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Trip: Chair Peak West Face - [FA] The Upper West Side (WI4+ M4) Trip Date: 01/18/2021 Trip Report: Grade Update: Doug and I agreed to upgrade the route from WI4+ M4, to WI5- M5 when submitting to the AAJ. This decision was made to align more with the grades of the Canadian rockies. Keep in mind that this route is immensely condition dependent. Yesterday @Doug_Hutchinson and I skied out to the west face of Chair with low expectations and too much weight on our backs. As far as I can tell, this face has seen little to no winter climbing activity and was completely off my radar until @Kyle M showed me some photos. Our route started by slogging up ~700ft of steep firm snow with a couple easy ice chokes along the way. Nothing worth roping up for. The sun starts hitting the lower snow slopes around 10am, so I would recommend timing things so you start climbing no later than 10:30. After the slog we arrived at the head of a small alcove where we kicked out a platform and roped up. Gear for a belay is hard to come by, take what you can get. I took the first pitch which ended up being a tricky 20m M4 left facing corner system. Nothing was ever really that hard, but protection was difficult, and the rock quality left something to be desired. A really cool looking super direct mixed pitch can be found just to the right and would probably go at M7. Doug then took the lead on the money pitch. While only about WI4+, this pitch proved to be a pretty serious lead. The crux required climbing into an alcove behind a detached curtain, grabbing a rock hold with your right hand and swinging over a bulge above your head. Not your usual WI4. This pitch took good 10 and 13cm screws, but not always where you want them. One could probably bail back to the snow from here with 2 ropes. Moving forward we climbed a full 65 meters of scrambly snow/rock/ice up to a scottish looking headwall, and up a ramp to the left. Belay off a small tree that may be buried in different conditions. I have a hunch you can go either right or left, not sure which is easier. A short sketchy mixed pitch took us up to the false summit. Not hard, just tenuous and poor pro. ^Placing the only piece on the pitch ^The piece The route finished with a classic Au Cheval alpine ridge traverse with snow and ice on the north side, and warm dry rock on the south. This traverse is VERY poorly protected, and definitely not straight forward. Descent: There are two good options for the descent. The best option by far, is to do this route as a carryover, foregoing the skis and descending the normal route to the east. This requires very firm conditions, but would be much shorter. Since we left our skis in the Melakwa valley, we were forced to descend that direction via a long snow gulley opposite of the standard rappel anchor. The first rappel shares the piton anchor with the standard descent, just in the opposite direction. We left a piton and nut anchor 60M down to the left for future parties. This rappel only got us half way to the next worthy tree, luckily the snow was good for down climbing, but we were well aware of the exposed cliffs below. Two more raps off trees took us to the schrund. Ski back over Bryant col, or for bonus points, continue out via the second half of the Chair peak circumnav in the dark. Link to my Strava track can be found HERE for approach and descent help. Get on this climb! We thought it was pretty classic, and likely not in good condition very frequently. Reach out to me with any beta needs! Thanks to Kyle M for this photo! Green is the route, Red is the descent, and the Yellow dots are rap anchors. The last rap is in a bushy tunnel that may be difficult to find for future parties. Gear Notes: Single rack .2-2, stoppers, KB's and Bugaboos. 6-10 Screws 10-16cm most useful. 2 Pickets brought but never used (per usual). 60m twin ropes. Approach Notes: Ski or boot up and over Bryant/Chair col via pineapple basin. Descend over to Melakwa lake, and up to the base of the wall.

