Michael Telstad

I just stumbled across a post on Facebook announcing that Alex Cunningham AKA @AlexC192 has passed away. I don't have any information whether it was climbing related or not. I don't think I ever met Alex, nor did I ever really interact with him online. Many of you have probably read his Yak Peak TR where lots of wise words of advice were given. It's sad to see some of our worst fears come true. Here is a Go Fund Me link that I came across if anyone wants to help his family.

Rumor has it that years ago while skiing the line, someone ripped an anchor in the runnels and stuck the landing into the couloir.

@Doug_Hutchinson I don’t care if I’m on belay or not, it’s all for the pizza and margs.

@Doug_Hutchinson You should be proud of me for finally getting a radio. Maybe next time you'll have the peace of mind to start drinking even earlier.

Last month a group of 7 friends and I went on a trip out to the remote Icefall Brook. An otherworldly cirque in the mountains north of Golden BC, housing likely the highest concentration of big ice routes in North America. While out there we climbed several of the classic ice lines and one new mixed route that we think was pretty classic. The new route we climbed parallels Fossen falls for five pitches up to M7 WI5+ with an A1 roof crux that we did not have time to try and free. It probably goes free somewhere around M8 or 9. Overlay of the route. You can see Doug near the bottom of Fossen falls for scale. P1: Our first pitch followed an obvious chimney system up into a cave below the beginning of a steep flare. Protection was decent, but the rock quality wasn’t the best. The cruxes consisted of a few bulge pulls with poor feet and decent snice sticks. P2: The second pitch was absolutely classic mixed climbing. The ice on the right wall was barely thick enough for good sticks, but stemming, chimneying and good rock gear eased the stress as the ice got steeper and fatter. A tunnel and a bunch more rock gear protected ice took us up to what is essentially the top of Fossen falls second pitch. P3: From here, I stepped out right and tiptoed my way up a barely-there smear aiming for a short but steep pillar above. Again, gear was hard to come by, but when I did find something it was usually good. More incredible ice and mixed took me to another protected comfortable belay stance in the back of the main cave. A scary, but spectacular pitch. Kurt said following it was one of the best pitches of mixed climbing he’s done. P4: Now under the crux, it was Kurt's moment to shine. He started by trying to climb some thin glassy ice out to the right in order to skirt the roof but backed off when the rock above looked downsloping, loose and generally really hard. Instead he opted to take the roof straight on, tagging up the drill and placing 3 bolts with a few pieces of intermittent gear. Once at the lip, he sent the drill back down and started free climbing again. As he climbed out of sight things got slow and quiet. Standing in my cave I watched rocks rain down into the abyss as a combination of snow and down plumes floated in the air from Kurt's shredded down jacket. Eventually he called off belay and I also aided my way through the roof to save time. The climbing above proved to be hard, grovely, runout and wide. The upper part of this pitch was bone dry and entirely chossy. A less classy crux than we had hoped for. The first attempt going out right that we backed off of. Kurt approaching the roof, I'm hiding in the back left corner. P5: One more pitch up a slick ramp took me up to a pedestal just above the top of Fossen falls. With no suitable cracks for an anchor, I hammered my tool into a deep pocket and tagged up the drill, drilling the only bolted anchor on the route. From there we rapped onto Fossen and took that the rest of the way down. Slogging down to the hut, we were welcomed by some cold dinner and the rest of our group already asleep upstairs. We called our route “Jumping for Joy” (M7 WI5+ A1). A phrase that Kurt's late father used often, for the simplest things in life. Rack: Double rack .2-4, handful of pins and ~10 screw including several stubbies. 2 70m ropes for rapping, but 60's are fine for the route.

I doubt the FS would, but the NPS absolutely has and will. There are certain bored NPS employees that love spending their time snooping YouTube looking for infractions. Maybe think twice before posting that sick video of you paragliding off Mt. Shuksan.

Oh damn. I heard super 3rd hand it was a party attempting Superalpine. However that is most definitely the base of our second pitch. Glad they had good weather and were able to get flown out of there. There’s a video now LINK

The people want to see the Nooksack report! You might not qualify, but you should try reaching out to Mark Smiley about getting some cash for those pickets. He sometimes reimburses young climbers a percentage of their bail anchors to discourage rapping off shit gear to save money. ANCHORS LINK

So many thanks to you @olyclimber. When the CC landing page turned into a virus riddled porn ad I was fearing the worst. If the day does come that the site has to die (god forbid), all I ask is that we try our best to get it archived like SuperTopo. The amount of history and beta here is invaluable.

