Michael Telstad

Trip: Silverstar Mountain - Complete East Ridge Trip Date: 07/18/2020 Trip Report: Over the weekend Gabe and I ticked off another Wa Pass obscurity with the East Ridge of Silverstar. Apart from a two part NWMJ story (P1 and P2), Allen/Layton's Wa pass traverse, and a few comments from Scott Johnson we had very little specific beta on the route. I'm curious how many people have climbed this route. It proved to be quite the adventure and I feel like it would be a shame to take that from the next party to go up there. So in order to preserve the adventure and mystery of the route I've decided to be vague on specifics and heavy on photos for this TR. Here are a few notes that I wish I had known before heading out. 1.)Don't rely on Mudhole lake as a water source, the first spot we pulled from was rank and clogged up our filter really badly. We should have expected that... 2.)Expect just enough terrible rock with enough frequency to be stressful. 3.)Don't expect to find prefab bivy spots along the way. The only one we saw was the one we made. 4.)The lichen grows thick in these parts. Now here's the photo dump. Day 1 Mudhole Lake AKA Horseshit puddle Long way to go Silver Moon and Varden creek spire, the 3rd "major" summit along the ridge Finally able to see the meat of the ridge Our nice little sloping bivy Day 2 Started the day with a rappel and stuck rope. Looking back at Silverhorn and Silver Moon, as well as many other gendarmes and sub-summits Summit at last! Traversing back to Burgundy col Gear Notes: Singles .2-4, Doubles .3-2 and a bunch of slings. 1 60m rope and 30 ft of tat. You could bring less of everything if you soloed more of the ridge, we roped up earlier than most other parties. Approach Notes: Take the unmarked horse packing trail a few hundred feet up the cedar creek trail. Just keep following the ridge to infinity and beyond.

Don't forget about the NE face of Robie Reid!

I feel like I have good endurance. Then I read your TR's.

Here's the overlay. Red is the Wright-Pond, Yellow is Narcos, and blue is the P2 var that might have been climbed before. I suspect future routes on the face will also finish with the last pitch of the Wright-Pond, It just seems to be the best option.

It was crystals of some sort, either meth or crack. It looked quite pure so I'm guessing meth. Cops thought the same. I got the price from googling "street value of crystal meth", I'm probably on some list now. If I was a Walter White type you wouldn't be hearing about this and I wouldn't still be driving a 92 Accord. I chose the name Narcos when I thought it might be coke. The routes new alternative name is Breaking Bad.

I deeply regret not getting one when I first found it. I was freaked out and wanted to get out of there ASAP. When I wen't back up with the cops they didn't want me taking any pictures and I wasn't gonna mess with someone holding a very large rifle in the middle of the woods.

Such a classic shot!

For anyone wanting to score, there's still a few oz worth that spilled in the woods somewhere. Just watch out for those tweaker deer, they have been known to break into cars in the parking lot.

That sounds like a lot of effort. Good work and lets see some pictures!

