geosean

Wow, nobody else went out there on a great Saturday! Amazing. It was such a fantastic weekend.

Trip: Gunn Peak - Uh, south. Standard. Trip Date: 11/26/2023 Trip Report: On 11-26-23 me and @Albuquerque Fred climbed Gunn and Tailgunner peaks. It was grand fun made much easier than is typical for this season due to the long high pressure system that melted and crusted the snow. Not knowing what to expect from the conditions we brought all kinds of gear: rope, pro, axes, crampons, helmets, snowshoes. We didn't use any of the technical stuff, just axes and crampons, and helmets. The trail wasn't as bad as we expected from the reputation, but it was pretty bad. The heavy frost down low made sure the brush was dry at least. We had to use crampons to manage the log crossing at Barclay Creek. Snow began at 4300', then we broke out into the open and thanked the crust for making the walking easier. Another party in days past broke some trail that helped a bit. Yada yada yada, we donned crampons at the base of the "hidden ledge", not so hidden and definitely more of a gully than a ledge. There was some ice and since 2 climbing for a short distance. The upper snowfield was easy. The ridge crossover at 6100' was the make or break when we got our first look at the traverse ledge on the north side. I was pleased to see that the previous part left us some steps and a bit of a trough. It was a piece of cake actually, though heady. This was what we brought the pro for. You descend, then a really thin snow ledge with exposure, then ascend again. It would protect very well as the belayer is at a notch and there are several great cracks at the low point, then trees at the top on the far side. Then an easy walk to the summit. It had been very warm in the sun all day and it was positively balmy on the summit, T-shirts and lady bugs (not a euphemism). The descent was about the same, crust plodding, then up Tailgunner. Then down, down, down. Headlamps for 15 minutes. Given a high snow level to make the trail tolerable, I think this would make a fine all year summit if you bring pro for the north side (or are bold on a steep slope with exposure going both up and down and across). The route: First crux: Second crux: Summit: Frost line stayed in the valley all day: Gear Notes: Carried a lot. Used axe, crampons, helmet. Approach Notes: Trail is ok, not as bad as advertised.

Wow, an amazing adventure to be sure!! That looks like a wild area to explore. Thanks for the writeup!

Wow, you make this sound easy! So did you summit Ruth from climber's left of the glacier? Oh yeah, and did you do the "more secure route" or the "more exposed route" up Mineral? Per Crowder and Tabor.

Wow, amazing. I can't say it looks like a classic but it sounds great nonetheless. Thanks for the post! Quite the adventure.

I know right! That's why I'm becoming a mountain runner, I'll run up to the north side of Rainier then scramble Liberty Ridge in dry conditions in August of 2040.

I agree about getting better at ice climbing for late season, but on a snow or ice route you can't just go earlier for more snow because the consolidation effect greatly changes the route. For instance sure you could do the Price Glacier in April but you would be wallowing in deep snow for much of it, then by the time the snow consolidates the cracks are open. But yeah, I could do something like the Price in august if I was a better ice climber.

Haha, you came with credentials!

Hey, I've been thinking a bit about routes that a person should plan to do sooner rather than later in the big scheme of things due to climate change. Basically routes that will get much harder as snow conditions go out. I'm thinking Nooksack Tower, Liberty Ridge, Price Glacier (almost too late already). They don't have to be snow routes but just routes with snow access that is getting difficult. Anybody have any thoughts? For instance, the Price Glacier Right used to be a viable route: Photo from July 22nd this year.

Wow! I thought the fire suppressant was some kind of paint markup line on your photo. Very cool.

This is a rad idea!! but since Washington's better than Oregon I've never done any of these routes. I'm joking, kind of, but seriously keep it up this sounds really cool!

Trip: Bearpaw Mountain and Church Mountain - Uh, whatever Trip Date: 08/19/2023 Trip Report: Looking for an easier day after some hard trips and also breaking in a new partner I settled on the very much discussed but seldom climbed Bearpaw Mountain, with a side of Church on the way out. We quickly hiked up the Church Mountain trail then at the meadow turned up slope and went cross-country crossing over several ridges towards Bearpaw Mountain. The final scramble of Bearpaw is a couple moves of easy class 3 along the ridge, there is a trail from the saddle above Church Lake. The entire area was devoid of humans, very pretty, and lots of fun cross-country rambling, generally very easy. We discovered a surprising and very distinct outcrop of limestone that is very interesting and just rock is not common in the North Cascades. After Bearpaw we decided to take the easiest line and dropped to Whistler Lake, passing several lakes and wandering around the meadows at around 5600 ft. From kidney lakes we ascended to the notch on East Ridge of church mountain and joined the standard scramble route. I haven't done this in many years and summer conditions and it was a bit more complicated than I remembered but still not more than class 3. After the summit we headed down the standard route, over the church lookout, and down the trail to the car. The whole trip took 9 hours over about 13 mi and 6, 000'. It was a great day out in our mountainous backyard (for Bellinghamsters) in an area that I've talked about going to for years but never gotten around to doing. More of a cross-country high route days and actual peaks but very enjoyable! I did this TR on my phone and can't figure out how to put spaces between the photos, it's not actually one vertical panorama. Note: this whole report took me about 10 minutes, so let's see your reports! Gear Notes: Trail shoes. Poles. Approach Notes: Church Mountain trail. Made it to the trailhead in a Pontiac Sunfire, the creek crossing required some driving skill.