Polish goes in “easier-than-usual” condition. Get it before it’s swiss cheese.

Shhhhh 🤫 Honestly I would be so happy to see someone else fill in another line.

Probably WI4 for the pitch, but after 20ft of steep traversing it was all over.

I think at this point we have established that the SP is not the superior lead rope solo device. People are climbing 5.14 on grigris with minor modifications. I know of several folks who have both, and choose to use the grigri instead. It’s time to let the silent partner die in peace.

The often-discussed west face of Sloan has been in the forefront of my mind for about as long as I've been winter climbing. When I first came across the stunning Scurlock photos of the face, I was blown away to learn that there had been no successful ascents of any of the major ice lines. Rumors of poor-quality ice came with every attempt up until Kyle and Porter's climb in 2020. I'm not going to lie, I was somewhat disappointed when I heard someone got to it first, but it was only a matter of time. A few weekends later I skied in with @sfuji to try and take their route to the summit. Weather changed rapidly and we spent the night in the basin listening to avalanches rip down the face as it continued to snow. We skied out the next day after some consolation pow turns. My attention then turned to the prouder lines on the main face. Still not yet entirely sure I was ready for the direct line, I set my eyes on what would become the Slither (Merrill-Minton). When that high pressure system hit in late Jan 2023, I knew it was the perfect window for the face but had committed to some other obligations. When I got a text from Tucker asking if I thought their line was previously unclimbed, I felt that same pang of disappointment mixed with the psyche for my friends. It had taken a while, but the plums were slowly getting picked. At this point I knew I had to make this a priority, If the window showed up, I had to at least try. In the summer of 2023, I went out and climbed the SW face rock route Fire on the Mountain. It was my first time actually touching the peak, and I was impressed by the rock quality. This gave me hope that the pitch up to the dagger would be possible but might need a few bolts. It also gave me the opportunity to experience the upper mountain and SE shelf descent. Fast forward to about two weeks ago when this massive high pressure system rolled into the forecast. A brief but deep warmup followed by a long stretch of cold high pressure. THIS was the system I'd been waiting for. Bozeman and Patagonia had stolen the majority of my go-to alpine partners for the winter, so I quickly exhausted my list of regulars. I began reaching out to friends of friends who I'd never climbed with before but seemed up to the task. Finally, I convinced Justin Sackett, a guide based in Portland to make the drive up for the weekend. On Wednesday the 15th I woke up in my car along the Mountain Loop and began pushing my bike up the Bedal creek road. At the time, there was a large tree fallen over the road that was impassible in a car, not that my Prius would have made it much further. I hiked in with a tag line, some pins and a small hand drill bolt kit to stash below the face. Along the way I cleared some branches and did my best to establish an easy to follow boot pack. It also confirmed that skis would not be worthwhile to bring. I snapped some photos through my binoculars and booked it back down trying to get a few hours of work in that afternoon. Scoping the dagger. The Slither is also fat for anyone keen on taking this one to the summit. That day I posted trying to get someone to go chop down that tree, and to my surprise @Manheartmountain was already on his way out there to do the work. This saved us about an hour on either side of the day, and a good bit of suffering. Our alarms blared at 2:40 am on Sunday, early enough that my body hadn't quite realized I was sleeping. We crawled out of the car and set off a little after 3am. The Redbull, gas station muffin and last night's Chipotle fought for dominance in my stomach. The approach went smoothly with the refrozen snow surface, and we found ourselves in the basin around 5. Here we ran into Rob who was planning to make a solo attempt on Superalpine. We shared trail breaking duty up into the lower gulley of the face. Below the first ice step we stomped out a platform and pulled the rope out, after taking a short break Rob continued out right across the ledge towards the Superalpine gulley. Described as WI3 in Tuckers Slither report, our first pitch involved a heinous aerated delaminating pitch of WI5. This was by far the hardest pitch of ice we climbed. It can be bypassed by walking around to the left, or possibly the ramp to the right climbed by @Marcus Russi on his 2017 attempt. It also looks like a good pitch of M5-6 climbs just parallel to our ice smear connecting at the top where the ice is better. Lots of options here, we don't really recommend climbing the same pitch