ilias

Thanks Stephen

Trip: Dragontail Peak - Serpentine Arete Date: 6/20/2015 Trip Report: Allie and I climbed Serpentine Arete car to car Saturday June 20th 2015. Definitely a long day! We started out from the Stuart Lake Trailhead at 2:30am to give ourselves plenty of time and hopefully be the first party up since we had heard there was considerable danger of loose rock / rockfall on this route. As it turned out, we thought the route's reputation for loose rock was a little bit exaggerated. I found it to be fairly average looseness for climbing in the Cascades, with only the top 1/4 of the route particularly loose. Even there, you could avoid dislodging any rocks by being careful and watching where your rope was going behind you. It's definitely a route to watch for loose rock on but not one to avoid because of it's looseness, in my opinion. I'd seen that there was only a tiny bit of snow to cross to get onto the route in the morning by looking at photos from hikers the previous weekend. So we brought only light ice axes and no crampons to save weight in the carryover. This turned out to be the right decision. The snow was bullet hard in the morning, but you only had to go like 30 feet up the snow (see the tiny red line in the photo): We arrived at the base of the route around 6am, and found a nice flat ledge soon as we got off the snow that was ideal for faffing and roping up: I'm sure there's many ways to do the first part of the route but this is how we started: Once around the bend in the above photo, the terrain forms an obvious scoop that leads you up and right towards the pillar that's described in all the beta. The terrain leads you up to the left edge of the ledge, and then you follow the ledge around to the right of the pillar where the crux crack pitch is. Allie led the crux, going up the center crack rather than the broken twin cracks on the right, and we both found it to be rather stout for a 5.8. I've definitely climbed 5.9s that were easier. Allie after leading the crux: I led the next pitch, which I thought was more of a typical 5.8. It was super fun climbing including slabs, crack climbing, chicken heads, and liebacks. You finish this 2nd 5.8 pitch at an old piton, which I used as part of my anchor here (the angle of the three pieces wasn't nearly as obtuse as it looks in this photo): Another party of 2 (Mark and Shannon?) caught up to us shortly after the crux pitches. They seemed to be moving considerably faster so we let them pass us. From here, the beta we'd read had led us to believe that the rest of the climb was "4th class - 5.0, with occasional low-mid 5th steps". We found that not to be really true, with at least 4 or 5 short cruxes throughout the rest of the climb that were probably also in the 5.7-5.8 range. We did basically simul the whole way up from here, but I stopped to belay Allie in after the little cruxes as I didn't think they were really simul-appropriate terrain. A notable one shortly after the 2 official 5.8 pitches was a ~15 ft section of layback on top of a slab that I sewed up like crazy. Another one was a ~10 ft vertical corner crack, one of the guys in the party that passed us following it here, as I wait to lead up it: All in all, we found there to be significantly more good quality climbing at a fun challenge level on this route than we had expected based on the beta. We summitted at 3:30pm: The enchantment basin looks awfully barren this time of year: Stuart standing proud as always: We hung out with the other climbers and hikers at the Dragontail summit until about 5pm, then made our way down. The Dragontail snowfield was soft in the afternoon, crampons definitely not needed. Dragontail snowfield on the descent: We arrived back at the cars at 10:30pm, for a total of 20 hours car to car. Approach notes: Very short section of hard snow in the morning. You'll want an axe or crampons for this section, but don't need both if you are fairly comfortable on hard snow. Gear notes: We brought a very large rack (singles #0.2-0.4, doubles #0.5-2, one #3, a set of nuts, and 13 slings). We were happy to have this much gear because 5.8 in the alpine is about as hard as we lead, and it allowed us to sew up the hard parts. Climbers that comfortably lead harder grades could do this with a light alpine rack no problem.

Edelrid Mega Jul http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/edelrid-mega-jul-review I use it and like it. I'd say the only notable downside is it takes slightly more effort to pull the rope through the device when belaying someone up in guide mode, as compared to a standard BD ATC Guide.

Out of curiosity, how plausible would the North Ridge be as a descent route?

Thanks! Saw you were up there too just a few days before. Were the fixed pickets already there? Curious how long those were around.

Thanks Abby! I'm new to posting on CC so it's good to see someone I ran into in the mountains on here!

Nice shots! That's pretty awesome that you could see us from all the way over on Sahale.

Weight makes a big difference in pace. Make sure to lighten your load as much as possible. But you probably already know that. Aerobic training is aerobic training. Probably the most time-efficient aerobic training to do on week days is running. Run at a moderate pace that you could keep up for a long time (even if you are only going for a half hour to one hour run). If the issue is specific leg muscles rather than cardio, then just keep going every weekend and they'll build up pretty quick. Make sure to stay active with mountain activities throughout the winter so you don't have to start from scratch every climbing season (back country skiing, snowshoeing, ice climbing, etc). Also, consider doing after work short (but steep if possible) hikes, carrying weight, at nearby mountains. Aim for slightly more weight then you're likely to be carrying on real alpine outings, so that whatever you carry on alpine days feels light compared to what you're used to. Use water jugs or something and dump them out at the top so you don't have to carry the weight on the way down and trash your knees.

