ebbinghaus
Member
Climbed Calamity from Flowed Lands and then continued the bushwhack over to Mt. Adams with Wonder Woman (WW) last Saturday (Oct 30th).
A very overcast day that added to the *enjoyment* of the whack!!
Left Upper Works parking lot at 6:15 made it to the Flowed Lands lean-to area by 7:50 (4.1 mi traveling at the rate of 23 min/mile).
Took off behind the 2nd lean-to off of Calamity Trail (on right as you are walking towards the FL). Not bad climb initially. Found the places where the bears like to bring campers' stuff sacks and devour the goodies.
Bushwhack to Calamity was not difficult (that came later!). Hard part was deciding when we were on top. Bushwhacking was made much more difficult by the lack of visibility. It is hard to know that the true peak is on the next notch when all you can see is the downhill in front of you, with no sign of the notch!
We tried to summit little Calamity first. I believe we did at 9:20. It had taken use 90 min to go 0.64 miles (140 min/mile).
Finding the true summit took a while. Again because we could not see more than an 1/8 of a mile in front of us, so we wandered around more than we should have. We were reluctant to leave the ridge line when we were not sure that going downhill was the right way to go to get to the true summit. Of course the GPS was pretty useless during most of this due to too many trees.
Summitted Calamity at 11:00. All of 4/10 of a mile from Little Calamity. (A record crawl of 250 min/mile!! but I believe this reflects the fact that we traveled much more than 4/10 of a mile.)
11:20 we left the summit of Calamity bearing 237 MN to col
This began a very difficulty bushwhack. Lots of the worst of everything. To make matters worse, we came down a bit further east than we had expected.
12:25 Were not expecting slides!! Followed these down as best we could. Were very steep. Apparently these lead into Hanging Spear Falls. We were way East of where we should have been.
We followed the right side of the slide down a ways. The slide was very steep.
Much trouble getting down. Many high cliffs. Were a bit of fun though. Through the fog we sited a small rise towards our right. We thought we had missed the Col somehow and that this was the beginning of Mt. Adams.
After much looking at map and compass we decided it had to be the small knoll on the SW of the Calamity Mtn. We had expected to be on the West side of this but were on the E. Side.
(Note that we had been hearing roaring water from the East. We thought this might have been the Opalescent (or Hanging Spear Falls) prolly was.)
We angled so as to traverse around this knoll on its S side. Did so and reached a large blowdown where we had expected a wide-opened flat space in the Col. Took the GPS reading as per below:
Actual GPS reading: N 44° 05.660' ; W 074° 00.794'
We were very close to the planned GPS reading. It was more to our N.
Pre--planned GPS reading: N 44° 05.795; W 74° 00.866
Note that the col was approx 6/10 of a mile from summit of Calamity. I forgot to write down the time here..
We propose renaming Mt Adams as Mt. Blowdown. There was more blowdown from the col to the summit of Mt Adams than I have ever seen. It was made more interesting by the fact that the blowdown was in small plateaus between a series of 20-30 ft cliffs.
2:20 Took another GPS reading at the top of one of the cliffs before venturing into more blowdown.
Showed us to be about 2" (min) from col; about 6" (min) from Mt. Adams. This translates into about 6/10 of a mile from the col. Our rate of progress since leaving Calamity was 211 min/mile.
Followed 233 MN to Mt. Adams from Col
Very, very hard work. We were further SE than we had expected to be. Prolly was alright, but we climbed up to top of ridge so as to be on top & on bearing.
Not sure if this was the best decision as the blowdown and spruce were heavy along the ridge. Also, it turned out that there were many small knolls along the ridge on the way to Mt. Adams.
We kept looking for the firetower and kept being disappointed.
4:40 Found the fire tower. We were almost under it before we saw it. The last bit had taken use 230 min/mile.
All total it had been 8 hr and 50 min since we had left the lean-to at the FL. In this time we had traversed 2.4 map miles. WW led the way most of the time, though even she was getting tired and a little grumpy during the last part of the trek.
Of course, it was foggy and we were in the fog/clouds.
Ran down Mt. Adams, back across bridge, and up the road to Upper Works. Traveled these last 2.8 miles in 70 min (25 min/mile) to return to car in the darkness (last Sat of EDT) at 6:20.
