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On July 8th at 1:20am, Felipe Guarderas and I began walking up the Goodell Creek drainage with the intention of traversing across the Picket Fence skyline. We ended up climbing just a few peaks shy of the “proper” traverse but had a wonderful time moving through a ton of incredible terrain and we are very content with our execution and style of the traverse. By the time we began to walk out, we had already begun to scheme when our next trip into the range will be. We had about 56 hours of high pressure and we knew that the traverse would be an uphill battle to complete before the rain arrived. We opted to climb in a stripped down, lightweight style carrying a small bivy kit and tarp to maximize our ability to move in the terrain. We carried two dinners and two breakfasts just in case we would need to bivy a second night and we both carried about 3000 calories/person per day. Approaching the Southern Pickets in the early morning of Day 1. We had a rack and a half of cams, aluminum semi auto crampons, 70m 8.5mm rope and shared a single Petzl gully. We both had 40L packs and carried a small puffy, vest, wind jacket and hardshell rain jacket. We hoped that we wouldn’t have to deal with any rain but wanted to be prepared if the weather arrived a bit early. The approach went smooth with lots of snow above 6000’ and we arrived at the base of Little Mac at 7:30am. We enjoyed a long break on the warm rock and attempted to dry out our approach shoes and socks from the long snowy walk above the tree line. Soloing over to the base of Little Mac. We scrambled the exposed heather ledges to the base of the 5th class climbing on Little Mac and then launched up into the 5.7 terrain above. After a bit of terrain confusion, my pace started to increase and I began to find the flow through the exposed face climbing on the upper panel of Little Mac. We continued climbing up to the summit and continued up and over the three Macmillan spires. East Face of East MacMillan. Summit of East MacMillan. I had attempted the traverse last August with Dan May, and we had made it to the backside of Terror before pulling the plug and retracing our steps back over the East Face and down into Crescent Creek Basin. This go around I felt more familiar with the terrain and moved a bit quicker through some of the confusing 5th class terrain that Dan and I struggled to read last year. We continued simuling and soloing across the skyline until we reached the base of East Tower #5, where we broke the rope out and Felipe fired the stiff 5.8 pitch to the summit. We rapped into the familiar gully of Inspiration Peak and soon after found ourselves at the base of the East Face of Inspiration. Felipe led up the impeccable pitches on the East Face of Inspiration before we rappelled down to the Inspiration-Pyramid Col and continued racing towards our hopeful bivy at the base of Mount Terror. P1 on the East Face of Inspiration Peak. P2 on the East Face of Inspiration Peak. Pyramid and Degenhardt went quickly and we reached the base of Terror at around 7pm. Tired but very psyched on all the terrain we had travelled. There were minimal bivy options and the wind had increased throughout the day out of the south. Pyramid's 5.8 Chimney Pitch. Instead of enduring a lumpy dirt bivouac in the wind, we opted to utilize a large snow moat beside a large boulder that marks the start of the East Face of Mount Terror. We spent an hour kicking in a suitable flat spot large enough for the both of us and settled into a heavy night of sleep before an early wake up the next day. Our snow moat bivy at the base of Mount Terror. We awoke at 3:30am and were well into our first simul block when the sun began to paint the east face at around 5am. We continued up and over Terror, onto the Rake’s extensive ridgeline and over the Blob and the Blip. Felipe on top of Mount Terror. One of the highlight pitches of the traverse was the knife edge ridge climbing of the East Twin Needle. It was a superb pitch of climbing in a very wild position. We hit the summit of East Twin Needle right around noon and the increase in winds made it obvious that a low pressure system was on its way. Felipe cruising the wild climbing on the East Twin Needle. On top of West Twin Needle. We reached the base of the Himmelhorn at 1:45pm and Felipe hiked the crux pitch of the traverse in good time. One more pitch brought us to the top of the Himmelhorn and we high fived and kept moving over to the rappels. Six total rappels brought us to the Himmel-Otto Col and by then it was about 3:30pm and fairly windy. With the Ottohorn and Frenzelspitz still ahead of us, we discussd the pros and cons of traversing the ominous choss gully over to Frenzelspitz, climbing the last peak and then retracing our steps. It seemed as though the loose terrain would eat up a ton of time and with inclement weather on the horizon it seemed like a death march out of Stump Hollow would be inevitable if we choose to complete the traverse by the book. Base of the Himmelhorn. P2 of the Himmelhorn. Looking back at P2 of the Himmelhorn. Instead, we left our gear at the Himmel-Otto Col, soloed the Ottohorn and