Napeequa Traverse

Friday evening, Wyatt and I departed Seattle at roughly 8:20 PM and made it to the White River Trailhead at 11PM where we had a very comfortable night in the back of the Prius which is surprisingly well suited for trailhead camping. With the front seats pushed forward, both Wyatt and I who are about 6ft can stretch out comfortably.

Saturday morning we departed the trailhead at 6:30 after waking up at 5:50. Wyatt and I had some disagreement over whether to say “depart by 6:15” if you intend to depart at 6:25 or whether to just say “depart at 6:25”. Wyatt is of the perspective that a rigid time is stressful so it is better to set a loose earlier time with the expectation that you will miss the earlier time by a predictable margin, in this case 10 minutes. However, I countered that it is stressful to miss a deadline you set for yourself. We ultimately concluded to set different departure times. Wyatt would plan to leave at 6:15 while I would plan to leave at 6:25. In reality we both departed in tandem at 6:30.

The first nine miles up White River and then up Boulder Creek went quickly. Our rate of travel slowed on the climb up to Clark Peak, but we still submitted at 1PM.

Wyatt on the summit of Clark Peak.

Looking down into the Napeequa valley from Clark Peak.

At this point, we had completed the majority of distance and mileage for the day. Clark provided a beautiful and clear view towards Glacier Peak. We then proceeded on to Luahna peak which we submitted at 3 PM.

The climb to the summit of Luahna peak was very chossy.

From there the day started to get challenging and slow. The descent down Luahna was slow with a bunch of loose rocks acting like ball bearings on top of larger rocks. In retrospect this section would have been a good use case for a helmet. We made it to the top of Butterfly glacier by about 4:30PM.

The descent down the glacier was pretty straightforward and very dramatic. Much easier walking then the loose rock and because the glacier was mostly blue ice Wyatt was confident (and I was therefore confident by proxy) that we would see all the crevasses. We made it to the toe of the glacier by perhaps 5:15PM, but then the remaining descent down to the Napeequa River was very slow going. There was tons of loose rock, reasonably steep slopes, and a fair number of creeks to make the rock wet and a subset of the wet rock was slippery. In one notable example we were descending down a creek bed and there was a large gently sloped wet rock. Wyatt said ‘it’s not slippery should be fine to walk down it!’ Which was a funny statement because I’ve never heard someone yell to warn about a wet rock being not slippery. In any event, we made it to the valley bottom as we were losing light and made the east decision to camp here rather than to try to press on further to our original campsite we were targeting beneath hoof peak. So we pitched Wyatt’s Big Agnes tent and ate dinner outside. I ate three packets of Beef Pho with three packets of Tuna mixed in. Wyatt shared a packet of hot chocolate with me for dessert.

Saturday night I slept quite well until about 4 AM when the wind picked up and it began to snow somewhat heavily on the tent. After waking up briefly though, I turned over and fell back asleep. We had originally planned to climb up toward Hoof Peak for sunrise. But at 6AM the snow and cloud layer convinced us to stay in the tent a bit longer. I fell asleep for another 30 minutes while Wyatt read things on his phone (Wyatt tells me he does not particularly enjoy sleeping and therefore tries to minimize it which is a very foreign concept to me). At 6:30 we packed up our gear and tent. As I was shouldering my backpack to depart, Wyatt pulled a stove out. “You’re not going to cook, are you?” I ask him, incredulous that anyone would pick 6:50 AM in the shade with snow on the ground as the right time to sit around and eat breakfast. Wyatt however was going to cook. I proposed my alternate vision (that we start walking and stop to eat breakfast once we got some sunlight) but Wyatt was not presumed. He argued that we had a nice spot at the moment and that his stuff was already out. Both those lines of reasoning seemed a little thin to me, but I went on board and also made oats.

Our camp spot in the morning light.

Breakfast complete we decided to abort on our original plan to walk towards Hoof Peak and then on to high pass, and instead climbed up and traversed over towards Butterfly Butte due to the snow and wind. This shortened route was notable and also provided some very beautiful views of larches and the glaciers on the sides of Clark and Luahna, the peaks we had climbed the previous day.

The larch were just beginning to turn yellow.

There was a reasonably good foot path down from Butterfly Butte and from there had a reasonably good trail all the way back to the car.

Looking back towards the iconic Napeequa valley.

Crossing back over the pass towards Boulder Creek was beautiful terrain and also would have been very photogenic had we had a touch more sun. As it was, compared to the slow miles of the previous day the easy miles back to the car were appreciated. We made it back to the Prius at about 4 PM.

At the trailhead we chatted with a nice guy from the forest service who was instructed by his boss to go explore in the high country. He had attempted to follow a similar route to what we had done, but turned around because he was solo and not exactly sure if the route he was following was legitimate. Wyatt talked him through our route while I went back to the car to put sandals on.

On the way back to Seattle, we stopped at a nice Vietanamese restaurant in Monroe on the drive home and arrived home in good order at about 8 PM. All and all a successful weekend trip.