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Trip: North Cascades - Sloan Peak - Superalpine (WI3-4, 1000') 04/17/2022 Trip Date: 04/17/2022 Trip Report: Fabien and I climbed Superalpine this past Sunday and topped out on Sloan peak. History: This route was attempted on 02/28/2020 by Kyle and Porter and on 03/15/2020 by Porter and Tavish We left Saturday afternoon, got the car to about 2000ft on FS 4096 just before the snow became continuous. We skinned in with overnight gear and setup camp near a small accessible stream feeding Bedal Creek at 3600ft. Sunday we woke up at 4:00 a.m. and we're breaking trail soon after. We found an easy crossing across the creek at 3950ft and stayed climber's right of the moraine to avoid being in an avy path until we were forced back in the forest. We started seeing the route peeking through the trees and reached the large snow field below the West face of Sloan peak. We approached up to the base of a left leading couloir and stashed the skis there (A). Route: We booted up the couloir, encountered a small step (B) and roped up at (C). (C-D) Short WI4 followed by easier climbing. Careful with rope drag on the rock if the belayer is in the sheltered area before the ice. (D-E) Short ice steps separated by snow. Setup an anchor on the right side at (E) (E-F) Left leaning ice staircase in what looks like a dihedral. (F-G) Snow up to a belay stance in a 5ft step. (G-H) Small ice step then snow up to belay in thin ice. (H-I) Mostly snow with some good ice screw placements. Belayed off a snow anchor. (I-J) 30ft of Easy mixed climbing. Placed cams 0.5 to 1 and made a snow anchor on a wind hardened snow fin: (J-K) Snow bowl. This can have a lot of sluffing and is dangerous if the snow is unstable. We were able to follow a path up that had already sluffed away. It was mostly the top 2in of snow that had fallen the previous night. (K-L) Snow bowl up to a notch on the ridge slightly climbers right (L-M) About 200ft of ridge traverse to the summit. Descent: (J-N) We decided to go down the snow ramp on the other side of the mountain that the corksrew follows for a bit. We aimed for a gendarme (Below the N). From there we did one 30M rappel off and traversed under the gendarme to the corkscrew route (O). By then the East side of Sloan Peak was in the shade and we found good snow to front-point sideways and down a ramp for almost 1000ft. (650ft elevation loss) There was a moat at the bottom which we negotiated skier's right. We had brought two poles up for the next section that involved wallowing across the bottom of the SE face to reach the South ridge of Sloan at 6750ft. (P) From there, we headed back to the W ridge near where the route starts (Q). It doesn't look like it can be traversed easily a first but there's a passage around 6100ft. At this point, we could see our skis and felt like it was in the bag. The chute skied amazingly well but once we reached the snow field, the snow had started to crust making it quite hard to turn. We arrived back at camp at dark pretty tired. Since we both had engagements on Monday, we slept until 4:00 a.m then skied most of the way back and made it home by 11:00 a.m. Overall, this is a fun route when the conditions are there. The snow bowl at the top is probably the most dangerous part of the route when the snow is unstable. It may be possible to bypass by staying on the ridge (Probably from J). Strava GPX Enjoy! Gear Notes: Gear: 11 ice screws (Used all) 8 draws 2 pre-rigged quads 0.3 - 2" cams 1 picket (2 would be better) Small Nuts (Unused) Approach Notes: Drive from Darrington while Bedal pass is closed. High clearance vehicle recommended for FS 4096

Trip: Chair Peak, WA - NE Buttress winter Date: 1/14/2017 Trip Report: We used the beta for the Chair Peak NE Buttress route from RobUSA of RocknRopeNW There were at least 4 teams attempting the route yesterday including us. Since the beta is already good, I'll focus on the conditions. Timing: Left the car at 5:40, arrived at the base of the climb at 8:00, summited at 14:20, started the rappel at 15:40 and back at the car at 16:45. P1: The S gulley has decent snow, little ice and some exposed rock steps. There is a slung horn about half way through. Built an anchor in the trees. P2: Snow conditions were really bad, a 1" crust of ice over 2-3 feet of super dry powder. We were postholing and breaking chunks of crust that would fall down P1. This probably discouraged the other teams from attempting P1. Anchor was a slung lone tree. P3: Same bad snow conditions, minimal opportunities for pro. We built the anchor at the bottom left of the ice step with 2 cams and an ice screw. P4: The ice step was in good condition, thick and solid. We climbed it from the right side. Afterwards, the snow slope was solid for kick stepping. I built an anchor when I ran out of rope with a picket and pitons just 10ft short of the next trees... This anchor is consistently hard to find and build for many parties. P5: The snow became crusty again. Belayed from the the other side of the ridge just before the small summit block. We saw faint footsteps near the summit but none on the route. We descended a gully on the SW side of Chair before going back up East to the rappel notch. The west side was receiving a lot of sun turning the snow to slush. Single 60m rappel from the notch brought us to a manageable steep slope. We saw many rap stations during the rappel. The anchor is three rusted pitons that sounded fine and we backed it up with a .75 cam. We walked back to our stashed skis and skied all the way to the car. [video:youtube] Detailed GPS: http://caltopo.com/m/5528 Gear Notes: Cams to .3 to 1, .75 used to back up the rappel Thin pitons Small nuts 2 Pickets 10 alpine draws 5 ice screws (10cm to 21cm) 1 ice tool and 1 hybrid tool (BD venom) Tat, knife, quicklink... 70m rope and 60m tag line for the rappel. Approach Notes: Started at the upper Alpental lot with AT gear. Followed the climbers left side of the Source lake drainage. Booted up the second half of the Chair peak basin to the start of the climb.

We had some beta from the rope teams that summited Saturday. We ended up going climbers left around the final bershrung. We found that flagging the objective hazards (Snow bridges, crevasses) greatly helped us on the descent.