Living Outside: Mount Larrabee

So, on saturday Frankie & I set out on hwy 542 toward Mount Baker. We took a left onto the forest service road that would lead us back to Twin lakes and the trail head. It ended up being a beautiful and pretty darn cold day. Our goal was to summit Mount Larrabee, which Fred Beckey described as an easy scramble up some loose rocks. What Frankie & I should have learned by now is that what Fred Beckey deems easy, is typically scary and or life threatening by normal human standards. The first 2.2 miles was up a nice switch backy trail that led us to a beautiful mountain pass with amazing views of our surroundings. From this point onward, there is no defined route to the summit maintained by anyone. So the fun started. We got "off route" and visited an old abandoned mine. This then caused us to go back up 500 feet through blue berry bushes until we got to where we were supposed to be. Then, we went up a scree, tallusy, pumicy thing to the side of Mount larrabee. Only 1000' feet to go to the summit. This is where the fun started. I honestly could not tell you which way was the "right" way to go, except that we did not go that way. We climbed up some gross crumbly rock face where the rock you were holding one second that was attached to the mountain would be in your hand detached from previous mountain resting place. The word "exposure" or phrase "Frankie I'm really scared" was uttered or mumbled multiple times over the next hour... but thankfully we reached the summit and had AMAZING views (photos to come). We actually ran into one of the guys from the graduate class ahead of me, which was completely random when you're in the middle of designated wilderness, on a crumbly shitty trail that you made yourself. The way down was much easier since we had learned many lessons on the way up, and it took us 6 hours round trip. Frankie has some amazing photos and videos, but he's on a plane going to Korea, and I only have the few photos from my camera. Enjoy