thedylan

Thanks for the fun trip Sean. Such a beautiful setting, relaxing first day at camp, engaging route, and wild summit. Yeah snow routes in the cascades are sketchy these days. When do you think was the last time that couloir got a good freeze this year? But though the snow was sketchy the rock was better than expected. Definitely some looseness but a lot of compact chunky greenschist reminiscent of the Fisher Chimneys. Fun scrambling. We greatly benefited from all the mistakes and mishaps of others over the years--I fully believe there is some terrible rock on this peak and I'm glad we got to avoid it. Very surprised to be the only names in the register since 2018. Let's see some ascents! The north face/ridge route looks cool too and then you don't have to climb over the bergschrund!

Good idea to post, sounds even scarier than when you told me about it! I didn't realize there was a party below. Glad they and you and Dan are all ok.

Kind of on my own topic here but I just wanted to say: I saw they changed the language of the bear notice on the NOCA website and it is definitely better. Maybe they read this thread! Anyway I'm grateful that someone did that, I think people are more likely to listen and understand.

Honestly it's NIMBYism. I feel for the staff at NOCA because they have a big job and a small budget, but it's so easy to fall into this type of thinking... "we used to have such a nice quiet neighborhood." Take the recent bear issues at Cascade Pass. Here is what NOCA says on their website: Blame, shame, and punishment, without sharing any responsibility. This isn't helpful communication. I didn't learn anything except that I'm probably a bad person who shouldn't visit the park since I'll ruin it for everyone including the bears. The signs they put on Cascade River Road have much the same message. I also don't see how this helps the bear. Maybe some friendly educational signs, plans for food storage lockers, I don't know. I wish I could see that the park service was stepping up, but the message we all hear time and time again is that park visitors are a problem they wish would just go away. What if instead we accepted reality and got to work? I personally care much more about protecting the bears that actually live in the park today than some abstract and problematic idea of "untouched wilderness." I don't think angry signs and punishments are going to do the job.

Nice work!! Looks both scary and fun. Is it just me or does the rock actually look kinda nice? I must have climbed in the cascades for too long. Of course pro is another story, I'm certain there's none of that.

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.

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

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

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

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

I had a great time "cascadian hilarity" describes it well. @zaworotiuk here's you guys coming up the snow arete in the morning! Might have to zoom in.