then descended back to the col. We felt okay with our decision to leave out Frenzelspitz and began our long descent back down to the car. On top of the Ottohorn, looking back at the West Face of the Himmelhorn. One overhanging rappel brought us to snow in the gully and we moved quickly down to the heather benches of the Crescent Creek Drainage. We hit the Barrier Col at 7pm and were able to quickly find the trail down into Stump Hollow. The Himmel-Otto Couloir. I stupidly got us lost as we began our last descent to Terror Creek and we spent the next few hours making slow progress bushwhacking down to Terror Creek, across the river and back up to the Goodell Creek Trail we had approached on. Goats on top of the Barrier Col. By the time we both reached the cars it was 1am on July 9th. Just under 48 hours since we began walking uphill. Although we didn’t complete the full traverse, we are content with our style and timing. At around 7am, it began to rain down in Newhalem and we were psyched to be sleeping in our cars rather than high up in the mountains. We also figure this likely won’t be the last time we’ll be in the Pickets and it’s nice to have a few peaks to come back to… A huge thanks is in order for Wayne Wallace, Mark Bunker and Colin Haley for their initial vision for the traverse and to Jeff and Priti Wright who’s beta was invaluable throughout the trip. Additionally, Jens Holsten, Sol Werkin, Chad Kellogg and Dan Hilden’s vision for a full enchainment of the Picket Range inspired us immensely and we are pretty mind blown at what those guys were able to do over 8 days! https://sam-marjerison.blogspot.com/2025/07/picket-fence-traverse-attempt.html Gear Notes: 70m 8.5mm rope Singles .2-3, Doubles .4-2, Small Rack of Stoppers 6x Single Length Slings, 4x Double Length Slings, 2x UL Quickdraws Aluminum Crampons & Shared Petzl Gully Windburner Stove + 2x 4oz fuel cans (only used one) Rab SilTarp 2 Small Repair Kit: Repair Tape, Ductape, 30’ 3mm cord, 3x AAA batteries, bundle of bailing wire 2x 2L Soft Flasks Feathered Friends Tanager 20 Thermarest NeoAir Small Portable Battery, Inreach, Headlamp and chargers Approach Notes: Up Goodell Creek, down Stump Hollow (don’t get lost like us!)

Trip: Terror - N buttress (attempt), Himmelhorn - Wild hair crack, Degenhardt NW+E route, Pyramid - W route Trip Date: 07/04/2025 Trip Report: Drawbridged again in the pickets for the second time in a week. After the standard rap into the couloir north of Otto-Himmel col my partner @aikidjoe encountered a moat that appeared impassable. He ascended back to the station and I took a look down the next gully skiers left. From lower down I could see it would have been no good to try the moat (which would have required an absurd running leap) because another moat was not far below that one. I kept descending adjacent to the couloir, finding mostly solid, even fun, exposed class 4. There was a short low fifth corner with a lemon cake sized block that kept it secure. I passed a slung block with old webbing. Where things cliffed out I found some good .1-.2 cam sized cracks that could be used for a rap anchor. My 60m rope easily reached continuous snow from there (maybe 20m rap). Last year at exactly the same time of year I downclimbed continuous snow down this couloir without even needing the first rap. And last year was a low snow year too. So I was pretty surprised at the state of the couloir. This workaround skiers left seems viable to me. Posting it here in case it helps anyone. The false start and exploration ate up enough time that we decided to bail on our plans for the Stoddard route and head back up to climb WHC instead. My partner was bemused because he expected a crack climb The day had started clear. On our way back down from O-H dark gray clouds moved in to block the ridge. I was glad we weren’t somewhere high on the north buttress of Terror. Next day was quite socked in. We headed off for Degenhardt, accidentally heading up from the south before correcting course for our intended NW route from near Terror’s east col. To gain the couloir there was short choke that steepened at the end to maybe 80 degree snow. We underestimated the angle from below. Odd, usually it’s the opposite. We were able to bypass this on slabs on our return. The foreboding weather and lack of visibility gave the climb a serious feeling. As it gradually cleared on the way back the route started to feel easier. There is plenty of choss on Degenhardt but I recall the scramble being pretty fun. While extracting the summit register I dropped its pencil down some hole. Sorry. From there we groped our way slowly toward Pyramid. The route finding in the clouds was trickiest near Degenhardt. Was glad to carry ax/whippet all the way due to about ten steps through a narrow and steep snow couloir to get to Pyramid’s rock pyramid. We had peek a boo views into McMillan cirque but could see nothing at all to the east. By the time we passed back west of Degenhardt the clouds were lifting and it was a relief to see where we were going. The weather kept improving and the sunset was a real mind melter. UFOs came out in force. Next morning greeted us with more clear weather but having had our fill we bid adieu to the goats and our impeccable camp. After the bruising descent we enjoyed copious berries south of terror creek. Gear Notes: 60m rope and light rack, crampons, ax or whippet Approach Notes: Goodell

