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Trip: Mount Carrie - Smoot Direct Trip Date: 09/11/2022 Trip Report: Perhaps the only upside to shattering my thumb this spring is that I have been catching up on my Smoots this summer. In fact, I'm at 99 after an ascent of Carrie a few weeks ago with @cfire. With each peak, I'm pretty impressed with this list ( it is back in print!). Not many bad outings in the book and some are very, very good. This is one of them, not for any classic climbing but for jaw dropping views across the valley at the Olympus massif. And so you'd better like pictures of Olympus, because you're about to be assaulted. Given the long drive we did the trip over three reasonable days: Day 1 was up the Sol Duc to the High Divide (prepare for combat parking at the TH); Day 2 was out to Carrie and back; And Day 3 was finishing the High Divide West to the headwaters of the Bogachiel and back to the Sol Duc. Every day we saw bears out and about, fattening up on berries before the winter snows come. We also saw quite a few people doing the loop in a day (the Olympics version of the Enchantments thru hike?), since permits are hard to get. Despite that, this is a busy loop, lots of people everywhere but Carrie (we saw nobody on our ascent). But, as you'll see below, it is worth the hassle of planning ahead. The High Divide is about as Olympics as it gets! Heart Lake: Carrie in the smoke out there: Olympus! Summit views to the SE. No idea what most of these peaks are, but I know @olyclimber does!: We enjoyed watching the ravens on the summit. They were battling with each other and raptors that invaded "their" territory: Cumbre! Heading down, Hoh below: Carrie is choss pile on the right. Not as bad as it looks though! I lugged my tripod all the way in, but should have looked a bit more closely at the moon phase: The classic Sol Duc falls (I cropped out the crowds): The trusty Civic is still intact with beers inside! Gear Notes: Clothes, shoes, whiskey. Approach Notes: High Divide, clockwise

Trip: El Cap - Mescalito- Solo Trip Date: 09/30/2022 Trip Report: I figured I'd post a bigwall trip report on here as I have not seen many and thought it would be a fun distraction as we sharpen our ice tools and crampons... Considering I could write a paragraph on the intricacies of each of the 26 pitches, I’m tried to slim things down to the more salient (read: snafu, or scary) moments. Cuz steppin' up in your Aiders and nothing happenin' is rather borin. Especially being alone, the only conversations are those weird ones bouncing around my noggin. Is drytooling really just pumpy aid climbing, or is aid climbing just lazy drytooling? Bing! Then bing! Ah my god that’s a traumatizing thing to hear. My head is spinning, my mouth dry as the Sahara. Why do these seemingly good cams keep ripping? I’ve been getting fried in the sun since sunrise and want, no need, nothing more than to make it up these last few feet to the ledge. Then I can rap down and chug. It takes a few short lifetimes for my heart rate to settle, not from the double cam ripping fall, but from impeding heatstroke. I turn on my headlamp, go back up, place bigger cams in the splitter placements, step up confidently again… only to bing! bing! and whip off again. What the fuck? Anchorage ledge isn’t giving it up easy. At least I finally got to test my lead solo system. Over it, I free climb off to the right and finally onto my bivy ledge for the night. I rap down fast as I can to my bag, dive bombing into my bag to commence the chug. I cough, half of the water comes bursting out, I wince as my wrung-out stomach struggles to accept the now-foreign juice of life. Hauling and set up finally over, I put in a Herculean effort to keep down a few bites of salami before calling it a night. It’s clear that I have barely half enough water to make it another 5 days on this wall that roasts from sunup to sundown. I guess there’s a reason it’s called the Dawn Wall. I fix my lead and haul lines the next day, then have to fix my 6mm tag line to hit terra firma. After a brief pit stop in civilization for burritos, chips, and 5 more gallons of water, I’m back staring up at my 6mm. Time to jug! There’s some slippage- unnerving- but I tie in direct periodically to prevent another, quicker trip to the deck. Back at Anchorage, I’m psyched. I’m armed with all I need for another 6 days. It’s game on. After the previous 24’s tribulations, fixing and reversing the traversing Seagull pitch, now in the shade, is a relaxing endeavor. I eat and drink well that night. One of countless lower-outs of the bags The following day is spent entirely following a single, right leaning crack system. Cleaning is a pain as I have to pull myself back in to every directional piece left in the crack. I forget the haul line and have to rap down to get it in the middle of a lead. The last pitch of the day is long and sustained. I feel strung out, exposed, and alone as the sun sets. There are free climbing chalk ticks that seem to rub in my mediocrity as a free, and aid, “climber.” I close my eyes as I step up on yet another shitty cam, trying to get that horrible bing-bing sound out of my head. A hidden bat hole and shitty heads unlock the day’s finish line. A little over an hour later and I’m sitting in my ledge, which, combined with my headlamp’s short radius, allow me to forget where I am and enjoy my warm mashed potatoes. I’m up early the next morning, arming myself for battle with the Molar traverse. In my apprehension and eagerness to get the pendulum over with, I lower off a bolt with tat and start swinging around. Many tries and many smacks into the wall later, I realize I’m missing something. I foolishly went for it too early! I jug back up, climb another ten feet, then nail the correct penji first try. Tom Evans photo of the Molar Stoked to have that over with, I carry on, only to have my spirits sink immediately as I notice some crackling sound and extra flex in my prosthetic foot. It must have gotten busted on that failed first pendulum. No big deal... if I don’t fall again. I’ve had these feet go flying right off after big whippers, and sure as shit didn’t want to have to watch as my foot sailed down to the base. The damage I carried on carefully the rest of the day, and was able to find some peace and flow while navigating old rivets, heads, and thin cracks on one of the route’s cruxes, pitch 15. Steep rivets, p16 (?) A fun one to reverse (P17) I’d planned the next day to be shorter, giving myself time to chill at the palatial Bismarck ledge, marking the end of the fully hanging bivies on the route. I get up to the ledge early in the afternoon, and quickly realize I’m going to have to fix the Bismarck pitch- a long widening C1 corner culminating in a mandatory layback once your biggest cam no longer fits- to get any semblance of rest that night. I take a deep breath, and without lingering and freaking myself out any further, dispatch it. I let out a holler; the rest of the route will be gravy. I rap back down and enjoy a rare few hours of watching the soft golden light in the valley turn to the fiery colors of sunset. Having skipped dinner the first night, I have a surplus of food, feast like a king and sleep like a baby. Big gulp Best room in the house! Bismarck ledge. More time consuming traverses the following day lead me to two easier pitches, and a surprisingly cruxy penji onto the cool, sloping Ship’s Bow ledge. Camped here for the night, within touch of the summit, I felt a weird sensation of grief. Grief for the death of this experience, a week whose intensity can never be matched on flat ground. But thoughts of pizza kept the grief from getting too strong. A wee bit tired, 3 pitches from the top A 15 foot unprotected lieback off the Ship’s Bow had a similar effect as several cups of coffee, shaking off the latencies of 6 days on the wall. The C1 pitch sounded nice until it turned into a wrestling match reaching for cams deep in the flare. I linked into the penultimate pitch, trying to remember how to climb with bare hands on the cool 5.7 flake traverse. She didn’t give it up easy; the last pitch consists of hand placed beaks and deadheads off the belay and a mega reachy inverted camhook, then finally a cruiser bolt ladder. Final morning sunrise. Mescalito's been on my radar for a while now, as a long, steep, sustained-at-the-grade line up the shining Dawn Wall, a stepping stone into the world of pants-shitting aid. Tracing the route between features back in the Meadow, I felt intensely grateful. Grateful that I'd walked right up to it on my first day in the Valley and gotten that out of my system. But more importantly, for the experience I'd been lucky enough to have up there, and for all the people who'd helped or just shared kind words along the way. Thanks for reading, keep it fun, keep it fast, and if you can, keep it safe, cheers! Gear Notes: standard wall rack, handful of beaks Approach Notes: highly strenuous