One thing I found with a lot of sleeping backs that are in the lowest end of weight/volume range for their warmth is that they tend to be quite narrow in the legs/hips (hip girth). If you sleep like a log on your back, that's not a problem. If you're like me and tend to take a while to fall asleep and roll around a lot, you may find the lack of space/mobility in the legs/hips problematic. It restricted my sleeping bag selection considerably. Just something to consider. I use this one as my 4 season bag and have had good luck with it (it packs down much much smaller than the stated 10.4 L): http://www.rei.com/product/847520/sierra-designs-zissou-12-sleeping-bag

Trip: Forbidden Peak - West Ridge Date: 6/13/2015 Trip Report: Our group of 4 climbed the West Ridge of Forbidden Peak this Saturday. I was really stoked to get on this climb as it's one I've wanted to do for about 2 years now. We were worried that permits for Boston Basin would be unavailable when we got there Friday just before the ranger station close time, but it turned out they had plenty of room for both Friday night and Saturday night. We decided to hike in that same evening, leaving the trailhead at 6:30pm and getting to high camp in the basin just after 9:00pm. At high camp, there are currently 2 snow free spots big enough to hold a tent and a bunch of other spots big enough for bivies. All 4 of us were in bivies and had no trouble finding space. We were greeted with this view of the approach glacier and bottom of the West Ridge Couloir from camp: Clouds came and went throughout the night but conditions were not bad for some night photography (with my point and shoot): We started from camp at 4:30 am, behind one other party of 3. We chose to go straight up the glacier through a path that connected all the way through, rather than going far left as some beta describes. For now, it is relatively easy to navigate straight up the glacier, either crossing a few snow bridges and hopping over a few crevasses, or zigzagging back and forth. Shortly, we arrived at the base of the couloir, where the snow still connects continuously on the left side of the "major rock" (but not on the right): There's a bit of a break forming in the snow in the narrowest part between the major rock and the left wall, where you have to climb down and then back out again, but there's snow down inside the break that you can step down onto. This will likely soon be gone and you'll have to step all the way down to rock, but it doesn't look too bad. Ascending the couloir was pretty mellow, with solid secure snow in the morning. Up the entire length, there is just one area where the couloir looks like it's melting out, with a break down to the rocks below, but there's a bridge over on the right side. The snow looks like there's enough of it to last several more weeks before making climbing up the couloir difficult. It was interesting to see the rappel tat all along the walls of the couloir, which must have been relatively easy to access when it was set. But in this low snow year, all the tat was 15-30 feet up off the snow and would have been a giant pain to get to. Also, some previous party had left fixed pickets that they must have rappelled off of buried in the snow all the way up the couloir, at intervals allowing double rope raps from fixed pickets all the way down the couloir to below the major rock. The pickets must have been originally buried deeper, but some of them are now only about 6 inches below the snow surface. They will likely end up melting out and sitting on the snow surface in a week or two and some party will get to booty a whole lot of pickets (I think there were 4 in total). The top of the snow in the couloir attaches nicely to the rock and allows an easy step across, for now. After gaining the notch, both of our pairs of 2 climbed up the West Ridge in about 1.5 hours to the summit. The party that had been ahead of us had forgotten to clean a few pieces of pro early in the route, which we cleaned for them. AS a result, they waited for us to come up to them and give them the gear, then they let us pass. There was also one other party behind us, for a total of 3 parties: our group of 4, the party that started ahead of us was a 3, and the final party was 2 climbers that were doing it car to car. Only 3 parties for a total of 9 people seemed like not many people at all for a perfect Saturday and I was pleasantly surprised, after having read many trip reports of traffic jams on the West Ridge. We simulclimbed the route from the notch to the summit, other than stopping to pitch out the 5.6 crux section. We climbed on 1 twin rope per group of 2, folded in half for a total of 30m of rope length, which we coiled down to 20-25m anyway to reduce rope drag. The crux is short and can be easily pitched out with 30m of rope. My partner down-climbing the false summit, me belaying her in from the summit: A view over the Boston glacier towards Buckner, which some of our friends were gonna try climbing North Face on the following day: More summit views: Group summit shot: We enjoyed the summit for about half an hour and then began our descent, reversing the route. The party of 3 was getting close to the false summit as we passed them on the way down, and the party of 2 had just gotten above the 5.6 crux section. We simulclimbed down the ridge, doing 1 rappel for the crux section only. As always, the descent took longer than the ascent, both because down-simuling that ridge is a little more intimidating than climbing up and demanded a bit more care, and because we had to get past the other 2 parties that were still climbing up (who were really nice about it but it still takes time). We did 1 double rope rappel from the notch (where there is a nice rap anchor) down to the snow at the top of the couloir, and another double rope rap from there onto the couloir, to one of the fixed pickets I mentioned above. We backed it up with a 2nd picket (which the last person to rappel took out) and then rappelled down from there too, but the snow could have easily allowed us to just down climb from there, as well. After that, we roped up and descended the rest of the couloir and glacier, returning to camp around 3pm (10.5 hours camp to camp). We took a relaxing rest at camp and started hiking down at 4:30pm, returning to the cars by 6:30pm Saturday. Overall, the west ridge couloir and the route are in great shape right now. Go get it! Gear Notes: We brought 5 cams: 0.3, 0.5, 0.75, 1, and 2 and a set nuts. Could have been fine with a lot less. The crux has a piton you can clip, but I still stuck in a couple cams leading it. The ridge mostly takes natural pro (slinging rocks/horns) and we wouldn't have minded a few more slings than the 13 we had brought. Approach Notes: West ridge couloir and glacier in great shape. Likely to stay good for another couple weeks.