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Mt Kent (5087ft)Exploratory TripJanuary 4, 2002 |
The Dawn Patrol was down to two this morning. Michael and I decided to snowshoe in to Mt Kent and explore this great peak. Michael had told me earlier about Phil F's climb up a north face route a few years ago and how there was very little information on this attractive peak.
We left the McClellan's Butte trailhead at 6:08am and hiked up the snowy trail with our headlamps blazing. We steadily hiked through the forest and arrived at the 2nd logging road (FS 9020) just as the sky started to brighten. Twilight is my favorite time of the day. We walked the road for a while until the snow became too deep and switched to snowshoes. It wasn't long until we had a view of our objective: Mt Kent! Instead of hiking up the Alice Creek drainage, we decided to stick with the road (FS 110). This helped us make good time, and before long we were looking down on the road from which we came.
The road made for easy walking and we were able to take in the impressive surrounding peaks and the morning sun on the top of McClellan's Butte. We left the road when it became clear that it would take us no closer to Mt Kent. We could look across the Alice Creek drainage and see an obvious gully that we hoped would lead us to the summit. The slopes below the peak itself were most definitely avalanche prone as we could see old debris from two large slides. It hadn't The bad part was that we were almost level with the bottom of the couloir, but to get across we would have to lose and then gain a lot of elevation. So off we went through the snow.
After a fun creek crossing, we climbed back up the other side and had a better look at the slope we needed to ascend. The wide open slope with a few fir trees lower and only slide alder higher told us that this was not a place to be at the wrong time. The snow itself felt stable, but just to be safe we spread out and followed the trees as much as possible.
Below is a photo of an earlier trip to
