Todd Anderson

The smoke did not take long to move back into the Enchantments after the rain cleared it out on Saturday

Gear notes: helmets, riot shields, Glad you guys are okay!

Definitely leave the skis at home. When we did it S-N we skied: 1. Spire Point to just below White Rock Lakes (aka the Dana Glacier), 2. a quick traverse of the South Cascade Glacier, 3. the Le Conte Glacier, 4. Le Conte ridge down to Yang Yang Lakes, 5. the Middle Cascade Glacier, and 6. Cache Col to Cascade Pass (almost) If we were going N-S, we could have skied: 1. Spider-Formidable Col to Yang Yang Lakes, 2. Le Conte ridge to bottom of Le Conte glacier, 3. Le Conte-Sentinel Col to South Cascade glacier, 4. South Cascade Glacier to White Rock Lakes, 5. Spire Point to Cub Lake I suspect all these runs will involve at least one carry now. The problem with the N-S runs is that most of them are not fall-line; you're just trying to maintain elevation as long as possible. This will be much more difficult as the snow starts to melt out, mostly because moats you have to traverse under will be bigger and further downhill. What would have been the best N-S run, Spire Point to Cub Lake, is south-facing and could be melted out by now. We skinned from Cub Lake to Spire Point, but otherwise either booted or skied the rest. The frequent transitions and steep traversing made booting faster.

I went S-N on July 1-2, taking the Downey Creek trail to Bachelor Creek, to Cub Lake, to the Spire Point col. There has been some work done on the upper Bachelor Creek "trail", as evidenced by orange flagging, and generally speaking the trail is pretty well beaten-in. If you miss the flagging, the easiest way down would be through the pine forest on the descender's right side of the valley. Unless you have skis, you shouldn't have much trouble even if you end up tunneling through alder for a bit. Going uphill through alder with skis was fun.

Anyone been on this route recently?

Turns out I have more time off than anticipated and flights are cheap Thanksgiving day, so I'm headed to the desert to climb splitters with everyone from CO. There may be a Seattle-area group headed to Hyalite, though; I will certainly be there for the ice fest. I am assuming that if ice starts coming in in the Lillooet area we'd hear about it on the West Coast Ice facebook page, but maybe not. In any case, it looks like highs in the 40s for the forseeable future up there.

The late great Andreas Fransson skiing the Col de L'Aiguille Verte (line #1 on the topo): Route detail on the Couloir Couturier (line #4) including some ski beta and history: http://www.camptocamp.org/routes/54983/fr/aiguille-verte-couloir-couturier

DPS and Dre, emailed you guys. Anyone else: andersontodds at gmail

Yeah drying gear sounds like an issue. Unfortunately my ice partner list is not deep; one of the attractions of Lillooet is the density of TR-solo-able ice. If I can round up three more I guess a motel room would be affordable.

I have a few 4-day weekends coming up in the later part of this year, and if Lillooet ice is in good shape I think I'll head up (from Seattle). Can anyone recommend somewhere to camp for cheap up there? My station wagon is set up to sleep in, so really all I need is a parking space where I won't be harassed. Would also consider hostels, but Google isn't turning up anything cheaper than $50/night. I'm not very familiar with western BC north of Whistler, so any help would be appreciated.

Hey Davey, hope you guys had a good trip! Also thanks (to one of your group, anyway) for the rappel beta; we probably would have figured it out, but I think you saved us a lot of time Sunday morning.

