Gabe O.

Way to get in there early! Looks like the fun pitches were nice and dry. Gotta question about the road: Last year they had jersey barriers set up 1 mile from the Esmerelda trailhead parking lot. Could you tell if they were still there? (perhaps somewhat buried in snow still)

Incredible photos of a spectacular trip! Jason, if you don't mind me asking what camera & glass do you shoot with?

Sounds like a fun trip, and glad to hear the other party inflicted rockfall didn't do any real damage. After looking at your GPS track it looks like the descent you took (brown track) is more or less the exact same route I took when I skied the Cascadian earlier this season (light blue track). I did notice that cascadian (as I know it) joins another large gully to the east at around ~8000 ft (circled in red). I'm curious if that is the alternate descent you mention?

The 'Wall' (I've never heard it called that) is part of the standard Fisher Chimneys route. It is the only section of 4th class in the Chimneys if memory serves. Everything else felt solidly 2nd or 3rd. It was the only part of the chimneys that we decided to rap since we had heavy overnight packs and harnesses still on.

Awesome write up and photos Tim! This is making me rethink some of my summer plans in an attempt to get out to the Pickets. I sure have spent enough time staring at them from various peaks around.

Cool thanks for clearing that up, now I wonder which route I even took up my only time up the 'old chute'. Seems like I may have actually been in the Mazama chute as I don't remember much of any ridge traverse/knife edge to get to the summit from the top out.

Sounds like a quiet day up there. One question, I thought the 'Old Chute' and the 'Mazama Chute' were the different names for the same thing. This seems to corroborate that but who knows, they could mistaken as well... Can anyone clear this up?

Trip: Colchuck Peak - North Buttress Couloir - NBC Date: 6/11/2017 Trip Report: Ed and I climbed the NBC and skied down the colchuck glacier on Sunday. As there is plenty of beta online so I will focus on conditions. The couloir itself was cruiser aside from 3 rock steps to surmount. - The first had a nice snow ledge below which made it feel easier than if there was any exposure. There was a bit of thunker ice on the right hand side which made it easy to pull through. Not sure how much longer that will hang on... looked like you could pass it via easy 5th on the right once our way goes. - I cut to the right of the second and traversed a solid rock ledge to gain the snow above the it. - The 3rd one required a move or two on rock but nothing memorable. The 2nd and 3rd are visible in this photo: These steps will definitely get more interesting as time goes on... From the top of the couloir to the north face we followd a snow finger up that turned into an exposed and loose ledge traverse. Nothing technical, but you wouldn't want to make a mistake... North face: After a bit of this we got back to snow. We followed a bootpack (from last weekend?) which continued traversing up and right on the face. We saw a couple cairns on the right side of the face so we thought we should scramble that way. We got cliffed out above and though we had rock gear we didn't want to make things more difficult than necessary. We traversed left back to snow to a couloir which brought us up to a bit more scrambling, more low angle snow and then a rock chimney to the summit (interesting with skis on the pack). We only roped up for the final snow couloir at the top of the north face and the bit of rock above placing a couple pickets, small cams and slinging a few horns. From the summit the snow was patchy to the col and great skiing from the col to where the trail enters the boulder field on the south west end of the lake. Only required a short carry of a few feet. EDIT: fixing photos Gear Notes: crampons 2 tools 30m 8mm rope 2 pickets ~6 slings 5 nuts 4 small cams Skis! Approach Notes: 5 miles on trail with minimal snow/some soggy sections.

I visited the caves in May of 2015, and while you could see where Snow Dragon had partially collapsed, Pure Imagination was still holding up. It went back further than we were able to explore. I wonder what has happened since then. I would also say with the amount of snow this year it's entirely possible that the cave is still intact but that the entrance is buried. Maybe worth looking into once spring rolls around.

Thanks, Josh! It was a fun route for sure. Nick's edits have inspired me to think about getting into it as well (Fil's GoPro was used for this video).

Awesome job and beautiful photos! One question: the date of the report is 1/30/2017...I'm assuming you didn't time travel back in time to get this report up before standing on the summit for the second time tody. Did you guys climb Saturday or Sunday? Looked to me like the weather was better on Saturday.

Those are my partners (Fil's), but they are e-climb tools. I think an older version of these: https://www.e-climb.com/en/cryo-ice-axes/22-ice-axe-cryo-p.html. I've used the before a few times and love them. Especially for steep snow. The spikes on the bottom make for great traction when holding them below the pick and pushing them into the slope.

Trip: Guye Peak - Southeast Gully Date: 1/28/2017 Trip Report: Fil and I climbed the southeast gully on Guye Peak on Saturday. The bottom half of the gully was in the inversion cloud layer and was in great condition - nice alpine ice for the most part once it gets steep. Great sticks with our tools. We soloed it without much difficulty. Roped up for the second half and climbed 4 pitches. The chockstone that some people seem to have trouble passing was more or less covered in snow. Our 3rd pitch ended up being on crappy wet and snow covered rock - completely avoidable if you traverse right out of gully and climb above (on snow) when you see no more snow/ice to climb. The higher we got the wetter the snow became but the angle mellowed out so it was manageable. credit goes to niroyb for the sick video edit below: [video:youtube] Gear Notes: Light alpine rack + few screws, knife blades, and pickets. 70m rope Used every form of protection at least once. Approach Notes: Parked in Alpental Parking lot and followed Ober and then Unter strasse roads up above Sahlie Ski Club

Trip: Mount Shuksan - Fisher Chimneys Date: 8/13/2016 Trip Report: We climbed the Fisher Chimneys over 2 days (13th-14th). First day hiked past Lake Ann and scrambled to top of chimneys. We were lucky to have a dirty boot path on snow marking the entrance to the chimneys. This probably won't be there for too much longer. Roped up and placed pickets for Winnie's Slide (probably unnecessary) - still very snowy. We camped above the entrance to upper Curtis (south-west). The entrance to Upper Curtis was melted out and icy. It's not terribly steep and we saw people cross this section in many ways (no rope 1 or 2 tools, guide lowering 3 climbers off ice screws, roped up no protection etc.) We ended up just scrambling rock (3rd class) on the left side up to a flat snowy section where we roped up. Hell's Highway is steep but snowy - placed pickets but probably more for peace of mind than out of necessity. Sulphide to summit block is direct and obvious. It does cross a section with several sags that will probably turn into open crevasses before long but I have no doubt there will continue to be a route through. Summit block gully was dry except for a large patch of snow 1/4 way up. We used crampons on ascent (~8am) and none on descent (~9:30am). We rapped once on descent from summit block (midway down) on my 30m rope and twice descending chimneys Times: - ~6 hours trailhead to camp - ~3 hours camp to summit - ~3 hours summit to camp - ~4.5 hours camp to trailhead Wouldn't say we were moving particularly fast at any point (except maybe last couple miles back to car). GPS track here: https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/4d19be3a4ec964ed695716503aa5ec20/ Winnie's: Entrance to Upper Curtis: Hell's Highway: Sulphide: Gear Notes: Crampons Ice Axe Ice Tool Pickets Ice screws (not used) 30m rope (rappelled 3 times) Approach Notes: Obvious Trail