Hmmm, I wonder what this is?
April 24-25, 2004
Paul Belitz, Jeff Manor
Jeff is known for a strong love of stupid trips. He was the brainchild behind our last trip to the B-P Cleaver, but every once in a while he strikes gold. We found a rich vein this time.
The Jeffinator has been tied down lately, busy with domestic affairs, so after several weeks of mountainless activity he was raring to do something big. The weather looked good for the weekend; the forecast called for a mostly cloudy Saturday, followed by a warm and clear Sunday. Jeff suggested the B-P Cleaver, and I was game for a third overnight trip in a month. We decided to leave Seattle at 7. That we did, and were at the beginning of the end of the road at 10am, after stopping for some artery-clogging fast food and a new pair of sunglasses (the party that forgot their sunglasses (and foam pad) shall remain nameless, but it wasn't me). After fifteen minutes of hiking up the road, we hit the trailhead.
Everything was socked in, and it was drizzling ever-so-slightly. After hiking for half an hour, the skies opened up and it really started to rain. We hunkered down under the biggest tree that we could find, made sure that our sleeping bags would stay dry, and sat around for half an hour waiting for the rain to stop. Instead, it turned into snow. We couldn't ignore such an obvious sign, so we packed up and started hiking again. After a while the rain stopped, and soon we were in the meadow at 3600 feet, and we started booting up to the high point of the ridge. Once there we sat down, ate lunch, and enjoyed the break. The Park Headwall even peeked through the clouds, taunting us. We kept going, now on skins. As usual for the first day of a trip, Jeff was feeling stronger than me, so he got the privilege of breaking trail. As we made our way up the cleaver the clouds started breaking. As we got to a nice level spot at 7100 feet the sky was nearly clear. We decided to bivy.
Being on the east side of the mountain meant that we were in the shade altogether too quickly. We brewed up for a while, dug out two platforms, and dove into our bivy sacks trying to escape the spindrift coming down the slope. I managed to fall asleep at some point, despite cold feet, and was soon keeping Jeff awake with my snoring. Jeff didn't enjoy the night as much as me, lacking a foam pad. The upside was that he was conscious to wake me up when the sun rose above Shuksan. We decided to start hiking right away to try and warm up. It didn't work, after twenty minutes I had to stop and warm my feet in the sun. A bit higher we took a half hour break to eat breakfast and hydrate. The weather was spectacular; not a cloud in the sky.
After booting up a steep slope we switched to skins and kept moving. As usual, I slowed down at 9,000 feet, but it wasn't too bad. We decided to skirt the headwall
to climber's left, heading for the crater. After crossing a nearly-concealed crevasse and going around another, we got to the final slope to the summit plateau.
Two snowmobiles came up Sherman Peak as we grunted to the summit,and graced us with the sweet melody of two stroke engines as they drove into the crater.
I was hoping that they would fall into a fumarole and prove Darwin's theory, but no such luck. I considered mooning them, but figured that they wouldn't be looking
anyway.
The summitfest was in full swing when I skinned up at noon, with four people on the true summit and at least fifteen on the other side of the summit plateau. A skier
asked what route we had done. I replied "Boulder-Park Cleaver". "Um, so, is that a route name?". No, it's a cleaver. 
After a while on the summit we decided to get going. The snow down to the cleaver was quite nice. A few inches of corn over a good base made for easy skiing.
We got down to our bivy, packed up, skied down, skinned out, climbed down, skied down, hiked out, and drove home. Jeff says I should mention the skiing down through the woods, since he enjoyed it so much. It consisted of sideslips and stem christies through tight trees, tree wells, and melting out creeks. Fun survival skiing, and fast, too. We walked back to the car without much drama. The end.
Check it out! Jeff made a movie of some gaper, and he almost looks like he knows what he's doing! Almost.
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