tylerhs01

Awesome! I did the 4 Sisters traverse a couples summers back on foot, but not with a bike approach! I just moved to Bend and am definitely psyched for more long, silly human-powered adventures. Let me know if you're looking for partners!

Thanks y'all. Lot of fun rock out there. Next time I think I'll check out some lesser traveled areas such as the towers along Crystal Creek and stuff behind The Temple.

Trip: Stuart/Enchantments - The Enchanted Enchainment Trip Date: 06/30/2019 Trip Report: On Sunday June 30th, I managed to complete a whirlwind tour of the Enchantments' 9 tallest peaks. I think "enchainment" is the right word, since I did not stay true to the ridge crests like a "traverse" would imply. Ever since my route through the Core zone last summer, ticking off the 7 major peaks from Mclellan to Cannon to Argonaut (and also Prusik), I’ve been pondering the feasibility (and stupidity) of adding Stuart to the list. I'm no Peter Croft, so I'd start with Stuart's west ridge. Much route-planning was done. At first I was considering an approach from the south side, to facilitate an easier romp up Stuart, but I think the mileage for that route would be too much for my non-trail-runner legs. So I settled on the Stuart Lake approach and hoped I would be able to find a shortcut to Stuart’s West Ridge (since the West Ridge is almost always approached from the south). Jake Robinson and his buddies did a 3 day trip, ticking the same peaks and provided helpful beta. The ridge from Stuart to Sherpa is fairly straightforward, but I knew from them and others that Sherpa to Argonaut was gnarly. I considered dropping all the way down to the valley trail after Sherpa, but decided I would try a high-ish traverse to save some calf-burn. The only other route-planning decision was to drop straight off Cannon to the car. It is just so friggin alluring!! Cannon is such a slog via the normal route, and the fact that it is geographically so close to the trailhead was too much for me to pass up. Future Tyler be fucked, I suppose. I created an illustrated route overlay of what went down (with actual gpx data), using fancy color-coding and dashed lines to indicate difficulty and tediousness of terrain. (gpx file here). Cause information and maps are fun. I started my pilgrimage at 1:30am, in order to have some light once it got steep on Stuart. I pandered my way through the burned stuff past Stuart Lake and managed to ascend the slopes toward Long Pass without too much difficulty in the dark. I encountered some steep snow to get up to the 7950’ notch on Stuart’s NW face. From the notch I dropped down a bit and traversed some more snow to get to the shortcut gully. The gully had continuous snow, but I was sick of the hard snow in my cramponed approach shoes, so I scrambled up class 3 rock to the right. All in all, shortcutting the west ridge was pretty straightforward and required no technical climbing whatsoever. ^ the view back toward the 7950 notch Everyone and their uncle has posted their version of the west ridge, so I won’t dive into that. I reached el primero cumbre at 7:40am, a bit behind my self-prescribed schedule. From Stuart I meandered down the Cascadian and stepped off toward the Stuart-Sherpa Col. I encountered a short 4th class downclimb, and didn’t reach the col until 8:40am. ^ Fun clouds from the top of Stuart Sherpa’s west ridge was great fun, and I was almost suckered into a beautiful splitter crack before I more responsibly found easier terrain off to the left. I reached Sherpa