We picked the hottest weekend of the year to climb Johannesburg. But, what was more important was that we chose a weekend with a perfect forcast. Good choice - I would never want to be stuck up on this route in bad weather. After climbing this dubious route on this monster mountain, the words of Robert hearken back: <paraphrasing> "Every Cascade climber should experience Johannesburg - but just once". I'm proud I finished the climb and I'll never do this one again. The upper part of the climb was asoundingly alpine and the thought of imagining myself in such an outrageous setting only added to the grandeur. The lower buttress, on the other hand, was atrocious, with its continuous steep and brushy cliffs. On top of that, protection is sparse. The safest part of the climbing is in the dense timber where you can sling big tree branches clinging onto cliffs. The cliffs themselves are exceptionally stingy with protectable spots. We drove up Friday evening for a car camp at the Cascade Pass trailhead. A few weekends earlier on a climb up Sahale and Boston basin, we had to hike the road three extra miles to this location. Thankfully, it was fixed now. If you wish to climb Johannesburg, the least you can do is allow yourself the luxury of a 20 minute hike to the base of the climb. We pulled into the moderately crowded parking lot late and set up our sleeping bags on level picnic tables. I awoke the following morning and looked over to Michael's table to see no one there. Where'd he go? A rustle of the grass behind me caused me to turn where Michael approached with a big smile. The "Calm Before the Storm", I called it. We both knew we'd be in for an exceptionally strenous day. We set off by walking around to the point in the road that was closest to the snow runnoff from the Cascade-Johannesburg (CJ) couloir, downclimbed to the small creek and up over talus to the snow. We saw another party in front of us, intent upon the buttress as well. There's a prominent snow finger that appears to easily access the buttress, but it's unfortunately surrounded by large moats. Not finding the potential jump savory, we found a preferable crossing above it. A simple jump, accompanied by a distinct sense of one-way, got us on the route. "So it begins". We set off as the other team belayed each other up onto the route.
We traversed along steep ledges. Almost immediately though, the brush and direct steepness starts. We climbed a long section of it unroped, allowing us to get a lot of space between the other party who were still belaying below. The climbing quickly became too steep for unroped climbing and we stopped to rectify the problem.
Our first goal was to get up to a prominent snowpatch that marked a distinct point where you could either take the western or eastern variation on the Northeast Buttress. Our plan was to take the western variation. A lot of ground lay between us and the snowpatch though. Looking back, the scariest climbing was certainly on the lower part of the buttress before the snowpatch. At one point, after a few pitches of steep brushy climbing where we adopted the habit of grasping at branches and bushes to help us up, we entered a brushy gully with a rocky bottom where we could cover ground more quickly. I recall wearing my leather gloves for sections of the gully where I was breaking devils club to clear a way and using the lower branches as handholds. We continued to follow this gully steeply up. Occasional 5th class moves allowed us to gain shelves where we could see ahead. The angle only increased. Michael led one pitch up that turned out to be too steep. A dicey lower off a sling fastened around a shrub prompted us to turn left and exit the gully. There was virtually no protection here and the natural protection, the brush, was spotty at best. To the left, we could enter timber. After leading us out of the gully and up on border of the gully, Michael took off for a pitch that eventually opened up into thick huckleberry bushes on moderate ground. A hundred yards or so through the brush deposited us at the welcomed snowfield where we took our first break.
We sat and drank longingly for at least thiry minutes. Then, I led off for the western rib variation. There was a rocky cliff in front of us that looked a little intimidating. "More sketchy terrain", I thought. Actually, it was quite easy; we headed to the right and traversed horizontally and then headed up through several steep timber pitches. These pitches were mostly jungle gym style climbing where most of the holds were branches. Protection was thanfully very easy. All you needed was a handy sling. There were more than enough stout branches to choose from. We climbed and swung our way up the near vertical forest. Michael ended up leading a pitch that took us up a cliff for about one hundred feet that then exited right into dead vertical thick brush. This short section was the thickest brush of the entire climb and was almost like swimming. Taking the dive was exiting the rock and clinging onto branches for dear life and pulling and tugging ourselves into and upward through the brush. Many of the large branches grew straight down and we climbed them much as one climbs, or tries to climb, a rope. Michael brought me up to a belay spot in the trees. I took over and headed further to the right, trending up slightly. I suddenly emerged onto the long-awaited heather slopes.
While the heather wasn't an end to the thick brush, it was at least a different (and preferred) type of brush. We were done with the devils club and the sappy branches. After another break where we reapplied sunscreen and took in the views, we headed up. The rock tower above us, where our bivy site lay, looked close. However, it was much further away than it appeared. We put away the rope for this section and wended our way up and around. The steep heather and non-stop 3rd and 4th class scrambling didn't relent.
The heather slowly started to give way to rock. Our next target was the titanium pin that marked the potential rappel into the gully. After a short knife edge section on solid rock, for which we roped up, we arrived at the titanium pin. There were some old but reliable slings left here as well which we promptly claimed (we'd use them on rappels the next day). Slings are valuable on this climb. Our original plans called for going left instead of rappelling down into the gully on the right. One look at the awful gully confirmed this.
