Goodell Creek Bushwhack

Goodell Creek Bushwhack

Oct 4, 2026, 5am – 7pm

23 miles, 4kft gain

I have some objectives deep in the Pickets in the North Cascades that would benefit from the shortest possible approach, which is Goodell Creek coming from the south. There is a trail part way up Goodell Creek, but it only lasts 3.5 miles before diverting up towards McMillan spire. The remaining ~9 miles up the creek is supposedly a notoriously difficult bushwhack. According to the bushwhack rating scale by Mark Dale ( https://www.alpineinstitute.com/the-cascade-bushwack-rating-system/) it ranks as Grade III-IV, BW4. This means “severe brush, pace less than one mile per hour” and “will take a long day and involve continuous battle.” I think this is the main reason there are basically no trip reports online of climbers bushwhacking up Goodell Creek, despite it theoretically being the shortest approach to the central pickets in the Fury area.

However, I wanted to see for myself if it really was that bad. Perhaps I could find a good way in and it would be a useful approach in the future. I know from other bushwhack approaches in the North Cascades that early fall can be a good time of year when creeks are low. Sometimes it’s possible to just walk up a creek in the fall and avoid bushwhacking, while the same creek would be too deep for that in the summer. This was the case for Perry Creek, the approach I’ve used a few times for Hard Mox.

Also, sometimes people don’t take the optimal route for bushwhacking and report conditions harder than they could be. For instance, the bushwhack rating scale of the alpine institute lists the Silver Creek approach for Mt. Spickard as Grade V, BW4+ (meaning “Extreme Brush, multiple hours needed to travel one mile, will take a long day and involve continuous battle.”) However, I’ve done this approach four times for various objectives and found a relatively easy route through mostly open forest. I would rate that BW1, Grade II-III.  I thought that might be the case for Goodell also.

Also, I had a few tools that previous bushwhackers may not have had. High-quality satellite images exist now for the full approach, which weren’t available 10 years ago. Also, LiDAR data now exists for this region as of 2024. I analyzed the LiDAR data and created a digital surface map (DSM) and a digital terrain map (DTM) for the area. LiDAR data involves an airplane sending signals down to the ground and measuring their returns. It can distinguish between returns from vegetation and those from ground. A DSM is a model of the surface including returns that include the highest point sampled, which includes vegetation. A DTM includes only points classified as ground.

I next subtracted the DTM from the DSM to get a model of canopy height. I know from experience that old growth forest (geneally at least 100ft tall) is generally easy to bushwhack through, and vegetation less than 5ft tall is generally tall grass or ferns and is also easy. But vegetation between 6ft – 50ft might be slide alder which will be very challenging. Vegetation between 50ft-100ft is likely younger growth trees but still not too hard.

I color-coded the canopy height map for these different regions, then charted a path from the upper end of the Goodell Creek Trail continuing up Goodell Creek. I tried to keep it in zones <5ft or >50ft. Based on the satellite images I knew the flatter sections of Goodell Creek had wide banks from spring floods that were open in late summer and fall. That could provide easy walking.

So my general plan was to bushwhack through old growth from the trail down to the creek, then walk along the creek in water shoes as much as possible. Whenever the creek got narrow or steep I identified regions of >50ft growth to bushwhack up next to it.

The first weekend in October is Larch March when many trails are very crowded. I figured this would be an excellent time to avoid any chance of seeing another person by bushwhacking up the notorious Goodell Creek. There might even be some colorful slide alder there to admire (hopefully from a distance and not from within it).

Sunday morning I left my apartment at 2:30am and was hiking up the Goodell Creek trail by 5am. I timed it so I got the first bits of daylight before sunrise just when I needed to start bushwhacking. At the point where the trail leaves the old road grade to head up to the McCallister area, I instead started a traversing descent towards Terror Creek. I passed through old growth with big stumps, then reached the unlogged area with massive cedar trees. At Terror Creek I dropped down to where it got less steep, then crossed and cut down into Goodell Creek.

In this area Goodell was very wide and open. The creek, however, wove far to the left and right, hitting steep embankments. So I put on my water shoes and just crossed whenever necessary to stay in the easy flat open terrain. The water was at most shin deep, so this was no problem.

At about 1390ft the creek narrowed and started getting steep, making walking directly up it challenging. There I cut right into the old growth. Surprisingly, I stumbled across a trail at around 1500ft. It was faint, but it had occasional cut branches so was definitely maintained by humans and not just a game trail. I followed the trail for about 2 miles, until it dropped back to the creek at about 1900ft. I built a cairn there to help me locate that point on the return. There were no cairns on the talus parts of the trail, which makes me think it may not have been created by climbers. I’m not sure who made it though.

From there the creek was flat again and I put on the water shoes and walked up along the bank, occasionally crossing to get to easier terrain. At 2000ft there was a patch of blowdowns that looked tricky to climb over. So I switched to hiking boots and bushwhacked around on the right in some old growth. I then cut back into the creek since the old growth soon switched to slide alder.

The area between 2050ft to 2150ft was somewhat trickier since the creek got narrow with big boulders and slightly steeper, but the sides were all slide alder. This 0.5-mile section was perhaps the crux of the route. I just walked up the creek in my water shoes, which at times required scrambling over boulders and wading into knee-deep water. But that was all kind of fun.

Around the corner I cut up into the trees on the right side to access what appeared to be a talus field. However, this was very brushy and the talus was tricky and slow going. So I instead dropped back into the stream at 2200ft. I followed the stream from there to 2400ft, but then encountered slide alder. I crossed over to the left side and had good open old growth forest to 2600ft.

Above 2600ft I dropped back into the creek and just walked in the creek since the sides were slide alder. By around 1pm I reached the last grove of trees, which was my conservative goal for the trip. I’d previously taken pictures from the summit of East Fury looking down Goodell Creek and figured if I could make it to that grove of trees then the terrain was mostly open above there. This was also approximately my turnaround time to make sure I got home before midnight since I had to be in to work early the next morning.

I hiked a little ways up a talus field to the east of the grove of trees to get a good view of some future objectives, and then took my first real break of the trip, a 15-minute stop to enjoy the view.

By 1:30pm I started back. I pretty much followed the same path back, except between 2600ft – 2200ft I stayed on the west side of the creek in the old growth, which was different than on my ascent. I was a little quicker navigating back since I remembered the route, and I made it back to the trailhead by 7pm. So it took about 7.5 hours up and 5.5hrs back.

Using the Alpine Institute bushwhacking scale, I would grade Goodell Creek via the route I took as BW1-2, WA4, Grade III.

 

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