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Wendy Thompson Hut a few nights ago....

30L challenge ultra 400 500g daypack just finished. Metal G-hooks, sternum adjusters, and shoulder adjusters. super bomber and super stoked

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/find-my-saved-skier-trapped-4-hours-avalanche/281-31496e1a-69b9-415b-b4e5-395236bb152d Took a brief break to browse for some good news. Check this out- guy survived an Avalanche FOUR HOURS buried. I've never heard of anyone lasting this long. Long enough for his wife to drive up to Stevens pass and tell the ski patrol where he was. I'm 100% sure they KNEW, not thought, but KNEW it was a body recovery situation. But there he was, still alive. It's perhaps a miracle, but more likely he was buried near the surface and there was enough air transport through the frozen snow that he didn't die of C02 poisoning. He reported creating an air pocket around his face, and his body temp dropped to 70, so he basically went in to hibernation. Still. ya gotta breathe occasionally, right? I think the key was he never gave up, wanted to survive, prayed, and his mind and body went into a "I will survive by hibernating" state. Fantastic. Or, it's a miracle. Good for him and his wife, anyway. Does anyone know, is this a record? 4 hours is INSANE -Friedrich

Now that I'm standing on the stilts of AI, I'm making quick progress in remediating some very complex issues that have plagued the site. One has been a problem with new registrations not recieving their registration email so they could sign in. I believe I have it fixed. Try it if you've been frustrated before. The amount of things I fixed just today on this site is amazing. I can't actually believe it myself, but this is where we are at. And its going to get even better. I have plans. I'm looking for accomplices.

Gaia has the summer route well marked: https://www.gaiagps.com/map/?loc=14.2/-121.7389/48.3278 I would think this would be about what you would do when the road is driveable, even if the mountain is mostly snow covered. I have only climbed in spring but the route linked above works fine with snow cover. Not sure if you can get all the way up there with the low snow lines of late though. My guess is no. In that case, you'll want to go this way: https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=2430763 Good luck @Diges, please post a TR next week letting us know how it went!

No, but (and maybe you’ve seen it) this recent TR is in the vicinity so might be interesting to look at:

Thanks those of you throwing down $. It really is a morale boost for me, to know that I'm not alone here in keeping this good ship Cascadeclimbers.com. I want to build this so it will last. The challenges for this project are unique, but I've already faced so many keeping this site going that I'm feeling confident we can do this. This is just another bridge to cross, there will be more. We will cross them.

Sounds like we need to do a photo auction! But in the meantime, I'll add in some $$

thanks for the update and keeping the infrastructure here going!

I created a new application that lets you sign up to get a email with a clickable links to all the new TRs for the month. So if you forget we exist you'll be reminded and you'll see all the new TRs. I tested it and it looks good so far. You can opt out and I've tested that. It will also include whatever I have in the "Annoucements" tab. I may put an add in there for AAI occasionally....maybe not...but it could happen so don't be mad it it does. Its cool feature! Let me know if you see anything weird with it. Its on the right sidebar. It disappears after you sign up. I put other logic into it too. When you sign up you won't immediately get an email, but I'll add something right now to let you know you're signed up. The actual email only goes out at the end of the month. But that will be it! No other BS, I promise. I don't want BS either. This is so cool, i'm having fun with this crap!

ooooh....would be cool to be able to sort search results by date. Right now if I do a user search, seems like it doesn't organize perfectly by date. Also was able to do a workaround for the TR only returns by author by searching for a username and then putting "TR" in the keyword box. Have I really put in 195 TRs over the years?!

I just need us to crowd source ideas for making this site better code wise or any way. Lets hear your ideas. A LOT more just became possible.

This is so great!!! Thanks @olyclimber for never giving up on the site. This should really revive our ability to mine the past for future inspiration....much appreciated!

I just used the search feature to find a JasonG TR I'd never seen for the Little Yoho Valley. It gets me excited for my trip next week!

Oh I quickly realized that buying the Pro version was the thing to do. im using Claude code, which is suited to my level…not an IDE. ive worked with some really smart people and the process it uses is uncannily similar. The actual coding part is more black box but when it troubleshoots it tells you what it’s checking and why. It took it like 8 iterations to get it right but it did. I thinks the one part I’m wondering about it how good can it get at actually enabling my vision of what I want. It may just come down to my ability to write prompt rather than Claude not being able to execute.

@JasonG I just wrote up an account of the first ascent: https://jimwalseth.substack.com/p/blind-date-in-the-bugaboos I used a photo or two from this post, thanks again for that @JeffreyW

