ilias

Hah no worries, just checked this thread again. I did the South brother last year, it was fun, but there was snow most of the way up. I imagine the gully on the way up would be much less enjoyable without snow.

I'd say Fernow is a more serious scrambling outing than Stuart. For one, it's more remote and you're much less likely to run into people there, whereas the Cascadian is both a very popular route in itself and the descent route for everyone climbing the West and North ridges. Second, the Cascadian is almost entirely class 2 terrain, just a lot of elevation and a lot of choss, and falls almost anywhere on it just mean you end up sitting on the ground. The scramble up Fernow, in contrast, has a lot of class 3-4 terrain and is steep enough in places for falls to be dangerous. Other scrambles that I've enjoyed that would be reasonable to solo are Dragontail, Colchuck, and Sahale. Colchuck and Sahale involve crossing small glaciers but these are traveled unroped more often than not.

Yep, definitely no need for axe/crampons in the couloir. There is a small snowfield at the top from which you can get water, but it is off the path where you walk. You should not have to step a single foot on snow the whole time.

No water at all on the route itself. There is still a small snowfield remaining at the top of the Cascadian, where you can refill after you summit. There is a trickle of running water there, or you could melt snow. If you are planning a bivy at the notch where the upper ridge starts, it is possible to descend 400 ft down the class 4 gully to the Stuart glacier and melt some snow. But this would obviously be too time consuming unless you are planning to bivy there anyway.

