mthorman

Trip: Banks Lake, WA - Zenith, Emerald, Cable, Razorblades plus others Trip Date: 03/03/2019 to 03/14/2019 Trip Report: With reports of an incredible season at Banks Lake, my partner (Joe Peters) and I decided we needed to get over there. We drove over on March 3 to find a good place to set up a camp. Joe had to finish a couple things at work, but my wife Trisha came out to climb for the 1st two days until Joe got back. Then Joe and I were able to spend another 9 days climbing some of the wildest ice I have ever been on. Banks lake is that good!! I didn't list any grades in this trip report. Banks is a funny place and I found that grades were tricky to judge. In the end I decided that Wayne Wallace was right when he said..."Grades don't matter, everything here is hard." We camped in Joe's tipi tent which is pretty luxurious complete with stove for heat and drying gear. The best spot we found to camp was right across from Salt and Pepper. Camping limit is 15 days, it was free, and there was a toilet. We were able to sit in camp and stare up at Salt and Pepper every evening. Evening light in our camp. The view of Salt and Pepper from camp. (photo credit Joe Peters) Living it up inside the tipi. With that stove we could be sitting around in a t-shirt. It was absolutely essential for drying out boots and other wet gear after climbing every day. Here is a brief overview of our trip. 3/4 - Peewees #2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 3/5 - Climb below Emerald, Trotsky's Folly and Trotsky's Revenge (also called Phase Transition) 3/6 - Peewees #1 and 5 3/7 - The Emerald and Satan's Panties (also called Absent Minded Professor) 3/8 - Tea 'n' the Sahara 3/9 - The Cable and H2O2 3/10 - Unnamed climb Butch Cassidy in Moses Coulee 3/11 - Bombs over Old Baghdad (the climb across Banks lake at MP3) 3/12 - Shitting Razorblades 3/13 - Salt and Pepper 3/14 - Zenith I will just let the pictures tell the rest of story with a few captions. Peewee's Playground. I referenced these from right to left starting with 1 and ending with 8. Me leading Peewee #4 on the 1st day. A great place to start getting used to Banks ice! (photo credit Trisha Thorman) Craig Pope had just put up this line which he thought was probably an FA. It transitioned from the ice through the rock and out to the hanging dagger. It is Peewee #2 and he named it Turn the Page. This is a couple guys from MT climbing it on TR in the beautiful afternoon sun. The next day Trisha and I climbed this little flow. It was fantastic steep climbing that eased off about half way up. It is right off the road at the Emerald Pullout. It is amazing to me that there are so many of these lines that don't have names. Anywhere else and these good pitches of ice would all be named! Trisha doing a TR lap on Trotsky's Revenge. Day 3 Trisha headed back home and Joe arrived. Here Joe is arriving at the top of the fantastic Peewee #1. This is Satan's Panties (also called Absent Minded Professor). Rumor is that it hasn't come in for multiple years. It was a really fun multi-tiered climb that was a great warmup for the bigger climbs at Banks. The Emerald sits tucked up in a small valley above the main Banks Lake proper. It was a fantastic steep pitch of excellent climbing. It even faced north so it didn't get any sun to ruin the ice! Me leading the Emerald. (photo credit Joe Peters) Joe topping out on the Emerald at the end of a great day! With a cloudy day we decided to brave the lake and head across for some of the bigger lines. Thankfully the lake ice was thick and solid with no noises. The climb directly above me is Tea 'n' the Sahara. The one to my right is unknown.....it never came in this year unfortunately (or at least the dagger never touched down). (Photo credit Joe Peters). A closer view of Tea 'n' the Sahara. This was definitely my favorite climb of the trip. It consisted of 4 steep pitches each about 90-120 feet in length. The ice was typical Banks with