Trip: Gunsight - E and SW faces of Middle, S ridge of South Trip Date: 07/13/2025 Trip Report: I had the tremendous luck of finding a pair of climbers (Rebecca and Shane) who wanted to check out the Gunsight range using a rope team larger than 2 for the Chikamin. We climbed as a party of 3. They turned out to be excellent climbers and excellent company. First I’ll stick mostly to the things I wish I knew beforehand, inaccurate beta, etc. On our second day we blindly followed tracks of a party about a half hour ahead of us in the Chikamin which led to the lowest pass. Getting on the rock it seemed like possibly low 5th slab and too far south of Gunsight. We decided we were in the wrong place. I briefly scoped the next gully north which was terrible. We then found the right path, using mostly clean slabs. In Blake’s book the arrow isn’t quite in the right place, we were one notch north of his line, in the “s” in “peaks”. We had hoped to climb E face of Middle this day but with the lost time settled on S ridge of S peak. We would later find out that doing E face of Middle on day 2 is doable only if everything goes right, no route finding issues, climbing and descending efficiently. A better plan that I’d recommend to most coming from Downey is to aim for SW face of Middle for your day 2. P2 and start of P3 on S ridge S Gunsight: S ridge of S Gunsight is a garbage climb. The first pitch is not terrible but the face after an ok corner is covered in black lichen and any pro seemed worthless. Hard to find an anchor on top of the choss ridge. Much less than the reported 45m. The next very short pitch, again much shorter than in our description, has an exciting knife edge lean + leap onto the rock that begins the cannon hole (my first trad dyno I think). From there we expected 5.4 to finish the climb. I went back and forth, high and low, repeatedly dead ending near a notch with lots of tat. Finally I committed to a delicate and highly exposed 5.8-5.9 stem around a corner to get to a downclimb to the notch. From there I ran the rope out to the summit at somewhat dirty low 5th. Looking back I saw how the follower would be exposed to a big pendulum and deck, so I encouraged my partners to just rap that step off the existing tat. With a couple raps we were back on the east side retracing our steps to the notch. Numerous steep hard snow interruptions to the slabs involved time sucking crampon on-off transitions. I was grumpy about 2 days of effort to climb 3 pitches of choss but we caught a gorgeous sunset just as we reached the notch. From there we traversed high on snow and slabs below Gunsight to get to where we had stashed our bivies. The next day we tried again for E face of Middle. Rather than circle around the peak again Rebecca had the great idea of climbing the SW Beckey route, rapping S to the notch, then rapping E to get to the E face. The Beckey route was straightforward low-mid 5th choose your own adventure on fun solid rock with lots of knobs, which we began from a small cave just above the best moat crossing we found. The summit register’s last entry was from 3 years prior, a party doing gunrunner. We did one rap south beginning a little below the summit, backing up the slightly suspect block. From there a double rope rap from a higher confidence anchor got us to the notch. The anchor we found there wasn’t very great but we couldn’t find better options. I immediately found the e side to be mostly steep dirt. Angling slightly south I found an ok nut anchor maybe 45m down from the notch. A double rope rap from there got us down to the very dirty snow. This might have been the dirtiest gully I’ve descended up to that point. The high quality of the E face lived up to the hype, though misleading beta vexed us at times. Our first pitch was quite long due to low snow and glacial recession. Comparing our photos to some from 15 years ago there was some thing like 50-100 feet of rusty rock that had been covered in snow in the earlier photos. The pitch 2 crux is right off the deck and maybe sandbagged (or I was just tired). Awkward, tricky, exposed to decking, it took me about 4 tries to lead through it. I don’t think the pitch was more than 15m. This was another ledge where a good anchor was hard to find. Pitch3 (10c) was actually easier than pitch2. Shane had stopped one ledge short of the proper start of pitch 4. We worried about linking that step into pitch 4 because it’s supposedly 45m. In reality pitch4 turned out to be more like 30m. Oh well. The pitch 4 climbing was fantastic and its crux (10d) was another possible sandbag. I could not have led it. Very demanding powerful moves finally got me through it after a few attempts. By now the hour was late and we were looking at the mental crux of the runout 5.9 slab. Shane led this one too. Rebecca went second and I came last. I was glad to have watched them for beta on the subtle step down crux at the most run out point. Brilliant colors lit up the