thedylan

It may have been possible to skin through the step but it didn't look probable. I suspect the step is a victim of glacial recession. Here is May 2011 when Tom was there: And April 2022:

Thanks for the report Darin. For me it feels impractical/inconsiderate to be opposed to piton rappel anchors, those are inevitable if anyone not comfortable soloing wants to climb out there. Drilled bolts and unnecessary anchors on ascent routes like Little Sister is specifically what I am opposed to. Too bad you didn't run into them, I'll have to go back out there and make sure I wasn't hallucinating in the fog :D.

Baker Mountain Guides got back to me and said they are not their bolts and agree the bolts are unnecessary.

Message sent via their website.

The Mount Baker Wilderness line is on the crest of the range, so this face is just outside of it. Might explain the pitons instead of bolts on Green Creek Arete, which is in the Wilderness.

So beautiful! I started a separate thread on the bolts I noticed on Little Sister:

While climbing the left arete of Little Sister last week I noticed shiny new anchor bolts on the right arete (two aretes pictured below). Seems pretty unnecessary: the route is 5.4, most parties are simul-climbing or soloing, and there is usually lots of natural pro in this rock. I'm not interested in stirring up drama but I am curious if anyone knows the intention and reasoning behind these bolts. I personally would prefer we didn't have these bolts in this specific situation, but I am open to a good reason I don't know about!

Yeah that sucks. You should know it's not intentional at least:

FYI

I love it! Go Jeff and Priti!

Hard to tell on the N face we never got a good view from the ridge.

It was really fun thanks for writing it up! And thanks @Kyle M for posting the observation, this is a cool and useful concept for WA ice climbing: https://cascade-ice.com/observations/51

@geosean, @MGraw and I ended up doing this over the weekend. Only mandatory rock was the gully between the lower and upper snowfields and that was a scree scramble, we didn't use the rock gear we brought until SE ridge of summit pyramid. The slope angles on the face were not as steep as expected and we did little frontpointing even though there was a lot of ice. We descended the fisher chimneys. Overall it was a really fun and beautiful way to tour the mountain. Something that has been overlooked in previous north face reports: the old growth forest on the approach, between white salmon creek and the ridge top, was seriously amazing! Many old growth western hemlock--western hemlock is the climax species west of the crest which means that's a really old forest. Above that we reached beautiful fall-colored blueberry fields and heard many elk bugles. AND I just remembered, Mike and Sean saw a wolverine! Incredible place.

Thanks for the TR you inspired me to check it out, had a really fun day yesterday. Saw no one until Forbidden. I skipped the west ridge though, was kinda bummed but my fitness isn't quite there this year :). Interesting how the snow melts, at the notch with the rappel to the north side I did one rappel angling skier's right, a long easy moat scramble, then another rappel to a moat where I had one steep step to climb out and onto lower angle snow. Was surprisingly straightforward I was definitely expecting worse.

Just commenting so I can find my trips again in the future.