Motherboy 2019

Spending time with my mom is painful, mostly in the quads. She doesn’t have to tempt me with gummy worms to go hiking anymore, but keeping up with her is still the same challenge it was as a child. We reenact the scene annually in a death march we call Motherboy. This year it was a ski tour to the 9000 ft. summit of Mt. Shuksan in Washington state.

The trip was our backup plan to a three day ski traverse in Canada’s Garibaldi Range that fell through in April due to avalanche danger. After the failed B.C. trip we approached Shuksan from the south in mid-June via Baker Lake Road in Skagit Valley, an hour from my mom’s front door. We set out with heavy packs loaded with ski-touring equipment through four miles of forest and another mile of alpine. We reached Sulphide Glacier eager to lighten our load and start our slow slide upward on climbing skins.

We were already tired when we reached the glacier. Her voice was entirely serious when she commented that the surface looked flat and she could probably land her airplane on it next time. She has skis for her airplane too.

The steep ascent on the other side of the landing strip had me at the mercy of corn snow. The cycle of melting and freezing under hot sun and cold nights turned the top layer into marbles. On an especially steep section my climbing skins lost grip and I tumbled backwards. I managed to self arrest with my camera lens before falling too far down the slope. Mercifully, my polarizer filter can take a lot of abuse.

At 7000 feet we reached a thousand foot cliff running perpendicular to Shuksan Arm. A tea tray ledge sat on an outcropping; flat, stable, and perfectly cupped with a view of Mt. Baker across the valley. We pitched camp, then lightened our packs and made for the summit.

We reached the base of the summit pyramid an hour before sunset. The last five hundred feet of Shuksan are rocky and unpredictable. Especially tough this time of year when the sun starts to melt the ice. It can be easy or impossible depending on the snowpack and your equipment. The final push is vertical rock.

We each brought hiking shoes and heavy touring boots to kick stairs in the snow, but the inconsistent footing and short timing didn’t allow us to take full advantage. We were also running out of daylight to tie into our harnesses. We decided to free climb up the section of exposure we might not die from in a fall. After a couple hundred feet of crack climbing and scramble, our safe-ish route to the top ran out. Our choice was to jump eight feet into a thin vein of snow and kick more stairs until another dicey free climb or turn around.

With the odds of reaching the summit uncertain and a down-climb in the dark guaranteed, we chose to turn back. We knew we were in for a hell of a time already just getting back the way we came.

My mom found an abandoned piece of gear hanging from a rock to belay herself. I gave her the rope and used my ice axe to lower myself down an icy vein that had been inaccessible from below. I was torn between wanting to spot my mom and also not wanting to watch at all. It’s the same way she felt watching me climb trees as a child. It was my turn to trust her abilities like she trusted mine.

We were rewarded for our decision to turn back with a sunset for our descent, her on skis and me on my splitboard. We rode to base camp under a pink and purple moonrise. I sent a gleeful spray of snow over the lip of the Hells Highway cornice above Shuksan’s hanging glacier as we passed.

In the morning, we woke up with clouds settled beneath camp. The rocky perch where we pitched our tent felt like the sky fortress in a manga fantasy. Mt. Baker loomed next door like an immortal engine. We hiked out embarrassed by how much fun we had and wondered how we could make it more miserable next year.