Chiwawa Mountain

Chiwawa Mountain 8,459ft

On the summit

Eric Gilbertson

September 14/15, 2018

I had just finished climbing Dumbell and Greenwood mountains in the morning on September 14, and after collecting my sleeping bag and bivy sack, hiked back through Spider Meadow to the car. One of my boots had torn open so that my toes stuck out, but luckily I had a bit of shoe goo in the car. I applied the shoe goo, duct taped up the boot, and started driving down from the Phelps Creek trailhead.

I rounded the corner, then drove to the Phelps Creek campground near Trinity. I tried to wait around a while eating snacks to give the shoe goo

A nice bivy site

time to dry, but eventually started hiking after about 30 minutes. I hiked up the flat Chiwawa River trail for a few hours, and reached a meadow at the end of the trail around sunset. Two hunters were camped out there, ready for a special week-long high-elevation hunting season to start the next day.

We discussed plans so I would definitely be away from the area they were hunting in the next morning. There was still a bit of light left, so I continued bushwhacking through the woods up to a nice flat open meadow at 5,500ft. I found an overhanging boulder here, and laid out my bivy sack for the night.

I got up at sunrise the next morning, and followed a faint trail up a gully

Lots of blueberries

to the right of Pt 5971. The gully eventually opened up into an alpine meadow, and I started traversing up and right. I soon gained the col just west of Chiwawa, and saw some interesting tracks in a snow patch. It looked like wolverine tracks to me, and that the wolverine found the little snow patch just to slide down the side of it.

It was a bit tricky finding a 3rd class route through the col, but eventually I started scrambling up the west ridge of

Chiwawa. I got a bit off route too far to the south, and reached a low-5th class dead end. I down climbed, traversed back around to the north side of the ridge, and here picked up some cairns on the normal route.

The rest of the ascent was easy class 2 to the summit. I retraced the correct route to the col, and briefly considered going over to tag Fortress Mountain. However, I needed to pick up Katie at the ferry terminal in a few hours, and I would be rushing to get back on time as it was. So I continued back to my bivy sack, packed up, and hiked back to the car.

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