Trip: Goode Mountain - NE Buttress Date: 8/12/2016 Trip Report: David officially became a PhD candidate on Thursday, so we went out to the Knarr Bar to get smashed and play shuffleboard. Then on Friday morning we left to go climb Goode Mountain. We had both read a lot of TRs of Goode over the last month or so, but we forgot to print anything out and didn't bring a map, so navigation was based on foggy hangover memory. Somehow we totally nailed the approach to bivy at 5400'-ish; we definitely found the "magical alder tunnels" that Ilia S. refers to in his TR. It was sunset when we found a good bivy site, which was not large enough for the Firstlight. The Firstlight did make a good pillow, though. We slept in on Day 2 and awakened when a party of 4 tromped past us on their way up. Shit, they're going to take the summit bivy! They got a solid hour head start on us, but we eventually made it up the rest of the slabs and onto the glacier. The cracks are pretty big, but we found a way that started a ways east on the glacier that didn't involve any ice climbing or crack-jumping. The moat was deep near the toe of the buttress, but maybe only 5 feet deep and easy to downclimb where we got on rock, i.e. slightly uphill and east (climber's left) of the buttress toe. The glacier was definitely making worrying noises, and the north face was dropping bombs pretty frequently later in the day, so an earlier start probably would have been a good idea. I don't think we made it onto the rock until almost 10 AM because of our late start. Getting onto the ridge crest was kind of dicey, since the rock was extremely loose. We belayed two short pitches until we gained the crest, then simuled probably 500m in roughly 100m pitches. We pitched out the harder section about 3/4s of the way up, and since we were using a doubled twin we could only do 30-35m pitches. This was quite slow; we had been steadily gaining on the party of four ahead of us until we started pitching things out. At some point things got easier, and we did two more long-ish simul pitches to a ledge just below a bivy ledge near the summit. I saw two of the party of four on that ledge, so I was worried that the other two may have continued to the summit and we would have to share the bivy with them. Fortunately the entire party of four turned out to be on this lower ledge, so we did one simul pitch to just below the summit, and one 15-meter pitch to the summit. We didn't pitch the Firstlight because the weather and position were so awesome, so I ended up carrying a 3-pound pillow. I also carried summit kippers, but didn't have the appetite to eat them in the morning. On Sunday morning we discovered that Rudy the Rat had nibbled on my partner's climbing shoes, and also taken my socks. I was trying to figure out if I had enough moleskin to construct something to hike out with when my partner produced a spare pair of socks. Awesome. We rapped past/through the party of four, who were just starting their summit bid, and made it to the SW couloir and down those rappels pretty easily. We weren't really sure how to get down to the Park Creek trail, though, so we ended up going skier's left into a large open bowl that turned into a steep-sided canyon/drainage, and following the skier's right side of the drainage to the flood washout/burned forest. I thought I remembered a photo of people descending the left side of the washout (i.e. not actually in the washout), but David was leading the way here and he said a line straight down the middle of the flood washout would go. It was burnt alder hell at the bottom and we each took a few big scree falls, but we eventually made it to the Park Creek trail at 1:30 pm. We thought it would be 19 miles out from there, but a sign when we rejoined the PCT suggested it would actually be 21. In any case, we did it in 7 hours, and got to the car at sunset. Fortunately we made it to the nearest open gas station in Marblemount for sugar/salt/caffeine. Gear Notes: 1x nuts, 1x cams .3-2, a bunch of slings 65-70m twin rope, i.e. only one (a longer lead rope would have been very useful for bigger pitches but the light weight of the twin rope was nice) Climbing shoes, tent unused/unnecessary; kippers unused but necessary Put your socks in the steel mesh bag with your food Approach Notes: Long walk on the PCT, leave North Fork trail and cross North Fork at cairns, then choose your own adventure

When you use the MSR Cam Rings, do you have a single cord strand fixed to the tent tie-out, then the adjustable loop at the stake end? Or a fixed stake loop and the adjustable loop at the tent end? I have Cam Rings on my flat tarp (in the former configuration), and I find the tension extremely difficult to adjust, since there is so much friction between the adjustable loop and the stake.

Awesome photo, thanks. I had heard a friend of a friend did Slesse last weekend (solo?) and had a "super chill" glacier crossing, but I wasn't sure if he crossed the pocket glacier or the other one.

Any update on the pocket glacier? Low temps have been well above freezing for a while now....

Interested mainly on Lower Town Wall routes around 10-11, but would be okay doing pretty much anything, including belaying you on City Park (only if I can TR afterwards, though). Have double rack, 70m rope, car, etc. Based in Seattle. -Todd andersontodds at gmail

Did you ever find a partner? I'm interested.