Trip: Mount Stuart - North Ridge Complete Date: 8/2/2015 Trip Report: Nick, Kirsten, Craig and I climbed the complete North Ridge on Stuart this weekend. An awesome mountain experience, and one of my favorite climbs I've done so far in the Cascades. Highly highly recommend it! This route truly deserves its classic status. We approached and exited from the South, and split the climb up into two days, knocking out the approach and most of the lower ridge on the 1st day and the upper ridge and descent on the 2nd day. Bivying part way up the North Ridge of Stuart like this with with our view overlooking the Ice Cliff Glacier was magical. Here was roughly our approach. For anyone wondering, going around Ingalls Lake on the left is way better than on the right. Also, avoid dropping down into the basin north of Stuart Pass too early, you'll just end up dropping and regaining more elevation on boulder field. We took an alpine nap at Goat Pass, where we saw this cloud of smoke spring up, presumably from a new forest fire: From Goat Pass, you can easily drop down to the base of the North Ridge without setting foot on snow. Definitely no mountaineering boots, axes, or crampons necessary for this trip. Follow the lateral morraine down for a bit from the pass to the terminal morraine, then traverse east on that, dropping to the base of the route: We arrived at the route around 1:30pm, 7 hours after leaving the trailhead (time included two water refill stops and an alpne nap). Water is available right near the base of the route, melting from the Stuart Glacier. Nick started up pitch 1, the 5.7 cracks leading up to the 5.8 awkward squeeze slot. It really is very awkward, especially with a pack on. Pitch 1, the squeeze slot just above where Nick is at: I led the next 3 pitches, avoiding the burly 5.9+ open book by going right. The only beta I'd seen for the right variation was that there is a 5.8 40' 4" crack somewhere out right. Going right at the top of pitch 2, I found a different variation, which had some thinner finger-hand crack and some lieback. It was a fun section of climbing, that I would say probably went at 5.7-5.8 as well. At the top of this, you traverse back left past a bush and end up right at the top of the 5.9+ corner pitch. From there, you quickly finish up pitch 4, the easiest of the lower 4 pitches. From there, it's generally less sustained terrain up the rest of the lower ridge, but it is frequently strewn with short steps probably up to 5.6 or so in difficulty. Shortly into the easier terrain, my partner Nick accidentally slipped on lead and tumbled a bit down some moderate angle rock, fortunately only getting some scrapes and bruises. His confidence a bit shaken, I ended up leading from that point onward. We had great views of the Ice Cliff Glacier as we kept climbing higher on the lower ridge. The glacier was letting loose giant chunks of snow/ice every few minutes, making for some background music for our climb. We continued climbing, reaching a set of 3 nice bivy sites (one of them with room for 2) around 8pm. These sites were about 2 pitches below where the upper ridge route starts: Bivying up high on a rock route like this was awesome. I'd done many climbs with bivies at the base of a route, or after a descent, but this was my first bivy in the middle of a technical route, and it was super fun. Enjoying the bivy: photo credit: Nick Drake The next morning we started up climbing again at around 5:30 am. More cool views of the Ice Cliff Glacier popped up all the time, this one showing the upper part. I'd climbed the Ice Cliff Glacier last year, and was amazed to see virtually no snow at all in the ICG couloir. It also looks really steep, with snow in it the angle couldn't have been much more than 50 degrees, but here the couloir looks closer to 70 degrees. The upper ridge was characterized by clean solid rock, right on or near the ridge crest: Nick having a good time on the cheval section: Lots of beautiful exposed easy ridge climbing: Here's me on a random chunk of 5.7ish climbing on the upper ridge: photo credit: Nick Drake More beautiful ridge: As you climb the ridge crest, you suddenly pop out onto a pinnacle from which you need to downclimb a bit (there's also a slung rappel anchor for those that don't like downclimbing). From this pinnacle, you get a view across at the much-photographed "slab with crack" and the Great Gendarme. Soon as we popped up onto this pinnacle, I saw 6 people piled up at the base of the 1st pitch of the Gendarme, and knew right then that we'd be hiking out in the dark. A few minutes later, looking back down the slab as I belay Nick up: We arrived at the party ledge at the base of the Great Gendarme and hung out with the other climbers. Here we're watching Laurel lead the 5.9 lieback pitch: photo credit: Nick While we waited at the base of the Gendarme, Craig rappelled from the bolts down 80m on the Stuart Glacier side to melt some snow he saw and refill our water. With 3 parties on route ahead of us, we were waiting over 2 hours at the base of the Gendarme, and refilling water here was a good use of time. Craig climbed back up the unexplored 5.10+ rock with a pack full of water, saying he found some fun finger cracks on the way back up. With the other parties headed up, I started up leading the 5.9 lieback right below Dafna: photo credit: Kirsten Gardner This was a super fun pitch, and only my 4th ever 5.9 trad lead. I had amazing hand jams most of the way up when I wanted them (I alternated between liebacking and jamming technique). This pitch protects really well and is a great one to push your grade on. The two wavy segments that comprise the lower part of the pitch are really easy, and the crux is the final section just before the top out. The crux section can be protected really well and would have a really clean fall. I was super stoked to have led this pitch fairly quickly and efficiently, and felt mentally re-energized. Nick and I had forgotten our #3 cam in the car, and so I was really worried about the 2nd pitch, which is an offwidth. There's a fixed #4 in the wider part (I think it's actually a #5, the lobes are purple, but everyone calls it the fixed 4), but below that the crack protects with a #3, which I didn't have. We decided Craig and Kirsten would head up that section first. They left an extra double sling clipped to the fixed #4 for me. With that, I was able to lead the offwidth. Craig cruising up up the initial traversy part to the offwidth section: photo credit: Nick Drake Me on lead on the offwidth: photo credit: Kirsten Gardner Once you finish the offwidth section and get to a little grassy pod, traverse right on a hand and foot rail. Depending on how exactly you traverse right, you may see an old piton. Out right this way is a big sandy ledge with a fixed orange cam, and this can be used as your belay area to bring your follower up the offwidth pitch. From here, follow blocky terrain upward, staying above the big gully to your right until you reach a big boulder/headwall which cannot be easily passed. There is a set of rappel slings here, which you can use to rappel about 10m down into the gully, and then easily scramble up loose rock about 20m to a notch at the top of the gully. This notch is where the final short section of 5.8 climbing is. Here's the 5.8 crack, which had some more bomber hand jams. There's a fixed #3 in the crack. From the top of this, you follow mostly easier terrain to the summit. There is one spot with a spicy step across from one block to another, while being awkwardly confined beneath an overhanging headwall. There are slings on one of the blocks, which you can use for pro for making the step, or to rappel down a bit and avoid the step. After this step, you soon reach a sandy ledge. There's a rock there with a white arrow drawn on it pointing at a little concavity, which you go up to gain the summit ridge. From here, the summit is a short walk away to the west, while the descent starts directly from where you top out, following easy terrain eastward down the east ridge, copiously marked with cairns. Descent: We summitted around 8:30pm and spent minimal time up there. We followed cairns east near the ridge crest until they dropped down a bit, where eventually the path crosses the buttress leading down from the false summit. After this, cairns lead you down towards the Cascadian couloir. There is still a considerable amount of snow here, and we found places with flowing water from the melting snowfield to refill a bit. Descending the upper part of the Cascadian was a lot better than I remembered from last year, when I'd climbed the West Ridge. It was actually fairly enjoyable choss surfing. I have to give a shout out to my new Arc'teryx approach shoes (this was their inaugural trip)... despite 2000 ft of choss surfing, not a single pebble got lodged annoyingly in my shoes, as has happened with every other pair of shoes I've ever hiked on choss with. As the choss petered out and more vegetation became prevalent, we found a fairly well defined trail heading down the Cascadian. At one point, the trail splits, one going right, and one going left into the flow line of the couloir. We took the left, following right along where the creek would be flowing earlier in the season. This option is very easy to follow, as you just stick to the bottom of the couloir. There are some steeper sections, but they are all easily passed by hugging the left wall of the couloir. Another party followed the trail to the right, and we saw them having to backtrack and hike a fair ways back up, then drop down into the couloir and take our route down (they reached Seattle at 9am Monday morning). Descending the couloir does not inspire confidence as you constantly see what looks like cliff drop offs ahead of you, but they are all not actually very steep, and easily passed on the left side. The couloir becomes more vegetated as you descend, and near a flat spot with a small cairn at about 5900-6200 ft (sorry, didn't check my altimeter right there), we cut off right onto beautiful trail through forest and meadows that led us down to the Ingalls Creek Trail. Here, we made a silly mistake as Nick stopped to filter water at the first available little stream while the rest of us headed over to the Longs Pass trail cutoff and waited at the Ingalls Creek log crossing. Nick had trouble finding us as it turned out he had used a different crossing when hiking in this area before, and what could have been a 5 minute water filter break if we had all stopped turned into a 1 hour session of searching for each other in woods at midnight. A reminder to everyone to always stick together, even if you're on trail. After a long climb in the dark, things can go wrong and it's just not worth it to split up. Fortunately, we were all re-united and stuck close together as we started up the trail towards Longs Pass. As we headed up the trail to Longs Pass, we glanced back over at Mt Stuart and noticed a climber flashing their headlamp at us. This was at around 12:15 am Monday morning. Their flashing looked like a distress signal, and Craig flashed a morse code SOS at them with his headlamp, to which it looked like they responded with their own SOS. They continued periodically flashing at us as we headed up to Longs Pass. This party's location looked like it was at about 7000 ft elevation, near the Cascadian Couloir, perhaps a bit skier's left of the couloir itself. We briefly discussed the possibility of heading back up to aid this party, but quickly decided that was a bad idea, as we were tired enough that this was only likely to place more people in danger. Instead, we reported the information to SAR after reaching cell reception around 3am. I haven't heard anything more about this party, hopefully they are alright! Approach Notes: Whole trip can be done without setting foot on snow. No need for boots/crampons/axes at all.