Trip: Jack Creek - Jack Creek High Orbit Trip Date: 10/15/2022 Trip Report: https://climberkyle.com/2022/10/15/jack-creek-high-orbit/ Last weekend, I took advantage of the lingering summer by doing a two day high route orbiting the Jack Creek Valley. On the first day, I went over Windy Pass, past Eightmile Lake, Horseshoe Lake, and over Goat Pass, behind Ingalls to near Van Epps Pass. The second day featured a ton of ridge line scrambling and boulder hopping over the Scatter Peaks, Solomon, Nursery, Highchair, and Bootjack. The terrain felt surprisingly remote and beautiful with the fall colors. There was extensive boulder hopping on the red rock that made it feel harder than 18k gain. The scatter peaks offer some fun low fifth scrambling on good rock, if you're into that kind of thing. Gear Notes: "Fastpacking" gear Approach Notes: Trails.

Trip: Mt. Hood - Reid Glacier Headwall Ski descent Trip Date: 05/31/2022 Trip Report: Retroactive trip report from May. These past few spring/summers I've been living in my van somewhere on Mt. Hood, riding most days, usually solo. As you all know, this spring was plentiful in the snow department and created some stellar late spring skiing conditions. I woke up around 5am to more wind and cold than I was hoping for, turned off the alarm and caught some more sleep. Around 11:30 I took the dog for a long walk and started packing, typical Mt. Hood winds whipping across palmer and keeping temps quite cold for a late may early afternoon. I started up from Timberline around 1:45 only intending to skin up to Illumination Saddle and take a peek at the Reid for the first time. What I didn't expect to find was 8"-10" of perfect corn with no wind effect. I grabbed a snack, mulled over the fact that I was up there Very late in the day... However without the sun directly on the headwall yet and firm but pleasant cramponing conditions, I started my way up around 4. The climbing was nice and a very mellow schrund crossing gave me confidence to continue for a short while until the sun was on the face. Unsurprisingly, it started shedding shortly after with small wet sloughs coming down every few minutes, but no icefall and staying climbers right made it easy to stay out of the way of the sloughs. I pushed on, moving quickly until I was just below the rime towers that signify the top of the west crater rim. At this point it was time to go down. I was late. Too late for my liking, but steep turns beckoned. I transitioned and the sloughs grew larger by the minute, the corn was far gone by now and it was obvious that every turn was going to release a large slough, plenty large enough to get knocked off my feet and carried the 1000 feet down to the base of the glacier. Ice axe in hand, I ski cut the upper Reid face, traversing roughly 400 feet to a protected saddle and watched the entirety of the face slough off, racing down to the Reid glacier and revealing the previous days sun crust, which at this point was rather edgeable. It certainly wasn't the hero corn run I was wishing I had gotten out of bed for, but any bluebird day up high is a good one in my book, and steep turns high on the Reid made it that much better, good snow or not. Three days later I finally had the right partners and warm temps to ski the old chute naked... but that's a story for another day. Gear Notes: Splitboard, pons, one tool. Approach Notes: Timberline to Illumination Saddle