plenty of excavating but the position and length of the climbing make it a classic for sure. Joe climbing the final steep 4th pitch. Looking back up at pitch 4 of Tea 'n' the Sahara from rappel. We were able to rappel the entire route with 2 rope stretching 70m rappels......take 70m ropes! (photo credit Joe Peters) The Cable....it is such an amazing, steep, crazy, gymnastic, different route. An absolute must do at Banks. Here Brian Williams is a little past halfway up the long pitch. Me leading the Cable. It is so good......just go do it! (photo credit Joe Peters) The Cable in the setting sun. Next we went to climb H2O2. Here are a couple of unknown climbers on it the night before. Yet another great pitch of climbing right next to the road. Here Joe is putting up H2O2 in the evening sun. The following day we drove over to Moses Coulee. Unfortunately Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were pretty wrecked by the sun. This is an unnamed climb on the same road about 1/2 mile before Butch Cassidy. After reviewing the guidebook and talking with several other people this is actually Butch Cassidy. The climb between Butch and Sundance Kid is unnamed (although climbed). The WA ice guidebook has the wrong mileage to these climbs. Looking up at Unnamed route Butch Cassidy was awe inspiring. There were so many hanging daggers through the steep upper roofs. I gave it a go on lead but ended up sitting on a screw in the roof. I found out I wasn't fit enough to lock off on a tool and clean hanging daggers for that long. Still an awesome experience! Me approaching the large ice roof of hanging icicles. (Photo credit Joe Peters) The next day was cloudy so we headed back across the lake. This climb is right across from MP3. It isn't in the WA ice book and nobody seems to know what it is called. After staring at it disappearing into the fog above we decided to call it Stairway to Heaven. (Edit: sounds like it is called Bombs over old Baghdad) Here is Joe leading up pitch 2. The next day was time to get on Razorblades. This is a climb that had been on my list to do for a while and it didn't disappoint. Some years the first pitch isn't in or so thin that you can't protect it well. This year it was fat! Me leading up the crux first pitch of Razorblades. I don't think I have ever climbed ice by pulling on ice mushrooms with my hands instead of swinging my tools into the ice....fun but funky! (Photo credit Joe Peters) Finally after staring at Salt and Pepper every night for a week, we decided we needed to go and do it. The guidebook made the 1st pitch sound hard and scary. It climbs the loose rock on the left and traverses up the snow ramp to the ice. It was loose, but I found a decent pin and a couple cam placements. You definitely don't need a #3 C4. I would take a couple of KB pins and a set of cams from BD .3 to #1. The crux step of rock is easy 5th but it is loose and a fall would be very bad. Joe climbing up the steep ice of Salt and Pepper. It was a fantastic climb with big exposure. This is looking straight down for about 300 feet. We wrapped up our trip with Zenith. A fitting end to a fantastic trip. It was very fat this year but still steep and long! (Photo credit Joe Peters) Joe and I on Zenith. Being a roadside crag, many times a few people stop and watch. Sue Tebow was one such person but she was kind enough to leave us her contact information so we could get a couple pictures she took. It is always a treat to get both the leader and the follower in the same picture. Thanks Sue! (Photo credit Sue Tebow) A final parting shot of the huge deathcicle above Zenith. It was so fascinating to look up at but we wasted no time in getting out of there. It consisted of a thin hollow tube of ice that extended 30 feet or so below the cliff. Out of the center poured a huge amount of water. (Photo credit Joe Peters) Gear Notes: Ice screws and 70m ropes Approach Notes: Short and easy unless you are crossing the lake!