Trip: Little Liberty Bell - (Partial New route) Narcos, 5.9 600ft Trip Date: 07/11/2020 Trip Report: Yesterday I went up to try and do a new route solo on little liberty bell. It’s entirely possible that some or all of this route has been climbed before, I know for sure that the first and last pitch have been climbed, but I really couldn’t tell about the rest of the route. With that being said, I’m calling what I climbed Narcos. I’ll explain the name at the end. You may be able to approach straight up the basin from the road and cut off some distance but add some gain. P1, 5.7+—Start up the clean cracks up the big left trending ramp to the tree. If there is still snow you can climb up small corners and overlaps to the left that meet up about half way. This is what I climbed to avoid snow. Build a gear belay in a 1” horizontal below the tree, this is a much better stance. There were slings on this tree when I got there and some placements seemed to be cleaned out. On the last rappel. P1 follows the cool looking cracks up the ramp on the left. I ended up climbing the flakes to the left of the ramp to avoid the snow. P2, 5.9—Follow the horizontal straight right and up a bit. Follow good edges and cracks until you reach a nice looking finger crack, climb it up to some good ledges. From there follow ledges back left past a small tree (your last pro) and two large loose looking blocks sitting on the ledge, maybe don’t pull on them. Once you reach a good belay ledge, climb up a little further to a solid horizontal. Build your belay here and extend it down to the ledge if you can. There seems to be a more vertical option going straight up and right to a nice looking LFC. I didn’t climb this as I had intended on climbing new ground. It may have been climbed before. It is marked in blue on the topo. Looking up the improbable traverse on pitch 2. There is much more pro than in the picture. This is after cleaning the pitch. The 5.9ish finger crack, it's steeper than it looks. P1 visible below. The blocks I traversed across and tree I slung at the top of P2. P3, 5.7+ PG13—Go up the bush choked corner for about 15 feet until you can step left into good flakes that parallel the larger right facing corner. Follow these up to a series of ledges and a large chimney/flake. Chimney up the outside edge of this flake to avoid lots of pine needles and bushes until you can reach a cleaned out .75 crack, place something there. Down climb a little bit until you can step right onto a series of ledges/ramps. Follow these up the slab passing one Piton (my first pin placement on a route) and up the sharp arete. From the top of this climb back down left to a ledge below an arching right facing corner. Belay here on finger sized gear. This pitch could avoid the runout chimney and arete climbing in the future if the cracks were cleaned out. I had originally tried going straight up some solid cracks on this pitch, but after the cracks petered out and encountered some very hollow rock I left a nut and bailed on this option. Looking up P3. I only followed the bushy corner for a few moves before stepping left. This is after cleaning the pitch on the way down, the red c3 is a directional, not the only piece. Looking down the good flakes in the middle of P3 on the way back down. The runout chimney on P3 My very first pin placement, I had to document. There is no rope drag in the rope solo system, hence my sketch "quick draw" P4, 5.8+ —Climb up the fun arching corner and then right via hollow sounding but fun flakes (place nuts here not cams). Step right around an arete into a nice right facing corner, you are now on the Wright-Pond. Follow this up to a bolted belay. P5, 5.8, 45m—Same as P4 of the Wright-Pond. Description taken from MP. Climb the blocky corner/chimney up past a tree until you gain a low-angled slab. Head left across the slab to a wide hand and fist crack hidden in a left-facing corner. Exit the corner up and right on blocky but easy ground to low-angled ledges. Belay on a tree with slings. From here you can scramble to the summit. Descend via the Wright-Pond with 4 double rope rappels on bolted anchors. Good views of Silverstar & co! I think this route could clean up nicely and be a good 5.9ish option up the feature. It is hard for me to grade it accurately as the dirt, lichen, and self belay results in things feeling harder and scarier at times. I tried to grade it for someone who knew where they were going and had a hand on the break strand of their grigri. On the hike down I got a little off route (there is no route) and ended up in some pretty damn thick brush. While trying to force my way down the hill I stumbled upon a pile of white crystals under a small tree. My first thought was “wow, that’s a weird Fungus”, then I took another step and saw black canvas in the bush in front of me. My heart stopped as my first thought was I had found a dead body of a missing hiker, or murder victim. I got a better look and realized that it was a large black duffle bag, unzipping it I finally realized what it was. A 35lb duffle of crystal meth, street value of about $350k give or take. I dragged the bag to a slightly more visible location and marked the spot on my phones GPS. I drove down to Mazama the next morning to report what I’d found. I ended up leading some heavily armed cops up and helped them carry out the “package”. It’s possible that I made a very big mistake. I could have bought so many new skis! It was either a recent air drop with intent to pick up, or one of the bags from THIS event that happened last year. I will provide a topo/overlay soon if I get permission to use Chris’ photo. I'd be very curious to hear if anyone knows some history of ascents on this feature. Gear Notes: Double rack micro to #2, single #3 and 4. Single set of med nuts. 2 60m ropes. Crack Pipe. Approach Notes: Start as for Cutthroat wall by walking down the old road bed for 1/4 mile until you see an obvious double cairn on the left side of the trail. Enter the woods here and point it straight up until the terrain lowers a little in pitch. At that point you can start arching left to get to the ridge next to the wall. I highly recommend using the slope angle shading map feature on caltopo and trying to stay on lower angle terrain. it’ll make things a little more pleasant. From the ridge it is pretty self explanatory where to go.

