Mount Pugh — Sunday, Jul. 5, 2020

As a followup to my hiking Hidden Lake yesterday, I wanted to push for Mt. Pugh. Given the last trip report, I thought it was possible to push through the snow, as described, without gear but I turned back at 6.2k' (along the ridgeline traverse) for safety.

The Hike

The water sources (all 4) are plentiful below Lake Metam. I topped off my 3L bladder in a stream instead of Lake Metam because I had fond memories of later season water conditions looking like insect Petri dishes.

The hike up to the bottom of Stujack Pass is pretty standard. There are some new downed trees, but many can be hopped over or ducked under. There's some snowpack below the bottom of Stujack Pass, but none up the switchbacks to Stujack Pass. Mind your step as there are some pretty large holes starting to open up between the boulders (I postholed twice up to my quads).

At the top of Stujack Pass I switched from my approach boots (my Asolo GTXs) to my summit boots (my La Sportiva Nepal Cubes), put on my helmet, and my rain pants. Another pair of folks in just shorts and trail runners tried going around the bend to the west side of the slope when I was transitioning (about 150' up from Stujack Pass) and quickly turned around once they saw the steep snowpack.

Once I finished up my transition I turned the corner and spotted the snowpack.  It was about 45 degrees and consisted of a Cascade Concrete base with a small layer of corn snow.

I pushed up the slope as far as I could and entered the trees to the right, avoiding the heather as best I could and leveraging veggie belays via the firs.

Once I got past the firs, I was greeted with another firm steeper snowpack. I created stable kicking steps as much as possible and used my ice axe in low-dagger and high-dagger form when suitable to keep stability when ascending the hill.

I accidentally pushed up to the right of the trail, which allowed me to reach the ridge easily after doing some class 3 moves over rock with vegetation on it.

Looking at the remainder of the [obscured] traverse, I realized that today likely wasn't a summit day. I didn't have my crampons which would have allowed me to kick in solid bucket steps and ascend up the glacier, so I turned around.

I tried following the trail more closely on the way down, at first via kicking steps, then tried doing heel plunges. The heel plunges were a horrible idea. I ended up losing my footing and slid about 100' over the steep (60+ degree) slope. I am very thankful I didn't careen into any trees and I didn't fall off a cliff.

Once I got past the veggie belay section, I carefully tried heel plunging once more and was successful.

Ran into 4 other parties between the veggie belay and Stujack Pass. I was incredibly surprised by that since it was so late in the day (17:00+).

I was transitioning back to just my base layer and approach boots as I saw the other climber that passed me earlier come down. I asked him if he made it to the summit block, and he was successful. He didn't have his crampons and helmet and regretted not having them on the way over since he was doing a number of sketchy moves.

Gear Requirements

• Climbing helmet
• Crampons
• Ice axe

Gear Recommendations

• Waterproof gloves

PS If someone found a small ThermoRest pad, I think I dropped it around Stujack Pass (odds are it blew away, but one can hope :/).