Much later in the hike I ended up finding a road. At this point in the hike I did not know it was there. The road is below the summit on the far left of the pic. It is right below the small snow field. The peak in the center is Bessemer. I did not have time to summit.
This was my first good view of the Mountain
This is the drainage I wanted to get a look at. Unfortunately I still do not know exactly where to come in from to enter this drainage but I have a much better idea. Seems to have some good rock potential.
Higher in that drainage, Mnt Garfield, Cascades, Middle Fork
Whoop, There it is!
View to the other side
This was a cool spot. Walk into the middle of the clump of trees and look straight down to talus
More bushwhacking
Mnt Bessemer, was not sure once I got there if I should go left or right. I ended up going around the right side but I am now fairly sure there is an approach up a gully.
I ended up hiking up and right following the talus field. I got some real nice wind there. Enough wind that if I did not sit down it kept all the bugs away. So I stood there and ate some lunch.
Cool spot, but I went left.
Which led to more of this.
Back side of Bessemer and more bushwhacking. I went above the snow field.
View of the Olympics and the lake is toward my place.
Back side of Bessemer. No published routes. The center line actually looks OK for those that like wider stuff.
This is where I saw the road. I figured it would take 20 minutes or so since it is not that far. It took a fair bit longer. Lots of brush and some creeks. This is also where I got stung. I grabbed a bush to pull myself along then heard a loud buzz followed by a zing.
Cool little fall.
Obligatory flower shot.
The CCC road and the last few miles out. Was happy to get here, the road came out much further down river than I thought I would.
Mostly this hike was not too exciting although it was taxing. There were a few moments climbing up stuff. At one point climbing up the gully behind Bessemer where I was 50 feet up or so and had pulled up on the loose block and was holding onto to creaky root where I just had to go up cuz I really did not want to reverse the last couple of moves. So I did a good under cling on the root, reached high and buried my right hand up to the wrist in duff, high stepped over a root and mantled up onto the slope above where I dead pointed to a tree. I think that was a C1 move (Cascade 1). Another time I jumped off of a ledge to a slope and my feet cut loose but I easily grabbed a bush and came to a stop right away which was my plan B. C0 (Cascade 0).
I did find quite a bit of good rock and some real good potential. Some of it requires a bit of an approach. I am happy to know what is in drainage number two. I think I can piece this together into a 5 summit day. Felt good since I did not have a map and just did dead reckoning. I had looked at a topo on Google a couple of days before so I knew more or less where stuff was. Felt real good to basically hike to the top of BeseQuartz. It is buried in the trees easy to see from up high but down low in the trees it disappears. I had to skirt around to the right but manage to pop up 30 feet from the top.
The road was a great find. I now know I can hike up Bessemer Road (who would have thought) almost right to the top of summit 4026 then to Bessemer South.
It took me a while to get to the road and once on it I was pondering if it was worth it because even though it was going down it seemed to be trending away from the Middle Fork. I was going to go just a bit further before deciding which ridge to drop down. In general the ridges seem better since they have trees and when there are a lot of big trees there is not as much under growth. Anyway I was looking up the road trying to figure out where everything was going when I noticed a white helmet. It was a serious shock, I mean what the heck was a Mnt Biker doing up here? I waved and thankfully he road my way. perhaps he was thinking the same. As soon as he rolled over I asked if the road went down to the river, no intros no nothing. Just does this go down to the river which he replied yes and proceeded to show me his track on his phone. Then we talked, and finally he came around to "where did you come from". When I explained he just looked puzzled and after a bit said he would look at a map.
The road to the CCC trail was a fair bit longer than dropping down a ridge but they were easy miles and there was no bushwhacking. I turned on the headlamp for the last 30 minutes but probably could have done it without. This was the first hike, climb whatever that I packed for the night before in quite some time. Even with that I managed to leave out the water filter.