Around the left was the "rotten chimney" as described in the "Selected Climbs" book. Well, this was one "5.3" that would stump us. So, we went further left. Michael accomplished this by a delicate move around a devious corner. The pitch was short and I carefully swung myself around the exposed corner. Some steep and exposed climbing got me up to the belay. I led on up a steep step where I had to dig out a small handhold for my right hand. Once on this, I moved left and trended upward. Again, Johannesburg exhibited the dubious distinction of revealing little protection and I suddenly found myself on sloping ledges with nothing for protection. Not happy at this prospect and realizing the downclimb would be worse, I carefully climbed up to another ledge where I thanked my maker for an anomolous horn on which I could place a reliable sling. Higher up, I belayed Michael and then he left for the final two pitches that would lead us to the snowfield and our camp. We pulled into camp at around 7:45. I recognized it from some of Robert's pictures. Finally! We took the time to have some dinner, clean up in the small snowmelt stream and let the anxieties of the day wash away. The worst of the climb was over.
Michael woke up too early the following morning (5am) and goaded me to get up. Arrr... At least I'd slept solidly despite my concerns that the ground wasn't entirely level. I was worried about the exposure on the snow arete on the upcoming glacier section of the climb. Although the pictures I'd seen of it looked reasonable, I read about "calm nerves required" and "exposure" and so on. Well, it turned out to be quite an easy and enjoyable climb up the glacier. I'd insisted on bringing pickets along but Michael had forgotten to pack his. And, what's worse, I'd left mine back at the car (and I realized after shortly getting on the climb the day before!). Ah well, turns out pickets weren't needed at all. The snow arete was picturesque and alpine. It was easy enough where my mind could wander and I could appreciate my location. Beyond that, near the crevasses, we roped up. A short and moderately steep headwall led us to level ground. To our left was a large wall of ice which we comfortably passed under. The exposure over the right side led to an ice fall, but the route never exposed us to that. We continued to the opposite side of the glacier under the ice wall and hooked all the way back to the opposite side of the glacier once again before beginning the final bit of steep snow to a snow tongue between to towers, the right one being the true summit.
I was initially a little worried about the steep snow. Something about steep Cascade snow lately has had me a little nervous. Anyway, this too turned out to be quite easy. I led out and ice axe placements were generously deep. Michael swung out under me to lead the final piece of the snow tongue. We entered the moat on the left side. I felt snug between rock and snow. At the top, we finally had the view southward to the Ptarmigan Traverse peaks and Glacier Peak. We kept the rope on for the last bit to the summit and dumped everything else (except the cameras of course). The pitch to the summit was easy - no rope required. We arrived on top a couple of minutes later, about eight in the morning.
The summit register contained four rotten pages dating back to the mid eighties. We found Robert and Jesse's signatures as well as Colins. Michael recognized other names as well. I really enjoyed the rest up here. I wasn't as worried about the descent as I was the ascent. We started off for what would be a long, arduous, but reasonable endeavour. The first part was easy enough, albeit tedious. We stayed on the south side of the ridge, maybe 100 feet below the top at most, on relatively comfortable ledges. We crossed numerous ribs and gullys. Once we topped out on the ridge and enjoyed a short thrilling walk on comfortable sidewalks in the sky.
We passed above a steep snowfield (I refused to climb any super steep snow aretes up here) and then further down along more ledges. The descent became more difficult to follow and we had to start scouting ways around steep towers. Eventually, this led to about 7 steep rappels with occasional 3rd class downclimbing to get to the CJ couloir.
On most of the rappels, we couldn't see the next rappel station, if there was one. So, we spent lots of time looking left and right seeking out horns where we could place a rappel sling or the reassuring sign where someone else had placed one. Once down to the couloir's top, we felt very happy and relieved. We were officially off of Johannesburg and all that remained now was finding "Doug's Direct" route over Mixup Peak to the Cache Glacier. First things were first though - we bounded down the gentle snowfield and made for a large boulder that marked an "idyllic brook where one could reconstitute oneself." Reconstitute we did. We drank our fills and our cups ranneth over. The break was welcomingly long and relaxing.
We traversed grassy slopes past Cascade Peak and the Triplets to the backside of Mixup Peak. From here, we were able to put together landmarks seen from above to devise a plan that would get us to the suspected spot where Doug's Direct lay. There were three prominent snowfields on the left side of the peak that we would keep to the right of. Steep heather slopes and mixed rock would get us to the ridge. On the steep heather, we occasionally used our ice axe picks to dig into the roots and secure us. We eventually moved onto firm rocks and scrambled our way to the top. "How's it look?", yelled Michael when I topped out on the ridge. "This will work!", I responded. I almost couldn't believe it, but it appeared that this fabled "Doug's Direct" existed as reported and would indeed save us the tedious and treacherous route over Gunsight Notch.
Mixup Peak is a long trending ridge with the summit being on the southeastern end. Doug's Direct is almost on the opposite northwestern end. So, unfortunately, we couldn't tag another summit just for fun. No matter, it was enough to see that the descent would be a 3rd and maybe 4th class scramble to the top of the Cache Glacier. While snacking on our last food, we spotted a lone traveller on the glacier approaching Cache Col, a little ant of a man. I almost preferred to just rappel this terrain so we wouldn't have to do any real thinking. But, I yielded and we downclimbed to entire route to the glacier. It went easily with only a few more careful moves. We strapped on crampons for the last time at the top of the glacier. While not steep, this location was thin and slick. We then marched down the glacier and as the terrain became more firm, my energy increased substantially. I suppose this jolt could be credited to a peaceful mind that knew that all the difficulties were over. The remaining hike out was pleasant, and we'd have plenty of sun as well. We took one last break at Cascade Pass set against the whoopings of hidden grouse somewhere in the foliage. On the way down from Cascade Pass we ran into some goats - a mother and kid who opted not to move aside for us; we did instead.
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