And I only ran 5.5 miles the next day.

Hahaha, you guys are hilarious. I remember being in the back while skinning. Great shots Jason!

Nice writeup, thanks for sharing!

In this case it didn't have anything to do with the specific climb but glacier travel in general, we could have easily swung farther around the crevasses and avoided the bridge entirely but we didn't want to do as much traversing. But it was still a bit unnerving. By then on the descent we were pretty over it and just dealt with it, but still good food for thought.

"Maybe this is fun." HAHAHAHA, nice try at positive thinking, I like the effort. Thanks for the post, I've been trying to get in to that area for a few years. It looks amazing. Quite the solo effort, I think I'll take a partner! How was the camp below Crooked Thumb, aside from less than ideal water access?

Damn! Glad it all worked out!!! Sketchy. "Warning, climbing is inherently dangerous" to be sure. Even on routes that seem like they should be safer than say Lincoln or North Index in winter or the Price Glacier.

Trip: Nooksack Tower - Beckey-Schmidtke Trip Date: 07/23/2023 Trip Report: Hi, I'm going to try to keep this brief as my eyes are still dry from the long sunny dry day yesterday. Me and @thedylan climbed the "easy" route on Nooksack Tower over the weekend of July 22-23. We had a pretty easy time on the tower, especially compared to basically every other report out there. I don't believe we followed Beckey's beta exactly, but we climbed camp to summit in 4.5 hours and never anything harder than about 5.0, and that was the last 30' to the summit. I would recommend our route highly (if you insist on climbing the tower at all). We hiked in to camp at 6100' in 5.5 hours without pushing particularly hard. The hike was beautiful and the camp spectacular, if one had to retire from climbing but still wanted a good mouthful of it this would make a spectacular backpacking trip. Our campsite was at 6100' at a minor notch in the ridgel it had close water, immediate access to the glacial snow slopes, no bugs or rats, and perfect flat smooth slabs for sleeping and lounging, even backrests! It was weird having time to lounge, eat, drink and etc while on a serious climbing trip. But this route isn't broken up well into approach and climbing day. We were up at 2:30 am, hiking by 3:30. We found an easy bridge through the bergschrunds and were headed up the gully by first light. I had laughed at Tom Sjolseth's 2009 report that suggested the snow was 60-70° at the top, but it was! If only for about 20'. Fortunately, there was a fantastic moat to change out equipment in. A lot of people seem to get on the rock too early, we went to the top of the summer snow, "where the couloir narrows" per Beckey means really narrows, not just a little narrower. We climbed right up a crappy "slabby" corner, actually a chockstone gulley to access the obvious class 3 right leaning gulley, after 200-300' we worked a bit right out of the bottom of the gulley to keep the terrain moderate as the gulley steepened. We climbed a steepish wall here that might have been 5.0 but it could have been bypassed lower and right. This working right felt like wrapping around a rib at the time but isn't really when seen from above. After "wrapping around the rib" we were on a face and this is where a LOT of people go wrong. We passed lots of rap stations that apparently lead up and right to the north face route (BAD, insert frightening those emoji). We climbed up class 3 and 4 open terrain for ~250', then started working left and up. Lots of left. In this open class 3-4 area keep looking left, the multiple ribs and gulleys below you and left are steep, once they start to mellow out and the terrain above begins to steepen work left across multiple ribs and gulleys. We found this to be very positive incut hands class 4 ground with some ramps in places leading you up and left. Once you get into a distinctly bigger gulley you are in the zone, this leads to the ridge crest 200' north of the summit, or, I believe, you could keep traversing one more large gulley over and climb straight up to the summit. This looked easy from above but we didn't go that far over. The big gulley we climbed up was mostly class 3 with some 4th class steps. We hit the ridge and put on the rope for the first time. Dylan lead out, simuling to the summit in about 150' of rope length. There was massive air on the west (right) and plenty on the left that I'm glad we used the rope even though I think the only 5th class part was 20' or so up a wall to the very summit. There were some familiar names in the summit register. Bizzarely, we signed in right below @Albuquerque Fred from 5 years ago!! Can that be true!? In this case the summit really is only about half way there, so we headed down after some snacks and photos. We did 2 raps in a row off the summit back into the large cl 3-4 gulley, then downclimbed it and the traverses back to the NF rap line. We did 3 more raps to the snow moat and our gear. "We" decided it was OK to downclimb the top scarry steep part, so Dylan went first since it was his idea. It was actually OK, the snow was soft enough for good steps but firm enough for solid high dagger sticks. This was extremely tedious after about 800'! My hands hurt today from stabbing my axes into the snow. When we got back to the compound bergschrund situation we couldn't figure out how we came up, Dylan kept climbing down where I insisted I had lead up, but there was nothing obviously right. I kept insisting it was there and that it had been easy but he kept insisting what he saw below was steep icy climbing into the cracks. Eventually we traversed between some cracks and set up a rap off a bollard on the lip, we then realized the bridge we had come up on had collapsed and was lying in the bottom of the 'schrund! The hike out was uneventful but didn't take much less time than the ascent did, bizarrely. Once above the moraine, we did different routes up and down and I think this added to the increased exit time. On the way up we followed the boulders at the base of the trees as in the red line below. This was a mostly flat traverse between 4600 and 4700'. Then we turned up to traverse at 5200', below the buttress to the right of Dylan in the photo. The ascent from 4600 to 5200 was lousy climbing pulling on blueberry, if you can find a good way to do this it would be way faster than the ridge crest. There is a perfect goat path through heather and a ledge through the steeper slabs, then easy clean slab walking to camp. The slabs were amazing, beautiful clean rock, easy walking and fantastic pools and streams of water tracing intricate routes along the rock fissures. On the exit we reversed the slabs and the traverse at 5200' but then gained the ridge and followed it all the way down to the moraine, the last steep part was as bad if not worse than the way we went up but the ridge was also brushy and tedious. I would recommend our ascent route in red below: OK, so not so short, but it was a long trip. Car to camp: 5.5 hours. Camp to Summit 4.5 hours. Summit to camp 6.5 hours. Camp to car 4.75 hours. Apprach: Moraine and first look: Slabs below camp: At camp: Changing systems: The sun rises from Redoubt Camp from the snow moat: Shuksan from the summit, the Price looks tough: Dylan on rap: Last look: Gear Notes: 60m twin rope, 60m tag line, 2 axes, steel crampons, e-bivys, small rack (placed 2 pieces), tat (used none), 2 pickets each (didn't use), approach shoes for the hike and rock, boots for the snow, poles for the river. Approach Notes: River was fordable, tough on the way out, crossing is flagged. Trail largely flagged, not bad.