horizon while it was my turn but I could give it only fleeting attention as I concentrated at the crux. Once through I ran up the ridge (low 5th? Didn’t notice any 5.8) in the twilight, basically a full 60m rather than the 15m our beta advised. We repeated the rap sequence south to the notch as it grew dark windy and cold. The rope got stuck during the pull here. With much effort Shane finally freed the rope. The descent to the east was a known thing at this point but I argued that it was so bad that the descent to the west couldn’t possibly be worse. About this I turned out to be wrong. We did one short rap to an anchor south of the main gut/vomitorium of the gulley, with resident snaffles greeting us at both ends of the rap. From there Shane plunged into the unknown, over an overhang, choss diarrhea of all sizes being released. At a full 60m we went off rope and I took a clean slab ramp around a corner and found good cracks while they pulled the rope. Somehow that rap didn’t destroy us or the ropes. We placed a cam anchor and got past the steep icy snow onto lower angle stuff and began the traverse back to camp, arriving around 2am. We made dinner, celebrated, and tucked in around 3. Next morning I went back with the suspicion that our anchor could be reached on class 4 slabs that we couldn’t see well in the dark. It turned out to have a little low 5th, so rapping was definitely the right call for the circumstance. But I was glad to recoup our gear. Having encountered the worst and second worse gullies of my life on either side of middle gunsight I now think that the best way to retreat is probably down the SW Beckey route. It’s ledgey so it would be best to downclimb most of it with some raps where it makes sense. And best done in the daylight, after climbing it at least once so you know the way at least approximately. Faded from the unexpected epics our only goal for day 4 was to get back to Itswoot ridge, beginning around noon. But around 1:40 at about 7K’ we heard a voice from a distance. We stopped and listened. Heard it again. Could barely make out words like “broken ankle” “helicopter”, “alone”. We pressed the SOS. The voice seemed to be vaguely in the Sinister area but we couldn’t tell where. We started backtracking and did some Marco Polo every few minutes without success. Finally passing east of the north face of Sinister we saw what we realized was a person. He was not moving and covered in a gray sleeping bag so we hadn’t been able to tell him apart from a rock at a distance. Maintaining some privacy here, we found that he was indeed immobilized and in severe pain and needed rescue. His inspiration and his equipment were in disharmony and this had culminated in a long and presumably very rapid slide down snow NE of Sinister. Fortunately over cracks, unfortunately meeting some rock(s) along the way. A little while later a father and daughter were coming down the Chikamin. It was nice to have more help. We did our best to keep him warm and as comfortable as possible as we waited for SAR. When the helicopter came we were surprised that it took so many laps through the area (maybe 5?) before two rescuers finally were lowered down with a litter. The morning had begun mostly cloudy but the afternoon was quite brilliant. Some rain approached quickly from the north and reached us just as the helicopter took off with the victim and SAR people aboard. We restarted our ascent in the rain, reaching our turnaround point >4.5 hours after we had stopped. This guy was quite fortunate that several people happened to be in ear shot on a week day in such a remote area. The rain cleared half way up the Chikamin and gave way to that kind of really clear atmosphere that seems to come on the heels of misty alpine weather. We found a wonderful spot past Dome glacier, well before Itswoot and called it a day. The highlights of our last day included a brief swim in cub lake, the flora above cub lake, and the many berries along Downey. Less fun was stuffing our pockets full with entirely unnecessary flagging all along very obvious trail along Bachelor. Some of it quite haphazardly stuffed onto bark like so Gunsight delivered adventure in more ways than I could have anticipated. For people going there for the first time I’d advise to stay the fuck out of the gullies on both sides of Middle, bring lots of gear for rap anchors because there seems to be little traffic there, skip south gunsight, and expect everything to take longer than you’d think. Photo dump will go here: Gear Notes: Double to 2, one 3, one 4. 2x60m twin. In reach (please people). Knife for tape. Approach Notes: Downey approach is currently straightforward. Trail work has been done all the way to Bachelor

Love it! And really, the entire report top to bottom. I took two different ways to get back and forth over the Challenger E-W ridge line. The further east one was definitely harder. I think the west one is Solar pass, and wasn’t technical.

We went up to the right of that arete under the col: Tim scrambled it and dropped a rope to Steve and I and we were glad for it!

Where's the "love" button? Thanks for the time you spent conveying all the pieces of your journey!