Wow...great job! Taking smash and grab to the next level! Awesome pictures....and what a great route!!

Sorry I can help with identification, but I am curious how you felt the crossing was....spooky or pretty solid?

I have used the FF Osprey UL 30 for quite a few years. The Osprey has served me well throughout the Cascades in Spring, Summer, and Fall. I have pushed it down to 10F several times and been alright (it is custom to a 25F bag...see below). It has held up super well, packs down really small and barely weighs more than my big down puffy! Even took it up on Denali and doubled it with a Marmot 0F. I also own a -10 Eider and would definitely recommend FF bags. FYI you can have Feathered Friends "overfill" a sleeping bag to increase a rating. My Osprey is actually overfilled with a couple more ounces to make it a 25F bag instead of a 30F. Just call the Seattle store and ask them about it.

I had friends out there over the weekend. They said many routes were in and some even fat.

As others have said, you can eat really well on the West Butt. I definitely took my fair share of dehydrated meals but on those weather or rest days it was nice to cook something good. My biggest recommendation is take a frying pan and lid which you can convert into a makeshift oven. I made pizza, cookies, and biscuits in there not to mention frying all sorts of stuff. Well worth the extra weight. You can't really have too many tortilla shells or cheese in my opinion. Oh and if you can figure out a way to get crackers up to 14k camp without them crumbling you can trade it for just about anything. Last piece of advice is take food you like....duh but just because somebody says x, y, or z is a great food with lots of calories doesn't mean you will like it. Try it at home first, you don't want to cart the weight all the way up to 14k camp only to realize you don't like it. Here is my spreadsheet. Overall I was aiming for 3000-3500 calories. I thought that worked out well for me. Breakfast Lunch Dinner Extra *Also not on the above list was 2 tubes of biscuits, 3 tubes of pringles, cookie dough, and hard candy. **A lot of those dinners were dehydrated as I wasn't going to cook up beans for a chili! The extras soups I mostly made for a hot meal mid day and the puddings I made into hot chocolate drinks either morning or night. ***A "snack bag" was the following all cut up into tiny bit sized squares, mixed together and covered in powdered sugar (made it easy to melt in mouth if frozen, and the chocolate didn't make as much of a mess if left in the sun.) 1 of each: Cliff bar, protein bar, Milky Way, Snickers, and granola bar.

I have about 5 years of pretty hard use on multiple pieces and they are all full of holes and in need of replacement. I would be pysched to get 10 years!

I haven't been out to Banks yet, but judging from Spokane temps I doubt there is much yet. We have been highs in the upper 30s or lower 40s and lows just barely below freezing until late last week. The last several days have been colder finally but things definitely seem to be getting a slow start this year.

Awesome report! That climb has been on my list for awhile. The car incident reminds me of last winter when we came out from 3 nights backcountry skiing to an empty parking lot (truck was stolen). Yea the RCMP said the same thing..."It happens all the time up there".....and I was like "maybe you should think about putting up some cameras or patrolling it more often". Thankfully I got it back a couple weeks later though.

Found them randomly on Instagram. https://www.hexclimbing.com/

The only other option I have seen is this one. It isn't a different ax but lets you use your normal tools with these picks. I haven't tried it personally but know someone who has and liked them. https://www.escapeclimbing.com/product/dry-tool-picks/

Thanks for posting Scott! And congrats on one big adventure.....man running until you are sweaty and then sleeping until your cold sounds awful!

Nice job and thanks for the report! It sounds like you guys had a fun time up there. Crazy how much drier things are this year.

Mt. Adams can still be climbed in a day trip even if the road is closer lower down. I did it several years ago in March from one of the lower snow parks. It makes for a much longer day but the plus is fewer people! Of course you could easily turn it into an overnight or even a 3 day. It really depends on what you want. If you are looking for good skiing then you might be happier just staying slightly lower as the upper mountain can get pretty hard and windswept....obviously condition dependent. I think it is worth the effort and I honestly had a lot more fun being the only person on the mountain than when I went back later in the season and walked up the ant line of people.

This looks really good! Thanks so much. I sent you a PM.

Man looks like a beautiful trip! I love all the great pictures.