Oh man, I'm not sure I would solo the Challenger Glacier personally. I was there on Labor Day and there are some big cracks, glad you made it ok. It never seemed to me to be worth dropping down at the impasse, I mean, you're there to climb mid 5th on the peak. Nice trip, thanks for the writeup!

Thanks for a great trip Karsten, it was a tough one to pull off with a new partner; I think we did great. As Karsten mentioned, @Riley81's beta was invaluable: The only place we screwed up was on the north face of North. Follow Karsten's directions above. The dihedral mentioned by Riley81 and Beckey is really short and easy, we climbed it as a face, and there is a big tree growing out of the back of it, so it didn't seem like a great landmark. At this dihedral you wrap around from the NE ridge to the east face basically, then up into a gulley, then you are at the horn with tat and the start of the hidden ledge traverse. Don't go up the easy class 3 gulley to the steep wall. Otherwise you end up doing Beckey's variation: "Variation: On the lower portion of the climb, from the "hidden ledge" ascend a steep rock wall to a large hanging brush patch. Imitate a gorilla..." You get the idea. Riley81s beta on the descent from North was perfect (it reads insane at home, but following along totally works). The only thing I would add is descending from Middle, we did the same thing but had to do some looking around. From Middle Index we started down the ridge, bore left down a gulley to a treed area, then back west up a heather gulley, through a notch, down some rock and trees on the west side to an easy ledge system. Then bear east (left) along this ledge and heather to slabs, you cross the ridge back to the east side here where it is very gentle. Down slabs easterly until it starts feeling cliffy below, then go back over the crest to the west again and down a chossy slope or a chossy incised gulley. Wrap around to the crest where there is a chockstone gulley that leads to the notch. We made a rap station off a huge block on a prow skiers right of the chockstone and did a ~25m rap into the notch. Just above our station is a tree that Riley and co rapped off of (we didn't check this out). Incidentally, we were a tad confused that no one mentioned that the Middle-Main notch is a double notch with a point in it, this we easily climbed over to belay at the base of the next pitch out of the notch. With @Riley81's, and of course @JasonG's, beta with some Beckey thrown in we did pretty well. It's mostly all there, the looking around is the best part. If I were to do it again (which I won't) I would take a higher percentage of double runners and more small cams e.g. #0 and #1 master.

Damn! That looks firm for that route.

This is a cool report and I have tons of respect for you two as climbers and amazing trip report writers but I have to agree with Rat, paragliding is illegal in Wilderness areas. It is the responsibility of all of us to protect the character of the wilderness lest we lose it or incur more regulations to curtail misuse. Unless there is something I'm missing here, then please disregard.

I love that scene!

I would recommend Glee and The Roost just south of West McMillan Spire if you are looking for more like class 2. Some would consider Mixup Peak soloable, not me though. Magic was fun and solo worthy, as well as Hurry Up; I did those in a day as a group solo. I believe the Cache Glacier is widely considered soloing territory.