Didn't you hear? Ski season is over!! Good work on the slush harvest!

Do any of you old timers have one of these gathering dust in your closet somewhere? Ideally I'm looking for one of the forrest tools with the nut tool attachment, but I'm open to other long picked alpine hammers as well.

If so, then the reference I found was wrong in a number of ways. I'd definitely be interested in any info you can get from Leland.

Anyone have a topo/pitch breakdown or really any info on this route? I accidentally climbed a few pitches of it last year and the only info I've been able to find is Marks S-face overlay which says "Windom - Co. 2000 "Escargot" IV+ (5.11 A0) 5.12".

I rope soloed this a few months ago. Due to the impossibility of rope drag in the solo system I was able to link pitches and do the whole route in 3 long pitches and some soloing to the top. I can't speak for the first 20 feet as it was under snow, but the rest of the route was pretty quality. The crux was running with water but there were enough good holds to make it totally manageable. Raps are straightforward. The skiing in and out was bad...

Trip: Prusik Peak - Der Sportsman Trip Date: 06/23/2020 Trip Report: I was pretty hesitant to write this TR due to the current overcrowding in the area. I realized that it likely isn't going to make much of a difference cuz no-one really uses this site anymore anyhow. And as long as people follow a few key tips, you can have a good responsible Enchantments climb. 1.) Avoid weekends like the plague... as best you can. 2.) Get to the TH before 7 And try not to get yourself parked in. 3.) If you start later hitch to and from the TH if you can. (This worked better and was safer before COVID). 4.)Pick up trash you find. Quadruple points for picking up other peoples surface shits, and try to stick to trails and rock as much as possible. Now on to the actual TR Last year Sean and I climbed the West face of CBR around the same time, starting at 9:30ish and getting back to the car just before dark. We decided to keep the (almost) solstice tradition going this year with Der Sportsman. 17+ hours of daylight is pretty luxurious We left the trail head a little after 6. Our packs felt light with no water and no real insulating layers to speak of. The trail was pretty quiet at that hour on a Tuesday. The hike up Aasgard was pretty uneventful with only the usual snow patch to cross near the top. The descent down to Prusik was a nice change of pace and the soft snow seemed to make it a little lower impact and faster down the steep sections. Arriving at the base in good time, we decided to chill for a little bit and recover to give us a better shot at the cruxy first pitch. Finally the sun coming around the corner gave me enough courage to rack up and get going while the crux was still shaded. Unfortunately I pumped out and broke a foot chip so no OS for me, but Sean followed the pitch in style. P2 isn't too spicy apart from the real risk of whipping on your belayer. This is the only reason I would consider setting up the belay a little higher. P3 is absolute money! Unfortunately it has 2 fixed pieces at the beginning that detract from the cleanliness of the line, but who really cares, it's great! P4 I found the step right to be super desperate and kinda just fell onto the far right foot as a last resort, not sure how that worked out but it did. The moves off the pillar near the end of the pitch are pretty spicy. The rope looks like it would slice right across the arete if you were to fall. Best to avoid that. P5 was probably the only sandbagged pitch on the route. I'd also say it's the worst pitch on the route, which is saying a lot since it is still pretty damn good! I've seen the pitch called 10b, but I'd say 10c/d. P6 Oh boy is this the icing on the cake! Such an incredible position to be climbing such an amazing crack! Definitely not 12a, felt more like 11a/b on TR. From where we topped out, we untied and scrambled up to the summit, chatted with some nice folks and took a small nap. We then downclimbed the W Ridge and scrambled back to our packs in our rock shoes to avoid taking axes or shoes up the route. The hike out always sucks, but is the price you pay for the light packs and burrito dinner. We got down with enough light to re-set up camp and crack a beer before the headlamps came out. I feel like I've focused too much on times in my previous TR's. If you want to know our splits I have a Strava track HERE. Gear Notes: Double rack tiny to 2, single #3 and triples in a few finger sizes. We brought nuts but never used them. 60m 9mm rope Handfull of slings and QD's Water filter Trail runners Approach Notes: Over the river and through the woods, up the pass, down the hill and up another hill.