Trip: Terror Basin - via Goodell Creek Date: 7/16/2016 Trip Report: I'll try to keep this short, since there are plenty of TRs for this area of the Southern Pickets, and I didn't actually summit anything. Working on photos now figured it out. Various weather forecasting sites called for intermittent drizzle Saturday morning, cloudy to clear Saturday afternoon through Sunday noon, and drizzle becoming thunderstorms Sunday afternoon. Sounded like a weather window to me! No potential partners thought it sounded like a weather window, though, so it was a solo trip. The plan was to leave Seattle at 5 AM, get to the Marblemount ranger station for the permit at when they opened at 7 AM, and be hiking at 8 AM. I got to the ranger station at 7:15 and had to wait in line for 20 minutes; not something I was expecting for a rainy morning in one of the least-visited National Parks. Anyway, I started hiking at 9 AM. It had been drizzling on and off since at least 6 AM, and the shrub-tunneling sections of the trail left me completely soaked by the time I got to the turn-off up the steep climber's trail (11 AM). It had stopped raining, but I was in a cloud from 3000' all the way to camp, so nothing had a chance to dry out. Fortunately the trail, while rough, was pretty easy to follow. I got off the trail at least half a dozen times on the way up, but was able to retrace my steps and find the trail again without ever losing much time. Above treeline you will often be looking for cairns instead of a beaten path; when you cross a stream and can't find cairns or a path anymore, try looking up the streambed. The steep snow descent from the notch at 6200' was pretty exciting. A few steps after I put on my crampons I managed to snag my pant leg and lose my balance, but hung onto a snow bench and did't slide anywhere. The snow was pretty soft and I realized I didn't have the skills to French my way down, but low-dagger and frontpointing worked well until the slope eased off. The creek through the bivy bench was pretty high; several tent sites were underwater. It looked like there were two sites that were high enough to be usable, although an enterprising party could flatten out a few more. I got the bivy area at 4:30 pm; 7.5 hours after I left the car. The plan was to climb West McMillan via the West Ridge (class 3) on Sunday morning, but I felt so wrecked when I woke up that I decided to just hike out. After a brief shower right before I left camp at 8 AM, the weather was perfect until I got back to the turn-off at 1700' around 1 PM. Then it got wet again, and when I was driving out (at 3) I saw lightning in a few places. Anyway, it was a fun trip and I'm excited to go back and actually climb some things. One night is probably not enough; I think I would try two or three next time. Gear Notes: Navigation: Gaia GPS app, which could only handle about 2 days on my shite phone (bring an external battery); the approach notes in the Beckey guide were awesome. Snow travel: A short, light axe was great; longer ones would get horrible hung up on vegetation on the approach. Crampons were very nice; unfortunately I only have full-auto crampons, so had to wear my Nepal Evos. These were very heavy (especially when soaked), and I got some pretty vicious blisters on my heels and big toes. The bit of scrambling I did on the hike in and on some nubbins at the 6300' notch did not inspire confidence. I think mid-height approach shoes with strap-on aluminum crampons would be wonderful for this trip. Dampness mitigation: I don't think it's possible. Approach Notes: From Marblemount, drive east on 20 until you cross Goodell Creek, then take the next left towards the Upper Group Campground. Continue to follow signs for the group campground on dirt roads until you find a sign warning that you're not at a maintained trailhead, along with a small gravel parking area.

I'm not going to spend two weekends in a row in Seattle and I feel like I haven't done enough alder-flossing, so I'm headed into Terror Creek basin tomorrow. Hopefully doing West Ridge of West McMillan early Sunday, then getting out before any possible lightning. Anyone want to come along? Priorities are: 1. don't die 2. have a laugh 3. summit 4. be dry at the end (ha) Leaving Seattle at 5am on Saturday. Partner needs crampons, axe and food (don't think I have enough for two right now); and all the normal personal camp things you want to bring. Prior experience in the Pickets would also be handy. Email andersontodds AT gmail Weather links: Mountain-Forecast/Mount Terror NWS/7 miles NNW Newhalem, 5200ft UW Atmospheric Sciences (looping doesn't work)

Leaving Seattle at 5am tomorrow morning to go suffer in the Pickets if you're interested!

So I've heard, which is why I'm not thinking too hard about anything more difficult than W McMillan. This trip is mostly about getting outside and chasing and maybe even some nice views and a summit!

Good to hear. Hopefully that "thunderstorms also possible after 11am" part goes away.

Anyone been up to Terror Creek Basin recently? Thinking about doing the West Ridge of West McMillan this weekend, depending on what the forecast does. From all the photos I've seen it doesn't look like crevasses are an issue until late July/August, but updated conditions (or pure speculation) would be helpful. Thanks!

So, did anyone get on Goode last weekend? I'm having trouble uploading photos (as usual), so here's a link to one I took from the summit of Liberty Bell on Sunday. Hoping to get on the Megalodon, but not sure if I should try in two weeks or two(ish) months.... I have photos of other angles, but I'm not sure how useful they'd be. I can post if there's any interest.

I've never used a down quilt, but I have a Feathered Friends Vireo UL. As you can see if you follow the link, it's an elephant's-foot-like bag with no hood or zipper. The idea is you're bringing a down puffy anyway, so you might as well wear that to bed and bring a lighter sleeping bag. Hence, the torso area is very roomy compared to the footbox. The standard model also has more down in the leg area than the torso area for this reason. My Vireo has five ounces of overfill in the torso, so it's actually around 20 oz. I used it on Mount Adams at the Lunch Counter camp (around 9400 ft) at the end of May, with Capilene 4 underwear, a light synthetic puffy, and a light wool hat, and inside an eVent bivy, on top of a Therm-a-Rest Z Lite Sol and under a tarp. I guess the low temp was in the low 20s that night. Anyway, it was supremely toasty. My model is the 68" length, and I am 69" tall, so I can really cocoon myself in it. It also had enough girth for two Nalgenes and a fuel canister near my hips and lower back, although you would be hard-pressed to get anything besides your feet in the footbox/lower leg area. I will also say that the Vireo did a good job of venting persperation, apparently, since it was dry but the foot of the bivy had some frozen condensation in the morning. In summary, Pros: light, packs small, warm Cons: feet might get pretty warm in warm weather, no snuggling w/ SO