Marshall Mountain
(Doesn't count. Did not make summit.)

Marshall Mountain was Erin's and my first overnight in the high peaks. Last year we overnighted at Cascade Lake, down by Blue Mountain Lake. This was the first overnight which included a trip to a high peak.

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The trip started from upper works, and we came into the flowed lands, and were able to get a leanto to ourselves - a group of 6. We unloaded our gear, had some lunch (not by the leanto - reports of bears by everyone we encountered headed out), and headed for the herd path to Marshall.

Erin had not slept well the night before, and the early departure, and first hike with a full pack really wore her out. We made it to the knee in the trail, about a half mile from the summit, and opted to back out. The trail was a monster, very much like a herd path. Picture above shows one small section, but this type of scrambling was common.

We headed down with 2 others, Charlie and the goat (Brendon) continued on and bagged the peak - great job! The rest of us went back and started dinner, down by the beach, a ways from the leanto. Didn't want brer bear bothering us in the night.

Food was kept in a bear cannister, but we didn't plan well, and didn't have room for foor garbage in cannister, so we hung it off a cliff. More on this in a bit.

We settled into leanto at dusk, and the majority of the bear like noises were from sleeping hikers, until about 3am. Something large trumped down the path right next to the leanto, huffed about 6 feet from us - two of us heard it - and then things were quiet for a bit. In about 20 minutes we heard the bear - he had snagged our garbage and was feasting.

At dawn, we fired up the stoves, brewed some coffee, cooked up some scrambled eggs, and I went down and cleaned up the garbage. The bear was very neat, garbage was all in a small 2 ft circle. I appreciated his/her courtesy. By hanging the 'smelly' garbage right next to where we hid the bear cannister with our food, the bear never noticed the cannister. Not sure if this is repeatable, but we didn't need to search for the cannister at all.

Hiked back out, and returned reluctantly to civilization.

Here's Charlie's report of the same trip.