Unsettled. The word kept coming to mind when I considered the weather forecast for the next few days. An unusual weather pattern had taken hold in the Pacific Northwest, and we were due for thunderstorms. A red flag warning popped up over most of the Cascades, indicating extreme fire danger from lightning strikes. It was unfortunate timing given that Lei and I had a big adventure on the books, which I had barely managed to squeeze in between commitments to family and work. I had been very disappointed to refuse a trip to Goode Mountain earlier in the summer, but I was already in the doghouse for abandoning my husband many a weekend to go climbing. Typically completed over 3 days, Goode Mountain involves a 15-20 mile approach and over 2000 feet of easy technical climbing. We would have to climb the entire route with all our gear in order to ascend the northeast buttress and descend the gentler south side of Goode. I had been dreaming all summer about sleeping out, preferably on the side of a mountain, nothing between me and the vast wilderness. Given good weather of course. At over 9000 ft, the summit of Mount Goode could easily turn into a miserable place to sleep. Or it could be the most spectacular bivy in the Cascades.

The day before we were scheduled to set out, Lei and I texted frantically while I pretended to work. I refreshed MeteoBlue every 10 minutes even though I knew nothing would change. The bottom line was that different weather models showed highly divergent forecasts, with the worst predicting thunderstorms on both nights we were planning to be out. Adding to our uncertainty was the permit situation. Wilderness permits for the North Cascades, which are required for any overnight trips within the park, could only be obtained in person from 7 am to 4 pm at the ranger station in Marblemount. That would mean either leaving Seattle no later than early afternoon to obtain a permit the day before our trip or waiting until the day of and delaying our start time until at least 9 am, given that we would have to wait in line and drive an additional hour from the ranger station to the trailhead. Since the former was not an option for us, and considering our likely slow pace, we decided to go without a permit. I imagined hiking 10 miles only to have a ranger turn us around, though it seemed unlikely given that we were starting on a Thursday and heading into one of the least popular wilderness zones.

We arrived at the huge Rainy Pass trailhead in the dark and set up Lei’s car camping tent next to what we later found out was the toilet. I dozed off quickly but was awoken several times in the night by pounding rain, dripping onto the bottom of my sleeping bag from a partially unzipped fly. I was surprised by the degree and duration of the rain, not typically encountered in these parts, especially at this time of year. We woke up before dawn to avoid being caught camping next to the outhouse or sneaking into the wilderness without a permit. Several others emerged from vans around the parking lot, stretching and staring up at the questionable sky. We crammed the wet tent and sleeping pads into the car and drove a couple of miles to the Bridge Creek trailhead, where we disappointed a PCT thru hiker hoping to catch a ride to Winthrop. He told us that he couldn’t sleep in the rain and decided to hike through the night. We regretfully informed him that walking to Winthrop was not an attractive option but guessed that he would find a ride soon.

As we hit the trail that morning, the rain continued sporadically, at times strangely seeming to fall from the clear blue sky. We were skeptical but soldiered on. We chatted about the Goode trip reports that Lei had read. One group had inexplicably left their packs near the top of the mountain and gone to Stehekin, the nearest settlement connected to the rest of civilization only by boat, to get pastries. We concurred that if anyone asked, we were headed to the bakery in Stehekin, definitely not to camp in the backcountry. Intermittent clouds eventually gave way to blue sky, and the trail became hot and buggy. After about 10 miles we were finally able to turn off the PCT. We breathed a sigh of relief since we were no longer likely to encounter a ranger. We easily crossed Grizzly Creek on a series of logs, and the trail deteriorated quickly thereafter. We swam through the overgrown brush for what felt like a very long time and finally reached a clearing and the north fork of Bridge Creek. The huge mass of Goode Mountain rose in front of us, an idyllic landscape of bright green meadows and thundering waterfalls, topped by smooth dark slabs and an icing of blue glacier. The more than 2000 feet of rock above that seemed almost insignificant from this distance. The whole scene looked very intimidating; I would never have conceived to go into such a place without the assurance of so many who came before us.

