McGregor Mountain, North Face Couloir

Outlined by sharp ridges, cliffed-in cirques and broken sub-summits, McGregor Mountain (8,122 feet) peers 7,000 feet, in all directions, into ancient glacial sculpted valleys. On its north face, within its highest amphitheaters, lies the Sandalee Glacier, which continues the sculpting its mother glacier began, however fractionally, to this day. But as it shrinks, its present name becomes all the more prosaic, or perhaps prophetic. Attributed to Edward Oscar “Jack” Blankenship (1875-1949), who named the glacier “Sandalee” when he was a forest ranger in Stehekin in the early 1900s. The name means “ash-colored” or “roan-colored’ in Chinook Jargon. The latter is what applies to the glacier, since in late spring, on the highest snows, pinkish or roan-colored algae paints its surface.

Blankenship also named McGregor Mountain, as Grant McConnell explains in his book “Stehekin: A Valley in Time.”

“In the early days of the century Jack Blankenship went out to make a first land survey of the valley. He established one of his fixed points on a large boulder … (and) a second fixed point, he selected the big peak above the valley and wrote it down in his notes as McGregor Mountain,” McConnell writes. “Thus, an old man of no particular note, who merely built a shack at the base of the mountain, had his name placed on the greatest peak above Stehekin.”

May 8 

Bridge Creek Trailhead (Hwy 20) to Dan’s Camp

I stepped onto a meltwater-drowned pullout on Highway 20 below the south face of Whistler Mountain. Matt Leitzinger, my friend and brave companion for the trek, splashed out the other side of the car, and we both growled indignantly. In the meantime, my having pulled back and forth in search of a better parking spot had unintentionally woken our neighbors, an RV couple who stepped out to ask us about nearby hikes. “There’s nothing snowless yet,” I advised. The provided information seemed redundant considering the looming (although quickly melting) snowbanks.

Yet, as our conversation ended, they fired back, “Are you really going skiing?”

“Yes,” we insisted.

But were we? If we were being honest with ourselves, any true skiing was still in question. There was the real possibility that no actual, honest-to-God bridge crossed Bridge Creek. Trust me, the irony did not escape us. Especially as we struck out from the car for the forest, stumbling down the bank of Highway 20 onto snow, and the beginning of our long walk.

Either way, I considered any movement forward a good start toward our destination, the north face of McGregor Mountain and its symbiotic ice, the Sandalee Glacier.

In front of us was 6 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, the venerable superhighway of trails. Even with feet of snow atop it, I could see the swath hewn from the forest above as clear as day. A reason, no doubt, a variety of forest creatures had led the way: bear, moose, deer, cougar and wolverine (high on McGregor) among them. 

Their tracks told a story, which was incomplete. As such, I couldn’t help but fill in the gaps and imagine their interactions. Would Bobby, a grumpy old bear, give way to Moby, a gangly, young and dopey moose? I think he would. The self-proclaimed king of the forest would learn that a moose is nothing he wants to grapple with. I recalled the time a much-too-close moose merely flexed his muscles and I practically fell over in response.

So the way passed, within a bubble of spring, from Highway 20 to South Fork Camp . We wandered over dozens of frothing rivulets, past thousands of glacier lilies, and through clouds of the brightest blue butterflies I’d ever seen.

When I strode into South Fork Camp, I did two things in order. First, I danced in the middle of the big, beautiful bridge that, thankfully, crossed Bridge Creek, and then I sat on the shore, and cracked a cold beer, which is not something I generally bring. It was my cure-all in case the bridge was out.

Like flotsam, we eventually wound on our way, over logs and through brush, to a higher camp. After I had crossed the tumultuous waters of Bridge Creek, likely named by A. N. Doty, I considered the difficulty of his having built a trail through this country in the 1880s. Even then, it was a costly and spectacularly difficult effort. One newspaper writer didn’t begrudge the expense, explaining that, “He will get 3,000 dollars (roughly $108,000 in 2026 dollars) for building the trail and will have earned it.”

Doty also built the bridge over Bridge Creek. After construction, the newspaper dubbed him the “first man to take a horse through the Cascade pass.”

We continued for another 2.8 miles to Dan’s Camp, arriving long before dark. We pitched a tent on a dirt island next to a springborne creek. Its sounds put me to sleep long before I should’ve, but a day in the mountains has a way of allowing the body’s directives to overrule the mind’s.

May 9-10

Dan’s Camp to McGregor Mountain and back to South Fork Camp and Highway 20

Our way to the summit of McGregor Mountain began on more dirt than snow. The kind of mixture that is the bane of all backcountry skiers.

