Leroy Creek High Route, Seven Fingered Jack — Friday, Oct. 21, 2005

Central Cascades

For the second year in a row Seven Fingered Jack has given me reason to, well, reciprocate in a fingered sort of way. Last year I was trying to complete Maude and 7FJ on the same day and just ran out of time. This trip, we did fairly well on time but the loose scree just wore us down and sapped our will. Despite beautiful weather (and of course good visibility) we were perhaps a little high on the traverse and failed to go far enough northward to espy the true summit and got suckered in by a gully where what little there was of a trampled route apparently ended. By the time we discovered the error of our ways we were in no mood to do any more wallowing up the ugly scree and loose slabs. A view from one of Jack's less prominently extended fingers would do. This mountain is considerably looser than Maude (at least by its S shoulder), a helmet and very small party sizes are good ideas here, the tales of its chossiness were no exaggeration. I'm not sure I have the will to go back and make up the 50 vertical feet that separated us from a true summit. A fair number of hunters populated the lower reaches of the Phelps valley prior to the Wilderness line. But other than hunters down low we saw only one other party the whole day, who were also drawn mystically towards this very same bad gully on 7FJ. Made upper Leroy in less than 2.5 hours but the remainder from there took 3. Larches in Leroy were what you'd call 'past prime' but they had left a veritable carpet of their needles on the heather and meadow, and that was quite spectacular too. Just small patches of snow on the 7FJ route but a fair accumulation on the shady N faces of Maude and Chiwawa. On way back down the valley trail in the twilight, saw an elk on the trail coming up towards us in distance that was so big I thought it was a horse, until it turned sidewise and bolted off the trail and I saw its profile. (A bull that had already lost the antlers? Seemed real big for elk cow.) Sadly, forgot the camera on this trip. Views of Glacier Pk were spectacular, you'll just have to take my word on that :-)