summit around 9:10am, looked auspiciously at the balanced rock, and decided to save it for another day. The descent off Sherpa was quite straightforward after reading beta on folks descending from the north ridge. A short 4th/5th downclimb followed by trending skier’s left into a scrambly gully until I reached a big-ass vegetated ledge at about 8100 ft, and then more leftward traversing to a broader gully, which I took all the way down to 7200 ft. From here I began the long, much-not-looking-forward-to traverse to Argonaut. In actuality, it was not bad at all, and perhaps even vaguely enjoyable! There are some huge swaths of granite on these high slopes, many of which are littered with fun knobs for easy scrambling. The rest of the terrain was quite straightforward goat-trail meandering. Time-consuming, but not god-awful by any means. I eventually reached Argonaut’s southern gullies and ascended easy terrain until right below the east ridge where I climbed a probably unnecessary section of easy-5th. From there I scampered to the summit (at 12:30pm), with a bit of apprehension as storm clouds began rolling in. From Argonaut, I descended a rap route on the east face, which I had done the summer before. I had found some unused webbing/rings on Sherpa, and used the rings as a nut placement to aid down a somewhat tricky section near the base of Arg (for the next party wondering what the heck is going on there). From here, spirits were high, as I knew I had completed most of the tedious stuff and would be on fairly well-traveled terrain for the rest of the day (not including the hail-mary off Cannon at the end of my route). ^ Looking back at Argonaut A few splits: Colchuck – 2:30pm Dragontail – 3:40pm Little Anna – 4:30pm Mclellan – 6:20pm Enchantment Peak – 8:10pm (I only tagged the NE summit, which may be lower than the SW?) Cannon Peak – 9:40pm ^ Into the core... ^ Stuart & friends from the Enchantment Peaks ^ Stuart & Enchantment Peaks & friends from Cannon Managed to top out on Cannon with a bit of light to admire a hard day’s work (damn Stuart looks so far away!) From Cannon I was feeling pretty good about making it down before my 24 hour goal. After all, the car was only 2 miles away… In the weeks prior, I had done some route-planning using satellite imagery and a topo to figure out the least-bushy way off Cannon. This was helpful but not a perfect solution to the hell-hole that is the 5000 vertical feet of bush, dirt, rock, bush, scree, and bush. Maybe I’m exaggerating, as I was quite delirious at the time and it was dark. The first 3,000 ft were fairly straightforward, with a few cliff-bands to avoid but mostly loose dirt/talus. The next 2,000 ft of vert went from bad to worse. Many cliff-bands were not hinted at by my topo map, and where I had previously plotted a viable line through rocky terrain (while comfortably sipping tea in front of a computer at work), was not actually viable terrain. So into the bushes I went and I didn’t arrive at the trail until around 1:00am. From the trail it was a short, but damn-did-my-feet-hurt, hike to the car. Roundtrip was 23 hours and 35 minutes, 16,865 ft of gain, and 27.4 miles. Frankly, those numbers seem pretty small considering, which I attribute to all the little (and big) shortcuts I connected to make quite an aesthetic loop through some beautiful country. I hope some of this beta is helpful for those looking to enchain some peaks out there or just get some damn good exercise. Gear Notes: Axe, crampons used. Approach Notes: Stuart Lake

