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Trip: Vesper Peak - No Colusion with the Russian on Ragged Edge Trip Date: 07/27/2018 Trip Report: OlegV (The Russian) and I climbed Ragged Edge (Original start) on Vesper Peak Friday. Thanks a lot to Darin and Gene for putting up such an enjoyable route in a truly splendid setting. They are wonderful, tremendous, people! We had debated whether to bring ice axe and crampons. Our man Tom came to us and emailed us saying he had gone in there in June, and there was still a lot of snow. Tons of snow in June, folks! So we would want to take the axe and pons. But the Russian was very powerful in their assertion that there would be no snow, and that we'd want to go light. Now, my sources are very good people, and I trust my sources very much, but I can say this for sure. I didn't see why there would* be any snow up there! But the Russian tore his old trail running shoe on the approach. SAD! (image by the Russian) When we got to the lake in the bowl below Sperry and Vesper on Thursday, it was still covered with snow. There was just about one small patch of dry flat ground by the side of Vesper creek for us to bivy (image by the Russian): We were worried we'd be screwed by the snow. Lots of snow up there still, folks! Lots of it! But we had made the best approach from the trailhead - of all time! No one before us has made such a tremendous approach!! *I wanted to make a small clarification about my previous statement. I meant to say "I didn't see why there wouldn't be any snow up there". That should clear it all up, folks. I was in my Nepal Evos (don't have a lighter shoe that's as comfy ).That came in handy the next day to deal with the snow. We followed the trail up the East shoulder of Vesper. Where we wanted to cut across to the gap, the snow angle was not too bad. I cut steps, and the Russian was able to follow just fine. Luckily, the North side was all snow free! Who would've known?! Nobody knew, folks, nobody knew! There was just a small patch on the approach ledge, which we bypassed easily: Since we wasted enough time dealing with the snow, we decided to go for the original start as soon as we came up to it. The climb was a lot of fun. Thanks much for the bolts and the fixed anchors - just at the right places! And we could get a bunch of gear in otherwise. Here are some pics from the climb: The last pitch, with Copper Lake in the background: (At) The Summit with the Russian. Notice the Russian looks a lot more calm, composed, and in control ! The Russian made a bunch of video recordings. Who would record their partner? SAD! But in all the recordings, my voice is there in only one of them! It was great to get my fat ass up in the hills again after two years. But trust me folks, it's all a witch hunt, and there was no collusion with the Russian! Your favorite CC.com-er has done nothing wrong! We took our time lingering in the 'pine (wanted to avoid traffic driving back to Portland). But then we got delayed for almost an hour by construction on I-5. SAD! The 24-hr espresso drive-thru in Everett, and lots of fun conversation with the Russian kept me awake for the drive home. Among other things, we talked about obesity, epics in the mountains, Dan Smith, Maria Butina, etc. But there was no colusion! Gear Notes: We brought too much, placed much. Leave the axe and pons at home. Approach Notes: The 2.2 miles of dirt road to the trailhead (from the Mountain Loop Highway) is in bad shape for compact cars. I had to be super careful not to bottom out my Impreza! A highe(er) clearance vehicle is recommended.

