S-Gully

July 27th, 2008

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The plan this morning was to climb Thatchtop via the s-gully. We had attempted to find this route a few years ago, and ended up on a bushwhacking adventure that eventually landed us at Mills Lake.

We left the TH shortly after 6:00am, and used the fire trail shortcut. As on our last attempt, we chose head towards Mills Lake, and use the trail's bridge to cross Icy Brook. Then we followed the faint, spotty trail along the south side of the brook. There's a log crossing near the first switchback along the Loch Vale trail that many people use on the s-gully route. Our intent was to get about even with that crossing, turn south, and head up following Foster's route description. By the time the trail petered out, we were fairly close to the log crossing. At that point, there was much less resistance to go up than continue along the brook. Using my compass, I confirmed we were heading south. Unfortunately, I think we should have aimed somewhat west of south as we started up because we topped out of the woods east of our target. The bushwhacking through the woods was straightforward. There was one very steep, gully-like, section that had fairly soft, somewhat loose soil. The worst thing about this gully, was it added a bit of confusion later in the hike as to whether we were correctly following the route.

The described route reaches a cliff to be skirted to the left. It then enters a narrow, steep gully that ends at an open boulder field across which lies the obvious s-gully. When we emerged from the woods, we were directly below a series of slabs and large cliffs. It was deja vu all over again!! It had to be very near where we topped out way back on our first attempt to find the s-gully. So we assumed skirting left was the correct thing to do. These cliffs are the ones visible from many nearby vantage points in the Glacier Gorge area. However, in hindsight, it was obviously wrong. We'd been all along the base of these cliffs before, and there's no narrow gully to be found as you head around to the east. To add insult to injury, shortly after starting to skirt along the cliffs, we spotted cairns. One of which had a nice view of Longs behind it. These cliffs are in the open, above the woods, and visible from all around the mountain. The cliff on the correct route, to be skirted, is down in the woods, and is only visible from select locations from the west, such as the West Glacial Knob. It might have been helpful if the description mentioned the cliff was still down in the woods, and that the narrow gully had very sheer walls. If we had a westerly component in our trudge up through the woods, we might have hit the correct cliff.

Anyway, after getting a view of Jewel Lake, we turned back. We stayed above the woods heading for where we had first arrived at the cliffs. There was a line of trees to the west of where we had exited the woods, and they continued up to the base of the cliffs. When we returned, Sandy took a look on the other side, and there was the open boulder field with the s-gully directly above. We had been just 5 yards east of where the narrow gully topped out. It was almost 10:00am, about the time we'd expected to reach the summit. We decided to call it good enough, and started down the mountain. Even though we didn't achieve our ultimate goal, it was still a pretty good hike. And we did have success, in that we found the s-gully. On our way down, we followed Foster's route in reverse. The third time would be the charm.

If you're looking for something different that includes bushwhacking, but don't want to reach a summit, I'd recommend climbing around on this part of Thatchtop. The views are nice, you'll likely have that part of the mountain to yourself, and it's quick and easy to reach. Just be aware of the topography. There are a lot of cliffs, small and large, scattered across the that end of the mountain.

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