Trip: Canadian Border Peak (CBP) - NW Route Trip Date: 10/15/2022 Trip Report: Me and the boys, @Albuquerque Fred and Mike G, were at it again, this time we headed to the Great White North to climb Canadian Border Peak, on a record hot October day. We took Tamihi Creek Road to the drive able end at 2760' and began the hike up the road in the unseasonable heat and thick smoke from fires over in the upper Chilliwack valley. We hiked the road past 8 switchbacks to the distinct and at 5250', then plunged into the brush straight up to the ridge crest at 5700'. The brush wasn't as bad as we expected, but I could see if the blueberries and fireweed were wet it could be unpleasant; about half of it is brushy and the other half is reasonable forest. From the ridge crest we followed the ridge on a heather walk with a short scramble over a knob to the distinct NW shoulder of the peak. From this point the only beta we could find, Beckey, is pretty confusing. Even now rereading it I can't make any sense of his direction. Nonetheless, the route finding is actually very straightforward; go up gullies, trending right into different gullies when necessary, until there is a major buttress to your right and your looking up an intimidatingly steep gully with slabs and a huge dihedral making the left side. We scrambled up this on 3rd and 4th class terrain with loose rubble on top of everything, the rock is mostly sound, just covered in debris. Just below a flat spot in the NW shoulder (your left) you enter a boulder field with precarious rocks, we continued up this where the NW buttress basically merges into the rest of the mountain. Here is the crux pitch, a slab with wandering shallow cracks left of a bulgey off width layback/dihedral. It has been reported at 5.6. We scrambled (soloed) up broken ground about 50' to the right on blocks and good cracks. I call it 5.4 but with lots of holds and variations. Go up about 60', then work left on a slabby ledge into the gully where the crux pitch tops out at another buttress shoulder. From here it's up another gully with a step out to the right. This looked way more intimidating than it was and we weren't sure it would go, but there are ample holds to keep it fourth class. Up from there is an easy boulder field to the summit. We hung out on the summit watching the smoke gradually envelop the nearby peaks until we decided it was better to get down. From the base of the summit boulder field we made one 30m rap to the shoulder at the top of the crux pitch, then another ~20m rap to the boulder field below the crux. From here it was all careful down climbing and staying out of each other's fall line back to the easy heather ridge. On the way out we met lots of friendly dirt bikers that were clearing the brush from the sides of the old road, by now it's probably even more chill than the way up. All in all it wasn't nearly as bad as advertised, glad to have done it, probably won't go back. Incidentally, this climb was way better than American Border Peak. (This is not editorializing on politics or society). 8 hours car to car. 9 miles, about 4500' gain. Fred on approach, it's the one on the left: Mike scrambling slabs with debris: The crux is the dihedral just left of center, we soloed through the light rock to below the crack at center: The major gulley with huge dihedral on climber's left: Gear Notes: 2 30m ropes. Helmets! Approach Notes: The road is all brushed out and easy.

Well my day job obliterated my free time, but things are finally looking better there. I just renewed the forum software for another 6 months out of my own pocket, that cost is $60. It *should* help cut down on the spam we get I think, since there is a "spam defense" element that is included on the license. So that is another known cost....$60 dollars every 6 months, or $120 a year (for now, assuming they don't raise that in the future). Regarding how to donate, I'm just considering how to do that as I'd like the keep the cascadeclimbers.com piggy bank separate....maybe a paypal account or something. I have to see about how you set one of those up for an entity like this. Anyone done that before? Also! I'm talking to a sponsor! Nothing nailed down but I will just say that there are some awesome local companies out there that recognize the value of this place. thanks.

Hey everyone! I am looking for climbing and skiing partners for this winter or in general. I am 18 and have been taking alpine climbing seriously for about a year. Before that I have lots of rockclimbing experience (climbing team kid sinse I was 8 ). As of now I can lead 5.12 in the gym. I have a small amout of trad experience and would like to progress that skill as well as a small amout of ice climbing experience. I am training to hopefully be a guide and all the experience I can get is amazing. Climbes this last season. Dc route Mt. Rainier North Sister corcsrew route Sloan peak Colman demming Mt. Baker (Ski) North face Devils bedstead Attempt on exum ridge The Grand Teton Eldorado Glacier Eldorado peak Attempt west ridge Mt. Stuart Longs peak Keyhole Route