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Trip: Cascade pass - Magic, Formidable, Mix-up, Sahale Trip Date: 09/02/2020 Trip Report: First time S from Cascade pass for me. Wonder what took me so long. I guess the lack of good rock, but it’s really goddamned beautiful. At the knoll before Cache glacier it was drizzling and the strong wind was blowing wet stuff up. I crawled under the leeward side of a small tree, one of the last I could see. Waited for 4 hours, cursing forecasters and getting bitter. I didn’t know that I was in for the most beautiful day in the mountains I ever had. After those cramped 4 hours the weather was still very unsettled but improves enough that I could now see where I was going, so I headed up and over cache col. It was sunnier on the other side. Dropped camp at kool aid lake, pleasantly surprised to be alone, and headed up to magic mountain. It lived up to its name. A crazy glory followed me all along the ridge. It wasn’t a fleeting thing. My first and last photos of it are 50 minutes apart. I had only seen photos of the effect till now, so I don’t know if this is common, but it had a large diameter bright white ring far outside the inner rainbow rings. The outer white ring didn’t come through in my photos. So surreal. I was also treated to sights reminiscent of laser shows when I was on the east side of the ridge. That night moonlight gradually illuminated magic mountain but the moon itself stayed hidden behind Hurry-up peak until much later. Wow. The weather was much calmer next day as I approached Formidable. Route passed above some significant crevasses on the Middle Cascade. Easy, but no-fall terrain, especially in the morning with icier snow. Formidable has the good, bad, and the ugly. Some soul sucking steep dirt and scree, some nice smooth but low angle and ledgy slabs, a scary rotten steep 15ft section just below the summit, and fantastic exposure along a short row of incisors to the summit. Yup, pretty fun overall. Took a long break at the bottom of the glacier on my way back to watch shadows grow across the beautiful mess down below. Most of the abundant ledges here aren’t flat but there could be a spot or two for bivying. Would be very nice to do so if you can get comfortable. A group had showed up to kool aid lake but there is plenty of room to spread out there. After dinner I walked north a little to pick berries. After having my fill I sat on a rock facing west and noticed a bear feeding down the slope maybe a 1/4 mile away. It seemed large and had a light brown coat, totally different than the smaller dark black bear I saw playing in a pool not far from cascade pass the next day. I don’t know if it’s possible it was a grizzly? Then after another incredible sunset at camp in the dusk light popped up a creature I had never seen before. It had a long but tiny body, and was springy/twitchy like a pika or chipmunk. I think it was a weasel. But so much smaller than I pictured a weasel to be. It bounced around, locked eyes with me a couple times, then bounced off elsewhere. Next day I got moving back to cache col to try to get Mixup and Sahale same day. Originally I planned to do mixup on day 1 but the weather prevented that. I found out about the East face route from@bellows TR last year (thanks!). Found one small acceptable route down the moat on the upper right edge of snow. Gross steep dirt and rotten rock to gain the U notch. Wrapped around to the V notch and climbed up and left from there. It’s about 20 ft of I dunno 5.5 or so, but the rock didn’t seem very trustworthy. I only noticed one good spot for pro. It wasn’t terribly loose or rotten, but seem to be fractured into blocks that are probably not glued down all that well. So, beware. White staircase was excellent as advertised. Class 2 until near the top where vertical walls force you right into class 4. There is a very brief awkward but not difficult 5th class move to gain the ridge just north of the summit. I did rap this part on the way down, and a rap to the V notch. The rap station above the V notch was, mmm, creative. Got the job done though. Back at the U notch I chose to rap on a fixed line hanging there. Not sure if that was a great idea, but it’s so dirty there, was nice to skip some of it. Still had to down climb a little bit more precarious garbage after that rap to get back to my overnight pack. On to Sahale. Up till now I had enjoyed quite a bit of solitude. Knew that wouldn’t be the case back at the pass but I was still surprised at how many people were day hiking to sahale arm/glacier. This was less fun. Fun resumed at Sahale glacier. And I was pleased to find a nice short crack near the summit. There was one other climber summiting at the same time, after already approaching quien sabe same day, but turning around due to a sick partner. She was moving fast. Wednesday weather had been so strange and amazing, then crystal clear Thursday through Friday, but Friday afternoon smoke had blown in. Views were still pretty great. Had some nice approach shoe skiing down the glacier and then all of a sudden I was back at the car, enjoying the drive through cascade river even more than usual. Gear Notes: 60m rope for mixup, crampons, ax Approach Notes: Back and forth and back and forth

Trip: Luna Peak - Standard Route - True Summit Trip Date: 09/05/2020 Trip Report: With it being Labor Day weekend, we sent someone ahead the night before to get a ticket at the ranger station for the next morning since we had a 9am boat taxi scheduled on Friday. Luckily, we got our permit within a half hour or so of them opening and got to the boat pickup on time. YouTube Video With pleasant weather we made quick work of the first 10 miles to the Luna Camp signpost. Sitting around taking a lunch break a solo guy came by on his way to do Fury. A couple people in our party had thought the Luna signpost was for a trail split to where you head off to Luna and told the guy he was taking the wrong path. He seemed to have that response that sounds like he knew where he was going and was wondering if we knew where we were going. A couple people had gps tracks though that did show someone went to Luna from the Luna Camp split. Never caught up to him to say sorry about that. We did eventually spot him just topping out on Fury as we were on top of Luna the next day. One mile later we got to the cairn that marked the spot to head up to Luna Peak. There