andybrnr

Corkscrew is off the true summit wrapping down to the SW and over to the glacier, while this follows the N ridge to the N/NW faces.

Didn't get a good shot of the West face, unfortunately. I'll try and edit up the helmet cam at some point if it's any good, might have some better views. Jim Dockery on my cross-post to TAY left a very nice shot from Mount Forgotten: http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=28315.0

Trip: Sloan Peak - NW Face and gully Date: 4/16/2013 Trip Report: Ever since climbing a variation of the Beckey route on Sloan's W face (TR here), I'd wanted to head back in to Sloan. The goal for my second trip would be to answer the all-important question, "will it ski"? My original thought was to connect the upper section of the corkscrew to the south ledges, but it seems rare that enough snow is plastered onto that aspect to make a continuous descent feasible. While searching for winter photos of Sloan, I came across Taluscat's TR. Looking to the right of their first few pitches, I had the feeling that the gully might just go. The months of ski season slid by, and the combination of weather and partner availability had not aligned for a trip up Bedal Creek. As the snow began to melt, I figured I'd missed the window for the year. The late season powder dump on April 13-14 reset my thinking. Weather for April 16th was favorable, with showers on the afternoon of the 15th hopefully having kept the sun off the snow, and I convinced Robert to go have a look with me. We left the U District at 0045, and by 0230 we made it up FS-4096 a mile and change before tree fall blocked the road at 2000'. We geared up and headed out, finding consistent snow cover on the road within a 1/4 mile. We followed the road up beyond the trailhead, continuing on an abandoned section to where it crossed Bedal creek. Skinning up the drainage through the woods, the snow continuously improved with elevation until we were breaking trail through 18" of medium density powder. The deep snow made for slow going, and we broke into the clearing about a mile from the base of the NW face at 0530. As dawn lit the sky, we got our first look at coverage on the face, and the line appeared to be in good shape. After a quick food stop, we headed up through the forests towards the slopes of the NW shoulder, intending to intersect our ski line at the 6300' level. The snow on the shoulder was of fantastic quality, and we readily talked ourselves into taking a 1000' lap on 20" of cold, N facing powder. Climbing back up our skin track to the shoulder, we grabbed some more food and were back on the up by 1030. Clouds drifted slowly by, partially obscuring the peak and dropping the odd snowflake as we booted up the face. The early trail breaking began to catch up with us, and progress slowed to 325' an hour through the steep and deep. Snow conditions varied, with some sections involving a wallow through two feet of powder, and other parts holding a few inches over crust. The cloud cover bought us some extra time, but we knew the W facing aspects would become less friendly in the afternoon sun. The crux of the climb was delicate booting up rotten snow on a narrow, exposed 50 degree ramp to gain the summit ridge at 1430. We started a traverse towards the summit, but the return of full sun convinced us that it was time to head down from our high point at about 7600'. Pulling skins and clicking in, we enjoyed smooth powder on the lower summit ridge. Exiting via the exposed ramp was a little dicey, but with a touch of side-slipping we made it and cruised the short traverse to the top of the NW face. After a few steep powder turns, we encountered some nasty, 50 degree crust, requiring about 175' of whippet belayed side-slipping to gain an excellent pitch of powder. As I ducked below a rock outcrop mid-face to wait for Robert, a yell from above was promptly followed by a decent size slough of debris that had cascaded off the cliffs above the face, blowing by 15' to the right of my safe spot. I was relieved to see Robert appear shortly thereafter on my left, and we picked up our pace, leap-frogging down and left to the top of the gully. Another few hundred feet of good powder terminated in steep, crusty side slipping, but we finally arrived at the choke above the avy fan, where we discovered what had appeared to be continuous snow from our distant examination at dawn was actually a steep roll to 10' of 70 degree snice. Robert went first, side-slipping as far as possible and then dropping the final 5' into the soft slough below. Following suit, I hopped down into the debris, and we arced celebratory turns down to Bedal creek, rejoining our skin track for the slushy slog back to the car, boots off at 1745. Approx 9.5 miles, 6600' total vert. If Dan hasn't been here, this might be a first descent. And now some pics: Route overview Route detail Bedal Peak First view of the upper mountain (from Robert) Upper face detail (from Robert) Cool light (from Robert) Booting up the face Looking back down the NW face to the shoulder Down the west face. Need a parachute to ski this one. Summit ridge (from Robert) Down the ramp (from Robert) Skiing the lower gully (from Robert) Looking back

Yeah, it was definitely time to gtfo when the snow started to turn heavy... saw you guys drop in right as we finished setting the track up to the notch and out of the basin; we were hoping you guys made good time getting out, as snow conditions were quickly trending from decent to sketchy.

