Thunderheads line the horizon looking west from Bacon Peak

Date: May 21-22, 2022

Plan: A sunset view into the heart of the North Cascades and the Pickets
Parked: Before the blowdown on Bacon Creek Road
Elevation Gain: ~9,000 ft
Distance: 19 miles roundtrip
Total Time: ~30 hours (15 hours moving)
Sun Horizon Collisions: 2 (An electric sunset and a cloudless morning)
Summary: Exhaustion and sunset thunderheads make a snowy summit of Bacon Peak in the North Cascades even sweeter.

In answer to the question below, YES, but I guess I’m supposed to save that for the end.

Is Bacon Really That Good?

There’s a whole lot of hype around bacon, but as a comedian (I think on Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me) once said, "it’s good, but not good enough to base your whole personality around it." Personally, as someone who embraces the lives of both a foodie and a human garbage disposal, I’ll eat it, but have yet to be truly impressed. On the other hand, I think the hype behind Bacon Peak could be real. A mid-elevation glaciated peak in a forgotten and trailless corner of North Cascades National Park, Bacon Peak is renowned for isolation, beauty, and adversity. And fortunately, it (mostly) doesn’t come with the climate change/vegetarian ethical quandary of its popular and mistreated swine homonym. I am not a vegetarian. Or a vegan or gluten free or allergenic or any other sort of food restriction. But considering the intelligence of pigs and the fact most are raised within a few feet of cage before they're killed for meat, if there was an animal we eat which mother nature might fights us for, it would probably be bacon.

The Roadwhack

My attempt on Bacon Peak started from an unusual approach for summer, but pretty standard for the snowy months. Bacon Creek Road on the south side of the massif gets within about 4 miles of the peak’s broad summit, but it also only reaches about 700’ of elevation. Good for people who don’t want to drive in the snow, bad for people who don’t like to climb lots of extra vert. A couple years ago a logging road zigzagged partly up the slopes, but a couple mega winter storms in the last few years have attempted to pave the road with fallen trees. With no forest service work out here anymore, the government has left it up to private individuals to maintain this dissolving strand of society, which is how I found my headlights facing a woody impasse late last night. I figured no one else would be schwacking up the road this weekend so after clearing enough space for me to turn around my car I settled down for the night.

In late May light comes early to the North Cascades. Down in the valleys the sun won’t show up for many hours, but by 5 a.m. the sky is almost fully light. My gear is packed and hefted onto my back just before 6 a.m. as I set off ("Oh wait! Can’t forget the tent! I knew my backpack didn’t have nearly enough heft. Okay, now we’re ready") down the road. It’s easy to see why the road was only cleared to where I parked my car. A few trees down quickly transitions into a woody KerPlunk maze with boulders perched precariously on hundreds of sticky trees. I make it a couple hundred meters before I realize I’ve left my camera on the top of my car and hurdle back through the maze to retrieve the only truly essential item for my trip.

With the car behind me it’s tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, re-heft backpack, tree, tree, tree, tree, and so on. Most of the trees are small enough to step over but high stepping for half a mile does eventually get tiring. The road becomes clearer and the down tree frequency decreases as I hit the mile mark and turn to take the bridge over Bacon Creek. I figure I’ve passed the worst of the road bushwhacking, but on the other side of the creek I begin to see orange flagging. I can’t imagine how terrible you must be at navigation to lose an entire road but then I encounter the Big Kids Blowdown™ section. If the earlier trees were toothpick sized, these are sequoia sized. Massive giants confront me—trunks thicker than I am tall, even when lying uprooted, shattered on the ground.

"Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to follow the path...It looks like the route of least resistance leads this way, so I’ll just…hmmm…maybe I can walk along this wide tree…is that the road over there???"

In this sort of scenario I’ve found it’s easiest to walk along the trunks, but that only gets you so far before you have to hop to the next one. During the transition period hopping from trunk to trunk my balance beam skills are tested to their limit. I mean I only fall like three times, my camera slamming into the thick knotty wood, thankfully protected by a new, thin, Neoprene sleeve. The deadfall becomes thicker and more difficult to cross as I wander in and out of the forest graveyard before glancing at my GPS and realizing I’ve wandered a couple hundred meters from the "road." Then it’s more bushwhacking before I pass through a final bramble patch and a gloriously unencumbered path appears where I can make hundred meter sprints before having to navigate more downed trees. So the verdict must be that I’m "truly terrible at navigation."

The Bushwhack

Eventually I switchback up to where the real bushwhack begins. A small orange flag marks the turn into the forest and I plunge into the trees. At first the travel is simple. Whoever flagged this route seems to have decided there’s no such thing as too much flagging. Every other tree in a wide swath up the slope has a small fluttering orange piece of ribbon. I have my GPS route downloaded, but surely no one can get lost in this confetti atmosphere? Once again I’m proved incorrect as a little too much adherence to my GPS track causes me to lose the flagging and I wander onto some wet mossy ledges.