Considering hitting up Dorado Needle this coming weekend. Anyone been on, or seen, the McAllister glacier lately? What's it look like getting from the Inspiration Glacier through the Tepeh towers col and down to the Dorado-Tepeh col? And toward the base of the NW ridge of Dorado Needle? Any info or photos would be appreciated!

Awesome trip report and video! Maybe I'll have to look into getting myself a flying camerabot. By the way, think we ran into you up there I think our friends Nick and Kirsten were the party you rapped down with the day you got rained off Kain route, and Allie and I were the ones that came and downclimbed the col, after getting rained off Surfs Up.

We brought both axes and crampons, but didn't need either. There is a bit of snow ( < 100 ft) to cross to get to the Uto - Sir Donald Col, but it's soft if you hit it in the afternoon. Didn't bother taking out the axe or crampons when we crossed in mountaineering boots in the afternoon. Even in the early morning when the snow was harder (returning to camp after our impromptu bivy) we crossed the snow finger in our climbing shoes, with little sharp rocks in our hands. I'd say probably no need to bring up crampons or ice axe for the rest of the season for Sir Donald.

Looks awesome!

Nice work Jaime. Great beta as well, will be useful for future parties climbing this route. ICC sure has been giving this route some traffic this year!

Yeah I don't get it. Downclimbing/rappelling the upper section of the ridge seemed much more reasonable. I can understand them wanting to reduce/eliminate two-way traffic on the ridge which could be an issue on days with many parties on route. But personally, after trying the summit bypass I'd definitely rather deal with trying to get by a couple parties on the ridge. In regards to the bolted rappels down the slab (#5-10), I'd say they have probably cleaned up somewhat relative to the report you linked. Loose rock seemed fairly minimal on these 6 rappels, with us only dislodging one small rock with a rope pull once. But they could definitely clarify the scramble path from the bottom of rap #10 to the rap #11 anchor, cause there are trails and cairns there leading every which way, most of them towards mossy/wet/exposed class 4. Also, I found this page online that notes that the last 2 rappels were repositioned at some point: http://acmgmountainconditionsreport.blogspot.com/2013/07/mcr-mt-sir-donald-info-july-12th-2013.html I think many of the photos/overlays of the rappel descent still show raps #11 and #12 at the original locations. This explains why we were looking for the last 2 rap anchors too far to skier's left in the dark and not finding them. Anyway, there are tons and tons of fixed slings on the lower ridge to be used as rap anchors instead if one wanted to simply rappel the lower ridge instead of the bolted rap route. However, most of these slings don't have rap rings.

Yep it definitely goes very nicely with a single 60m, was clearly designed for it. Perhaps it used to be designed for doubles back when the guidebook was written and then intermediate anchors were added later or something? We went by Steph Abegg's beta, which also mentions it took only a single 60m rope, as of 2007: http://www.stephabegg.com/home/tripreports/britishcolumbia/bugaboos2007