Crux pitch was certainly still the dihedral, so nothing harder than that, though a bit trickier than the pitches preceding the dihedral. The final pitch up to the bench was excellent, though, a bit of lichen coverage but straight up a relatively sharp arete, which might've been the best of the day.

Dashed yellow is unroped traverse, solid yellow is a guesstimate of the line we ended up taking... hard to tell if it's the right feature from the perspective of the photo.

The pics of the face we have aren't good enough to mark it... I'll try to find one of yours or Schaef's and pen the route in. Was curious if the rap station we ran into at the top of the final arete was part of the descent for one of your projects, as I figured we were over the the SW face at that point, but probably weren't quite far enough right for that to be the case.

Trip: Sloan Peak, Mountain Loop Hwy - West Face variation Date: 9/24/2011 Trip Report: Departed from U. District of Seattle with climbing partner Robert at 0500 Saturday morning with the objective of climbing the W. Face of Sloan Peak. Missed FSR 4096 on the first pass, but caught the mistake quickly and set out from the trailhead around 0730. After a bit of a break in the blueberries on the slopes below the start of the route, we began climbing around 1030. Using beta from Rad and Schaef's TRs, we simul-climbed the first three pitches to the start of the leftward slanting fourth pitch to join the upper section of the dihedral (5th pitch). The move into the dihedral is indeed "airy", but the crux went smoothly (thanks whoever left the nut as fixed gear). We inadvertently made the route more interesting by not checking the topo after leaving the belay above the dihedral, heading right instead of left. We traversed about 40m right along the bench before roping up again, heading straight up for four rope pitches. The final pitch cruised up a lichen encrusted but very aesthetic arete, ending at a rappel anchor that appeared to be in pretty good shape. From here we unroped and ascended fourth class terrain, gaining the corkscrew route about 60 m above the rap station. With the extra pitches and route finding issues, we tagged the summit at a very late 1900, and while the weather through the day had been ideal, the cloud cover moving in rapidly dimmed the light. Heading back down the corkscrew, we downclimbed the 30m rappel at the SE corner to gain the lower bench down to the snowfield, but in the waning light were unable to locate any established rap stations. We switched on our headlamps as a light rain began to fall, making conditions on the relatively smooth slabs of the bench trickier. We ended up downclimbing to the bergschrund, setting a single rope rappel off a corner of the schrund as an anchor to get down the steepest part of the snow. Yaktrax provided pretty poor traction on the very hard snow now lubricated with a touch of rain, and the traverse across the snow went slowly, self-belaying with our ice axe picks. Back on rock at the far side of the snowfield, we scrambled up to gain the ridge separating the snow field from the scree below the S. Face, and hiked along the ridge until finding a convenient point to downclimb 5m to the slopes below. The traverse back around to the gear we'd cached at the start of the route, groping along by headlamp, seemed to take forever. Seeing our pack, trekking poles, and extra water bottles appear in our headlamps was a joyful occasion, though fatigue was setting in. With all gear redistributed into two packs and our smoked salmon dinner consumed by 2345, we slowly descended the steep slopes below the W. Face in search of the faint climbers' trail leading out of the forested saddle below. We missed this, resulting in a bush whack back up the ridge a bit to find the steep heather slopes leading down towards Bedal Creek drainage. The light rain had made these treacherous, but the whippet self arrest ski poles we had along as a second snow tool proved perfect for mud-tooling back down. The remainder of the descent back to the car was somewhat dream like, as we were frequently not sure whether or not we were on route, with only the occasional familiar landmark materializing in our headlamps to suggest we were headed the right way. Bedal creek trail back to the trailhead cruised by quickly, and we returned to the car at about 0315, and were back in the U. District by 0530, 24 hours and 30 minutes after setting out. The climb was fantastic, the descent a bit epic, but an amazing day (and change) out. Will add pics when Robert gets them off his camera. Gear Notes: standard rock rack, ice axe, yaktrax