Some early forest views of the Picket area

In the last few years I’ve done enough scrambling to realize that scrambling is not all that difficult, especially if it stays in the class 3 and low class 4 range. Scrambling with an overnight backpack is a different matter. These ledges are not particularly consequential but the backpack imbalances me just enough that what would be simple class 3 feels much more risky as I deathgrip roots and small trees to prevent the slow turtle backwards. The brush thickens and more small cliffs to work around present themselves. Once again I learn:

Bushwhacking: not too bad trail running with enough of my body covered

Bushwhacking: heinous with a winter pack.

Every little branch grabs any chunk of gear not flush with the pack and tries to tear it away from me. No matter how low I drop towards the ground to pass under a tree, my backpack will get stuck. Even if the trunk is four feet off the ground and I grind your body into the soil, my bag still catches the log overhead.

So this is the unpleasant part of the climb. Branches in the face, sweat pouring down my legs and back, ice axe stuck on a branch ten meters behind me; it all gets a little tiring, but near 3,400’ the grade lessens, the forest opens and snow suddenly appears. Thank god for snow covered brush! With a quick transition to snowshoes I’m on basically an escalator up the slope until I have to backtrack because the forest has stolen my sunglasses. Redoing the hundred feet of gain is worth it to prevent permanent snow blindness.

The upper part of the Amphitheater of a Thousand Avalanches. In black and white for even more drama.

The SnowWhack

At 4,000’ I make it to the gently sloped saddle that leads (slowly) up to Peak 4,800 (aka Hot Wire or Spark Plug). It’s 6 miles and more than 5.5 hours in, way longer than I thought it would take to reach this point. Views abound with the Pickets guarding the east, and the southern section of NCNP/Glacier Peak Wilderness stretching all the way to the south. However it’s the Amphitheater of a Thousand Avalanches which really catches my eye. I knew this was going to be the danger crux of the climb, but this basin coming off of Electric Butte and the high alpine of the Bacon Massif appears somewhat stable. After a short rest I begin the couple hundred foot descent to the basin when a loud rumble perks up my ears. In front of me a chunk of cornice breaks and streams off the near vertical slope. It wouldn’t pose any risk to me, but it gives me pause and when two more smaller slides crash into the basin I decide it’s a good idea to wait for stabler snow.

For three hours I wait at the summit as slides continue to tumble down. None of them are too large and the runout is fine, but I still wouldn’t want to be caught under a falling river of snow. As always, the crash of snow and ice is surprisingly loud. Like the amplification of the smallest applause after each act, the basin turns even the tiniest slide into a thunderous crash that intimidates. The current forecast is for thunderstorms and clouds to move in so I hope by waiting until the early afternoon I can minimize risk. The worse case scenario is that I hang out in the basin all night (it has a pretty spectacular view already), and if I’m feeling good I make the summit push early the next morning.

Finally the sun dips behind a cloud and the crashes stop. It’s not particularly confidence inspiring, but the risk seems low enough that I’m willing to give it a chance. If I move fast enough through the basin, the avalanches can’t get me, right? Off of Peak 4,800 there’s a steep snow finger to descend and then it’s sloshing through the thick, wet, unconsolidated avalanche debris. I’m in snowshoes, but they’re really only moderately helpful as I hit the low point and start to ascend the gully that leads up onto the Diobsud Creek Glacier. The base of the gully is the most dangerous part. 2,000’ of avalanchy slopes loom overhead as I "quickly" wallow up the steep snow. I’m already pretty tired, but a "can’t stop, won’t stop" mentality pushes me onwards and up 1,500’ in a mile. As I climb, the overhead danger slowly lessons until I’ve reached 6,000’ and the base of the glacier. A wide snowy expanse opens up before me as thunderheads dance everywhere except overhead.

Electric Butte (and it’s amphitheater) don’t look quite as threatening from above

The FinalAscentWhack

It’s only 2 miles and less than a thousand feet to the summit, but I am exhausted. As I begin the final climb it’s hard to remember a time I was more tired. The slope is gentle, but I’m so fatigued I can only climb continuously for about ten or twenty feet before I need to take a break to lean on my poles. I begin to count out my steps. The goal is to reach fifty before stopping. Sometimes that falls to 37 or 26 before I stop for another break. Fortunately the North Cascade views provide some distractions. Everything is snow covered since none of the spring melt has started in earnest yet. Rocky spires retain caps of white snow while newly exposed lakes caused by the recession of the glacier lay deeply buried underneath the winter snowpack. The temperature oscillates between too warm and too cold as thunderheads block the sun and then highlight everything in golden light.

One step. Another step. One segment. Another segment. And I’m on the last climb! And I’ve dropped my pack at the saddle! And I’m on the summit…oh, wait…the higher peak is that one over there. Back to the bag. Another hundred meters of climbing and then I’m on the walk-up summit of this broad 7,000’ peak. It has taken everything I’ve got, but just after 6:30 I’m standing on the summit in perfect conditions surrounded by dozens of miles of wilderness. It truly is an unforgettable experience.