Trip: Bugaboos: Crescent Towers South (Donkey Ears) - Ears Between w/ Direct Start (5.8, 8p) Date: 7/9/2015 Trip Report: Allie and I did a BC climbing trip from Jul 2-12. I'm breaking it up into a few reports for the individual climbs. Here was our overall trip timeline. Bolded days are those described in this report. Jul 1: Leave Seattle after work, drive to Glacier National Park in Canada Jul 2: Pick up our permits to camp at Mt Sir Donald at the Rogers Pass visitor center, hike in to the Upper Bivy site, at the col between Mt Sir Donald and Uto Peak. Climb Uto Peak via SW ridge. Jul 3: Climb Mt Sir Donald, descend most of the way Jul 4: Return to camp and hike out, drive to Golden and stay in Motel Jul 5: Get our packs packed for the Bugaboos, have breakfast, drive to the Bugaboos trailhead and hike in to Applebee Dome campground Jul 6: Climb Bugaboo Spire via NE Ridge Jul 7: Scramble Eastpost Spire via NE Ridge Jul 8: Climb Snowpatch Spire via Snowpatch Route Jul 9: Climb Crescent Towers South (Donkey Ears) via Ears Between Jul 10: Attempt Snowpatch Spire via Surfs Up, but get weathered off Jul 11: Hike out, drive to Halcyon Hot Springs for a day of relaxation Jul 12: Drive back to Seattle Ears Between w/ Direct Start (5.8, 8p) We opted for a slightly shorter climb the day after Snowpatch, so we headed up the Ears Between route on the Crescent Towers. It leads to the south summit, called the Donkey Ears. The usual start is to head up the "approach ledge" for the Crescent Towers, from where the climb is a 6 pitch 5.7. We opted to do the 2 extra pitches of the direct start, both of which are 5.8, making it an 8 pitch 5.8 climb. This turned out to be a good decision, as the 2 extra pitches were some of the most fun. The other fun pitch was the last pitch (the chimney between the two ears). The 5 pitches in between were relatively nondescript and uninspiring. We were tired from all the hard climbing we'd done so far on this trip and did not enjoy this route as much as we might have if we were fresh. Nonetheless, the first 2 pitches were really fun and the final pitch chimney is really cool. Definitely a good moderate route to do in the Bugaboos when looking for a bit shorter day. Here is Allie leading pitch 1 of the direct start: Looking over at Snowpatch Spire from the top of P1: Summit of the South Donkey Ear: The descent beta in the guidebook is a bit brief so I'll give some more details here for the descent. 1) By the summit of the South Donkey Ear, find a sling rappel anchor. Rappel directly down (East side) from this anchor 25-30m. 2) At the bottom of this 1st rappel, find a 2 bolt chain anchor. Rappel from this down a dirty gully trending rappeller's left. Rappelling a full 30m to the end of your rope will put you on a sandy ledge at the bottom of the gully. Look rappeller's left and a bit up and you'll see a notch in the ridge with a rock sticking up: 3) Scramble up to this rock through the notch, and you'll find another 2 bolt chain rappel anchor. Rappel down your entire rope length to easy ground. 4) Follow the ridge crest down, and you'll see a well beaten path with many cairns along the way. Down scramble this ridge crest as it broadens, following cairns, for about 15-20 minutes. The broad ridge crest suddenly falls off in a cliff, but off to skier's left you'll find a sling rappel anchors with rap rings. 5) Rappel down this, another full 30m rappel, and you'll be just above the Crescent-Eastpost Col, an easy class 2 scramble away from camp: That night I finally got myself to take a few star photos. The sky was a bit hazy so not super starry: The next day, we tried to go climb Surfs Up, but just as we were getting on pitch 1, weather came in, with rain coming down and thunder sounding in the distance. We rappelled off some slings a bit off to the side from the 1st pitch, and returned to camp. The weather cleared up later in the day. Some shots near the Bugaboo-Snowpatch Col: After resting the rest of the day in camp, we hiked out the next morning and headed to Halcyon Hot Springs, where we relaxed and ate the full day before driving back to Seattle:

