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This might be useful for some of you: https://roadstatus.searchthesummits.com/

@CascadeClimber To my understanding, and the way we went, the standard route goes further up the corner then cuts right higher. I've marked up your picture with the what we climbed, and what has fallen off to the best of my memory. Could be wrong. We were in a cloud...

Trip: Esmeralda Peaks - [FA] Moonlight Serendipity (WI2 M5+ 1,200ft) Trip Date: 11/21/2021 Trip Report: Last Sunday @Kyle M, Kurt Ross and I set out to investigate rumors of early season ice in the Esmeralda Basin area. A couple sizable blowdowns stopped our drive early, diminishing any hopes of even making it to our intended climb. With zero expectations, we decided to go for a walk up the road and see if we could get eyes on anything cool. We took our sweet time walking up the road, stopping to look through binoculars at everything that vaguely resembled ice. We nearly dropped all our climbing gear at the trailhead, but decided to keep it for “training weight”. Luckily we did, as we shortly got eyes on the NE face of Esmeralda’s NE peak. A discontinuous series of ice smears, chimneys and ramps seemed to form a potential route up the face, but we figured it was still too early. Possibly against our better judgement, we decided to “go scout the approach” and soon found ourselves scrambling up fun WI2 smears on the lower flanks of the face. Our route followed easy terrain that angled left and then traversed hard back right to where the face steepens abruptly. A very convenient dike feature splits the face for almost its entire height, and proved to be the key to our success. I kept leading, and scratched my way up a fun albeit poorly protected section of chimney. From here I had my fill for a little bit, and let Kurt take over the sharp end. An easy connector pitch took us up to a decision point. The chimney/dike feature continued above us, but seemed to hold ever steepening iced up rock climbing. With the little amount of daylight we had left, we opted to bypass this to the left via a tricky and somewhat loose chimney that seemed like it would take us to easier terrain, and the summit. Kurt casually lead the pitch, seemingly unfazed by the toaster oven sized block he dropped on his head. The sun set on us as we were following this pitch, and brought us to another decision point. We hadn’t prepared for a day of this magnitude and were running out of food and water fast. We could either bail now and call it a good scouting mission, or keep going in hopes of the summit, and a quick walk off. We opted to push onward into the night. From this point the climbing was largely on snow, apart from the odd rock step, or awkward bit of shallowly buried slab. Two more pitches brought us to an imposing headwall we hadn't seen from below. I was starting to worry that our climb was done there. While we could have likely found a route up the steep dry rock, it was far too late in the evening to start such drytooling shenanigans. Our last option was to keep traversing right to search for a way around it. Much to our surprise, a perfect rock ramp cork screwed around the summit block, taking us to the top of the wall. Once atop our little summit, we saw a long complex rock ridge that unfolded in front of us. Continuing to the true summit would have taken us several long pitches, and more hours than we had. We had climbed to the top of the wall we intended, and were more than happy with how things unfolded. The descent involved a couple pitches of down leading and about six or seven double rope rappels off trees and bushes. We hiked out hungry under the almost full moon, and got back to Seattle at two in the morning the next day. Kyle will likely write a more in depth blog post in a couple days. While clearly not representative of the conditions we encountered, the topo below shows more of the wall than is visible from below. Gear Notes: Single rack .1-3, nuts, beaks, KB's and a Spectre came in handy. Screws were not required for the conditions we encountered. 10's and 13's would be best. Approach Notes: Walk, drive or sled to the Esmeralda Basin TH. Hike up the trail for a little under a half mile before crossing the creek and picking your way straight up to the face. If you can drive to the trailhead, this climb is VERY easily accessible.

