South Creek Butte

Description

We awoke this morning to sun at the Road’s End Campground by Twisp. We started at 7:00. The Twisp River was in a torrential state so we looked for a log crossing and came across one that was about .25 miles downstream from the campground and went across. This log crossing will be available for many years unless of course there is some major flooding in the area. The logjam is located directly beneath a pullout section of the road about .2 miles from the Road’s End campground. We then went cross-country and up to the right to find the abandoned mining road that Beckey talked about. We found it. However, I would recommend crossing the river and then walking directly back upstream to find the abandoned road. The abandoned mining road starts directly across the river from the Road’s End campground. This mining road is actually in pretty good shape and is even better than some trails in our state. Yes it has blowdowns but it is much better to stay on this road than to go cross-country. The abandoned road will wind its way to the old “Crescent Mine” on the USGS map. When you immediately cross the Crescent Lake stream on the abandoned road go directly uphill. Go uphill and veer to your left, because your objective is to be above the old mine site due to waterfalls but below some cliff bands. You want to be at about 5000 feet before you come to the next major stream shown on the USGS. This stream is to the SE of the Crescent Lake stream. Follow this drainage all the way to the col at 7400 feet. We had snow all the way. We put on crampons, but it was an iffy call if you needed them or not. We scrambled to the summit of Crescent Mountain. Summit time: 10:00 We scrambled down Crescent mountain on the west ridge and went over to South Creek Butte. We encountered no problems traversing. We reached South Creek Butte at 11:30. This Butte has melted glass everywhere and wires from an abandoned lookout. We went up point 7680+ to look at what we were accomplishing. We then went down the west ridge of 7680+ to the col and dropped our packs. We scrambled up to the summit of Mother Lode. Summit time: 1:00. We then went down to our packs because we were going to go down this couloir to Crescent Lake. We set up a snow bollard and did a 20-foot hanging rappel over snow down into this couloir. We then downclimbed the couloir another 200 feet. We then followed the snow filled Crescent Lake stream all the way down to the abandoned road. We hiked the abandoned road all the way to where the road reaches the campground. Remember you can’t cross the river, so we went downstream to the logjam and crossed back to the car. We reached the car at 4:00. 6/6/99

Thanks to Stefan Feller for this description.