Trip: Bugaboos: Snowpatch Spire (and Eastpost rest day) - Snowpatch Route (5.8, 19p) Date: 7/8/2015 Trip Report: Allie and I did a BC climbing trip from Jul 2-12. I'm breaking it up into a few reports for the individual climbs. Here was our overall trip timeline. Bolded days are those described in this report. Jul 1: Leave Seattle after work, drive to Glacier National Park in Canada Jul 2: Pick up our permits to camp at Mt Sir Donald at the Rogers Pass visitor center, hike in to the Upper Bivy site, at the col between Mt Sir Donald and Uto Peak. Climb Uto Peak via SW ridge. Jul 3: Climb Mt Sir Donald, descend most of the way Jul 4: Return to camp and hike out, drive to Golden and stay in Motel Jul 5: Get our packs packed for the Bugaboos, have breakfast, drive to the Bugaboos trailhead and hike in to Applebee Dome campground Jul 6: Climb Bugaboo Spire via NE Ridge Jul 7: Scramble Eastpost Spire via NE Ridge Jul 8: Climb Snowpatch Spire via Snowpatch Route Jul 9: Climb Crescent Towers South (Donkey Ears) via Ears Between Jul 10: Attempt Snowpatch Spire via Surfs Up, but get weathered off Jul 11: Hike out, drive to Halcyon Hot Springs for a day of relaxation Jul 12: Drive back to Seattle Eastpost Spire - NE Ridge After climbing Bugaboo Spire on July 6th, we slept in and had an easy rest day in camp, basking in the Sun. By mid-afternoon, we started feeling a bit lazy, and went for a scramble up the NE Ridge of Eastpost Spire. Eastpost is the closest of the spires to camp, and it took us about 2.5 hours camp to camp. The NE Ridge is a 4th class scramble route on the back side of the mountain as viewed from camp. It makes for a great low effort way to stretch your legs on a rest day in the Bugaboos while getting some great views. We hiked up to the Crescent-Eastpost Col and headed up the snow slope on the back of it to get to the NE Ridge, at the notch in the middle of the photo: We climbed easy terrain on the NE Ridge: and were rewarded with nice summit views: Snowpatch Route (5.8, 19p) After our rest day, we headed up Snowpatch Route. After how long Bugaboo Spire NE Ridge had taken us, we were worried about how long of a day this would be, so we woke up really early and left camp by 3:30 am. The approach takes you back down to the Kain hut, around Son of Snowpatch up the Bugaboo Glacier, and to hit the notch between Snowpatch Spire and Son of Snowpatch up a gully on the back side. Most of this approach is quite nice and straightforward, except for a short section of horrifically loose scree leading up to the gully. Pitches 1-3 were an easy (but exposed) low 5th scramble from the notch up near the ridge crest to get to the base of a deep dihedral. Here's a shot of Allie on pitch 3: We roped up at the base of the pitch 4 dihedral. Climb the dihedral until topping out near the base of an even bigger dihedral, where you'll find a 2 piton anchor: For pitch 5, you don't head up the corner itself but up some cracks on the right wall. After surmounting this wall, you drop down right a bit and do some "easy" moves to get to a rising hand traverse that heads right. For us, the easy moves were covered in a waterfall coming off the melting snowpatch above, and this made them pretty spicy. The hand traverse itself (pitch 6) was dry and very fun. After the hand traverse, Allie led straight up the slabs/broken ground (pitch 7) above to the base of the snowpatch: From here, we got on simul and did pitches 8-13 in one continuous simul pitch that I led. It took only about 40 minutes for these 6 pitches, saving us a ton of time. Some photos from this section: Looking back at Allie by the snowpatch: Looking up at the route, you keep going along the left side of the snowpatch. There's some sections that go pretty far between opportunities for protection, but the angle is low enough that it doesn't matter: Looking down again: The broken ground of pitches 12-13, leading to the "inverted pear" (black shape right in middle of photo): The more challenging (5.8ish) climbing starts from here. Allie led the corner (pitch 14-15): The next pitch (16) lets you pick between an off-width or a face-climb option (either goes at 5.8) for about 20 ft before climbing easier ground. Allie picked the off-width and crushed it, while I stood at the belay and worried about how she was 20 ft off the deck with no pro: The next pitch (17) we both thought was the crux. It is quite convoluted. First, you climb up a few steps, then you do a cruxy hand traverse left, with no real feet (just smearing on near vertical slab). I led this pitch and found the hand traverse very difficult, resorting to sewing it up and pulling on gear. Looking back at my gear chain: After the hand traverse, you continue further left on a little ramp, and then reach a section of sporty face climbing. This section is protected by 3 old pitons, and there's probably one spot there where you could stick in a small cam that would hold also. After this face climbing, you crawl back right along a ramp to behind a horn. This horn is the supposed belay spot but I found it very awkward, so I continued up from the horn for about 10 ft to another horn with a bit more of a ledge by it and belayed there. Looking down at Allie belaying me after doing the hand traverse: Allie following the pitch after having finished the hand traverse. You can see the pitch kind of winds back and forth: From here, two more easy pitches took us to the summit: Allie setting up the first rappel down the Kraus-McCarthy route: This rappel route is awesome, all chain anchors, optimal length for single 60m rope (each rappel is 25m-30m). The book beta shows a picture where the last rappel reaches all the way down to the snow. This year (low snow and such) that wasn't even close to true, the last rappel leaves you about 100' above the snow (or maybe the book meant that it reaches the snow if you use double ropes for the last rappel or something). But it's an easy scramble from the bottom of the last rappel skiers left down to the snow, so no problem. Looking down the rappel route: Looking across at Pigeon Spire: The climb took us 13 hours camp-to-camp. Out of all the climbs we did on this trip, Snowpatch Route was our favorite climb for both me and Allie. Definitely recommend it very highly. The simul pitches beside the snowpatch were super fun, and the 3 5.8 pitches high on the route were interesting, unique, and awesome. Together with the uncomplicated descent, it makes for a very enjoyable, appropriately challenging outing. Despite the higher number of pitches in the book description, this climb takes much less time than Bugaboo Spire NE Ridge.

