Rapelling is spectacular, but may be the safest method of descent. 



Mt. Shuksan Climb 



by Patricia Spring . . . photographs by Bob and Ira Spring 



PERHAPS a climb up Mt. Shuksan wouldn't rate a footnote in 

 the history of mountaineering but it has an excitement all its 

 own. On our first night out, 4,000 feet up, on the shores of Lake 

 Anne, the thunder of ice falling off the edge of upper Curtis 

 Glacier was like a freight train going through camp. 



We started without any illusions that this would be an Everest- 

 like affair, a great assault on some heaven-piercing peak; Mt. 

 Shuksan rises a little more than a modest 9,000 feet in northern 

 Washington. In spite of this shortcoming it demands all the 

 intricate and varied climbing techniques of major mountains. 

 It can scare you and freeze you as much as Mt. McKinley, and it 

 can pay off in a great amount of adventure, fun, and scenery. 



The party consisted of the leader, John Klos, Bob and Norma 

 Spring, Walt Gonnason and Julie Marty, Ira Spring, and me. 

 It was our seven heads that popped out of the tents in a hurry 

 when we first heard Curtis Glacier roaring. 



Shuksan is in the Cascade Range, which intercepts the moist, 

 eastbound air off the Pacific and wrings it out. Five hundred 

 inches of snow will fall around it in a winter, leaving fifteen to 

 twenty feet of hard snow by March. The accumulation of this 

 snow results in the massive ice sheets that wind their way down- 

 ward on Shuksan's slopes. 



When we finally left Lake Anne after five days of waiting out 

 a rainstorm we went two miles through flower-strewn meadows 

 to the lower Curtis Glacier, the place where the earthquaking 

 roars originate. Curtis Glacier makes its trip in two sections. 



The author leads the group in a difficult maneuver. 53 



