Leaderboard

Rolf Larson and I climbed a line on the north face of Mt. Buckner on Sunday the 20th. Friday, after bivying at the trailhead, we skinned up the road and started up the trail to Boston Basin. Coincidentally a group of 3 skiers were off to ski the north colior on Buckner that same morning. Thrashed through the brush and above tree level by early afternoon up to within about 800 feet of the Sahale Boston col that day. Skiers continued on to make the traverse to Boston Glacier. Next day some weather moved in and vis was shitty at the col. We began the traverse. Good neve, exposure, heavy packs. Traverse, Down the Boston Glacier in light north face pow and across to the north face of Buckner that day. Scoped lines. Line we originally intended to climb looked too filled in with snow. Another line caught our eye that started with an ice flow then went into some snow and ice runnels. There was a direct start to this line that just looked too much like powder snow on rock. After another cold night in the Bibler, Rolf roused early with his usual sunny disposition and made a brew while I kept my head stuck in my sleeping bag. We trudged up to the ice fall. After some fucking around I finally started up the ice - a fun pitch with a decent steep section. From there we continued up steep snow and fun aesthetic mixed climbing. Here's a bad photo but gives an impression of the climbing. The neve was superb. Everything that looked like powder snow from the glacier was thick thunker neve. We realized we should have taken a steeper line or the direct start. About half way up the face we were able to look down at the direct start and it looked rad - with a classic ice and neve filled chimney with decent rock pro. What little girls we were for taking the conservative approach. More fun climbing led to the of the ridge and a classic ridge traverse with exposure and amazing views of the North Cascades in winter led to the summit. We paused in the sun and descended the north coliour back to the Bibler. It was only 1:30 by the time we got back to camp, so we made a brew and I told Rolf I was over spooning with him in the Bibler let's go home. We packed our shit and bolted. The skiers who had skiied the north coliour the day before had been farming the north facing slope from the Boston Sahale traverse notch down the glacier that day and had kicked a bitchin skin highway back up. Thanks skiers!! Got down to truck by 8:00 after a long exhausting day and had a beer. Named the route "Copa Cabana" after a friend who spent his President's Day weekend kiteboarding and drinking margaritas in Mexico with bikini babes instead of the Rolf Larson lovefest of freezing ass and killing ice. Shot of the route from bro's arial photo page: The Copa Direct remains. If this high pressure holds someone should go crush!!!

Thanks @Cliffordsa for the photos and info! Looks like the exit pitch was pretty dry for you as well? There's a random photo on mountain project that shows ice flowing down each side of the chockstone but I never saw it form in my many trips over there this year. @Cptn_Sprayhab I don't see a problem here. @ACosta originally said that the line may have been climbed before and promptly retracted the FA claims when we found out it had been. I find the pervasive "every square foot of Hood has been climbed" belief interesting. No one (so far) has taken issue with our Cathedral Ramp FA claim from a month ago. No one disputed Three Little Monkeys in 2018 or the Pencil in 2017. Other Black Spider routes were put up as recently as 2010 and no one complained about those either. Either all those lines were in fact unclimbed or the true first ascensionists have advanced into a Zen state of truly not caring at all. It's easy to assume some near mythical figure like the aforementioned Steve House would've done everything on Hood, but apparently when asked "what's the best alpine route in Oregon?" he settled on Jeff Park, which probably barely registers as "real climbing" to most of the people in this thread. So it's reasonable to think his Hood resume might not be that extensive. Of course there have been a lot of hard people who have done a lot of hard things on Hood, and some of them have undoubtedly kept quiet about it. It wouldn't surprise me if any number of the routes I mentioned above had been previously climbed. But if people are going to be purposefully secretive or reclusive then they're willingly removing their own voices from the conversation and there's not much the rest of us can do about it. Preserving "ground up adventure climbing" is an interesting topic of discussion but if that's a style of climbing you'd like to pursue shouldn't you just, I don't know, avoid spending time on climbing information websites like this one?