Mt. Buckner

Category: Washington (HWY 20) Summit Elev: 9,114 ft *
Date: March 23&24, 2010 (Tue&Wed)Trip Report #: 83Partners: Jason Hummel, Kyle Miller

Route: North Face (snowy early spring conditions, steep ice/snow)

The North Face of Mt. Buckner is not often climbed or skied in the winter or early spring, but if the weather and conditions are right (as they were for us), it makes for a wonderful adventure complete with wallowing, exciting climbing and skiing, thinly bridged crevasses, great views, downclimbing steep ice, basecamp on one of the largest and most beautiful glacier in the Cascades, frigid belays, and lots and lots more fun and memories.


* The SW summit is listed as 9114 ft, which makes it the higher summit relative to the 9112 ft NE summit. However, at some angles - such as from the SW summit - the NE summit actually appears higher. This has been a topic of debate among county high point peakbaggers, since Buckner is the Skagit WA county high point with over 3000' prominence. This debate inspired the creation of a program that employs photo pixel analysis to determine elevations. This program was used to determine that the SW summit of Buckner is indeed 9.6 inches higher than the NE summit (hence, probably closer to 9113 ft than 9114 ft). This is all very fascinating. It would be interesting to do a photo pixel analysis to determine if the SW summit is still the higher one under winter snowcover!
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