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Triple Couloirs and the rest of the N. face of Dragontail look to be in the best shape it's been in since 2017. Didn't climb it this year personally but saw some posts. Videos of the runnels look quite fat, saw some photos of the face with really good coverage.

I just over 50 years old. When I was a wee one in the third grade and fourth and fifth grade, I delivered newspapers to peoples homes on my bicycles. About 70 homes. Back then, I even read the paper. People bitched about the government's ineptitude then. Too many taxes. Wasted money. Nothing has changed in people's complaints about their own government. And yet things still work out. Just add another bitchfest to the pile.

Trip: Snoqualmie - NY Gully Trip Date: 03/30/2023 Trip Report: Kyle Tarry and Andy Traylor joined me for NY Gully Thursday 3/30. Enough has been written about the route over the years so I'll just say it was a fun time with good guys and share some conditions... Skinning up from Alpental was a little icy in the AM but the old swiped out tracks were nice for the descent in the PM. Fair bit of snow on route, especially the first two pitches and the exit pitches. Snow had a crust and was not supporting weight super well though we made it work. Made digging for pro a little difficult. There was ice but it was thin. We tried to place two stubbies all route and they both bottomed out. Turf was mostly good to swing into. Crux is mostly ice free. We did not do any rappelling but did two exposed snow traverse pitches to get off from the top of the crux pitch. Now what you all wanted... Photos! Pitch 1, snow on rock Pitch 2, more snow on rock Andy follows P2 Kyle on P2 chimney Views Start of P3 "box gully" Andy and Kyle following box gully/P3 P4 pictures, long 60m rope stretcher to base of crux, runout in places, snow covered slab at the end. Crux pitch - P5 Andy is actually on snow here, last of two traverse pitches to get off, traversed right over and up into trees. Gear Notes: Lots of beta on the interwebs, all seems to be about right. Definitely can't sew it up except for the crux which takes great gear. Approach Notes: Skis

not exactly a partner story, but close. A couple summers ago, my friend Todd and I climbed and skied the Fuhrer Finger on Tahoma and encountered a very ill-prepared skier high on the Nisqually. We had climbed the Fuhrer and the lower portion of the Nisqually and were melting snow when we saw a solo man below us on skis slipping and sliding around with every step. We had switched to boot crampons at this point and just figured the skinning was difficult. He eventually caught up to us and the crevasse we had just crossed, which involved a steep traverse above it. He seemed worried and communicated as much so we offered him a belay but he declined. Still on skis, he pulled his ice axe out and started across the traverse. We watched in disbelief as his skis skated around on the hard snow. He then proceeded to slip and started sliding towards the gaping crevasse. At the last second he self arrested with his axe, one ski dangling in the void. He sketchily gathered himself, finished the traverse, and embarrassed, introduced himself. "Coloradan. Climb 14'ers for breakfast, sometimes in winter." At this point I noticed that his skins have not been cut to fit his skis. The skins completely overlapped his skis like the bun around a hot dog. He then decided to switch to boot crampons. But his crampons did not fit his tele boots at all. We tried to tell him that the crampons did not fit his boots, but he completely shrugged it off and claimed he'd used them for dozens of 14'ers in winter. He took off in a hurry and proclaimed he was off to ski the Kautz. We watched in horror as he bypassed the mellow glacier slope to the right and tackled a more direct AI 2 step with his shit crampons. His feet cut multiple times but somehow he made it to mellower terrain above. We continued with our climb and descent and arrived at Paradise in the evening, where a ranger asked if we knew where the "sketchy solo guy" was. Apparently the rangers had been watching this guy all day with binoculars because he didn't register for a solo permit. He'd even triggered and almost been caught in a slide on the lower Wilson. We saw him later that evening in Copper Creek restaurant. He'd successfully skied the Kautz but was stopping for a bite to eat before he headed to the hospital to have a self-inflicted crampon hole in his leg stitched together.

