Successful summit of Shuksan on Labor Day weekend via Sulphide glacier.
Day 1: Started around 2pm with our party of 4. About a 5 hour hike to camp, 5 miles, 4500ft. Beautiful views of Baker and Baker lake on the way up. About a mile from camp, the trail turns North and becomes a climber’s trail heading straight toward the glacier. We roped up for the last 20 minutes of hiking to high camp, and navigated around several medium-sized crevasses. We camped on the plateau at around 6400ft. We didn’t see the composting toilet at camp, but the map shows it on the ridge to Southwest. Only saw one other party of 2 camping on the ridge.
Day 2: Started hiking at 2:45am. We were happy we started at this time both for more stable snow and avoiding the brutal heat later in the day. The first steep section of the Sulphide had many large crevasses and moats with waterfalls running underneath, but this section can easily be avoided by sticking to the climber’s left side below the rock rib. We started a bit too far left and had to traverse across a couple of rock islands.
The flat section of glacier above was easy walking with no visible crevasses and a clear bootpack to follow. We followed the ridge up the lefthand side close to the intersection with the Fischer chimneys route. Found a couple snow bridges to cross that were wide and holding up well. Near the summit pyramid there are some narrow cracks hidden beneath snow, and we punched through one of these waist deep. Otherwise the route is in great shape for this point in the season.
Reached the summit pyramid and started climbing the gully around 6am as the sun was rising. This was a fun class 3 scramble with some interesting moves on solid rock. Be careful about knocking down loose rocks. It’s easy to get pulled too far right onto the SE ridge route, but if trying to follow the gully, stick to climber’s left. There are 2 options near the top to summit - a steeper gully on the right, or gaining the ridge on left and going around the summit block to the left. We were the first party on the summit at around 7:45am. Saw two more small parties on the way down, then a couple large, maybe guided, groups coming up around 11am.
Spent about a half hour on the summit, then made 3 rappels, with some downclimbing in between, to the bottom of the gully. The first rap anchor is skier’s left, looking back toward the route, of the summit block. There were plenty of rap anchors and the ones on skier's right were in good condition with newer webbing, cord and rap rings. On the last section on the way down we found a path through the rocks on continuous snow, although some of the moats there will likely not hold up much longer. Back at camp at 12:30pm, then hiked out the same day.
Fun trip with a great group, no crowds, and interesting climbing!
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