I reckon it would go all year, it would just get more tedious with all the loose talus. I ducked around one crevasse near the top, but I think it would be fine for a while.

Trip: Mt Hood - Cathedral Ridge (via bike approach) Trip Date: 06/22/2019 Trip Report: Ever since I encountered this excellent-looking bike ride on the interwebs, I've been scheming to combo it with a climb of Hood. http://bestrides.org/lolo-pass-back-road/ I left the town of Zigzag (at a painfully low 1500 ft elevation) on my bike at 4:30am, and began the ascent up to the trailhead via FR 1828. The pitch was quite reasonable, I was worried about the bike ride with all my gear, but after popping it in my lowest gear I was able to putter up without too much effort. I reached the trailhead around 6am and began the hike up Timberline trail. Pretty fantastic misty-light-through-trees action on the way up. I downloaded a trip report of Cathedral Ridge onto my phone, but hadn't started reading it until I got up to McNeil shelter. The TR made it seem quite convoluted and exciting, which gave me a bit of pause since I was just going up solo in my approach shoes. The route turned out to be quite straightforward though. Between 7400 and 8800 it stays more climber's left of the ridge, and ducks right of the ridge around a big cliffband at 9200. At least the way I did it. I took crampons on & off a few times when nice snow slopes appeared, but I encountered nothing steeper than 40 degrees. And it probably goes without saying, but the rock was pretty shitty and loose. I summitted around 11am, and saw my first humans of the day. Largely uneventful on the descent, other than a few exhilarating glissade runs. The road surface on FR 1828 was a bit iffy, so I instead descended East Lolo Pass Rd, which just consisted of open straightaways at relatively mellow grades. I was really psyched on this trip! Really cool part of the mountain, although this was my first time up Hood so I can't really compare. Route: Gear Notes: Ice axe, crampons, bike Approach Notes: Zigzag --> Timberline trail

I think Alisse downplayed a bit the traverse onto Boston's north face from the Boston-Sahale Col (at least in my opinion). I thought that section was quite spicy, with huge exposure, and involved some pretty careful steps through shallow snow. Thankfully Alisse led that bit and I had nice steps to follow. It seemed like the couple inches of new snow weren't bonding super well to the old stuff. I would be hesitant to get on anything steep if the snow keeps accumulating this week. Although maybe some rain will help if freezing level drops. We were on the N face quite early in the morning (front-pointing), but if the snow softened like it did on the north aspect of Boston the evening before than it would have made for an excellent ski. No exposed rockbands to speak of yet, just a couple of (probably jumpable) 'schunds lower on the face. The Boston glacier is nicely filled in. Easy route-finding with or without skis, although I'd personally rope up if not on skis.

