Lowland Fog
When Elizabeth McDonald and I went up to Lake of the Clouds, she convinced me climbing Mt. McDonald would be a good idea. We spent a lot of time looking at the west face of McDonald and thinking about routes up it. After we got back we did a little research and decided the south face was what we should do. Mt. McDonald is on tribal lands in a special Grizzly Bear conservation area which is closed most of the good hiking and climbing season, and October 1 was our first opportunity to try it. As I left home, there was a lot of low fog, but it promised to be a nice day.
We hiked up to Island Lake using the old trail, dropping down to the lake from the ridge above Turquoise Lake. Then we followed a well beaten path to the top of the ridge dividing the Swan Valley from the Flathead Valley. From the divide you have a great view of Crescent, Heart, and Island Lakes. Betsy pointed way up one of the ridges where the larches were blazing yellow and told me that was where Circle Lake was, apparently a fun place to go if you like grueling hikes.
We got our first good view of Mt. McDonald's east and north faces from the divide. Looking north, we could see Disappointment Lake and Calowahcan Peak. Calowahcan's jagged teeth look intriguing...
We dropped down to Cliff Lake, then worked our way around to the west side where we camped under McDonald's east face.
We got a good night's rest and a liesurely start. As we were getting ready to leave camp, two guys came hiking up, headed the same way. They were in high gear... We scrambled up to a bench along the bottom of the east face and followed it over towards Icefloe Lake, then contoured around Icefloe and up towards the Ashley Creek divide. From there we could see the south face. We hid behind some rocks in the sun to warm up and grab a bite to eat, and planned our route up. As we watched, we could see the two guys who went by us in camp as they approached the summit. I don't think either of them did much more than stomp on it, then turned around and headed back down. They passed us just as we were starting up.
Our route went up to the snowfield in the middle of the face, across some yellow ledges which we nicknamed the "Yellow Brick Road", up a scree slope to a small horizontal snow patch, across to the west ridge, and then up to the summit. From the west ridge you have a great view of West McDonald, and the knife-edge ridge connecting it to McDonald.
The weather was outstanding, especially for this time of year. We put on some warm clothes and lounged around eating lunch and enjoying the view.
Then we reversed our route up, more or less. After a liesurely dinner by a warm fire and a good night's sleep, we hiked out via Heart and Crescent Lakes.
Our only disappointment was not seeing any bears, goats, or sheep. We decided they all went down Ashley Creek and feasted on the people approaching from that side, since we didn't see any of them on top...