really isn’t any kind of trail to follow so unless you know just where to find the log crossings it could get really tricky getting through the first mile. The boat driver mentioned he had dropped of a couple the day before who had gotten lost the week before trying to get to Luna who were trying it again. But we never ran across a couple ahead of us all the way to Luna so not sure where they went. We all wondered if there was a couple still lost in the brush somewhere on their 2nd try. We found the log crossing we were aiming for without any problem and found climbers trail on and off the rest of the way into the basin. We found a lot more of the trail on the way out but still managed to do a fair amount of bushwhacking both ways. Took us about 7.5 hours to do the 15 miles into Access Creek basin where we setup camp. Figured shooting for Luna Col would have had us there in the dark so Access Creek was a good spot to stop with views of Luna and the boulder field we needed to go up in the morning. Next morning, we took off up the narrow rocky gully, but going wider right and up and then across through the trees works too (probably a bit easier too). Knocked out the first 2000ft gain then rounded the corner for the first view of the col and Luna. Another easy 1000ft up to the col put us at the base of Luna Peak in just a few hours. Just a bit up the scramble to the false summit we past a pair of climbers coming back who had stopped at the false summit. Another hour (about 4 hours from camp) put us at the false summit where the fun really starts. Beta we had said you could run the entire ridge (harder) or take ledges across but requires a bit of a 4th class downclimb. After shimmying down most of the chimney the last move or two just felt too sketchy with the drop-off into nothing below and it feels like there were not solid holds for the amount of exposure. So, we split the difference and ran the first 30 feet of the ridge which is exposed but felt more solid and that took us to a ramp down to the ledges. Once there it was easy scrambling across picking our way across then switch backing at the end to get under the summit block. Once under the summit block, we wrapped around the backside and found a few easy moves up to the summit block. Just as most of our party were down to the ledges a group of three guys came up behind us who were pretty chill about hanging out waiting for us to get over and back since they were camped at the col and it was only about 11:30am. The summit register was full, and we wound up signing the back cover. If anyone goes up anytime soon it could use a new register. On the way down from the summit instead of heading straight over I had gone down a couple ledges and wound up finding an old rusty metal film canister. I thought there might be a film roll inside but instead there were a few loose pages of an old summit register. Most of the pages were faded too much to read or disintegrated but some were clearly dated from 1971, 77 and 78 which was a cool find. I brought the canister back out since it had been sitting there for so many decades. Not sure how long It had been dropped down on the ledges. I found a trip report from CascadeOriginals where someone had mentioned signing a register in a film canister back in 2003. Mailing it over to the Mountaineers to archive it. On the way back everyone else retraced their steps to go back up to the ridge then to the false summit. I went up the chimney which was a little awkward but went up fine. The party of 3 waiting for us then took off for the true summit while we took a lunch break before heading back. On the way back to the rocky gully above the basin we passed a couple trail runners who mentioned a pair in the gulley that had an accident and appeared on of them broke an ankle. On our way down we stopped by and chatted for a moment. It turned out to be the pair we had passed and chatted with a moment on the scramble up to the false summit in the morning. They had everything handled and were waiting for a heli rescue that was on the way and didn’t need anything. Props to them for getting hundreds of feet down the upper gulley to a flat area and props to SAR for pulling them out hours later. Next morning had a leisurely hike out and found more of the climbers trail going out than we found on the way in. Still got off track a few times and took a bit of navigating to find the log crossing. Fantastic trip overall with good weather and good company. Gear Notes: None Approach Notes: Bushwacky from the trail to Access Creek basin in places.

Trip: Silverstar Mountain - Complete East Ridge Trip Date: 07/18/2020 Trip Report: Over the weekend Gabe and I ticked off another Wa Pass obscurity with the East Ridge of Silverstar. Apart from a two part NWMJ story (P1 and P2), Allen/Layton's Wa pass traverse, and a few comments from Scott Johnson we had very little specific beta on the route. I'm curious how many people have climbed this route. It proved to be quite the adventure and I feel like it would be a shame to take that from the next party to go up there. So in order to preserve the adventure and mystery of the route I've decided to be vague on specifics and heavy on photos for this TR. Here are a few notes that I wish I had known before heading out. 1.)Don't rely on Mudhole lake as a water source, the first spot we pulled from was rank and clogged up our filter really badly. We should have expected that... 2.)Expect just enough terrible rock with enough frequency to be stressful. 3.)Don't expect to find prefab bivy spots along the way. The only one we saw was the one we made. 4.)The lichen grows thick in these parts. Now here's the photo dump. Day 1 Mudhole Lake AKA Horseshit puddle Long way to go Silver Moon and Varden creek spire, the 3rd "major" summit along the ridge Finally able to see the meat of the ridge Our nice little sloping bivy Day 2 Started the day with a rappel and stuck rope. Looking back at Silverhorn and Silver Moon, as well as many other gendarmes and sub-summits Summit at last! Traversing back to Burgundy col Gear Notes: Singles .2-4, Doubles .3-2 and a bunch of slings. 1 60m rope and 30 ft of tat. You could bring less of everything if you soloed more of the ridge, we roped up earlier than most other parties. Approach Notes: Take the unmarked horse packing trail a few hundred feet up the cedar creek trail. Just keep following the ridge to infinity and beyond.