Good to know!

Oof, glad I didn't experience that! The rock quality was poor, but the position was absolutely incredible. I think it's also possible to approach the buttress from the east/left side? The hike out was all a blur, I just remember the pizza :)

Trip: Pickets - North Buttress of Fury (during Pickets Traverse) Trip Date: 08/04/2018 Trip Report: Lani Chapko and I were planning on climbing Mount Robson via either the Kain Face or North Face, but weather looked iffy so I came up with a new objective that I thought would be equally challenging. We totally sandbagged ourselves on this route. Neither of us looked to closely at beta or trip reports, we just knew that the buttress was often approached from glaciers on the west side and the rock was supposed to be 5.6 or easier. I figured it would be like the DNB of Stuart with a long approach but no 5.9 climbing... The initial plan was to do a full Pickets traverse from Hannegan to Newhalem, climb Challenger, Fury, and maybe a Southern Picket. We set up the hella long car shuttle and started hiking to Hannegan Pass on Thursday afternoon. I screwed up big time and crossed the Chilliwack at the wrong point, and we traverse for an hour through steep trees to finally arrive at the faint trail up to Easy Ridge. ^ Getting lost on the way up to Easy Ridge As the sun set we set up camp at Easy Ridge and hoped for a dry night despite a wet forecast. On Friday we traversed over to Challenger in low visibility conditions. The Imperfect Impasse was snow-free, making things quite a bit more challenging than when I crossed it in May. On the way back up out of the Impasse, we hauled packs for a section. ^ Crossing the impasse We then crossed the Challenger glacier, also without any visibility. Lani was a route-finding pro somehow, and we didn't dead-end on any crevasses. Arriving at Challenger arm, the clouds cleared and we got our first look at our route up Fury *insert swallowing and stomach knots here*. ^Our route up Fury. Keep reading to know what NOT to do. We set up camp in Luna Basin and talked a bit about life and death (mostly death), and whether or not we should draw a line somewhere with regards to alpine climbing. We woke up at 4:30am and started up the west side of the buttress. ^The North Buttress in early morning The first crack at the base of the buttress we avoided by going to the right on mid-5th, loose, unprotectable rock. We soloed up without packs and then hauled them up with our rope. This became a common theme on the "approach", the glacier-carved rock was largely devoid of cracks and it seemed futile to use a rope without gear. The next rock band was harder and longer, we mostly went straight up from the top of the first snowfield and I found just one gear placement in about 130 ft of climbing. I think going further left and clipping trees would have been a better option. From here we excitedly got back on the steep snow and headed up toward the rock chute of doom. ^ rock chute of doom There was a big 'schund that extended out to the rock chute of doom (RCOD) forcing us to quickly cross the chute and head up the snow to the right. Throughout the approach so far we had noticed a couple small rocks coming down the chute but nothing worrisome. We climbed the snowfield and crossed the RCOD at a big boulder back onto the left snowfield/glacier. At this point it started raining lots rocks and ice, both down the chute and to the left and right of it, we quickly got under a big boulder at the base of the next rockband. We climbed the next rockband via the left side of the large boulder we sheltered under to avoid being in the shooting gallery. We looked down with distressed as more rocks and ice rained down on our approach path, meaning bailing would be a dangerous proposition as temperatures rose. Finally we scrambled up toward the buttress crest and excitedly put on rock shoes. We encountered a difficult 5.8ish step almost right away, which was not very well protected. We wanted to simulclimb a lot of the ridge, but with only a few cams and some nuts it was hard to climb for a long enough time to make simuling efficient. So we ended up doing a mixture of long pitches and soloing/scrambling. ^ Lani after pulling a 5.9ish roof and finding a hand crack, one of very few sections of good climbing on the route. We climbed up rock for a while before arriving at the "snow crossing". We were able to skirt the snow on the right side, however, and avoid putting shoes/crampons on. ^ "Is it hands?!?" - Me ^ "It's friggin hands Tyler!!" - Lani More scrambling intermixed with 5th class led us up toward the snow arete. We noticed the skies were getting dark to the east after a remarkably clear day. After finishing a long pitch, I looked up at the rest of the route. At that moment, electricity rained down from the sky. The thunder and lightning occured simultaneously and sounded like a bomb, striking the mountain a stone's throw away. I looked down at Lani, "On belay?". We continued climbing to find a better spot to hunker down. By the time the storm looked like it was subsiding, it was about 7pm and we weren't sure if we would be able to top out in daylight. We found an almost tent-sized area with just a few thousand feet of exposure off the eastern edge of the buttress. After moving rocks to make a vaguely flat platform, we decided we would take up landscaping afterward and setup the first light as the rain started to fall. ^ Setting up camp in a rather precarious position I slept comfortably despite having my feet over the edge, and we woke at first light with a plan I was not excited about. It was Sunday morning. Our car was in Newhalem and I was supposed to be at work on Monday morning. We had a bit of extra food but not enough to continue through the Southern Pickets. I told Lani we'd take the "fast" way out via Access Creek to Ross Dam. She didn't know what that meant luckily. We climbed up the half snow-arete, half choss ridge. ^ On the second section of snow near the top of Fury ^ The final section of climbing to the summit area/false peak. I felt pretty maxed out in my approach shoes on this gradient Topped out at about 7:30am. All we had to do was traverse steep heather/talus/snow to Luna Col, then up and back down to Access Creek, shwack out the creek to the trail, and then hike 17 miles out to the highway, and then hitchhike back to Newhalem to pickup Car #1, drive back to Hannegan to pickup Car #2, and then back home. Our splits roughly: 4:15am - Wake-up from thunder bivy camp 7:30am - Topped out on Fury, called boss to tell him I may not be at work on Monday 1:30pm - Arrived at start of gully down to Access Creek 6:30pm - Arrived at Big beaver trail, made dinner 12:00am - Arrived at Ross Lake, made breakfast 4:00am - Arrived at HWY 20 6:00am - Got hitchhike to Newhalem 9:00am - Arrived at Hannegan trailhead 11:00am - Ate huge pizza in Glacier, WA 2:00pm - Crashed on a beach in Seattle, WA We weren't moving particularly fast, but we kept moving! The Pickets are rough but soo addicting, I'm headed back this weekend Gear Notes: 60m rope, a few cams, nuts, 1 axe each, crampons Approach Notes: In via Hannegan, out via Ross Lake Dam (not planned)