I had the following adventure last summer in the Bugs. I wrote this account to share with friends afterwards. I even took notes to make sure I woould be accurate as it was happening as it was all so bizarre. Preface: I'm just a normal guy that likes to climb when I get a chance. I have a wife, 2 kids, a house, a dog and a job. I don't get out a hell of a lot, but I'm thankful for the time I get. I usually get a one week trip per Summer along with other shorter outings. I think I get along fairly well with others and I've climbed with quite a few others and rarely if ever had had any "issues" with partners. I'm not any Super Alpinist by any means, but I like to think I move pretty quickly and safely in the mountains and have been fortunate enough to climb all over this continent as well as Europe and South America. My wife has kept me around for 18 years and I have a great time with the people I work with. When I'm out climbing I like to flip crap and expect to get it back. To me that's part of being out with the boys. The reason for this information will come clear when you read my story. Disclaimer: As my 6th grade art teacher would attest to, I have little if any creativity. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. I like to tell a good story and on occasion have embellished a little, as I think most people do sometimes, but this story has NO exaggerations. I realize that this is just one side of the story. I'm sure my former partner has a different view. I do promise that all of the quotes are entirely accurate as I had time during this adventure to write them in my journal. The names of the key players (my former partner and his new friend) in this true-life story have been changed to protect their identities. Plus I don't want to discourage anyone from the pleasure of climbing with my former partner in the future. The Story I met Jethro about a year ago after looking for a partner on cc.com. We went cragging together a handful of times and we seemed to get along quite well. He climbs at about my level and we do similar work so had stuff to talk about. I mentioned in April that I wanted to get back to the Bugaboos as I hadn't been there in about 4 years. I would be my 5th trip to the Bugs, but I love that place and really wanted to try and climb the Becky/Chouinard route on South Howser. Jethro said he had wanted to get there as well. He had never been. We made tentative plans to go there in August. Jethro was going to Yosemite in June to try the Nose with 3 others. When he got back, I contacted him and he was still game to go to the Bugs the second week of August. He could only get 6 days off, but I said we could make it work. That would only leave 4 days of climbing when factoring in the 10 hour drive each way. The weather in the Bugaboos is extremely fickle, so I figured we might get 3 good days if we were lucky. Jethro picked me up at 10:30 instead of the agreed time of 9 am the morning of departure. Usually not a huge deal, but I knew that this would make it difficult to do the drive and hike in to the hut that same day. Still, I was just happy to be on the road and didn't even mention it. On the drive, Jethro mentioned that he hadn't been getting much sleep and wouldn't mind getting home a day early so he could rest before going back to work. I said that we would be limited on time as it is and I hoped to do some good climbs so we should play it by ear and see how the weather treats us. The drive goes good and we arrive at the trailhead at 9:30pm and slept in the car. I thought we could get up early and get to the hut and then climb McTech arête or something else with a short approach. When we get up I lay a tarp out and tell Jethro that he can lay his stuff out to pack as he just had all of his stuff in a HUGE haul bag in the back of the car. I was already packed and ready to go. Jethro said that he didn't feel like putting the effort in to packing so he was just going to take the haul bag up as he can just throw stuff in and go. I said that was a little strange. I've worn those things and they aren't the most comfortable things for packing and he had a regular big pack that he could use. He went on about how it really was a pretty comfortable pack and it wouldn't be a problem. Whatever dude, let's just go. He throws some more clothes in the Pig and we take off. He had asked how far it was to the hut and I said it has always taken me less than 2 hours to get there, but I didn't know how far. We take off on the trail to the strange looks of another 2 guys going up wondering what big walls we were going to be climbing with the Pig. I go at my usual pace and arrive at the hut in 1 hour 45 min. I wait for Jethro so we can go climbing. I wait. I wait. I worry that he might have fallen off of the trail so I start back down. I meet him a little way down. Jethro arrives at the hut in the record time of 4 hours and 30 min. Climbing for the day is out as it's almost 2pm. Jethro starts unpacking his Pig outside the hut. To my surprise he starts pulling out cans of food. I'm laughing as he continues to pull out canned food. He has big cans of tuna, chili, refried beans, and assorted other cans. He must have at least 10-15 big cans of food. Costco size flour tortilla bag and a few candy bars round out the food selection. He then pulls out a gri-gri, some swivels for hauling the pig and assorted other wall gear. It was quickly apparent that he had not unpacked his pig from the Yosemite trip a month earlier. I'm laughing and mention that maybe it took so long to get to the hut because his pack/pig weighed twice as much as it needed to. He really didn't say anything. The plan I made for climbing(Jethro didn't have any input, believe me I asked) was to go climb the west ridge of Pigeon Spire to acclimatize