Trip: The Mighty Tooth - Regular Trip Date: 01/17/2021 Trip Report: Took a spin up The Mighty w/ a lad from work for his first mixed climb. Mixed as in slush and rock, with just a hint of ice. Oh man, if it gets cold before it dumps again... Gear Notes: Tricams Approach Notes: Separate cars, slowshoes

Trip: Broken Top - Richardson-Rocket Link-up Trip Date: 12/29/2020 Trip Report: The Routes: The Full Richardson is an ice route on the N side of Broken Top. First ascent by Clifford Agocs with Brandon Seymore. It is essentially one 35m pitch of WI4+ up the headwall of an amphitheater that you pass through on the North Buttress Route (listed in Oregon High). If this route were listed in Winter Dance it would probably be described as 150m WI4+ (pitch 1 optional WI3 30m or climb around on snow ramp, pitch 2 WI2 50m up the gully, steep snow up to the headwall, pitch 3 WI4+ 35m, rappel or climb steep snow up and right to a walk off) The amphitheater seems to be producing more ice in recent years as winter temps increase. It was attempted several times by other locals starting in the 90's but rarely found in climbable condition. Based on what I saw on this outing, it seems that there are at least 5 possible routes for the confident smear/mixed leader. Here is a picture of me leading the main pitch... The Rocket Launcher (has definitely been climbed by Pete Keane who calls it Rocket Launcher, this might also be called Cold Sweat FA by Aaron Lish, but that might be a different line, we're trying to track down more info) is a finicky ice line on the East face of Peak 9094 (Broken Top's South summit). Because it is in the Crook Cirque (the so-called crater) which is a South facing glacial bowl and East facing, it can be hard to find in good condition. It starts up some easy ice mixed ledges for ~50m (exposed WI2/3 when fat) and then climbs a beautiful gash feature which is steeper than it looks into a hanging bowl (55m WI4, probably deserves an R rating most of the time). From there the obvious course of action is to just climb the easy snow for 90m to the summit ridge (often corniced), and then either head up to your R and tag the 9094 summit or down and L until you can down climb open snow slopes to the valley below the glacial moraine. Here is a recent picture... Our day: Clifford Agocs and I used a sled to get to the wilderness boundary by Ball Butte just before dawn. We opted to boot (not recommended, but our desired linkup and Landon's success booting on the rain crust on our North Sister climb the week before convinced use it would be okay, it was just okay). We hiked around BT via No Name Lake to the Bend Glacier and transitioned to crampons etc. at the base of the North Buttress Couloir. We soloed the approach pitches to the base of the Full Richardson and I got the sharp end as Cliff had already snagged the FA. Ice was in difficult condition (brittle but sticky to get the tool out again), definitely solid 4+ in the Rockies, Cody, etc. similar to steepness to leading Cleo's at Hyalite when it's fat but without the hooks. On top anchor options were limited. I dug down, bottomed out some screws in decent ice and tied them off. We then unroped and front pointed the snow up to the summit pinnacle and followed the standard scramble to the summit. We down climbed the summit and made one short rappel, then we traverse the W face to the top of the 11 O'clock Couloir. We tried to saw the cornice with the rope but its a big ice block with the weather we've had so Cliff body belayed me down next to it to check the snow before we both committed to down climbing. Once in the crater we traversed over to the base of the Rocket Launcher and soloed the first few steps until aerated ice and snice over some steeper/exposed rock made us rope up. I lead ~15m to a belay stance just R of the the crux pitch (left a fixed pin for ya). Cliff lead the next pitch in lovely spindrift conditions which started on good WI4, involved stemming through vertical snice, and climbing easier alpine ice up to a short vertical pillar. The pillar was pretty awkward so he brought me up and I got to lead the vertical ice into overhanging rock with an awkward move left, digging through snow for a stick and hooking a blob on the overhang to skate my way through (not hard per se, but definitely some of the more awkward ice I've climbed). I made a belay in some rock 15m up and then we simuled the snow up the bowl and gully above to the ridge. We hiked back to the sled in the fading light. Luckily the increasing winds were at our back, though the variable drifts made for some frustrating post-holing at times. Roughly a 12hr car-to-car. Pictures: Leading the Richardson... Cliff topping out Richardson... BT summit shot, Rocket Launcher climbs a hidden cleft on the L face of the peak on the R (Peak 9094)... Approach ice on the Rocket Launcher. You can just see the main ice in the cleft in the upper middle of the photo... Cliff leading the main pitch on Rocket Launcher, he's just above the difficult snice section and you can see the awkward pillar poking into view at the top of the gully... Gear Notes: 1x stubby, 4x 13cm, 3x 16cm, 1x 22cm, 2x knife blades, smallish nuts, long slings, 6-8 alpine draws, 1x 60m half rope Approach Notes: Sled + slog