Stu and I decided that another exploratory hike was in order, just to see if there was another possible access route to the Horseshoe Glacier. Accordingly, on Friday, we thrashed our way up a valley at about km 27 (?) on the Glacier Creek FSR, a valley that heads towards Ochre Peak and one tongue of the Glacier in question.To our surprise, we found a flagged trail most of the way up the valley. No idea who put it there or why, but it saved us lots of trouble. We did manage to find some difficult hiking, though, because we decided to investigate the right side of the valley, having seen a gully that we thought we could climb up to access the glacier.
To get to that gully, we had to spend some time in thickets of alder. Then we had to find the (only) crossing of a seemingly small but raging creek. And the gully? It went well for awhile, but as it narrowed, we were eventually faced with a small, cold waterfall that we decided we just didn't want to climb through. So, we retreated. Score so far: Us: Zero, Valley: 1. Needless to say, extricating ourselves from that side of the valley involved more alder thrashing, not helped by the realization that perhaps we should have tried the left side of the valley after all...., but too late in the day to change that. By the time we were back at the truck, we'd put in a hard 8 hours of work. Certainly enough for a Friday. A few pictures are here, towards the end of the album. Sorry, but no pictures of us in the alder.
Maybe we should try a different glacier....
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