Just did this route last weekend and it was awesome! We climbed it on Saturday of Labor Day weekend and never saw another party......didn't know that was possible up on WA Pass! We followed the beta in Blake's new book Cascades Rock. I found the topo in the book to be very accurate. We followed it pretty much exactly as described and found the belay's to be great locations and rope drag manageable. The quality of the rock was very good with the exception of the the middle of pitch 4 through a couple of roofs. We were able to trundle all the loose blocks in that area but there is still some crumbly rock. I climbed up past the Zebra wall all the way to the top roof and then traversed out which was awesome but felt more 5.10 than 5.9. The next pitch up the open book hand crack was the money pitch and the chimney off-width was thought provoking. Honestly there weren't any "dud" pitches and the climbing was fairly sustained at grade. What surprised me most was how much slabby face climbing there was on the 1st couple pitches. Seriously this is a classic climb! Approach Beta When you are following the old road don't cut up the hill at all the rock carins. We did on the way and the trail quickly disappeared and left us in thick brush and much too far climber's left. Instead just keep following the trail until you reach a creek. Before crossing the creek turn left uphill and follow it up to the basin above. Keep the creek close by on the right until you reach the open treed area. Passed this you reach a large slide alder section from old avalanches. If you stay right on the edge there is a pretty decent trail that you can follow all the way up to just below the boulder field. A few more easy boulder hoping and you are right at the base of the climb with very little bushwacking. We found this on the way down and it was WAY better than the route we came up. Decent Beta Once above the chimney on the last "real" pitch there is still a full rope length of 4th class scrambling to the route. Make sure you go all the way to the big flat slab before trying to rappel down to the right. We knocked all the numerous loose blocks off the rappel and the anchor cord looked in good condition. From the end of the rappel we hiked up the gully a hundred feet then crossed it on a decent ledge to the treed ridge. From here it was an easy hike down the ridge contouring skier's left to the main low angle gully system. No nasty scree down climbing necessary.

Strong work!!

Looks like a really fun trip and you guys had excellent weather! I really need to get a trip into the Pickets. And awesome sighting of the wolverine!!

I guess I am one of the slow climbers then because all 3 times I have hiked up to Muir with an overnight pack my times have been closer to the 5 hour mark at a casual pace.

I just got back from Eldorado yesterday. The snow line is somewhere between 4800 feet and 5000 feet on west aspects. Lots of snow from there up. Freezing levels were between 7k and 9k but we didn't take any kind of flotation and were fine. Definitely would have been faster with skis though. I have a friend who was in Boston Basin last weekend and he said the river crossings were covered in snow and easy to cross. I assume things would be pretty similar although it has definitely melting fast up high this week. It was forecasted to rain 2.5 inches of rain up to 9000ft on Thursday and believe me when I say it did on Eldorado at least!! Looking at Forbidden from Eldorado the west ridge looked pretty melted out. I am sure there might be some snow still lingering in a few places but it looked to be mostly all rock.

Link works fine this time. I like the looks of that. Interesting that it fits webbing too.

I agree with the fact that an ATC will have a lot of friction and be inefficient in comparison to a pulley. However when compared to a single carabiner I think it would be a similar amount of inefficiency (although an experimental test with a dynamometer would be interesting to me to compare). I have done a bunch of testing using a variety of carabiners in a 3:1 system instead of pulley and measuring their efficiency. The pulley I tested came in around 93% efficiency as compared to a true theoretically 3:1 system. The carabiners all ranged from 65% to 72% depending on how fat the carabiner was. The fatter carabiners such as a Petzl Attache were the best. My theory is that an ATC with a fat carabiner would be somewhere in the 60-70% range as similar to the carabiners. Plenty happy to abandon my theory if actual tests prove otherwise. Anyway the best solution as Haireball stated is to just use a Petzl microtraxion. It serves the function of a pulley with a progress capture very well and it lives on my harness when I am in glaciated terrain. Hanman I have never seen the CT Roll N Lock but it looks light and nice. Is the locking mechanism more toothed like a Microtraxion or Tblock or is it more of a general rope grab pinch mechanism. BTW your link doesn't seem to work on my computer.

It works just fine. Yes the ATC will capture the progress. When I took a 1 day crevasse course with RMI a few years ago they showed this way and we practiced both this and a carabiner with prussik. The only negative I can think of is if you needed to rappel down to get to the patient for some reason and you just used your ATC up top.

I was solo so just hiked up the backside of Dragontail Peak. Snow was hard and crusty all the way to the top....no powder or post holing at all. The trail was pretty icy as well since the freezing level was like 3500 feet on Sunday. The north face of Dragontail looked really good. Lots of ice plastered all over. There were several really cool looking lines that I would have loved to get on. Here are a couple pics. Closer up, and looking up towards the 1st couloir of TC.