Trip: Bugaboo Spire - NE Ridge (5.8, 10p + summit traverse + 1p) Date: 7/6/2015 Trip Report: Allie and I did a BC climbing trip from Jul 2-12. I'm breaking it up into a few reports for the individual climbs. Here was our overall trip timeline. Bolded days are those described in this report. Jul 1: Leave Seattle after work, drive to Glacier National Park in Canada Jul 2: Pick up our permits to camp at Mt Sir Donald at the Rogers Pass visitor center, hike in to the Upper Bivy site, at the col between Mt Sir Donald and Uto Peak. Climb Uto Peak via SW ridge. Jul 3: Climb Mt Sir Donald, descend most of the way Jul 4: Return to camp and hike out, drive to Golden and stay in Motel Jul 5: Get our packs packed for the Bugaboos, have breakfast, drive to the Bugaboos trailhead and hike in to Applebee Dome campground Jul 6: Climb Bugaboo Spire via NE Ridge Jul 7: Scramble Eastpost Spire via NE Ridge Jul 8: Climb Snowpatch Spire via Snowpatch Route Jul 9: Climb Crescent Towers South (Donkey Ears) via Ears Between Jul 10: Attempt Snowpatch Spire via Surfs Up, but get weathered off Jul 11: Hike out, drive to Halcyon Hot Springs for a day of relaxation Jul 12: Drive back to Seattle Bugaboo Spire NE Ridge (5.8) After our adventure on Mt Sir Donald and a rest day in Golden, we hiked in to Applebee Dome campground in the Bugaboos on July 5th. At the trailhead, you have to protect your car against porcupines: The hike in is absolutely beautiful, offering views of the Bugaboo glacier which descends down to very low elevations in a broken mass, and the Hounds Tooth: We had ridiculously heavy unwieldy packs as we planned to stay at the Applebee Dome campground for 6 nights, and brought lots of food as well as some luxuries like camp chairs, pillows, camp shoes, a change of clothes, a comfy double wall tent instead of my firstlight, etc. Here is Allie coming up the ladder on the approach trail: It took us just over 3 hours to finally reach the Kain Hut with our heavy packs, where we paid for the stay at Applebee Dome: It's quite the hut, with beautiful views, running water, electricity, and outhouses right outside. You can also even pay here (for your stay at Applebee Dome, Boulder camp, or at the hut) with credit card so you don't have to bring in cash (you just need your credit card number / expiry / etc and right it down on a form). From there, we continued on up to camp and had a lazy afternoon/evening, getting our stuff ready for the climb of Bugaboo Spire NE Ridge the next day: This climb is one of the fifty classics, and certainly lives up to its reputation. The initial 10 pitches take you up the NE Ridge (right skyline) itself, where you can tag the lower north summit if you want. From there, you traverse a ridge from the north summit to below the south summit, on the Kain route. This traverse involves 3 rappels and some exposed scrambling / low 5th. Finally, to tag the south summit, you have to do one pitch of 5.4 climbing. Then, you descend the Kain route (left skyline) back to the Bugaboo-Snowpatch col, which involves a bunch of rappels and downclimbing as well. The first part of the climb is gaining the Bugaboo-Crescent Col (lower right of photo). Gaining the col is a few hundred feet worth of low 5th class climbing in definite no-fall terrain. Despite this, it is generally done unroped, and we did it unroped as well. The section could be pitched out if desired, and there are rap slings in several places going up to the col. From there, you scramble up 3rd/4th class terrain to the "rope up terrace", clearly visible as a light diagonal line across the lower part of Bugaboo Spire. The first pitch off this terrace is the only one officially rated at 5.8, but we did not find this to be the most difficult pitch. Here is Allie following me up it: The pitch I found most challenging was the "5.6" corner a few pitches later, here is Allie following me up this one: The corner protects well but is quite sustained, and no-hands rests are very infrequent. From there on, you climb a chimney system for 5 or so pitches. The chimney is described as low/easy 5th in a lot of beta, and while this is true for the upper part of the chimney, the first 1-2 pitches of the chimney have some interesting moves that I think would best be described as being in the 5.6-5.8 range themselves. The chimney does also still contain some loose rock despite the popularity of this route. In fact, just the day before, a climber was injured in the chimney and had to get rescued, when his partner accidentally dropped a rock on him. After completing the chimney, there is a short section of further ~5.6-5.7 climbing before the ridge eases off. Near the top of the NE Ridge: Looking over at Snowpatch Spire: I'll describe the summit traverse here in some detail since I found beta on the details of this to be a bit limited. We decided to skip the north summit since the south summit is the taller one anyway. After finishing the last pitch of the NE ridge, there's an obvious notch on the left side of the north summit block that you come to. There's a rappel here (Rap #1). Awkwardly squeeze through the notch and rappel down just a few meters to a ledge, where to rappeler's left you will see a chockstone wedged between the wall and a large boulder/flake. Scramble over this chockstone and down the other side. Looking back at the chockstone and boulder/flake after having climbed over it: From here, follow a short sandy ledge to gain the ridge between the north and south summits: Downclimb along the ridge-crest for a bit until the ridge angle on the right becomes much less steep, then follow very easy cracks right of the ridge crest to the obvious big V notch left of the south summit block (center of above photo). There's another rappel (Rap #2) right at this notch. Again, rappel only a fairly short distance down to a ledge. Looking back at Allie downclimbing the ridge crest: From the ledge, you'll see another rap anchor off to rappeler's left, which you'll need to get to. We did this section as a pitch, as there's a few steps of 5th class downclimbing and some exposure. From this last rap station you'll see the famous Gendarme of the Kain route. Use this last rappel (Rap #3) to get down onto the Kain route, from which you take the last pitch of the Kain route to gain the south summit. We enjoyed the summit for a while and the beautiful views from there. Looking across at the Howser Towers: After enjoying the summit, we descended the Kain route (descent beta for this route is readily available), and down-climbed the Bugaboo-Snowpatch Col, returning back to our camp at Applebee Dome still in the light, around 9:30pm. The climb took us 17 hours camp-to-camp. On July 6th, the Bugaboo-Snowpatch Col was still in good shape, but by the time we left on the 11th, it had already deteriorated noticeably though was still pretty good. On the 6th, we were kicking easy steps in snow. On the 11th, many of the steps at the top were hitting ice as the snow on top had disappeared, and the last few steps to the top of the col were on loose rock/dirt. Here's a photo of the Col on the 11th: Over the week we were there, several parties reported close calls with falling rock at the col. With the low snow year, the col will definitely be out this year earlier than it is most years. It may only have a week or two left, in fact, before the growing objective hazard dictates that it's wiser to take alternative routes.