and then bivy at the base of the Becky/Chouinard route on Howser tower. The next day we would climb the Becky/Chouinard up and over. Jethro wondered about the water situation. I said we would not have water available until we dropped in for our bivy that night. He asked a couple of more times about the water and I again explained the situation, although I'm not sure he was getting it. We take off late for Pigeon as there was no reason to get going early as Pigeon is easy 5.4 and we would just get to the bivy spot early and begin getting cold. We were going light as we had to carry our gear up and over a 11,000ft mountain. I had a light 2 man bivy sack and some warm clothes and lots of Gu and a sandwich for dinner. We climbed up the Snowpatch/Bugaboo col and take a break at the top, which is about halfway to Pigeon spire. Jethro takes the moment to ask, "so is there water on the route?" I ask, "you didn't bring water?!" He says he brought a little but was just wondering if there was any on the route. I start laughing. Jethro then yells, "OK, that's 2 strikes. One more and I'm walking back down!" Huh?? He goes on to say that I flipped him shit about his food selection and now I was laughing at him about him not getting the water situation. I said that to me, flipping your partner shit and laughing about it was part of being in the mountains. He said he didn't play that game and wouldn't put up with it. OK Jethro. I apologized, explained the water situation again and we left the col for Pigeon. We climbed Pigeon. I led most of the way as Jethro was lagging on the rope. He was also very disorganized with the rack and his gear. As I'm climbing I'm thinking I'm not sure I want to be on a route as big as the Howser tower with his guy. What if I get the 3rd strike!?!? We can't back off of that route. Plus the weather looks a little iffy, but is forcast to get better the next day. We get to the summit of Pigeon and I ask Jethro what he thinks of Howser tomorrow. He says he's not sure he wants to do it. No problem. How about we go back to the hut and climb the Northeast ridge of Bugaboo tomorrow. It's a classic and I know the way since I've done it before. Sounds good. We get back to the hut by 7pm, eat and go to bed at 9 for a 4am wakeup and start up to Bugaboo Spire. The alarm goes off at 4am. I look out the window and not a cloud in the sky. Perfect weather! Jethro whispers, "hey Chris, I didn't get any sleep last night. I can't do any climbing today." It's Alpine climbing. Who sleeps!?!?!?!? I roll over and go back to sleep disgusted. I wake up at 7 and we are the only people in the hut, THE only. Everyone is out climbing or hiking. I'm not happy. Jethro gets up at 9am. I can't stand to look at him and go for a hike and scramble up Eastpost spire. I'm back by noon. He sits by me as I'm reading a magazine and wants to know what the plan is. I tell him I'm really disappointed with the trip as I get one climbing vacation in the summer and this is turning into a bust. I got the feeling that he had put nothing into the trip as I made all of the arrangements and did all of the planning. I didn't mind arranging, but it seemed as if he hadn't looked into the area at all and wanted me to plan everything as far as climbing and then bitch about the plan. Plus, the weather is perfect for climbing and these days are golden in the Bugaboos. He says between his work and girlfriend he hasn't been sleeping well and just wants to get home and get rest. He thinks he's having a hard time acclimatizing and tells me you must have acclimatized quicker because you were dragging me up Pigeon." I ask if he wants to climb tomorrow. He's not sure. I've had enough with this guy and tell him we should go tomorrow if he doesn't want to climb. He says he wants to leave and get home. Fine, we leave tomorrow morning. Maybe I can get home and salvage some climbing vacation somewhere else. About 7pm that night, Jethro comes up to me and says he is going down to the car to sleep as he can't sleep in the hut. See you in the morning when you come down. OK. He loads up the Pig and hikes down the trail. I get up in the morning and am out of the hut at 8am. Another perfect weather day wasted! The whole way down I'm thinking about who I can contact to go climbing with on short notice when I get home. I'm down the trail in an hour and wander into the parking lot. No Jethro or his car. Nowhere. I wander around the parking lot like a lost puppy with a huge pack, no Jethro. Two guys loading their packs getting ready to go up are looking at me and whispering to each other. I wonder if Jethro just drove down the road a bit to camp, so I walk about 1/2 mile down the ro... no Jethro. I come back to the parking lot and sit on my pack. What now? I sit there for about 20 minutes and all of a sudden Jethro drives in to the l...whew! He hops out of the car in a good mood and says, "this is fun, I want to stay another night." I just smile and start throwing all of my stuff in his car. I'm thinking the drive home will be hard. I'm changing my clothes by the car and Jethro say's "really, I want to stay another night. You can go back up to the hut and stay another night. It's not that far."