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Beckhorn Slide and 1062 meter outlier.
The Beckhorn Slide had been in my sights for quite some time: ever since I saw it from Rocky Peak Ridge when I finished my 46, 2 years ago. Then last summer while exploring one of the Bouquet River’s South Fork tributaries I spied the open rock on the 1062 meter outlier to the ENE of Dix. So, in order to kill two birds with one stone I drew a route in the Topo mapping program that went over the outlier, down to the shallow col between it and Dix, then traversed to the base of the Beckhorn Slide, up the slide, over to the Dix –Hough col and out to the herd path below the Grace Slides. I emailed the route to Mastergrasshopper to see how he liked it and the result saw us hiking in from the North Fork-Rte 73 parking area at 6:00am DST.
We figured we had an hour of trail hiking with headlamps to where the bushwhack would start. It was a gorgeous night/morning with a star-filled sky and the Spotted-Elizabethtown 4 ridge-line was beautifully etched out against the sky. Between the fine night-time scenery, the anticipation of the hike and the wicked pace Glen was setting along the leaf covered path my spirits were soaring high. The 3 creek crossings went well and when our little outlier peak was about due west of us we left the trail.
As daylight increased we found ourselves in a very open birch forest sloshing through dry, ankle deep leaves and quickly reached open rock which gave us ever-expanding views of RPR and Giant, the Grace-Spotted ridge and Mt. Mansfield in Vermont. This little mountain was a pure joy to climb as we ascended from outcrop to outcrop (taking many pictures). After traversing a section of mixed forest my anticipation of what was coming grew more and more acute until we broke out onto the exposed rock on the west side. It was incredible. We stood there, riveted, and absorbed the absolutely stunning and brand new (to us) views of the Dix Range and most importantly, the Beckhorn Slide. Since leaving the creek earlier on, any water we had seen had all been of the frozen variety and the slide appeared to be generously covered in it.
After calming down we got down to business and from our unique vantage point we scoped the slide carefully. We figured there were enough dry looking patches and channels to be able to climb it. The route we needed to follow to the base of it looked dead simple from up high but we knew that once we were down on the valley floor it would be trickier because the drainage spread out into a multitude of fingers. So far, because of the topography, we had not had to make use of the map, compass or gps.
Upon dropping down off of the exposed rock we re-entered the sunny and open birch forest and crossed one drainage, took on some water, weighed down our cameras with more mega-pixels and traversed a quarter-mile-wide rib of high ground to pick up the next drainage, which would lead us to the Beckhorn. We remained in the creek-bed and rock-hopped; the higher we climbed the more ice there was to avoid. Then the drainage began to split apart into various tentacles and we now had no views of our objective so after some uncertainty we broke out the GPS, which had a few key waypoints programmed in. We zig-zagged a bit but eventually broke out at the base of the slide. There was a lot of ice on it but there were also channels and fingers of dry rock that we were able to climb. Route finding was a challenge because most of the dry rock was covered with colonies of lichens that formed slippery blobs. The lower half of the slide was the toughest and due to the ice, which at times was crampon thick, we had to skirt around one or two ice covered steep steps. When we reached the narrow, upper half of the slide the climbing became much easier although you still had to keep and eye out for small ice patches. The views behind us were truly spectacular but the view of the final upper portion of the slide was intimidating. Viewed straight on it didn’t look climbable but once we got there it turned out to be pretty easy. We exited the top to the right and found narrow seams to wriggle up through in a very dense coniferous forest. The slope must have been 45 degrees but there were lots of strong trees to hoist ourselves up with and suddenly we could see down to the Elk Lake side and then we were following yellow markers to the summit of Dix. What a hike!
From Dix we followed the path to the top of pointy Hough and bushwhacked off of it down a steep slope that had some blowdown but nothing too bad. Near the summit the trees were dense, wiry and spindly but as we dropped they increased in size and the spacing between them also increased. I turned the gps on and recorded our descent route as a future reference for when I get around to climbing Hough as an off-trail hike. We joked that the easiest way to do high peaks as bushwhacks would be to climb them on the trail, bushwhack off with a gps and then turn around and follow the tracklog back up. (Ok, you had to be there, same as for the joke about seam grip) Anyway, we aimed for the shoulder of Spotted and gauged our progress by watching Grace slowly drift by on our right. We reached the birch forest and then did a fair bit of ankle destroying side-sloping above and parallel to the drainage (S. Fork Boquet), which gave us constant views of the Grace ridge-line as we moseyed along. Finally, we dropped down to the trail and hiked out to the highway. Then we turned our watches back to Standard time and drove home. The loop took just under 12 hours to complete.
