John Douglass

The much talked about but rarely climbed West Face. Wicked route guys! Money pitch looks $$$$$$$

I daresay right in the middle of the slabbage patch. Looks grrrrreat!

Table for one! Nice one Michael.

That's a burly enchainment. Bravo!

Trip: Sloan Peak - Corkscrew Trip Date: 06/01/2019 Trip Report: My partner Alex and I climbed Sloan Peak via the Corkscrew Route yesterday. We left the parking lot on the North Fork Sauk River Road at 8:30 am and with a fairly leisurely pace made it back by 9:00 pm. This is a great shorter alpine trip with all of the fun elements - wacky river crossings, a cushy footpath most of the way, some glacier walking, heather ledges, and a short scramble to a pointy summit with an amazing view. Highly recommended. The approach is fun this time of year! Plenty of slippery logs for the initial crossings over the Sauk River. We crossed 4 braids of the river by walking across the logs Man on Wire style! After this, the trail is in great shape and makes for easy walking. We stepped over a few patches of snow starting at 4500 ft and then put on our boots at 5000 ft. We booted through the soft but supportable snow up to the edge up the glacier and crossed fairly close under the east face. No issues with the glacier, few cracks are open at this time. I would not want to be there when the face is shedding much rock, but there was only a handful widowmakers embedded in the glacier when we passed through. The heather ledges have quite a bit of snow on them still but are passable. The gully next to the south rib is still entirely filled with snow so we went up and around a heather covered ramp with no-fall type exposure. Once there, it was a short 3rd class scramble on clean warm rock up to the summit. Glorious! The glissade down was a hoot! We hustled back down to the Sauk and managed to cross 7 braids of the stream?!? My partner gave up at some point and started marching directly through the river and soaked his pants and shoes. Ha ha. Then it was merely schwacking through devil's club, alder, and stinging nettle until we regained the hiking trail to the parking lot. Apparently we haven't yet honed our Cascades approach/deproach skills yet Gear Notes: boots, crampons, harness, ice axe Approach Notes: North Fork Sauk. River crossings were....

Three Fingers NE face has been done in winter, although the existing route is in the line of fire from a hanging snowfield. Still I'd probably head up there if conditions lined up. That whole valley is amazing. That W face of Sloan though....sweet. @Marcus Russi you had a decent go at it. Maybe next time.

Good job you two! FWIW I think the 5.10 variation left of the squeeze chimney is the best pitch on the entire route. Also, I strung together the last two pitches before the rappel by climbing clean hand cracks on the left side and completely missed the slab traverse somehow. I kept waiting for the "move" but it never appeared!

Approach to NR doesn't have much snow and you can just drop a bit lower if you want to stay on rock the whole time. No need for crampons or axe.

Not for our descent (typical scree down the Cascadian couloir)

Trip: Mount Stuart - Girth Pillar Trip Date: 07/31/2018 Trip Report: Updated with video After having a good time doing the Center Stage/Flight of the Falcons linkup in Darrington last month, I convinced my friend Kevin to climb the Girth Pillar c2c. I've got 3 little kids at home in Seattle and Kevin lives in Oregon, so we like to pack a lot of adventure into our infrequent climbs together. Turns out this adventure was heavy on the walking and scrambling, but the novelty of doing a new route (for us) on a big mountain made the effort worth it. We left the parking lot at 4am and hustled to the base of the North Ridge. Roped up and simulclimbed 6 pitches until the ridge narrows and flattens out. At this point the access ramp (easy walk down) breaks left and deposits you a few meters above the seracs on the upper Ice Cliff Glacier. We walked down, scoped the rest of the approach, and put on our crampons while watching RV-sized ice chunks tumble down. The upper glacier held soft snow with the only difficulty requiring a climb into and out of the massive crevasse that spans the width of the glacier. We hopped over the moat onto the rock (red) and proceeded to climb up through 500 feet of choss, death blocks, and grit. Up to 5.9X and time consuming. Pretty sure we were not on the recommended approach, but rather climbers right of it, as we had to move back left to finally access the bivy ledge. The actual pillar pitches (green) were quite good and the overall position is incredible. Route finding is obvious because it follows a single crack system the whole way. Mostly hand jamming mixed with flake pulling, although nearly all of the pitches lean to the right so they can feel a bit strenuous. Kevin led all 3 pitches onsight. I offered moral encouragement and tried not to short rope him despite our fuzzed out workhorse and GriGri2 combo. We topped out the pillar and simuled to the false summit. After taking time to eat and refill our water bottles with drips from snow patches, we started down the Cascadian Couloir for the long slog back to the car, finally arriving a few minutes before midnight. Just about 20 hours total on the move. Gear Notes: singles to #3, 2x #1, 3x #2 60m rope approach shoes, aluminum crampons, 1 technical tool per person Approach Notes: Standard southern approach via Ingalls Lake. Access upper Ice Cliff Glacier from ramp on lower north ridge.

Gawd it's hot out here. Interested in the Girth Pillar accessed from the NR. Anyone been up on Mt Stuart recently and had eyes on the upper Ice Cliff Glacier? Moats, bergschrunds, etc... TIA

Holy shit guys. That's a screamer.

Beautiful area. Thanks for the update. This may have pushed me over the top towards getting out there to climb.

I'm assuming you did the walk off? A friend and I did the Roan Wall - Salish linkup car to car on Tuesday 6/19 and there were some tracks coming off the peak. That approach certainly keeps the riff raff away. Jeez.

I swung by it this morning (2/22) before a ski tour. Here’s a few snaps.

Thanks for posting. Beautiful day to get out. I'm liking those skinny goulottes in the runnels section!

Generally the likelihood that I will treat/filter water is inversely proportional to the elevation. That is, at the trailhead I'm much more likely to filter the local creek water, but rarely filter from streams in the sub-alpine and up higher. It's not totally rational. But the herds (of people) tend to thin out as you get farther away from the parking lot. And they are the ones I'm concerned about hygienically speaking. Many years ago, I went on a week long backpacking trip in the rainforest in southwest Costa Rica. We filtered all of our water religiously. On the hike out, we stopped at a medium sized river and reluctantly pumped drinking water while looking at the upstream pastures full of grazing shitting cows. It was a long and hot walk out the closest town and you better believe we drank it all. Later that night, I opened up the pump to clean it and noticed a dime-sized hole in the filter. My guess is that it had been there for years. Nobody got sick that trip. Or anytime prior for that matter. Unless you're someplace with real hazard for contaminated water or nasty parasites - I say live a little. Also, nothing makes the world sparkle quite like being totally recovered from GI distress.

Alright glad to see the chain started! Was out ski touring yesterday 12/10/17 around Alpental. There was a party at the base of Chair Peak northeast buttress but didn't actually see them climbing. Thin smears of ice on the lower part of the NF could be fun.

Cold or not I'd probably go to the Canadian Rockies. Otherwise, a few days in Cody and a few days around Bozeman maybe?

"LFC to infinity and beyond" ha ha that sounds awesome. We were up there a few weeks ago to climb the B-C and made much talk (but no action) about Watchtower. That picture of the headwall corner looks so good, I'm definitely heading back for it. Thanks for the topo!

Nice TR and fun running into you up there Nick. Thanks for the miniguide dude!

Thanks Tim!

I skied down Asgard Pass that morning as part of the Enchantment Traverse and can testify that the wind-buffed top layer was quite firm and not great skiing. But it was fast Seems like this will be a good Spring/early Summer for climbing on NF Dragontail.