Trip: Goode - NE Buttress Trip Date: 07/22/2018 Trip Report: I've had this route on the calendar every July since 2012 and every year something has thwarted me (partners dropping, rain or thunderstorms in the forecast, etc). Last year was the only year I actually had boots on the trail and we ended up with a late start and making a route-finding mistake after crossing the N Fork of Bridge Creek that cost us the climb. This year the stars finally fucking all aligned and it was glorious! The view of the final approach after crossing the knee-deep N Fork of Bridge Creek. Follow talus between the lower slide alder up to the waterfall on the left, climb slabs to its right, then ascend talus through "magic tunnels" and onto open terrain. We bivied at 5600', just below the glacier. Last year we neglected to check out these slabs next to the left-most waterfall until it was too late. This year we went right to them. The slabs are exposed and a bit butt-puckering with full packs, but not enough to motivate us to get out a rope or give us pause about this endeavor. Opportunities like this (4 days of clear weather, motivated partners, time off work) are not so easy to come by in mid-to-late July, and I am not getting any younger. Ascending the Goode Glacier in the morning. It was broken up and we had to navigate crevasses and seracs. Nothing too serious. We all wore approach shoes, which worked well enough with crampons (I had my Grivel G1's that I got via a gift certificate from cc.com a few years ago, purchased at Jim Nelson's store). From TRs we knew that the higher up you gain the buttress, the less pitches of loose shittiness you must climb. Lower down you might get up to three pitches and up high as few as one. We opted to try for a snow bridge up high and found this one at about 6800'. It involved one face in move with a low step to block of ice. It might not go now, but there appeared to be a few other place to gain the rock below this that might last longer. We did one pitch of low-mid-fifth class rock then simulclimbed until about 8000'. I think we had a total of 3 simul-leads, with transitions only due to rope drag. I did not place much pro on these. When the buttress steepened we pitched 4 or so pitches and got to the bivy alcove at 8600'. From there 3 pitches to the ridge crest. It was lat-ish (6:30 pm) and 4 people were ahead of us and going for the summit. Figuring they would all bivy on the limited space there and seeing a nice snow patch at 8900' right next to a small bivy site we stopped, made dinner, drank water, drank whisky, and enjoyed a spectacular sunset: In the morning we waited for one of the parties to rappel. We saw them around 6 am. They said the other party was still hanging out so we headed up. After two pitches we were on the summit. We stayed on the summit for well over an hour, savoring the views. Having had been on the S side two years ago to climb Storm King, I knew we had a long day ahead. We started down. Truth be told the SW couloir and the trail down to the Park Creek trail was unsavory, and we got several blisters in our approach shoes. There is a nice spot to camp at about 7200'. Having been here before, we headed for it and looked for a stream out of the snow pack. We took a long break here to get water and savor views one last time. The views of Sinister and Dome, the rest of the Ptarmigan Traverse and Buckner are spectacular. From here it took us 3 hours to get to the "nice" trail. The length of the day and this trip with full packs was starting to take its toll. A few hours on the 4 miles to the base of this trail, then a connector (2.5 miles?) to the PCT, and about 3 more to the N Fork Camp where we had stashed food and a fuel cannister. We arrived at camp at 9:40 pm. I have never enjoyed a Mountain House more. Sadly, I had no whisky left. In the morning of the fourth day, we hiked out the last 10 miles, where beer awaited in the truck. Gear Notes: Ice axe, crampons, appoach shoes, helmet, small alpine rack with several double slings Approach Notes: Long, brutal

Does anyone know of anyone who has climbed all of the Cascade Volcanoes in one season? I just finished up a trip a week ago with the goal to summit every active Volcano. I biked between them, and biked from Tacoma down to the start down at Lassen (and then back home after Baker). I'm curious if anyone else has climbed them all "in a single push" before, or by biking between. I think the closest to this is Chris Davenport and Jess McMillian's Ring of Fire ski objective, but I'm not sure if they summitted them all, or were just more focused on ski descents of the Volcanoes. But they took the easy route with an RV in between. Granted, they did many many Volcanoes in two weeks, whereas it took me 25 days and change on a bike.... Details from the trip: http://www.runningfarther.com/tour-de-volcanoes-recap/