Trip: Bears Breast - SE Mega Slab Date: 9/7/2014 Trip Report: I still haven’t figured out why some climbs grab my attention and keep it, but the SE slab on Bears Breast is one that I’ve had on my list for about ten years. This wasn’t from the typical sources of inspiration- Beckey makes no mention of it (though it is prominently featured in a photo), and I had never even been anywhere close to Bears Breast in person. I heard about the climb through my friend and early climbing mentor Mike, and the description he relayed from Bryan Burdo was intriguing and stuck with me. About a year later, I read Chuck's excellent TR where he referenced the “mythical East slabs of BB mountain” and the hook was set. Fast forward to 2010 and I finally got around to doing some research on the route. Somehow I got Leland Windham’s and Bryan’s emails and started pestering them with questions. They were both very generous with beta and patient with my questions, and detailed the history of the feature as they knew it. Neither were aware of any ascent prior to Leland and Bryan’s 2004 climb (anyone else know of other ascents?), but the nature of the slab makes it difficult to know if parties have come before. The climbing isn’t very technical if you follow the paths of least resistance (sustained 4th, with bits of low-mid fifth to link weaknesses) and Leland and partners didn’t rope up on either ascent in August of 2004 and 2005 (different lines each time). To reach the summit, one traverses north from the top of the slab to the Beckey route. Snow patches cling to the slab into the summer, so usually August or later is the best time for an ascent. I was pretty excited to get a detailed picture of what the climb is like, but it was still four years until I found the time and partners to head in and check it out for myself. Joining me were some of the usual suspects- Sepultura, Trent, and Sparverious. It is a fairly long hike in to the base of the mountain (~12 miles?) past Waptus Lake, so I convinced the gang on a leisurely 2.5 day affair. We did not get off to an auspicious start, however. We (I) plowed through a trail junction just out of the parking lot, and ended up on Polallie ridge trail instead of one along the Waptus River. D’oh! Some cross country travel and a drop of 1000’ had us back on the right trail heading to Waptus Lake. Sorry guys. Waptus Lake is a popular spot, and rightly so. On a clear and still day, Summit Chief and Bears Breast are reflected beautifully in the lake, and it is a glorious destination in its own right for the valley pounding set. At the east end of the lake we wove our way through the tents and stood on the shore and took stock of the route we had hiked so far for. It is quite a sight! I’m not sure if there are many (any?) other mountains around that have a 3000 vf slab of solid rock. The SE mega slab of Bears Breast is about a third higher than Squire Creek wall, for example. Head on, It looked pretty steep for soloing (to a hack like me), but I reminded myself that things usually look steeper and harder than they really are. After a short break, we left the masses behind and walked around the Lake to the junction with the PCT and, shortly thereafter, camp next to the bridge over the Waptus River. I had forgotten how popular the PCT is, and there were a couple other parties at our camp. This wasn’t a bad thing considering that one of the hikers offered to share her excellent fire pit and benches. We helped to gather wood, and a shared a bit of our treasured Hunter. The hiker (a nurse) had some entertaining/disgusting stories that revolved around obese patients and unfortunate tattoos (Wet, Wet, Juicy, Juicy, Hit it Hard??!!). Needless to say, we were outgunned in the story department. We were moving at first light the next day, traveling cross country from camp trying to find the old trail that is reported to go up Shovel Creek to Shovel Lake. We found a trail not far from camp, but thought that it was the old Cascade Crest trail and didn’t stay on it. Mistake! When you find the trail, stay on it, it will take you all the way up to the slab. We eventually rejoined the trail and were soon at the slab, maybe an hour or less from camp? From below the slab is incredibly foreshortened, but still a little steeper than I was expecting. Changing into rock shoes (except sparverious who did it all in approach shoes), we followed one of Leland’s routes (I think?) by starting on a rib on the lower left side of the slab. The sandstone is grippy and well featured, so scrambling went smoothly. Sparverious was in the lead and picked a nice path up and right following natural weaknesses in the slab. Occasional overlaps and blank bits provided bits of trickier climbing, but nothing was ever sustained and no moves felt harder than 5.4-5. But it just kept going and going! Never severe, but always good quality with very little looseness, it was a more fun scramble than I was expecting. Since there isn’t much in the way of ledges, you tend to just keep moving. Climbing unroped we made progress rapidly, but it still took us about two hours to top out on the shoulder. Certainly a lot longer than it looks from below. As you are climbing up the slab you want to aim for the highest right side of it, where it abuts the near vertical cliff descending from the summit. This is where you will find a short gully that descends to another, longer, gulley that will take you up and left towards the North col and the Beckey rte. At the top of the second gully head left on a Class 2 shelf up and left to the actual col, passing underneath the start of the Beckey route. You can leave most of your gear at the col and head up. We followed the beta in this TR from NWhikers and it worked out perfectly, but be mindful of loose rock. A belay ledge collapsed from underneath Trent and Sepultura, raining the lower part of the route with blocks. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but if it would have happened when we were above them, it would have been a completely different story. The collapse spooked us all, and we didn’t linger on the summit, returning to our packs via three single raps on fairly good stations (backed up a chock stone with a nut after Sepultura pulled a pin on rappel). From the notch we were intrigued by Leland’s description of a “fun adventure” descending to Shovel Lake and so off we went to the east and south, descending more clean slabs and snowfields to the treeline. Getting to the lake did involve some ‘schwacking, but it was never too severe, and I think about 2.5 hours after leaving the summit several of the team were taking a well-deserved dip. Below the lake you want to stay on the skiers left side of the outlet stream where you can initially find faint bits of tread, but mostly just rock hop back down to the base of the slab. A little bit below the slab you can find the better tread that will take you almost all the way back to the camp on the PCT (note, there is a great camp on this abandoned trail about halfway between the slab and the PCT, next to Shovel Creek). I think we rolled back into camp about 11 hours after leaving, and we were ready to relax rather than move camp closer to the car (which was the original plan). More sharing of the fire pit with PCT hikers (father/son from Wenatchee), the last of the Hunter, and brilliant stars made for a satisfying bookend to the trip. The hike out the next day was predictably long and somewhat painful, but we did see a bear near the trail that broke up the monotony. Around the fire that last night, we all agreed that many would find the climb a fun and engaging adventure. Sandstone is unique enough around the Cascades that all of us marveled at some of the strange colors, shapes and formations we passed by. Bears Breast only sees about a party a year on average, so you will likely have the mountain to yourself. It is certainly within the reach of the average climber and located in a part of the range most climbers don’t get to- check it out! Gear Notes: Helmets, 60m half rope, light rack to 2", river shoes for crossing Waptus river where bridge is out on trail. Some may want rock shoes for the slab. Don't forget the Hunter! Approach Notes: Waptus River trail to old trail up Shovel Creek

I found a pic showing some routes on Kent from this thread ... http://test.cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/647462/Searchpage/1/Main/48549/Words/Mt.+Kent/Search/true/Re_TR_Kent_NF_unnamed_mixed_ro#Post647462 Here is the route we took (I'm not claiming this is a new route, I'm sure others have climbed it before) The differences with the Burdick/Fortier route is that we stayed left at the top of P1 and moved up, then crossed higher up to join that route in the main gully, then took the right gully at the headwall (they went left), and again right up a gully at the next headwall. From this pic, you can also see how another variation could be the Kloke start leading into the route we took