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Awesome, thanks for posting!

Trip: Austera & Klawatti - Scramble routes Trip Date: 05/24/2025 Trip Report: Went out to Cascade River Road over the weekend. The goal was to bag Klawatti, Austera, Primus, and Tricouni, then return back to the Eldorado Trailhead. With a late sunset, we got a relaxed 6am start and made decent work up through the Boulder Field. By mid-morning, we were skinning up the Eldorado Glacier, watching people post-hole through the slush. Soon we were below Eldorado and I talked to Climber Kyle & crew for a little bit. When I went up Eldorado last year it was in a near whiteout, so looking over at Moraine lake and Forbidden was stunning. Lots of parties were out as you’d expect from such a beautiful weekend. Once we started the traverse over to Klawatti, we were alone. The sidehilling was tiring, especially on a splitboard, but the surrounding terrain made up for it. We put on trailrunners and scrambled up the South ridge of Klawatti. It was fun scrambling and we were at the top around 2, albeit now with wet feet. We descended back down and made a nice traverse over to Austera. With the hot sun, we skinned in the shade below a big rock. Our skin track probably looked a bit stupid to other parties once the sun moved. Anyways, some shenanigans of snow in trailrunners eventually brought us to the Austera summit. On the rappel through the gully, I had an awakening when a carabiner unclipped itself. Luckily we had two opposite and opposed but it definitely shook me up for a second. We set up a nice bivy on the ridge below Austera and watched an avalanche pour over the cliffs on the McAllistar Glacier On Sunday, we started the morning at 6 by skiing the Klawatti Glacier to get over to Primus and Tricouni. At the bottom of the ridge the snow was already mush, over crevasses and cliffs. Knowing that this was our only exit option and that we’d be coming back out in the middle of the afternoon, we took a pause to think through our options. Wanting to make our parents proud, we decided to put skins on and head back out. Another ski party also followed suit. The climb up the Klawatti Glacier was definitely nerving. The glacier was very smooth, but big whoomphs reminded us of the cracks we were walking over. I think it was just the recent snow settling under our weight, but it still wasn’t fun feeling the snow around me dropping an inch or two. The way out was just a lot more traversing. I thought about going up to ski the northeast face on Eldorado, but Cole just wanted to get out. I wasn’t feeling super stoked about it anyways, so off to the Eldorado glacier we went. A few thousand feet of slush got us to the boulder field where it was a toasty hike back to the car. Went out to a college tour at UBC on monday and then skied Emmons/winthrop yesterday. For those wondering, the snow conditions are much better than the ranger blog makes it out to be. Nice corn to 1000' above the prow. Nice edgeable chalky to the saddle. Sastrugi Above. Skinnable snow at the switchback before the camp. Traverse to saddle or snowbridge which we saw a party belay across. Might add a TR eventually to my blogspot but got some school and other life to catch up on right now. Gear Notes: belay devices are nice for the rappels in addition to normal glacier gear Approach Notes: snow above boulderfield

Go hang a maga flag. Find out. My guess would be that some people would roll their eyes. And those people would be hailed as champions of your great autocrat. And then life would go on. Amazing “what if” though!

So yeah, I suppose I've followed the Beckey beta....but you'll do just fine if you're into the Pickets thing.

You're in the right spot! It has been a few years since I've traversed from Luna Col to Fury but I have done it a few times, including one-way coming down from Fury on a traverse and don't remember it being very difficult to figure out on the fly. I remember sticking fairly close to the ridge and then bypassing a steep section on the west side, on a prominent ledge. Here is a view looking toward Luna Col:

First time poster, not sure if this is the right subforum to ask this. Sorry if this doesn't belong here. Seems like there are one of two ways to do the traversal from Luna Col to the South Fury Glacier. 1. The SummitPost page suggests traversing E/SE of the ridge. 2. Beckey and many trip reports I've seen suggest staying on the ridge and taking the red ledges and the class 4/5 "Crux Tower." Based on just the route descriptions, I'd assume that the first route that stays below the ridge would be the easier/preferred option, but it seems like every recent trip report that I've seen from the past 4+ years all stay on the ridge (and climb the Crux Tower without ropes). What makes my assumption wrong here? Why is the ridge route better/more popular than the route that stays below the ridge? I'm grabbing a copy of Selected Climbs in the Cascades Vol 2 pretty soon which I hope will give me some more insight on the ridge route but I'd also like to hear the input of others. Thanks!

they should stick to cutting bolts on Forbidden, and keeping the cat scratch gully rappels as dangerous as possible. priorities, people!

Nice Lucas! Getting after it 🔥. Thanks for the inspo.

THIS is all you need

Here's some beta from this weekend, May 24-25. Snow on the road blocked access to the Schreiber’s meadow about half a mile short of the parking lot. I doubt that will melt out in the week, but snow down low is going fast. We took the summer route up to the Railroad Grade. I would not recommend that. It cost us an extra hour or more of climbing over snow obstacles. The week prior, Friday 5/16 through Tuesday 5/20, there was 3.5 inches of water equivalent that fell, or more than three feet of fresh snow up high. We brought show shoes and were thankful. We did not find any open crevasses to use for crevasse rescue practice, and I doubt those are going to open up any time soon. I probed an obvious depression in the area we typically use for this. While I did find a crevasse, the shallowest breakthroughs were at 230 cm down. We saw a large, group up high just below the open seracs. I don’t know for sure that they found any open crevasses, but they were stationary up there for several hours, so there may or may not be usable open crevasses up high around 7,000’. There were tons of loose wet avalanches on steeper terrain all around. Down low, snow bridges around the creek are collapsing. Be careful around those. Hopefully this is useful for others out there.

Thank you! Davis has been on the list...this seems like the way to do it!

Washington State's biennial budget twelve years ago was $18.5Bn. Today's is $76Bn. A state income tax won't solve wilderness access problems. And an additional sales tax would get funneled straight to politically-connected orgs just like Inslee's "Climate Commitment" carbon auction fraud.

Great topic. I wrote a master's thesis on wilderness access and your work reminds me of that long-ago project. You mostly avoid the effect wilderness/green orgs have had in limiting access vis-a-vis litigation and road closures. Back in the day NCCC and ALPS--and even the WTA were advocating for very limited/restricted access to virtually all wild areas and a strict interpretation of WA1964. Ditto the Pilchuck Audubon Society--and even some pretty radical NPS Superintendents like Bill Briggle. Other than theorizing that wilderness provided a sort of escape valve for capitalism, I didn't map out the economics as you have. I like what you've done!

boot dryers are mankind's greatest invention. without exaggerating: better than the printing press, moveable type, and sliced bread.

I'm a member of the NW Glacier Cruisers group

@Kameron Thanks so much. Which FB group?

Thanks appreciate it!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/activists-unfurl-trans-pride-flag-on-iconic-yosemite-cliff-hate-is-unnatural/ar-AA1FdKxT?ocid=BingNewsSerp Again, imagine a MAGA banner hanging from NA Wall and what the NPS response would be. And again, this is an NPS management problem. Fire everyone at Yosemite; rehire and reassign the handful who may not be ok with this.

Thanks Kam!

Saw on Facebook, no more snowmobiles for the season

https://youtu.be/GKdl-GCsNJ0?si=K8eSuFZnqx3Ygs2u

Spectacular pictures!

Sounds like the best way to just feel older.... Anyway sitting in traffic sucks! I love how the adventure extends throughout when you bike somewhere!

That's awesome! This TR got me thinking of all the places I could bike to, then I thought, "I'm too friggin old -- I'm just going to drive." 🤣

You didn't go into her bedroom and ask her to dry them for you at midnight? 😂 JK Hope you made it up to her? If not maybe consider rope gunning up Hard Mox on the next rainy weekend! 😂 Sorry, can't help myself. Glad you got out Lucas!