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A trip to Upper Slate Lake was something I was looking forward to for a couple of years.  Finally, I got the opportunity to go.  I could have easily made the trip solo but I didn’t want to attempt these difficult peaks solo.  So, Ken came along for this trip.  We originally planned this trip for four days but, because of an Ultimate tournament I was involved in, I was really tired and postponed the trip one day.  I figured we could still get in the peaks that I wanted to do, there just wouldn’t be enough time for rest.  Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate with us at all this trip.  It was still awesome though.

All the close access points to the Slate Lake area are closed by private property.  So, the shortest way into Upper Slate Lake is about 11 miles…one way.  The trail also undulates quite a bit, and after we’d gained over a thousand feet, we ended up loosing all of it (and more) by the time we turned off from the Gore Range trail onto the Slate Lake trail.  The Slate Lake trail is unmarked but is a western branch at an old cabin along the Gore Range trail.
 
After branching off, the trail heads west through grassy aspen fields.  At this point you can see the two drainages, one for the south branch and one for the main branch of Slate Creek.  Slate Lake sits on the edge of the southern branch and Upper Slate Lake is a little over a mile past Slate Lake in the northern branch.  It’s almost directly under Peak “L”.  Along the way, we had views of an impressive lettered peak, Peak “T”, which rose up like a spearhead along the ridge separating the two branches of the creek.  As the trail moves along the base of the mountains, it winds way around to provide the most gentle ascent to Slate Lake.  The trail is all but gentle though.  It gets pretty rough and steep but is, at least, easy to follow the entire time.  Right after a waterfall is the lake.  We stopped at Slate Lake for a few minutes then headed up to Upper Slate Lake. 

The trail to the upper lake is very rough too.  It took us a little over an hour to arrive.  We got our first view of the rows of peaks around the valley which were often cloud covered.  These were some really impressive looking mountains.
 
I thought about climbing a close peak this afternoon but the weather wasn’t cooperating at all.  It kept raining off and on.  Actually, this was to be a pattern that repeated throughout the entire trip.  We only got one window of opportunity to climb but that too was cut short.   Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves around campsite, occasionally retreating to the tent when the rain would come.  We went to bed with it raining and woke up occasionally to rain.  I woke up around six or so and still heard rain and realized that climbing might not work out for us.  Sure enough, the peaks were completely socked in when we got up around seven.  We waited around and there seemed to be some clearing around 10 am.  So, we packed up and headed to “South America Lake”, so-called because of it’s near perfect resemblance of the continent.  It took us well over an hour, maybe over an hour and a half to arrive at the lake.  The bushwacking was difficult and we came to realize that the best policy is, in short, to stay as low as you can for as long as you can.  The higher ground is so cliffy that you’ll spend lots of time trying to get around them.  The easiest ground is definitely the low ground along the tarns and marshes.

As we started up Peak “Q”, the clouds had moved in again.  Rain was definitely threatening but we decided to go on until we had a definite sign to turn around.  The first part of Peak “Q” involved climbing up a small gully into the upper basin on the peak.  There was still a good amount of snow up in here.  Our plan was to head almost to the ridge and then turn right along a long ramp system that would lead us to just under the summit.  The lower part of the basin consists mostly of large blocks of talus.  The slopes of the peak are pretty solid and are mixed with steep grass and large blocks.

We heard jets from time to time thinking it was initially thunder.  The clouds did not improve and all and were darkening.  We suspected that it was indeed going to rain on us and had a decision to make if we were going to start climbing anything that was 4th class or harder.  Fortunately, everything so far was only 2nd and 3rd class.  When we were still about 800 feet below the summit, however, it happened:  the rain started.  Then it increased.  It soaked all the rocks and everything became slick.  Fortunately, the descent wasn’t hard; but it was frustrating to know that we wouldn’t be able to climb today.
 
The rain lasted for quite a while.  We got back down to “South America Lake” as the rain was beginning to abate.  The sun came out a little bit too and the steep rocky faces on the peaks were all glistening.  We didn’t turn around though and head back, and that was a good thing because the rain came again, this time with hail and a lot harder.  It was a bit of an ordeal to get back to the tent because we ended up going down the opposite side of the drainage and having more troubles with cliffs.  This part wasn’t too fun in the hail!  Finally we made it back.  It continued to rain off and on throughout the day although we were granted a reprieve during the evening.  We both were awakened that night by the biggest rainstorm yet.  Oh well, maybe next time.  The bad thing was that the following morning was absolutely beautiful!  But, we had to head back down.  The good news was that as we were heading down, the clouds moved in again and as we were looking back up the Slate drainage from the Gore Range trail, we saw that the peaks were getting hammered yet again by the monsoon.  It was not meant to be this time.

Day 4:  Mount Valhalla (13,180), Grand Traverse Peak (13,041), and the hike out

I came out of sleep without opening my eyes and I heard a sound that I had heard before.  It sounded like horses walking around.  I knew what it was but I fell back asleep and dozed for a while.  I woke up again shortly and without moving opened my eyes and saw several goats around us.  I whispered at Pat not to move, but to open his eyes and look at all the goats around us.  It was pretty neat.  Ruth Ann woke up right away and we all three lay there looking at the goats who were grazing around us.  There were four adults and three kids.  As we stirred, the goats got spooked and headed out.  We watched them for a while…they appeared to be heading up to Snow Pass.

Before attempting to climb Mount Valhalla, which appeared to be a long way along it’s northwest ridge, we decided to go back to the bluff behind the cabin and see if we saw any wildlife.  The cabin was probably a good quarter mile from where we camped.  We waited by the bluff for a few minutes looking then spotted a deer who was still bedded down in the forest.  We watched if for a while then it got up and was joined by at least two more deer.  We headed back to camp to get ready for the climb when we spotted a male goat inspecting things around our campsite.  Our approaching scared him off and we got ready, carrying the usual lightweight load, and headed up.