In my mind we had reached first crux of the route – fording the swift, pearly blue glacial river. We spent a few minutes walking up and down the riverside, looking for the best place to cross. It was difficult to see what part of the river might be the shallowest since rocks created whitewater over most of it. We selected a section of the river without any white water, but it was still difficult to see exactly how deep it was. As we took off our shoes and rolled up our pants we became covered in flies. I was glad to have my bug net on my head, but flies immediately landed on any exposed skin. Time to get into the river! The water was cold to the point of pain, and I was surprised by the depth of the river. In the end there was no point in rolling up my pants since the water came up to my hips. I made my way across as quickly as possible. Without poles I would have been pushed over by the strong current. We both made it to the other side completely soaked, but we dried quickly in the hot and sunny weather.

We galavanted through a beautiful world of rocks and water, wondering where all the caterpillars were. We had heard that a section of the approach was often covered in caterpillars and were not looking forward to it. We finally arrived at a tunnel through some slide alder, and I figured we had reached the spot – the trees had patches of white webbing on them that I could only assume were full of tiny creatures. I put on my bug net and took a deep breath. The alder lasted longer than I was expecting, but fortunately a good path wound through all of it, and we only had to climb through the branches of a few trees with our big, awkwardly shaped packs. In the end it was easy to avoid the webs, and we only saw a few larger caterpillars. Unfortunately, I had taken off my sunglasses inside the tunnel and hung them from the front of my shirt, where they promptly fell off into the impenetrable brush, never to be seen again. I went back into the tunnel briefly to look for them, but it was steep and I was tired. If they were somewhere obvious Lei would have seen them anyway. I dejectedly trudged on, hoping that I would not be too miserable for the rest of the trip. We would only be on snow for a short period of time the next morning, and at least I had a visor to block the sun.

We passed a good bivy site to arrive at a fantastic bivy site. Water ran down the slabs all around us in a series of small rivulets and massive thundering falls, quite the beautiful show. I laid down in my bivy spot trying decide which direction to face, and it was so comfortable that I almost fell asleep immediately. We settled in for the night with plenty of daylight to spare. Clouds lingered to the north and we hoped they would stay there.

I woke in the night to a clear sky. The weather gods seemed to be leaning in our favor! A blasting full moon meant that we wouldn’t see many stars on our trip, but it was cool to see the adjacent mountains illuminated in the eerie white light.

The next time I woke up my alarm had been going off for approximately one hour. With all the water noise I could hear neither my phone nor Lei getting ready. Whoops! I packed up as quickly as possible and we filtered 3-4 liters of water each with the plan of a summit bivy that night. We headed up toward the glacier. The routefinding was straightforward until we reached the glacial moat at the base of the northeast buttress. In my mind this was the second crux of the route. One section of the glacier appeared to come close to the rock wall. We tiptoed up to the edge and peered over. Hoping for a gentle snow ramp, instead we saw an enormous gaping chasm. The only way across was to climb up and over a narrow, questionably supported fin of snow. I went further upslope to check out another section of the glacier, which turned out to feature a snow bridge that looked reasonably well supported. I also got a better vantage point on the lower snow fin, which looked well supported also. We opted for the upper crossing, and I laboriously pounded a snow picket into the glacier for a belay. When I arrived at the buttress I built an anchor in rock with water running over it – some real mountaineering shit. As I belayed Lei over, a large chunk of ice fell dramatically in the cavern below us, thundering into the void.

