holdennb

Sounds like a great trip! Any pictures of what the basin/lake looked like in terms of snow?

Hey, I'm actually looking to do a lot of the same things this year. I've been looking into glacier travel courses (Mountain Madness and the one you linked seem like the cheapest ones) in order to climb glaciated peaks, and though I'm familiar with sport climbing I would love to learn trad at some point in order to open up more alpine stuff. Message me if you're interested in taking a class together!

Hi all, I've had some climbing goals for a while, but I'm not really sure what steps to take next. To give some context, I'm comfortable leading (relatively easy) sport on rock, and scrambling. This winter I've been reading through FOTH and getting more comfortable with snow, doing some snowshoeing/snow camping and did a New Year's summit of St. Helens, dipping my feet into ice axe/crampon technique and dealing with some wintery conditions. I'd really like to tackle peaks like Eldorado, Sahale, maybe Baker/Hood (in addition to non-technical Adams) this year. Looking towards the future I'd love to eventually do stuff like Forbidden/Enchantments peaks/Bugaboos, but that involves the whole world of learning trad and building that experience. I was hoping to do the Washington Alpine Club basic climbing class this year, but unfortunately didn't get in (they had 3x the number of applicants as spots). Now I'm looking into classes from places like Mountain Madness, Pro Guiding, and AAI. I guess my question is, would taking glacier/crevasse classes be sufficient for most of the peaks in the Cascades that don't involve technical rock? It seems like the longer and much more expensive classes seem would be a bit much (and just really expensive), but I'm not sure. Of course it would be great to have a mentor/experienced friend as is often suggested, but I don't think many experienced climbers are just waiting around to teach a newbie like me! Any thoughts would be helpful, thanks!