Jim Hill Mountain — Tuesday, Apr. 13, 2021

Jim Hill Mountain is an awesome place that many visitors to Stevens Pass have no doubt seen when looking south from Skyline Lake "trail", Lichtenberg, McCausland, Rock Mountain, Lanham Lake, or west from Arrowhead Mt.

It's a popular destination for backcountry skiers with its long runs/lines and its higher slopes providing powder/corn skiing into March/April (see this 2016 page from Wenatchee Outdoors for more details).

For climbers trying to score lists on Peakbaggers.com in the Wenatchee Back Court/Mid-State Milers, it's ideal to attempt in the narrow low avalanche window to avoid some of the bushwhacking from Lanham Lake Trail and the chossy (talus/scree filled) slopes late season.

For me, I fall in the latter category (climbers), but aspire to be the former (splitboarder). I've been looking at this mountain for some time and aggregating information about it. The bonus of getting up to the top is that you have [largely] unobstructed views of the entire Stevens Pass area, high points along Snoqualmie Pass (Daniel, Hinman), 

This time of year (due to the rise in temps), the best approach is one that incorporates as much shade as possible, so north faces. I picked Henry Creek drainage, in part because the parking was clear, no logging was taking place (it's logged in the summer), and I knew the area a bit (again, from Arrowhead). Several tracks/trip reporters on Peakbagger and NWHikers noted that the path up from Lanham Lake is longer and can be a bit of a bushwhack.

I parked near the Nordic Center a bit later (I was tired/had chores to do), and started up the road towards the Henry Creek drainage. Despite the fact that the snow was soft, I made good progress up (following old down tracks) until I had to put snowshoes on on the sun drenched slopes around the end of the creek drainage.

Pushing up the drainage was strenuous and draining with my Lightning Ascent snowshoes with tails: I was breaking trail the entire way up the slope with the snowshoes penetrating between 3" and 6" each step. Some skiers that were doing a tour caught up with me around 5.75k' and one of the skiers pushed past me up to the ridge.

Like the big bad wolf, I huffed and puffed my way up to the ridge, finally gaining it, while taking note of small (1/32") wind slabs breaking, giving way to fresh powder. I tried to help guide the other backcountry skier up the path, since the lead skier seemed to have had a difficult time doing kick turns up the last section.

We chatted a bit (socially distanced), I gazed at the beautiful surrounding mountains (I could see Stuart, Dakobed, Sloan, and Koma Kulshan), and I put on my crampons/got out my ice axe. They started down, and I went up thinking that the next push I was going to do brought me to the real summit. Bzzzttttt.. NOPE! I was actually down the ridge about 100' and there was a gendarme in my way along with a spicy summit push with tons of cornices. This is where I stopped, given that I didn't want to downclimb 100' solo and possibly get caught in an avalanche triggered by my activity. Downclimbing with crampons wasn't bad, but I hadn't done a lot of bucket steps on the way up in sections, so I needed to do a bit more on the way down; the base was pretty icy, but my ice axe was punching through the softer layers, so it wasn't as much of use as it would have been on a glacier.

I tried glissading down, but the snow was too fluffy/powdery to do so, so I ended up doing heel plunging for about 1k' until I got to a flatter section, then put my snowshoes back on and walked the remainder of the way out.

A long day when I got back to the car--about 8 hours on trail. I was so spent that I didn't see the value in sticking around for my second set of objectives today--instead grabbed some food from the 59er Diner and headed back home.

A wonderful day, with the only "downside" being that I'll need to return to summit Jim Hill another day later on in the season.

I've attached a Peakbagger link with a GPS track and will be posting my NWAC observations/linking them here soon.

More Information on this Trip Report

• https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=1637329