Nice TR! This likely is better suited for the "Alpine Lakes" tab if there is an admin who wants something to do.

Good work once again! Is there a reason you guys decided to fuss with the tricky ridge again rather than take what you pointed out as the "Optimal Approach?"

@DPS If you go up there before this weekend I'd be very interested in hearing how far you can get.

@Kyle M I think we tried to force it this time around. We should have known it wasn't gonna go after hearing that baker got a surprise 2ft of fresh the day before. Going forward I'm definitely gonna wait for firm safe conditions and a bombproof weather forecast.

My friend Sean and I went for the FSA (First Second Ascent) this weekend the slow and heavy way, Unfortunately the weather gods had different plans. When we got to camp in the basin it had snowed more than expected, and kept snowing hard through the night. We called it as we were going to bed to the sounds of large natural slides ripping down the north and west face. Luckily I brought my fat (read only) skis and we got a few laps of knee deep powder in the basin before skiing out. I had been looking at your guys line earlier this season as the obvious line of weakness up the face but I lack the motivation to venture that far into the unknown. Thanks for dreaming big and I hope you heal up fast to get back out there this summer!

The rain then freeze cycle last week made for some good alpine ice conditions at the pass. NW Butt on Chair was in cruiser condition yesterday. Would likely be hard to protect per usual. The upcoming snow fall will likely make it wallowy again. Hard to tell if routes on Snoqualmie are in or not. Someone should go check out NY gulley. Had to chop out the cornice.

I think I have one of those! Will have to verify size and version when I get home but it sure does have some large drop pockets.

Is this still available?

Trip: Chair Peak - NE Buttress Trip Date: 12/09/2019 Trip Report: Went out to Chair peak yesterday in search of mixed conditions and found exactly what we were searching for. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day, but would have preferred a few more clouds to shade us and the route from the blazing sun. Overall I would describe the route as "in" mixed climbing condition. Out as a snow or ice climb P1: We took the right variation. Very fun and good mixed climbing practice. little to no ice but I did place one 10cm screw. P2: was a simul block across snow covered slabs and ledges over to the base of the ice step. Not many options for belays but it's hard to fall with much force on those slabs. P3: Sweet neve up to the narrow, thin and unfortunately short ice step. The step consists of a narrow column just barely wide enough to both protect and climb. I placed two rater than one stubby to help protect the belay anchor. I placed my spectre for fun in some turf after the step and belayed off two pins and a slung pinch point up and right. P4: cruiser snow simul to the top. Sean slung a tree for pro. Both rap anchors for the couloir rappel are currently out of reach. In order to reach the bolts I had to stand on my toes and hook the bottom rap ring, with my tool, then do a pull up and clip in direct to my tool in order to thread the rappels. The piton rappel is another 20ft higher. I'm 6'2 and could barely reach, anyone shorter would likely need to tie their tools together or use a probe. The skis pictures spent the day under a tree somewhere on the approach. Gear Notes: Gear we brought: Cams .4-1, many nuts, 1 Spectre, 4 kb's, 2 10cm, 1 13cm, and 2 16cm screws, 1 picket, 9 single slings 2 doubles. Gear we used: all the cams, the KB's, the 10cm, 13cm and one of the 16's, 6 singles 2 doubles. Approach Notes: Currently the summer approach seemed to be the best option. Pray for snow.