We climbed two very loose, traversing pitches to gain the ridge. At that point we switched to simulclimbing. The terrain was very easy to begin with – more scrambling than climbing. There were many possible routes to take as rock ribs split and merged. After two blocks of simulclimbing the ridge became more obvious and consistent, and we made quicker progress as we got used to the rock. We broiled in the full blasting sun the entire time, trying not to drink too much of our precious water. There were many sections with very few gear placements, either due to lack of cracks or general looseness of the rock. I questioned whether it might be safer to forego a rope on a route like this. Some beta had mentioned a gully on the right side of the ridge but I never saw anything of that sort, even though I traversed right a few times to look for it. Sticking to the ridge was straightforward and had some fun exposed sections, though the climbing never required any pause. We shortly made it to the “amphitheater”, a bivy spot with room for about 3 people. After one more block of simulclimbing that wandered quite a bit, I was happy to spot the giant cairn on black tooth notch, meaning we would be at the summit shortly! We took a break for some water and a snack, briefly debating whether we should continue past the summit to get a head start on the super long third day. But we were tired after all the sun exposure and excited about sleeping on top of the highest peak in the North Cascades.

The final block of climbing also wandered quite a bit, ascending almost to the top of a false summit before traversing sharply right. I kept climbing and climbing over lose blocks, very typical terrain for the rocky tops of Cascades peaks. I was skeptical that we would indeed find a large, flat bivy spot at the top instead of just more pointy rocks. I crested over a small boulder and there it was! A huge round bivy spot and an expanse of peaks beyond, our home for the night. Dramatic clouds roiled over the surrounding peaks but miraculously a blue sky remained above us. It was only a matter of time before a large, dark cloud invaded overhead. We ridiculously huddled under my tarp with all of our gear for a minute, laughing at ourselves when we realized it was not going to rain. We made dinner and were treated to a show of color and light that didn’t end when the sun set. Heat lightning far to the northeast regularly lit up a section of sky in front of us. I had almost fallen asleep with my glasses on when Lei frantically woke me up. Expecting to see a mean animal next to us, it was instead the deep red full moon rising on the horizon.

I woke in the night again, this time to an undercast layer of clouds illuminated by the full moon. We were on a pedestal in the sky. It felt much colder than the previous night, with a moderate wind blowing continuously. I put on my down jacket and huddled deeper into my bivy bag. The cloud layer below us persisted until sunrise, with only the highest peaks of the Cascades popping out in the morning light. I was glad to have brought all the layers of clothing that had seemed ridiculous in the previous day’s heat. We got a slow start in the cold, knowing we had a huge day ahead of us but wanting to enjoy the sunrise from our unlikely perch above the clouds.

Clouds blew in and out quickly as we began our descent with a series of six rappels, and I alternately felt quite comfortable or started shivering. After the rappels we happily put our harnesses away and began walking down. The descent was not as terrible as I had read, but we did unfortunately take a route down some sandy choss and snow instead of what was described as beautiful meadows. Expecting to get to a meadow (and a water source), we just arrived at more pebbly choss. The route we took was perhaps more direct in terms of distance, but I can’t recommend it.

It was unfortunate that we missed a water source since the next section of the route descended a dusty ridge of burnt forest. We had no relief from the blazing sun and were running out of water. Lei thankfully led the way, as I could only muster up the energy to follow exactly in her footsteps. When we finally reached the bottom of the ridge we were relieved to be on flat ground, but the nice path we had been following ended! We had to bushwhack randomly for a bit until we reached a good trail, which surprisingly was the official trail out. We were expecting it to be closer to the forest, but it looked like we would have to stay out in the open for a bit longer. We shortly arrived at the river that we had paralleled down the mountain for a welcome break. We gulped the sweet cold water and I soaked my tired feet for a minute. Two runners passed us who impressively had done the same route as us, starting that very morning.

The rest of the hike out was quite unremarkable, at least 20 miles of hiking through the forest on well established trails. It would have been easy except that my feet hurt worse than they ever had before in my life. A highlight of the walk out was a beautiful bridge that crossed over a powerful, crystal clear turquoise river. Interestingly the river flowed around a large rock island just after the bridge. The sheer volume of water passing was impressive. We also passed several campgrounds and were surprised to find them deserted. We made it back to the parking lot at 1 am, where we immediately got in the car and drove back to Seattle, since I had to catch a flight the following (same?) day. It was a fantastic and memorable trip, worth writing an extremely long trip report about.