Trip: Mt. Stuart NE Face - "Always the Cowboy, Never the Cow" Trip Date: 01/24/2026 Trip Report: Mt. Stuart “Always the Cowboy, Never the Cow” January high pressure is almost always a given. Whether its three days or a week one can usually count on a high pressure system showing up sometime in January. This year it decided to consume a large portion of the month. Great for climbers! With freezing levels reaching well above 10,000ft for multiple days. Washington winter was looking canceled. After a week of warm weather, the cold finally returned. With clear skies and cold temperatures in the forecast climbing conditions were lining up. On Tuesday I got a text from Michael asking if I was free last weekend to go check out Mt. Stuart. He pitched a winter ascent of the DNR which I quickly counter offered with the idea of a line to the left of Girth Pillar we both had looked at before. Steph Abegg had posted a summit photo from Colchuck on Instagram and way in the back it showed the NE face of Stuart. One could see the face was covered in ice and that there was a sliver of white just to the left of the Girth Pillar. Not certain of conditions but excited for the potential we decided to go take a look. After a spree of texts we came up with a plan and started reaching out to friends for beta and gear. Michael was able to acquire a sled from Sam Duke (shout out Sam!) so we could zip our way up the closed forrest service road to the trailhead. The stars were aligning for a rare Washington winter climbing window. We met in Leavenworth Friday morning caffeinated and hungry. We quickly sorted gear and headed to the trailhead. Michael powered up the sled which gave a loud burp and rumbled to life. We gingerly made our way up to the trailhead as neither of us had ridden on a snowmachine, eek! But we kept it on the road. We left the Stuart Lake trailhead around 10am and were happy to find a nicely packed trail all the way to the mountaineer’s creek turn off. The warm weather had consolidated much of the snow making for mellow boot travel once we stepped off the main trail. It took us about four hours to make our way to a bivy spot near the end of the sherpa glacier drainage. We set up camp underneath a boulder settling in making jokes and discussing a wide range of subjects to occupy our time before tucking into the tent. Oh he's a wanderer! Just a wanderer! NE face looking fat! At 4am our alarm clock rang and we slowly rolled out of bed. After a slow start of brewing up and eating breakfast we packed our bags leaving camp around 5:30. We made our way up to the ice cliff glacier finding passage along the right side of the ice cliff via ice and snow covered slabs. After getting onto the glacier we could see how much ice was covering the NE face… it was historic conditions! After roping up to cross the glacier we navigated our way underneath the face. At this point the wind had woken up and began biting at any part of skin we had exposed. This would make for a chilly morning. Big Mike getting ready to get Shrundy! Sunrise on the NE face! The bergshrund crossing was looking questionable. It appeared that crossing this shrund may provide a serious challenge in the future as the options were slim. Michael made his way over a narrow snow bridge finding Neve and ice on the other side. Once across we simuled our way up a few runnels of ice eventually making our first belay below a rock step. After reaching the belay I took the rack and set off on my first lead. I made my way up this rock step placing the #4 in a very nice crack working my way into some delicate feet with good tool sticks. Once I mantled this problem I moved my way into another 20m ice runnel. Topping out I came into a snow slope that lead to the streak of ice we had been ogling ever since we saw the face. I belayed up Michael and at this point the wind had made its presence well known. It made for parka and puffy pant belays necessary. Photo: Michael Telstad First Rock Step After a hasty transition Michael took off into what appeared to be the steepest section of the route which we broke up into two pitches. Michael led a really fun ice flow with stemming and good sticks into a shallow snow slope and put me on belay. As he brought me up we were chatting how much type one fun this would be if the wind would just die down. Looking up I was excited that this was my lead. It looked like the most exciting pitch of the route. It was a left facing dihedral with a smear of ice running down the left side. I started up aiming for the corner to our left. The trickiest part was getting through a thinnest part of the smear using small rock edges and delicate front points on the thin ice. This lead into the steepest ice on the route which was challenging to navigate due to the verticality and irregular ice flow. After topping out the smear I found a rock outcropping and belayed Michael up. When he reached the belay I could see in his eyes he had been blessed by the screaming barfie fairy. After a minute of arm swings and groans he took the rack starting up the next section of ice and snow runnels. Photo: Michael Telstad The flow that started it all Photo: Michael Telstad Getting the goods! Michael led us up another rope length with some simul climbing taking us to the upper snow slopes. From here we chose the path of least resistance taking a right leaning snow ramp that we saw would take us to the sub summit. From the photo it looked straight forward. Funny enough it ended up being some of the slowest climbing on the whole route. The snow ramp we saw was actually a very narrow band of snow that was a strange consolidation requiring multiple kicks to make a secure step. This ended up being some blue collar toe bashing over the next hour or so. Bashing my way across this ledge in one long simul-block we eventually made it to an anchor where the ramp turned into a snow field leading us to the sub summit. Michael later told me he was annoyed with how long I was taking until he came around the corner and then realized the reason for my slow lead. He proceeded to thank me for the steps I had painstakingly made. Almost There! Topping out the sub summit we popped onto the sunny south side and took a snack break. We ditched packs and ran up to the summit snapped a few photos and headed down. We walked and down climbed our way to the sherpa glacier descent exit. Front pointing our way down the sherpa glacier we eventually made our way back to camp sometime around 6pm. I don’t quite remember what time. Obligatory Summit Selfie Sunset Selfie. Back at camp we ate our de-hys, listened to music and hopped into our tent. The next morning we walked out following our tracks through the mountaineer’s creek drainage. We were psyched on what we had climbed but our excitement also laid in what might come next for the NE face of Stuart. Our Camp We believe our route climbs a direct start to the ’86 Girth Pillar Left completed by Mark Beibe and Charlie Hampson which was done as an aid climb in Octobe. We climbed this completely free following ice, snow and neve with a few mixed sections. Thus it was not quite a new route but definitely a first ascent in this style. We chose the name “Always the Cowboy, Never the Cow” after a CMAT lyric from the song “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!”. This was due to the blue collar climbing and the feeling of being cowboys out in the wild wrangling ice. Photo: John Scurlock “Always the Cowboy, Never the Cow” AI5 M5 FA: Michael Telstad and Tucker Merrill Gear Notes: Alpine rack to #4, nuts, screws. Approach Notes: Mountaineers creek to Ice cliff glacier

SJake on the summit of Luna, taken from the false summit with a disposable camera in 2018. One of those perfect mornings in the alpine.

Different people! Not to say anything of Mr Ng’s ability or potential. Maybe we all want to spot the next jeans wearing Cheamclimber, but I think it best just to encourage and help out the youth who clamor for the hills in our little community here. No sense in saddling expectations or projecting where someone is going. He will find his own way, and I hope his motivations are always his own. I do enjoy the TRs! Thanks Lucas!

That was me. Cascade Climbers is a great regional resource while MP has a national or even a global reach. Just trying to be helpful.