The beginning of the climb followed the lake to it’s northwestern edge then began a steep climb up a grassy slope to the Mount Valhalla/Grand Traverse saddle.  Unfortunately, about 3/4ths the way up, Pat broke his walking stick which he had humorously christened “Little Betty”.  He’d even carved his name and some more stuff into it.  Well, we convinced him to hold on to the part that remained.  Anyway,  Grand Traverse was much closer to us but we had planned on heading to Mount Valhalla so we began following the ridge.  Below us, we had earlier spotted the mountain goat.  He’d was moving all around Deluge Lake and as soon as we left the campsite, he returned to to complete his investigation.

The first part of the ridge wasn’t very hard at all.  The left-hand side of the ridge was very steep and pure rock and talus.  At the saddle there was a gigantic permanent snowfield.  We stayed mostly on the right-hand side which was mostly grassy ledges.
 
As the ridge turned more northward, it became much more difficult.  We had to stay on the right-hand side and work pretty hard at some good route-finding to find the easiest and safest route.  This part of the ridge was very slow going but the difficulty never exceeded 3rd class.  We did have to cross a few steep and loose gullies.  At one point, we squeezed through a notch that was bordered with a large rock that must have had a ton of quartz in it.  Below this rock was a very smooth wall with bright yellow lichen on it.  This landmark became one of the key landmarks for us.  Beyond this notch, we crossed another gully, took a break at another small notch on a grassy rock rib, then headed up to meet the ridge which now looked a lot easier again.  Once we got up on the ridge we were able to traverse at or near the top, past another major gendarme to the base of the final pitch to the summit.
 
The final pitch to the summit is a short 3rd class ridge then another short talus scramble to the top.  The summit of the mountain is actually a long ridge with the eastern part appearing to be the true summit.  As usual, there was no summit register up here.  We set up the cameras and took our summit shot again.  We rested on the summit.  I was facing west and Ruth Ann and Pat were facing east.  Suddenly I noticed a mountain goat appear on the western end of the summit.  Ruth Ann and Pat turned around slowly and we grabbed our cameras.  As we were getting our cameras ready, another goat appeared, then another.  It appeared to be the same family of goats that we’d seen earlier in the morning.  They were very skittish; they started to run off as we stood up.  But upon sitting down, they came back up on the summit but never came any closer.

We needed to get back down because we had decided to attempt a climb of Grand Traverse too since it was so close.  As we moved towards the goats, they scampered down the mountain and put a lot of distance between us very quickly.

On the way down, we decided to follow the top of the ridge as long as we could.  The top of the ridge is pretty tough.  It’s solid but fairly exposed 3rd class climbing.  Before we encountered any sustained 4th class climbing, we dropped back down to the safe side of the ridge and immediately found our quartz landmark and followed our original route back the rest of the way.

Back at the saddle, we looked up at Grand Traverse, not far away, and decided to try to climb it before the weather got any nastier than it already was.  Grand Traverse was nothing more than a 2nd class ridge climb from this side.
 
We started climbing quickly.  There were some nasty looking clouds south of Grand Traverse Peak and it was clear behind us.  As we climbed higher though, we heard distant thunder.  We continued on but unfortunately the clouds thickened and darkened.  It started to hail and rain lightly.  A mere 200 feet below the top we heard a closer clap of thunder.  My best judgment told me that we’d better descend.  So, I gave the word and we headed down rapidly.  This was definitely the smart choice.  Back near the saddle, a very loud clap of thunder hit and we zoomed down the rest of the way.  The rain had picked up and was coming down very hard now.  Unfortunately, because of the frost from the previous night, our stuff was out drying in the sun.  Well, not anymore, it was in the process of being doused.  Pat went down first since he was in front and ran back to the camp to throw all of our stuff into the tent while I stayed back with Ruth Ann.  When Ruth Ann and I got back, Pat had moved everything inside the tent and we stripped off our wet clothing and jumped inside.  While we waited, we made some hummus (by adding water to the mix) and had it with some crackers.  

The only thing that could prevent us from having to hike out with heavy wet gear was for the rain to stop and the sun to come out which it did about fifteen minutes later.  We spread everything out to dry.  While we were about our task, we heard a loud “CRACK!”.  I though someone had fired a shot near the lake or some sort of explosive had gone off.  We whirled around to see a huge chunk of snow that had broken off and fallen into the lake.  I’d never seen anything like that before; it was pretty neat.

After maybe an hour and a half, most of the stuff had dried pretty well.  We started to organize it again for the hike down.
 
We knew the hike down the Deluge Lake trail was going to be steep but I don’t think we expected it to be as steep as it was.  It was a very pleasant trail to begin with passing through thick green evergreen forests and deep green meadows.  There weren’t nearly as many flowers up here though as on the opposite side of Snow Pass.  A little further below, the trail broke away from the trail.  It started ascending and ascended for a long time before finally leveling off.  We were certainly building up for a steep descent.  Then it began.  More than two miles and two thousand feet.  This would be an extremely difficult trail to ascend with a pack on.  I’m glad that we had picked this direction.  

To add insult to injury, the trail really goes farther down it needs to and we found ourselves taking a sharp left-hand turn back to the trailhead that involved a good bit of uphill.  By this time we were really tired but we paused to take an “after” picture at the same spot that we took the “before” picture four days earlier.
 
We were back at the car safe and sound after four great days in the wilderness.  It had rained on us a lot but, in my opinion, that really enhanced the trip.  We saw all sorts of natural wonders.  This was undoubtedly my favorite trip of all time and I’d highly recommend it to anyone.  Now, I’m looking forward to trying many similar trips to this one.