Trip: Mt Sir Donald and Uto Peak - Northwest Ridge (Sir Donald) and SW Ridge (Uto) Date: 7/3/2015 Trip Report: Allie and I did a BC climbing trip from Jul 2-12. I'm breaking it up into a few reports for the individual climbs. Here was our overall trip timeline. Bolded days are those described in this report. Jul 1: Leave Seattle after work, drive to Glacier National Park in Canada Jul 2: Pick up our permits to camp at Mt Sir Donald at the Rogers Pass visitor center, hike in to the Upper Bivy site, at the col between Mt Sir Donald and Uto Peak. Climb Uto Peak via SW ridge. Jul 3: Climb Mt Sir Donald, descend most of the way Jul 4: Return to camp and hike out, drive to Golden and stay in Motel Jul 5: Get our packs packed for the Bugaboos, have breakfast, drive to the Bugaboos trailhead and hike in to Applebee Dome campground Jul 6: Climb Bugaboo Spire via NE Ridge Jul 7: Scramble Eastpost Spire via NE Ridge Jul 8: Climb Snowpatch Spire via Snowpatch Route Jul 9: Climb Crescent Towers South (Donkey Ears) via Ears Between Jul 10: Attempt Snowpatch Spire via Surfs Up, but get weathered off Jul 11: Hike out, drive to Halcyon Hot Springs for a day of relaxation Jul 12: Drive back to Seattle Uto Peak SW Ridge (5.1) We picked up our backcountry camping permits at 8am on Thursday and hiked in. The approach to Mt Sir Donald is beautiful, giving views of a gigantic untamed waterfall that comes off the Illecillewaet Glacier. You get views of Mt Sir Donald almost the whole way in. The route is the lefthand skyline: The upper stream crossing was flowing pretty good but not an issue to step across: The little lake just below the Uto-Sir Donald Col was still partially frozen: We arrived at the Col and dropped our camping gear. We brought bivies since we didn't know if there were bivy sites big enough for a tent up there. As it turns out, two of the sites at the col could take a 2 man tent, and the others are smaller. We decided that since we arrived fairly early at the Col, we would do a bonus objective, the SW Ridge of Uto Peak. It's a nice warm up that goes at 5.1 is about half the length of the NW Ridge of Sir Donald. Uto turned out to be a very enjoyable climb. The rock was very unique, the mountain almost seemed like a step pyramid made of individual cubical blocks. You don't hear much about Uto Peak because the route is not particularly challenging, but it's a worthy climb for the scenery and unique blocky rock, and I'd highly recommend also tagging Uto to anyone who heads up to climb Sir Donald. We did the whole climb on simul, with me leading most of the way: From the summit, you get a great view of the NW Ridge of Sir Donald, our objective for the next day: We descended back to the Col by reversing the route unroped, doing a few rappels along the way off fixed slings for the steeper bits. Sir Donald NW Ridge (5.4) On Friday, we woke up at 5am and headed up Mt Sir Donald. We knew it was going to be a very long day, so I didn't take too many photos. For those unfamiliar with the NW Ridge of Sir Donald, it is a ridge climb of similar character to the W Ridge of Forbidden, but continuing endlessly on for about 2500' of elevation gain along the ridge to reach the nearly 11,000' summit (as compared to the ~500' of gain along the ridge on Forbidden). The ascent was very enjoyable, and took us about 6 hours from the col to the summit. A few shots of our climb along the ridge, mostly me looking back down the ridge at Allie: A view of the giant Illecillewaet Glacier from the summit. It's hard to have a sense of scale here, but this single glacier is about 5 miles across. Summit shot: Descent At the visitor center, they hand you out a pamphlet with the descent options from Mt Sir Donald. The descent can be roughly broken up into an upper, middle, and lower section, as shown in this beta overlay: For the upper section, you can either retrace your way back down the NW Ridge, or take the "summit bypass", a series of kitty-littered slabs above cliffs on the SW face. The summit bypass was supposed to be faster and not particularly difficult, so we opted for this option. For the middle section, you downclimb the middle ridge. For the bottom section, you can take their recommended rappel route, or reverse the lower ridge back to the col. As it turned out (and we were later told by the ranger), there are random cairns on the summit bypass that take you in the wrong direction to more difficult terrain. Furthermore, the terrain was wet and seeping from the snow having recently finished melting on this area. This, combined with probable routefinding errors on our part in scrambling down the summit bypass quickly got us fairly sketched out on this descent, which after 1.5 hours still showed no end in sight to getting us back to the middle section of the NW ridge. We decided that at this point our safest option was to regain the ridge and do the descent directly down the upper ridge, since at least that way we'd know we are on route. We headed straight up a snow gully somewhere on the S face, ending up at the shoulder of a minor buttress that heads down the S face. From there, we had to traverse a terrifying loose slope to get back to the NW Ridge, which I did on lead, and it was by far the most terrifying part of the whole trip. This was all a very bad idea in retrospect... we should have simply retraced our steps back to the summit the way we had come, though it would have taken longer it would have been much safer. We finally got back to the upper NW Ridge after having burned nearly 3 hours and a ton of mental energy. I was quite shaken up after leading that loose slope traverse, and where we normally may have downclimbed most of the upper and middle NW ridge unroped, I now needed the mental crutch of rappelling almost everything. This burned more time. We did the chain anchor rappels down the ridge to rappel #5, which is the one that takes you down the lower slabs on the S Face if you follow the bolted anchors. Our original plan was to downclimb the lower ridge back to our bivy at the Col, but with how exhausted we were, we decided that just taking the bolted rappel route down would be best and get us off technical terrain the quickest. The first couple rappels down the slab went quickly, but then I stupidly dropped my belay device. From there on, I had to munter rappel, which twisted the rope and ate more time for me to constantly work out all the kinks and twists from the rope. We finished what is labeled as rappel #10 in the photo around 9pm and proceeded down the scrambling section, where the routefinding is non-obvious. As it got darker, we were unable to find the right path to the last 2 lower bolted rappels and instead got sucked into a dihedral system with some old sling rap anchors, which we used. It finally got completely dark with us still somewhere between the bottom of rap #10 and the top of rap #11. With us mentally exhausted and estimating our chances of finding the last rap anchors in the dark as about zero, we decided to hunker down for the night at about 11pm. At 4am the next day (July 4th), we could see again, and it turned out the next rap anchors were only about a 10 minute scramble from where we had spent the night. We did the last 2 rappels, traversed some easy snowfields back to our camp at the col, took a 2 hour nap, and hiked out. Looking back at this, I think the main mistake we made was trying the summit bypass descent with insufficient beta, which led us to burn a lot of time and mental energy, slowing us for the rest of the descent and making us run out of time. I can't be sure since we didn't find the right route through it, but the summit bypass option seems sketchy as heck in all cases, and I would not recommend it. Descending back down the upper ridge from the summit, where there are plentiful old sling rap anchors to use if needed, seems like a simpler option that is guaranteed to keep you on route. After epicing on Sir Donald, we had some discussion about not continuing onto the next leg of our trip (into the Bugaboos), or scaling back our objectives. But after a rest day in Golden and much discussion about what we learned, we decided to continue with the trip as planned. Fortunately, the rest of the trip went much more smoothly.