Pictures
The Beckhorn Slide had been in my sights for quite some time: ever since I saw it from Rocky Peak Ridge when I finished my 46, 2 years ago. Then last summer while exploring one of the Bouquet River’s South Fork tributaries I spied the open rock on the 1062 meter outlier to the ENE of Dix. So, in order to kill two birds with one stone I drew a route in the Topo mapping program that went over the outlier, down to the shallow col between it and Dix, then traversed to the base of the Beckhorn Slide, up the slide, over to the Dix –Hough col and out to the herd path below the Grace Slides. I emailed the route to Mastergrasshopper to see how he liked it and the result saw us hiking in from the North Fork-Rte 73 parking area at 6:00am DST.
We figured we had an hour of trail hiking with headlamps to where the bushwhack would start. It was a gorgeous night/morning with a star-filled sky and the Spotted-Elizabethtown 4 ridge-line was beautifully etched out against the sky. Between the fine night-time scenery, the anticipation of the hike and the wicked pace Glen was setting along the leaf covered path my spirits were soaring high. The 3 creek crossings went well and when our little outlier peak was about due west of us we left the trail.
As daylight increased we found ourselves in a very open birch forest sloshing through dry, ankle deep leaves and quickly reached open rock which gave us ever-expanding views of RPR and Giant, the Grace-Spotted ridge and Mt. Mansfield in Vermont. This little mountain was a pure joy to climb as we ascended from outcrop to outcrop (taking many pictures). After traversing a section of mixed forest my anticipation of what was coming grew more and more acute until we broke out onto the exposed rock on the west side. It was incredible. We stood there, riveted, and absorbed the absolutely stunning and brand new (to us) views of the Dix Range and most importantly, the Beckhorn Slide. Since leaving the creek earlier on, any water we had seen had all been of the frozen variety and the slide appeared to be generously covered in it.
After calming down we got down to business and from our unique vantage point we scoped the slide carefully. We figured there were enough dry looking patches and channels to be able to climb it. The route we needed to follow to the base of it looked dead simple from up high but we knew that once we were down on the valley floor it would be trickier because the drainage spread out into a multitude of fingers. So far, because of the topography, we had not had to make use of the map, compass or gps.
Upon dropping down off of the exposed rock we re-entered the sunny and open birch forest and crossed one drainage, took on some water, weighed down our cameras with more mega-pixels and traversed a quarter-mile-wide rib of high ground to pick up the next drainage, which would lead us to the Beckhorn. We remained in the creek-bed and rock-hopped; the higher we climbed the more ice there was to avoid. Then the drainage began to split apart into various tentacles and we now had no views of our objective so after some uncertainty we broke out the GPS, which had a few key waypoints programmed in. We zig-zagged a bit but eventually broke out at the base of the slide. There was a lot of ice on it but there were also channels and fingers of dry rock that we were able to climb. Route finding was a challenge because most of the dry rock was covered with colonies of lichens that formed slippery blobs. The lower half of the slide was the toughest and due to the ice, which at times was crampon thick, we had to skirt around one or two ice covered steep steps. When we reached the narrow, upper half of the slide the climbing became much easier although you still had to keep and eye out for small ice patches. The views behind us were truly spectacular but the view of the final upper portion of the slide was intimidating. Viewed straight on it didn’t look climbable but once we got there it turned out to be pretty easy. We exited the top to the right and found narrow seams to wriggle up through in a very dense coniferous forest. The slope must have been 45 degrees but there were lots of strong trees to hoist ourselves up with and suddenly we could see down to the Elk Lake side and then we were following yellow markers to the summit of Dix. What a hike!
From Dix we followed the path to the top of pointy Hough and bushwhacked off of it down a steep slope that had some blowdown but nothing too bad. Near the summit the trees were dense, wiry and spindly but as we dropped they increased in size and the spacing between them also increased. I turned the gps on and recorded our descent route as a future reference for when I get around to climbing Hough as an off-trail hike. We joked that the easiest way to do high peaks as bushwhacks would be to climb them on the trail, bushwhack off with a gps and then turn around and follow the tracklog back up. (Ok, you had to be there, same as for the joke about seam grip) Anyway, we aimed for the shoulder of Spotted and gauged our progress by watching Grace slowly drift by on our right. We reached the birch forest and then did a fair bit of ankle destroying side-sloping above and parallel to the drainage (S. Fork Boquet), which gave us constant views of the Grace ridge-line as we moseyed along. Finally, we dropped down to the trail and hiked out to the highway. Then we turned our watches back to Standard time and drove home. The loop took just under 12 hours to complete.
Pictures
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