having trouble thinking in full, coherent thoughts. After maybe 20 minutes, I could see my partner nearing the summit. We gave a wave and a thumbs up, and he quickly made his way back to me so we could start our long slog down.

Within the first hour, we had made it back over the glacier and had a short climb back up to gain a small ridgeline. It was here that the fun really started back. Every single step down toward camp entailed a waste deep posthole, around 30 seconds of squirming to stand back up, and repeat. Every single step made me debate why I ever chose to go outside. After an incredibly painful hour of descent, we made it back to high camp. I proceeded to collapse in the tent for a short reprieve from the sun.

After what felt like 30 seconds, but was probably 15 minutes, we decided it was time to pack up and go. We still hadn’t had more than 16 ounces of water since 8am, and I could feel my face actively getting microwaved.

To say the next 4 hours were the worst 4 hours of my life would not properly convey how miserable the descent was. Knee to waist-deep postholing awaited me with every step. Somehow, my friends seemed to not struggle with it as much, but perhaps my 265lb frame was just the perfect weight to punch through the snow. I will not talk deeply about the initial ascent to the talus field, as doing so would activate my severe postholing-induced PTSD.

We got to the talus field right as the sun started setting. Again, our partner desired to be the lone wolf and set off alone to meet us at the van. After dropping thousands of feet, my lower body was officially done for. Somewhere along the trail, we passed a river and refilled our water, convincing ourselves that that was all that was needed to get down. While the next hours of descent are not particularly interesting to write or read about, it was likely the most mentally exhausting night of my life.

We got slightly turned around multiple times on the thin and steep climbers’ trail, as it was now completely dark outside. By the time we finally hit flat ground, it was well into the night. There are no pictures to check timestamps on, but it was somewhere between midnight and 1am. There was only 1 crux left, where the hell did we cross this river!?

We spent at least thirty minutes walking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth looking for any suitable log to crawl across. When we finally found our winner, we knew the trip was finally over. It was a short walk on the forest service road back to our van, where we huddled up for the forty-minute drive out of the Cascades and back into civilisation. We stopped by a Denny’s for some golden nectar, then found the closest hotel. We checked into the hotel after 4am, and the guy must’ve been able to tell we were not doing well, since we only paid about 30$ total.

Our 11am checkout time came much too soon, and it was time to kill a day in Seattle, and catch the redeye back to Georgia.

I am finally finishing this story years after this first venture into the big mountains. While I am a much more experienced climber and general outdoorsman, I look upon this trip fondly, as I have never learned so much about myself in such a short period of time. Many, many mistakes could have easily turned into a SAR call, but by the grace of God, we escaped with nothing more than a week of sunburn peeling and some good stores.