Trip: Waddington - Bravo Glacier to SE Chimney w/ Right Flank Trip Date: 07/24/2018 Trip Report: Fern, Vance and I climbed the standard route (& official Beckey Favorite) over the July 24 to 29 interval. We drove up on July 24th and spent the night camped at the end of the Whitesaddle airstrip at Bluff Lake. On July 25th we got an early morning flight to Rainy Knob. Conditions were ideal. We built a basecamp, stashed unneeded gear, ate, and spent the afternoon reading and kibitzing. We got an early night, got up at 11 PM, and started the climb, carrying three-day packs. Negotiating the Bravo Glacier at night required some intuition as well as info gleaned from a quick overflight while coming in to Rainy the day before. We got around most crevasses. One near the base of the east spur of Bravo Peak required some extensive overhead shovelling at its lowest point , on a mound of recent debris, by Vance to turn it from a slushy overhang to a more solid vertical wall. We hauled the packs on that one and got on top just at sunrise. Several hundred meters higher, we had to make a long horizontal traverse across a 65-70 degree shelf above another crevasse, where the lip had sheared off, to reach the upper snowfield. Easy scrambling and a snowslog got us to Bravo Col by about 9 AM. The snow had started to turn from firm to breakable crust by then, so after some crawling and knee-walking, we gave up, dug a snow hole, and spent a few hours napping and watching jet fighters do loop-de-loops up and down the Tiedemann and thru Combatant Col. Zoom, zoom. The sound of freedom! Around 4 PM we figured the crust was all gone, so we roped up once more and slogged through the slop to Spearman Saddle, where we set up ABC. The next day the alarm went off at 1:30 and we left camp by 3:15, not wanting to start the rock climbing in the dark. We had firm snow up to the base of the Tooth and found a traverse across the lip of a randkluft to get onto the actual Tooth traverse ledges at a prominent brown slabby scar. There wasn't much snow on the ledges, just lots of loose rock, so we pitched it out to the notch, and to the base of the actual SE chimneys. The actual chimneys had lots of loose rock and a little wet slush masquerading as ice pitches under the chockstones. We chose to take the Right Flank variation (169B in Don's guide) which provided mostly solid rock climbing with two avoidable rime gargoyle remnants to add spice. Two pitches of the Right Variation (which felt like 5.8 to me btw, but then again, we were climbing in boots and crampons, but mostly with bare hands) led to one more long easy pitch up the scree- and snow slope above the Chimneys and a 2 PM summit. There was a Seattle/Colorado party on the NW summit at the same time, which was entertaining because they gave a sense of scale to our photos. We hung out on top for almost an hour (complete with a horsefly - where do these things come from?) before heading down. The first rap was 60 m to the top of the Chimney. We made another 60 to below the first chockstone but managed to get the knot stuck. Vance tiblocked up the stuck rope, unstuck it, and made two shorter raps - 30 m to above the second chockstone and then 30 m back to us. We elected to continue back down the Tooth ledges rather than the Harvard Notch line because it was so dry that there was substantial loose rock visible down that route and you rap in the fall line there whereas rapping and downclimbing the ledges traverses, giving one some protection. We made a couple 30 m raps here, then tried a 60, hoping it would reach the snow, but it didn't and the rope got stuck again, this time just due to slab friction near the anchor. Fern freed it up, and we made one more 60 m over the schrund and were down on the snow by sunset. We got back to ABC around 11 PM, for around a 20 hour day. The next day we lazed until 3 pm and then set off down the Bravo. We rapped twice (from rock anchors) on the Cauldron headwall to avoid the serac-lip traverse, and once more at the overhanging serac, where we used a bollard plus picket to take a 30 m rap/cimb/rap shortcut through two overhanging crevasse walls and an intervening tottering ice fin. We got back to Rainy Knob basecamp at sunset. There is a ferocious snafflehound at Rainy Knob. She tried to eat my socks but I'd worn them for three days straight in my boots and they stank so bad she not only gave up, but left our Mountain House dinners alone too! On Sunday, we got a morning pickup by Mike King and were back in Bluff Lake by 9 and back in the Lower Mainland by dinnertime. Gear Notes: Three pickets, crampons (dual horizontal front points worked best), two tools each, nuts and cams to 3" (doubles 1" and 2"), six tricams, six pins. Many slings and webbing. Left pins, nuts, tricams and slings behind on the descent. Took four screws and didn't use them. Superlight 3-person tent for advanced base camp. Two stoves (one canister, one white gas). Double 60s. Four or five light jacket layers, softshell bibs. Temps varied from below freezing at night to 25C in the day. Approach Notes: Save yourself the extra two weeks of walking in and out and fly Whitesaddle. Vance had previously kayaked and skied from Vancouver to the NW summit so he had a fair comparison of means. He says the helicopter is much faster.

You were well ahead of us. We didn't start hiking from High Bridge until about 3:30, arrived at North Fork around 6. We both had absolutely perfect weather. Not a cloud in the sky for days on end, no smoke, not too hot. Truly magnificient. On our trip, I snapped photos of 31 different types of wildflowers in bloom.

that looks like real mountain climbing

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