The Picket Range in all it’s late afternoon glory!

Once I’ve absorbed as much of the view as possible without freezing I have to prepare for an evening that’s much closer than I originally planned. There’s nothing I want to do more than tear into a pre-made meal and sink into bed. This is the hard bit of solo camping. You have to do everything yourself. There’s no divvying up of tasks, no one to bring you coffee in your sleeping bag, and no one to split the weight of the gear. After a few minutes I have the tent set up and I decide I just have to enter the tent for a moment to change into warmer clothes. This is almost a mistake. Once I’m in there, no way in hell do I want to leave the comfort of the sleeping bag.

The tent was way too enticing for me in my partially delirious state

"Just a half hour, right?
I’ll be fine..If I don’t get out of the tent for sunset, know one will really care.
I could just stay in here all night…"

These are dangerous thoughts, especially considering the whole reason I climbed up here was to witness a spectacular sunset. The clock ticks and I’m still in the tent, but as I sip water and my sleeping bag warms me I start to feel a little better. My light, throbbing headache lessons and I’m motivated to pop out. Emerging from the tent a quarter past eight, the light is spectacular. Thunderstorms, the strongest all year, are pulsating to my west and east and dropping down sheets of virga that are picking up the late evening light. For some reason I decide I must heat up water and make dinner simultaneously while I watch the sunset. What can I say, my brain was still having crazy ideas. In one sense this allows me to feel better quicker, but sunset photo taking is a full time job and with dinner thrown in there it becomes multitasking chaos.

Supposedly this was a quite strong thunderstorm (seen over Mount Watson), but Bacon itself seemed to avoid all the severe weather

The ViewWhack

Perhaps the most spectacular view is towards Mount Blum and the Pickets. They are partially enmeshed in clouds, but the last light strikes their snow covered slopes turning them gold. At sunset light defies gravity, sliding upwards and painting the bottom of the thunderclouds pink and purple. Soon the daytime heating fades and the thunderheads begin to dissolve. Stars begin to pop and I feel great, running around from scene to scene, composing the night, but eventually I must retire. I want to wake up for sunrise and just two hours ago I was ready to collapse in my bed for the whole night. The Milky Way calls for me to shoot it, but I decide it’s not worth it. Maybe another night. Maybe another adventure.

Only at blue hour did the Pickets really emerge

I wasn’t going to stay up for the Milky Way this night

Night is warm and windless, even on the summit of one of the stormiest peaks of the Cascades. Day dawns without a cloud in the sky. It’s been almost two months since the last consecutive days of nice weather so I’m glad I get to spend it in the alpine. A quarter moon hangs in the south as pink alpenglow lights up a Mount Rainier 150 miles distant. Our glowing orb peaks through the impossibly jagged summits of the Pickets bringing warmth and clarity to a new day. I’m not sure how many people have spent the night on this summit, but it’s probably less than a dozen. These are the trips I search for. I return to bed to get a couple hours more sleep and to wait for the snow to soften before making a quick breakfast (unfortunately Bacon was only on the menu visually and not gastronomically) and heading down.

The DescentWhack

The discrepancy between the effort required for the first part of the descent of a new day and the final ascent of the day previous could not be more stark. Where yesterday I drug myself up the final slope to the summit, today I bound down the glacier free and floating. Before I leave this alpine wonderland I take a final ascent. I simply can’t visit Bacon Peak without ascending the nearby creatively named Canadian Bacon. With ideal snow conditions the climb is trivial and opens a new view to the northeast which had been somewhat obscured by Bacon’s sub summits. I see the snow covered Berdeen Lake—one of my dream locations that I’ve been saving for a late summer trip for some number of years now. The post glacial terrain on the slopes below me is reportedly stunning in the summer, but for now it lies buried under twenty feet of ice and snow.

Minutes later I’m back at my backpack and shortly thereafter I’ve passed through a remarkably quiet Amphitheater of a Thousand Avalanches. There are new slides covering my tracks from yesterday so I was right to be risk averse, but it’s only after I stump up Peak 4,800’ that Electric Butte awakens and the avalanches recommence. I’m now almost out of danger and just have the bushwhack to worry about. I wasn’t thrilled with the schwack from the previous day so I look at my slope angle map and shift slightly south to take a more gentle dry creek bed. Here there are more spiky plants, but travel is less restricted. I make good time until I spot some flagging and trend north into the more open forest, navigating the last few cliff bands.

This lake didn’t used to be here, but the glacier has retreated enough that it’s quite large

Yes, Bacon Peak Is Really that Good.

I emerge onto the forest road and with wisdom from the previous day the blowdown navigation is a breeze. An hour later I’m back to my trusty steed and trundling down Bacon Creek Road. It’s hard to describe the beauty of this trip in words (thank god for photos). The ascent was more of a beast than I expected, but it was clearly worth it. One day I will return to this area on skis, which may not make the ascent any easier, but it will (probably) be more fun. And when that happens perhaps I’ll even bring some bacon to celebrate with on the summit.