as us in the conditions we found. Photo courtesy of soloist Rob. Justin on the first pitch. Deceivingly steep. The rock on the left looks very climbable, or you can just walk around. I took over for the second pitch and found the start of this pitch to also be aerated shampoo ice at the very bottom. I placed a beak and made a few rock moves to establish on the good ice a few feet up. From there a WI4 groove took me to the top of this step where I made a good screw anchor. The aforementioned beak was unable to be cleaned so it's still in place. I'd like it back if anyone else goes up there soon. Another pitch of harder than reported ice, either we had more different conditions or Tucker is a sandbagger. Likely the latter. Looking up at P2. Once again, we swapped and Justin Lead a pitch of WI3 up through a groove and out onto the onion skin cone below the dagger. Not a whole lot in terms of pro here, but incredible one swing hero ice for the follower. Now below the dagger, we took a short break and got prepared for battle. When racking up in the basin I chose to leave the bolt kit behind. This route deserved an honest attempt on natural gear before being sieged. After traversing back and forth a few times I finally chose my line and started climbing. The rock on this portion of the wall is highly featured, but extremely compact. Due to it being wet so much of the year, every crack and seam was full of frozen moss. This made climbing easier in some ways, but finding decent protection a real challenge. I slowly picked my way up, getting gear wherever I could. The terrain was pulling me right, but I eventually needed to cut back left to access the ice. Once a decent option showed itself, I made a hard traverse towards a hanging face under a roof. Finally getting a piece I was really happy with, I plugged in an additional garbage cam for good measure and committed to the steep footless traverse under the roof where I got myself a bit overcommitted. With my last pieces below my feet, and an arm wrapped around a small spike, I made a last ditch effort to press onto and sit on the thing the best I could. Barely getting enough of my mass onto this perch to go hands free, I pounded a KB into a seam right in front of my face. Finally able to relax a little bit, I knew that if I could keep it together just a little longer, I'd be on the ice and home free with the onsight and both my ankles intact. The final traverse went smoothly and I made it into the belay cave just before the sun peeked around the corner. In the warmth of the sun, I was able to revel in what I had just accomplished while Justin followed the pitch clean, securing our team onsight. The Beartooth Alpine picks still climbing ice well after a long game of "turf or rock" The gloves had to come off for this one. Unbelievably psyched. Also the point I realized I forgot sunscreen. The actual dagger ice pitch ended up being quite moderate. A steep traverse on fantastic quality ice took me to a WI3 ramp. If your biceps aren't cramping by that point, a stunning direct pitch of WI5 can be taken instead. It looks like in some years, a tunnel forms behind the pillar allowing for you to cut through, instead of around to access the easier climbing. From there we unroped and slogged up the snow slope up into the major corner at the top of the face. The occasional step of easy ice, and some snow offwidth climbing in a runnel took us most of the way up this feature. Near the top, the corner chokes down to a squeeze chimney directly up to the ridge, or you can cut right up easy snow and scrambling to gain the summit from the south ridge. I started up the chimney dreaming of the super direct but was turned back by BS sugar snow caking one side of the chimney. A fun challenge any other time than now, I backtracked and opted for the path of least resistance. We arrived on the summit at 3:45. Mooses Tooth or Sloan? We started down the corkscrew a few minutes later, and finally had the sun set on us near the bottom of the SE shelf. The diagonal steep snow downclimbing seemed to drag on forever, but we eventually made it down to walking terrain and slogged our way back around the mountain. We got back to the trailhead at around 8:20. Back at the car. Rack: 8-10 screws, handful of KB's, beaks and at least one small angle. Nuts, Single rack .1-2 (doubles would have relieved some stress). 60m rope & tagline was great for hauling the packs on the crux pitch. All the winter routes and variations I know about Photo credit: John Scurlock Orange: Full Moon Fever (AI4R, 5.8, 50deg) Crux pitches out of view Light Blue: NW face ski line Red: Borrowed Time (WI5 M7) Green: 2017 attempt Blue: Merrell-Minton AKA Sloan Slither (WI4) (AAJ) (CCTR) reportedly a sandbag by Aaron. Yellow: Superalpine FA w/out summit Purple: Superalpine with summit and better access ramp Not Drawn: Corkscrew route & Ryan Hoover's attempt to just below dagger.

Rad! Just sent you a DM. We’ll be seeing each other out there on Sunday. Let’s chat.