I wouldn't mind finding those slides. Though they did seem too steep to climb down. Maybe okay to climb up in very dry conditions.
A very overcast day that added to the *enjoyment* of the whack!!
Left Upper Works parking lot at 6:15 made it to the Flowed Lands lean-to area by 7:50 (4.1 mi traveling at the rate of 23 min/mile).
Took off behind the 2nd lean-to off of Calamity Trail (on right as you are walking towards the FL). Not bad climb initially. Found the places where the bears like to bring campers' stuff sacks and devour the goodies.
Bushwhack to Calamity was not difficult (that came later!). Hard part was deciding when we were on top. Bushwhacking was made much more difficult by the lack of visibility. It is hard to know that the true peak is on the next notch when all you can see is the downhill in front of you, with no sign of the notch!
We tried to summit little Calamity first. I believe we did at 9:20. It had taken use 90 min to go 0.64 miles (140 min/mile).
Finding the true summit took a while. Again because we could not see more than an 1/8 of a mile in front of us, so we wandered around more than we should have. We were reluctant to leave the ridge line when we were not sure that going downhill was the right way to go to get to the true summit. Of course the GPS was pretty useless during most of this due to too many trees.
Summitted Calamity at 11:00. All of 4/10 of a mile from Little Calamity. (A record crawl of 250 min/mile!! but I believe this reflects the fact that we traveled much more than 4/10 of a mile.)
11:20 we left the summit of Calamity bearing 237 MN to col
This began a very difficulty bushwhack. Lots of the worst of everything. To make matters worse, we came down a bit further east than we had expected.
12:25 Were not expecting slides!! Followed these down as best we could. Were very steep. Apparently these lead into Hanging Spear Falls. We were way East of where we should have been.
We followed the right side of the slide down a ways. The slide was very steep.
Much trouble getting down. Many high cliffs. Were a bit of fun though. Through the fog we sited a small rise towards our right. We thought we had missed the Col somehow and that this was the beginning of Mt. Adams.
After much looking at map and compass we decided it had to be the small knoll on the SW of the Calamity Mtn. We had expected to be on the West side of this but were on the E. Side.
(Note that we had been hearing roaring water from the East. We thought this might have been the Opalescent (or Hanging Spear Falls) prolly was.)
We angled so as to traverse around this knoll on its S side. Did so and reached a large blowdown where we had expected a wide-opened flat space in the Col. Took the GPS reading as per below:
Actual GPS reading: N 44° 05.660' ; W 074° 00.794'
We were very close to the planned GPS reading. It was more to our N.
Pre--planned GPS reading: N 44° 05.795; W 74° 00.866
Note that the col was approx 6/10 of a mile from summit of Calamity. I forgot to write down the time here..
We propose renaming Mt Adams as Mt. Blowdown. There was more blowdown from the col to the summit of Mt Adams than I have ever seen. It was made more interesting by the fact that the blowdown was in small plateaus between a series of 20-30 ft cliffs.
2:20 Took another GPS reading at the top of one of the cliffs before venturing into more blowdown.
Showed us to be about 2" (min) from col; about 6" (min) from Mt. Adams. This translates into about 6/10 of a mile from the col. Our rate of progress since leaving Calamity was 211 min/mile.
Followed 233 MN to Mt. Adams from Col
Very, very hard work. We were further SE than we had expected to be. Prolly was alright, but we climbed up to top of ridge so as to be on top & on bearing.
Not sure if this was the best decision as the blowdown and spruce were heavy along the ridge. Also, it turned out that there were many small knolls along the ridge on the way to Mt. Adams.
We kept looking for the firetower and kept being disappointed.
4:40 Found the fire tower. We were almost under it before we saw it. The last bit had taken use 230 min/mile.
All total it had been 8 hr and 50 min since we had left the lean-to at the FL. In this time we had traversed 2.4 map miles. WW led the way most of the time, though even she was getting tired and a little grumpy during the last part of the trek.
Of course, it was foggy and we were in the fog/clouds.
Ran down Mt. Adams, back across bridge, and up the road to Upper Works. Traveled these last 2.8 miles in 70 min (25 min/mile) to return to car in the darkness (last Sat of EDT) at 6:20.
I wouldn't mind finding those slides. Though they did seem too steep to climb down. Maybe okay to climb up in very dry conditions.
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