Marten Creek

Beano and I have been talking about scrambling Long Mt. for awhile and B. is up for anything so we tried a route from Marten Creek Trail. We figured right away that there probably wasn't enough snow left to take the gulley routes to the summit ridge and into a basin below the peak, but we thought we'd give it a try to go through open forest. We followed the Marten Creek trail for about 2 1/2 miles to a large wash out area that flowed over the trail. This looked like as good a place as any to try to slog our way to the ridge. We followed a stream gulley for awhile gaining about a couple hundred feet or so until we hit a large slab section. We worked our way around this on the left side hoping to be able to return to the stream gulley, but we soon found that the gulley turned into a waterfall and our slope was becoming a very steep and slippery slide area that was quite unstable. Realizing that down would be much worse than up, and that we were probably not going to get to the summit on this route anyway, we opted to have lunch and then head back down. The Marten Creek trail itself was very nice for the first two miles or so, but then deteriorated to salmon berry with a few devil's club thrown in. Blowdowns and washouts added to the fun. Once we started off trail however, our route became mostly solid slide alder, salmon berry, and more and more of the devil's club......what Beano likes to call, "El Diablo". I would agree. The funnest part of our descent was slipping down the dirt and head long into a patch of "El Diablo" that would meet you at about eye level. Finally, we returned to the trail and since we had some extra time, decided to try to follow the Marten Creek trail as far up the valley as we could. This trail becomes brushier and more eroded until it collapses into a six foot trench filled with rock and water. Beano was pretty sure that the trail crossed the stream in a large flat area....now snow, but we couldn't find a safe crossing. OK, enough is enough. More brush and scrapes and stickers until we arrived back at the trailhead. A change of clothes and Omega's for gyros and Mac and Jack. All in all a very satisfactory day and some better ideas for a more successful route to the summit. The only problem now is how to pick all the "El Diablo" stickers out of my poor skin.......and bruises, and bumps, and cuts and........