Nice work Jaime! Rough weekend to be out with all the bugs for sure...

Trip: Paisano Pinnacle - Mosquito Apocalypse Date: 6/28/2015 Trip Report: On Saturday Allie and I climbed The Girl Next Door (5.9-, 4p) on Liberty Bell. Plan was to do that as warm up, then hike in to the bench camp near Burgundy Col and do the Paisano Pinnacle WR and Burgundy Spire NF linkup on Sunday. The Girl Next Door was a really fun climb and we both enjoyed it. Pitch 1 is uninspiring, but pitches 2 and 3 are awesome. Then you share the pitch 4 slab finish with the Beckey route. The hike in to bench camp went well, but camp was infested with bugs. We set up camp and quickly dove into our tents, spending the next 5 minutes killing the giant swarm of bugs that got into the tent in the 20 seconds the door was open. We woke up Sunday morning at 4:30 am to give ourselves plenty of time and headed up to the base of the route. We had heard the route start was hard to find so we'd read up on all the beta and were able to make it there without any confusion. But, it was the mosquito apocalypse. We kept thinking that if we got higher, above treeline, the mosquitoes wouldn't be there. But they only got worse and worse. The very air was thick with them. They were in my eyes, in my nose, in my mouth. At any given moment, there was at least 50 of them biting me. Looking over at Allie, she constantly had a cloud of at least 100 around her. Despite the blistering heat, we put on our hardshells to at least partially protect us from the bugs. Between my pants and my shell and bugspray on my face (we didn't have enough to totally cover our whole bodies in it), most of my body was covered... except my hands and ankles. Allie was not as lucky, the bugs could bite right through her pants. Bleeding and itching from thousands of bug bites, we ran away from the base of the Paisano route and headed up to Burgundy col, thinking the breeze there might clear them away. They were slightly better, but we were still getting hundreds of bites per minute. In our excessive level of stoke, we decided that since we were right there, we'd at least try climbing up one pitch of the Burgundy Spire North Face route to see if the mosquitoes were any better once we were on the bare rock face. Nope! Even worse up there. Belaying was absolute torture. We ended up doing the first two pitches of that route to get to Burgundy Ledge, then quickly tagging Paisano Pinnacle via the class 3 scramble from Burgundy Ledge. Then we ran away, bleeding from thousands of bites and our morale totally broken. I've hiked and climbed in the cascades for years, and I've seen plenty of bugs. This was the absolute worst bug infestation I've ever seen. Nothing else I've encountered has come close. Today, my hands and ankles are swollen and misshapen from tens of thousands of mosquito bites. Everything itches and I can hardly do anything. Lessons learned: You may not need DEET on most cascade outings, but for that one time you need it, you REALLY need it. One tiny bottle for 2 people is not enough. Never ever leaving home without a full size spray bottle of 100% DEET again. Gear Notes: DEET. More DEET. Even More DEET. Bug Nets. Hard shells. Approach Notes: Nice hike to camp. Loose scree to base of route. Follow the instructions in Supertopo precisely (pay exact attention to the elevations he tells you to take right turns at) and it gets you right to the base, no problem. Have a good photo of the start of the route so it's obvious where the actual start is.

Oh, that's a great resource! Thanks!

Great, thanks! Hopefully we get lucky with weather.

Anyone have a more recent update on the conditions? Or know any websites that have conditions for mountains in that part of BC typically posted? Considering hitting up Sir Donald in a week or so.

Nice work! Really fun route I enjoyed it a lot last year.

Well Nick just cause I don't do something myself doesn't mean I can't recommend it to others! Besides, I've gone on like 5 runs this year, it's a new personal record.

Yep that corner looked like it goes as well, for sure. That was one of the cool things about this route, getting to choose your own adventure on most of the climb.

Nice work yourself on Prusik Alisse!