I couldn't find the endurance thread, but I had heard of Croft's big traverse. Nuts Do it! You don't have to move fast, just consistently

Westy Ford had the idea of doing that and Bachelor as well. I reduced it to just Sisters + Broken Top because it allowed us to fairly easy hike back to the car at Pole Creek trailhead. Granted I vastly underestimated the length of the hike back from Broken Top. Ended up being a 34 mile day in 19 hours. Some interested route-finding up the Northwest ridge of South Sister. We also didn't summit North Sister, there was a very steep snowfield (rock hard in the morning) that we weren't comfortable doing without boots or a second tool. Broken top has a pretty cool topout, we took the wrong route up (around the left/North side of the peak) but found the regular route down.

Trip: Enchantments - 7 Bulgers in a day Trip Date: 07/14/2018 Trip Report: Since moving to Seattle last September I haven't yet visited the Enchantments (except N Ridge Stuart), and I had just one day off this past weekend so I figured I should whip up something unreasonable. My initial plan was to thru-hike the Enchantments and tick the more accessible peaks (Mclellan, Prusik, Enchantment, Little Anna, Dragontail, Colchuck). But as things often go, one friend insisted I scamper on over to Cannon Mountain, and another friend posted a cool TR from Argonaut... I like hiking uphill and biking downhill, so starting at Snow Creek and ending at Stuart Lake was the obvious choice of direction. I stashed my road bike (I should really get a MTB) at the Stuart trailhead and started from snow Creek at 1:30am. The goal was to get up near Mclellan by sunrise, but I was a little late. Here's a GPX track of my trip: And here's a timeline of the peaks: It would seem silly to go through route conditions/beta on these uber-popular peaks. But I had an incredible time with this little challenge and am really curious what other similar or even bigger trips have been done. Some notes: - All in all: 31 miles, 16,800 ft gain, 20.5 hours - Averaged 1 bulger every 2.9 hours. I feel like this is a pretty difficult rate to attain even with a single mountain, what's the fastest bulger out there (c2c)? - I brought axe/crampons and only used them on the descent down Colchuck glacier (and they were much much needed on a section of bare ice). - West Ridge of Prusik was my first real free-solo (and down-solo). The slab bit definitely felt exciting, although at least downclimbing slab is about the same difficulty as upclimbing. I brought a harness, rappel device, and a beer just in case I freaked myself about the downclimb. I was thinking I could bribe another group with the beer to let me rappel with them. Nobody was on the route though, and the downclimb was fine. And I forgot about the beer until arrived back at my car. It exploded all over me after biking down the bumpy-ass road without suspension (or daylight). - The Southwest peak of Enchantment is awesome! Really cool summit block and some airy 4th class to get there. - Argonaut peak felt like an even headier solo than Prusik, but that was because I think I got a bit off route on the East face. I found a squeeze chimney to climb on the way down luckily (squeeze chimneys are the best when soloing!) After doing the Three Sisters + Broken-top traverse in Oregon the weekend before (holy choss-muffins!), I fell in love with the ease at which you can travel off-trail in the Enchantments. And once you suffer through the approach, all the peaks are so close together! I'm guessing others have completed similar trips, but I'd be psyched to hear what variations they did! I'm also interested in the possibility of doing all 9 Bulgers starting and ending at the Stuart Lake trailhead in 24 hours. I think it could be done (has it been done?) but the Stuart-Sherpa-Argonaut terrain looks pretty slowgoing. More pictures: Gear Notes: Axe/Crampons Approach Notes: Snow Creek to Stuart Lake Thru-hike

I think Challenger is quite reasonable in a weekend from Hannegan trailhead (much more so than this trip), the glacier was very filled in as well (end of May). Solo glacier travel is definitely a statistics game. I feel like early season on relatively benign glaciers like Challenger or Fury are no more dangerous than highway driving. But maybe that's not the case.

Trip: Northern Pickets - East Fury and Luna in a weekend Trip Date: 06/16/2018 Trip Report: Intro pic from the top of Luna: I did a solo trip up Mt Challenger a few weeks ago and enjoyed myself so much I decided I needed another dose! I've become a huge fan of weekend sufferfests. Doing stuff in a day is cool and fun, but you don't get as much of an alpine experience. I like making oatmeal at 4am in a rock bivy, waking up before sunrise at high camp, etc. etc. My pack weight for these trips is probably only 30 lbs or so anyway. I wanted to get to Luna on this trip, and figured East Fury would be a good stretch goal. I'm too cheap to pay for the water taxi, so I schlepped it 13 miles around Ross Lake and up to 10 mile shelter after work on Friday (I couldn't actually find 10 mile shelter, does it exist?). Saturday morning I started the much-not-looking-forward-to slog up Access Creek. I used the log crossing at 48.8395, -121.2090, although I could not find any kind of trail from Big Beaver trail to the river crossing. From the log jam, I headed up and right toward Access Creek (I found the higher I went the less bushy it was), and crossed Access Creek at 3k ft (thanks to the people who did Luna in a day last summer for this beta). Took about 3 hours from turning off Big Beaver trail to the headwater of Access Creek (was way faster on the way down once I improved my route-finding). The chutes up to the 6,100 ft notch were firm snow which was awesome. ^ Looking down at Access Creek The traverse to Luna Col was quick and painless with all the snow. Arrived at Luna Col at 1pm, decided to be ambitious, drop my bivy gear and try to bag East Fury. ^ East Fury from the 6100 ft notch below Luna Col. I took the right-leaning snow-ramp to the left of the major rock formations. Not sure what the standard route is. It took 3.5 hours from Luna Col to top of East Fury, and some micro-storms starting rolling through as I approached the summit. Raised my heartbeat a bit, but made for some good pictures. ^Southern pickets from Fury Back to Luna Col by 6pm and pretty exhausted, but the sky started clearing so just before sunset I couldn't resist scrambling up Luna. ^Looking north from Luna at sunset. The final ridge scramble was spicy! No snow whatsoever, but thought-provoking nonetheless. The last summit log entry was from late last summer. ^Southern Pickets and Fury from Luna Probably should have brought a headlamp up Luna. Best weekend trip to date! Gear Notes: Hiking poles and crampons Approach Notes: Ross Lake Dam - Access Creek - Luna Col

Bronco, That is good info, thank you