But there was a path through the madness. A blend of snow and logs bridged our path between bogs and streams. A rite of passage, I felt, but knew it was nothing more than two stubborn skiers too lazy to transition any more than necessary.

When I saw a log over the South Fork of Bridge Creek, I was finally forced to take my skis off. The log was a frozen sheet of ice, and polished by flood and rain. As I was crossing to it, my foot passed through a tangle of slide alder to the cold river several feet below. I emerged from my predicament, and began my butt-shuffle in less than high spirits. Only then was I reminded of the Greasy Pole contest held in Massachusetts. It’s where contestants run out onto an inclined, greased log and try to grab a flag at the end. It’s amusing to watch; although my version left me with squishy, waterlogged boots. But that didn’t bother me; this is what I live for!

Beyond the river, and after a traverse up a hillside, we arrived beneath a wall of waterfalls. Dirt was climbed for a short way before we finally arrived into the upper basin.

Below the north face of McGregor Mountain, I was struck by how different it was than I pictured. A long ridge of towers rose like a series of turrets. They stood atop a 3,000-foot wall composed of a mixture of stair-steeping snow and cliff. Bursting onto exposed rock were more waterfalls. The valley rang with dozens of them.

We found a snow finger that offered a pathway beyond the sheltering cliffs. A rightward traverse brought us into a glacial cirque. Below the greatest tower, we traversed rightward once again. By that point, the final ascent was revealed.

Near the summit, I followed Matt to a ridge, which took us to the top. There, I stood in the remnants of an old fire lookout. I was reminded of one of its most famous tales. A harrowing story which unfolded in 1926. 

According to newspapers of the time, “Two men, several miles apart, were injured through the pranks of the same flash of lightning.” A “bolt evidently struck a lookout house being erected on the top of McGregor Mountain, and followed telephone wires, injuring Edward Ramm … and Duncan James.” Chaos ensued. Suddenly roof tiles exploded and fell to the glacier. Boards cracked. Lines were snapped. Most impressively of all, the electricity sizzled along “a guy wire” and “blew a 600-pound rock to bits.”

To construct the lookout, a 1,400-foot tramway was built to transport supplies and materials to the top. As for the lookout, its fate was the same as most of these constructions after their usefulness waned. In 1955, the U.S. Forest Service set it aflame. A callous end for something that was created to fight forest fires to be, in turn, put on the pyre.

Melted glass and wire is all that remained of this beacon in the sky. For a generation it stood guard over the residents of Stehekin, more than a vertical mile below.

We swooped from the summit like falcons, our prey a line I’d mined from satellite imagery, and hoped would provide. Matt, upon hearing this, was all for the hunt.

As we dove tip first into this spurious line, we came to roost at the edge. From there any questions we had were answered; the way was clear.

We followed a 2,000-foot couloir that connected us like an electric circuit to the valley below. Turn after turn, we oscillated from one side of the couloir to the other, until we were done.

In the valley, I swept one last look at our line, and then like the button-sized blue butterflies we saw on the trail, I glided to the safety of the forest below.

On our exit, Matt convinced me to take the south shore of the South Fork of Bridge Creek to bypass the main waterfall, and the dirt walk. I had my fears, but they were pushed aside as we weaved snow patches together and made it past the waterfall without walking. The futility of our quest beyond grew apparent after Matt spun bodily into a creek, skis skyward and body below the surface.

Even so, we kept skiing until we hit a patch of slide alder too thick for us to pass through. Only then did we back off, and point our skis to higher (and drier) forest, which we walked until camp.

After moving our camp to South Fork, we laid out the best assortment of camp life we could muster: a fire, music, whiskey and the good company of the countless birds in residence.

In the early morning, the dull roar of the river blossomed into a thundering boom. We turned out the ashes in the fire and broke camp, setting off in the cool morning air.

In retracing our path back to my car, those animal tracks once again had me thinking. Were any of them friends? Frenemies?

Before I swung out of McGregor Mountain’s view, I returned to a time when the so-called “Guardians of the Peaks” were in residence atop its highest point. One such person was both a professor and writer. Her name was Ella Elizabeth Clark (1896-1984). 

She wrote of the lookout for National Geographic and gushed about the North Cascades (as I’m apt to do), saying that she has traveled “in the Lake Louise country of the Canadian Rockies, in Glacier national park ... in the Olympics of western Washington, in the Wallowas of eastern Oregon, and in Yosemite, and I have driven through the Swiss Alps. But I have never seen such rugged country as this.”

Neither have I, even when I have. Because the mountains I call home are made up of something grander than metrics.    X