Yang Yang Lakes at dawn.
Day 1: Cascade Pass to Yang Yang Lakes
Yang Yang Lakes at dawn.
After a restful night, we got an early start and left camp to work our way through the imposing cliff above Yang Yang Lakes to where one traverses underneath the East flank of LeConte. Here a goat path breaches the cliff band to LeConte Pass, where it then wends its way along snow and scree high above LeConte Lake to the edge of the LeConte Glacier. The pattern that had been established the day before was repeated, with crampons on and off continuously throughout the day.
The edge of the LeConte glacier was 3 hours from Yang Yang Lakes and provided easy entry and after 30 minutes of careful scoping, a way was found through the initial jumble of seracs. Thereafter, the glacier immediately eased in steepness. A relatively short climb lead to the broad Sentinel Col (not visible from Yang Yang Lakes). This is the fist view you have of the large South Cascade Glacier, which has suffered massive glacial retreat since the Ptarmigan Traverse was first done in the late 30s. From Sentinel Col, a gentle traverse along scree and snow leads to the Southwest side of Sentinel and the head of the South Cascade Glacier.
The South Cascade Glacier and Spire Point from Sentinel Col
At the base of the broad snow slope that decends Sentinel's Southwest face, Tim and I dropped our packs and scrambled the 3rd-4th class Southwest Ridge of Sentinel peak, a crumbling loose rock affair that was solid where it needed to be, but otherwise was not confidence inspiring. An hour and a half up and an hour back down, and we met Lowell and his party at the base. They had left camp a little after us and had scrambled LeConte on the way here.
From the base of Sentinel we continued on to a post sticking out of the ground, several hundred yards away. At first I thought this was a fancy cairn, but it turns out it is a mark used to gague glacial retreat. Descending past the post to the head of the South Cascade Glacier took only 10 minutes, and we proceeded across this flat expanse of glacial ice to Lizard Pass, above the White Rock Lakes. Here, the fabulous view of Dome Peak, Sinister, Gunsight, Spire Point, and all their surrounding subpeaks is only enhanced by the icy green and blue lakes that nestle on a high alpine bench above the valley floor. White Rock Lakes is actually 3 or 4 separate lakes, but it was hard to tell. Despite our late season visit, and the fact that it had been a dry, low-snow year, some of the lakes were still covered by snow. Evenso, White Rock Lakes is a place of magnificent beauty, and certainly the best campsite in the North Cascades I or Tim had ever made.
It was windy in camp, and the low-lying sun sinking in the west shed only meager warmth. A brisk wind blew constantly across the lakes to camp, keeping whatever bugs there might have been completely at bay. Two hours after we rolled into camp, Lowell, Brian, Matt and Phil strolled into camp, after having climbed Sentinel.
Phil Fortier and Brian Miller enjoy White Rock Lakes camp.