[pct-l] Russell Creek (Mt Jefferson - Oregon) crossing

Devon Taig devon.taig at gmail.com
Mon Sep 24 18:03:54 CDT 2012


My nephew and I walked across Russell Creek in mid-August on the snow
bridge too. I'm wondering though if this isn't something of a mixed
blessing.  Yes, crossing is very easy, but I tend to think that it could
now be a *very* dangerous crossing too.  It's not really a matter of when
the snow bridge collapses, but rather when it will and who might be
unfortunate enough to be on it when it does.  I've been across Russell
Creek on other occasions before and thought to myself, "if I fall I'll get
wet and perhaps banged up, but nothing more".  This year I thought, "if the
bridge collapses I'll die for sure".
My recommendation is to
1) Cross in the early AM just as you would if the creek were running - the
bridge will be more solid when it is colder. Yes, it really does make a
difference.
2) Use a walking stick to distribute your weight across one or two
additional points
3) Do not attempt to jump across the snow bridge as that's more likely to
cause more harm than good (by over-stressing the bridge) and its hard to
tell exactly where the bridge is at its thinnest point.
4)  seriously consider having someone belay you from above - NOT from the
side as that will do no good at all.
5) Wear gloves and carry a tent stake in each hand (something like an ice
pick is much better of course). Should the bridge collapse, you may be able
to stab at the snow and ice and possibly stop yourself from going under.

Devon

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Dennis Phelan <dennis.phelan at gmail.com>wrote:

> This weekend my wife and I filled in a missing piece of our Oregon PCT hike
> which included crossing Russell Creek coming off of Mt Jefferson.  From
> various discussions and postings about advising that this could be a tough
> crossing I was prepared for it not being the easiest and expected a
> challenge.  Now I know that this late in the year, the streams will be down
> as this was a very dry year and the snow melt has almost stopped, but what
> we got was most unexpected; the creek was entirely covered in heavy snow,
> which was frozen solid.  I tested the snow and it was so solid that my pole
> hardly dented it.  We simply walked across the nice ice bridge.  The
> toughest part was not slipping on the uphill on the far side.  What I am
> really wondering is why doesn't this condition exist every year?  This was
> a low average snow year, it would seem that this stream would be covered
> like this more than not.  Anyway, I was sure glad it was this year.
>
> Dennis Phelan
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