(forgetting that it took him 4 1/2 hours to get there) I look at him and ask him if he is serious. Yep, he's serious. Me: "There's no freaking way I'm hiking back up to that hut. What's your deal?" Jethro: "When I came down last night I decided to go for a drive. I came across this trappers cabin with a campfire out front and I stopped and there was this gal there by herself and we hit it off and I spent the night and I want to stay there again tonight." Me: "are you serious?!" Jethro: "yep". Me : "I'm not hiking back up to that hut". Jethro: "I'm not driving home today". Jethro: (my favorite quote of the whole trip) "C'mon Chris, it doesn't always have to be about what you want to do". Me: (laughing my ass off) "are you serious?" I sit on my pack. It's 10am, nobody is coming out because the weather is perfect so I have no chance for a ride. All I could think to do was get my stuff out of this lunatic's car. I empty all of my stuff out. He jumps in the car and says he'll be back by 9 or 10 tomorrow morning. Away he goes. My brain is having a hard time keeping up with events as they are happening. What the hell am I going to do if he doesn't show up? We are 25 mile from pavement, and another 90 to anything more than a 2 horse town. I'm sitting in the parking lot with all of my stuff. The whole time the 2 dudes from California in the parking lot are watching this drama. I go over to them and explain my situation. They laugh. One of them is Bill Papas that owns a Crossfit franchise. I do Crossfit so I recognized his name. I fall in to the roll of official Bugaboo Parking Lot Greeter. People arrive in the lot and look at me and my stuff out of the corner of their eye. They ask what the deal is and I give the short version of my story. I talk to Bill and his partner Bill for quite a while. I talk to Rueben and Joe who arrive from Portland, who take pity on me and give me a beer and some fresh veggies from the garden. I talk to the guide Yorn from Canmore and his guest Richard from Pittsburgh. They gave me a huge bag of fresh cherries, which were very good. Scott Lee from North Conway, New Hampshire hiked down because of injury. He was going to the closest town for a few days while his partner climbed for a few more days with another guy up at the campground. We talked about world issues for over an hour. 4 kids from Golden, BC that came up for a hike. An older couple from Invermere up for a hike. All were great folks and I actually came to enjoy talking to all of the different people from all over the continent. I set up the tent in the parking lot at about 5 that evening as the bugs were starting to come out and I wanted someplace to escape. At about 7pm another car arrives in the parking lot. It's a new SUV and there's a gal in it by herself. Kinda strange, but I had seen stranger in the last few days. She pulls up and asks what I'm doing with a tent in the middle of the parking lot. I give her the short version of my story and she starts laughing. All of a sudden, Jethro jumps up from behind the back seat laughing. Again, my brain is shorting out and I call him a few choice words. They get out and Pocahontas opens the back of her SUV and starts putting my stuff in the back of her car. I ask her what the hell she is doing. She says she just learned from Jethro that I was in the parking lot and I should come back to her cabin and spend the night there instead of in the parking lot. All I could think of was that I needed to get close to Jethro's car, as that was my way out of here. Pocahontas loads all of my stuff, I take down the tent and throw it in and get in without saying a word. It quickly becomes apparent that these two are on a 2 day bender. They are both hammered and are swilling beer fast. She's cussing like a sailor and throwing her beer cans out the window as we are going 50+ miles per hour down a very rutted dirt road. She's what we would say in the south was rode hard and put away wet. Luckily, the ride is short as the cabin is only a few miles away from the trailhead. It's a very old 1 room trappers cabin on the river. There are hundreds of beer cans in the front yard along with lots of bottles of whiskey in the cabin. Pocahontas hands me a beer and tells me to relax and I can set up my tent in the yard. Jethro keeps his distance from me and continually wanders out for walks down the road. Pocahontas proceeds to tell me her life story on how she has "full status", which means she is registered as 1st nations so she and her family can trap all of the critters she wants. Pocahontas is as white as my Irish ass, but she says her grandfather was full blooded, so she gets "full status". She has a husband and 2 kids in Kolowna, has some problems but at least she's not as bad as her sister who's a hooker in Calgary hooked on opium (I thought opium went out of fashion in the 20's). I'm impressed with Jethro's selection of a girl as this one is definitely a keeper! As it starts to get dark, Jethro goes for one of his extended walks down the road. After 20 or 30 minutes, Pocahontas says she is going to look for Jethro. She jumps in her car and takes off down the road. I look at Jethro's car and think that it is now mine if I can find the keys. I run into the cabin and start going through all of his clothes looking for the keys to his car. No keys. I ransack the cabin looking. I look all through the car. No keys. My plan was to get the keys, get up in the middle of the night, throw my stuff in, flatten one of Pocahontas' tires and drive to Abbotsford and have my wife pick me up there. I would call Jethro's home and leave a message as to where his car was. I then get the idea to hotwire the car. I'm under the dash by headlamp after drinking 3 or 4 beers and think that this might not be a good idea. If I screw up the wiring job, then my way out is really in doubt. I give up and sit by the fire wondering what tomorrow will bring. Jethro and Pocahontas get back after being gone for over an hour in the woods. I sleep in the tent in the front yard. The next morning I wake to the sound of Jethro crushing beer cans. He fills up 2 trash bags full of cans and bottles and throws them in the back of the car. We both get in and drive 10 hours back Washington. Jethro drops me off at my house. I tell him it was an adventure and to get the hell off of my property. He seems ok with that and drives off. THE END