PorterM

Awesome! How did the gully's do with glacial ice? Pick weights?

Indeed. Last year two friends who don't spray skied it. They said it was terrifying and would never do it again (because of cracks I believe). I skied the lower quarter last year a week or two after they did it and we traversed WAY skiers left and schrund is more manageable there. Curious if it will ever come into condition for it to be an enjoyable ski again...?

Thinking about it now, given the north aspect and elevation, it is definitely an accumulation zone by definition (more snow falls than melts on average). My best guess is either enough snow sluffs/slides off that it doesn't build up. Or, more likely, the steep angle combined with the mass of the glacier equals a very fast rate of movement, meaning the change in character of the route will be quick. My mind goes to the Nisqually icefall which I've heard moves fast due to its steep angle. As it is (regardless of the pandemic) the HW doesnt seem skiable.

Wow, I had heard rumors of people getting after in there but this exceeds my imagination! I might have to get out there next winter...

@Rad Yup, it has been dialed back now. This climb was back when it was more borderline. Rest assured that I have dialed it back now/won't be in the mountains for a bit now, like everyone else. @Geosean Last year was actually June 2nd. Interesting, not sure how to explain that. Things are always moving, of course, but it sure feels like a leaner snowpack as in more things are open up there as compared to last year. Strange.

Awesome! Thanks for all the work you put into this Kyle! This is definitely becoming one of my checklists... Maybe the core of my checklists. As for other routes to add, something harder and rarely climbed on Hood seems deserving. Yocum has gotten a lot of love in the past few days and has never really been "forgotten". What about something on the black spider face (black widow maybe?) None of those routes see regular traffic, I don't know if any of them would be deserving of this list though as I haven't climbed on that face... Anyone know better?

Nice work Matt!

Trip: Mt Baker - Coleman Glacier Headwall Trip Date: 03/18/2020 Trip Report: I’ve come to expect three things when climbing with Peter. First, we won’t wake up too early. Second, our packs will be light. And third, we will move fast and take almost no breaks. With those thoughts in mind, I was looking forward to getting up on Baker with him. We started climbing together years ago with next to no experience and have grown a lot climbing together. We had a wide variety of ideas of things to do and while heading up and seeing the Coleman Glacier Headwall, we decided that’s what we would do. We left Bellingham bright and early at 7:30. As we drove the road, we never saw that classic sign that says to stop driving there so we just drove all the way to the parking lot on compacted snow. We left the car around 9:30 and we were soon skinning up grouse creek. We didn’t stop until the saddle into the heliotrope area, both feeling a little sluggish. We followed a skin track across the traverse and dropped down onto the Football field. We skated across this flat and dropped another hundred feet onto the Coleman Glacier. Here, we put skins back on and scoped our route. We found our way through the broken glacier without much trouble and soon we were standing at the base of the Coleman Glacier Headwall. From this angle, it looked small and easy, but we both knew it was a pretty big undertaking. Last spring we bailed off it after a lot of rock fell and in the process of skiing down, I fell and cut my thumb pretty bad. This time, we were hoping for things to go better. We switched out skis for crampons and poles for axes below the face. There was a sizable debris pile we wanted to stay clear of so we transitioned further back. We started up the headwall around 12:30 and quickly ran into trouble. It looked like crossing the bergschrund was going to be tricky but when we got to it, it looked almost impossible. Significantly more involved than last year. We ended up doing a pitch where I traversed out left, over a snow bridge, up a vertical snow bulge, and onto vertical glacier ice. From here, I got a screw and traversed right off the glacial ice and onto water ice. One more snow bridge took me to more serac where I belayed Peter. Fro here, he stayed on belay and tested one more snow bridge that stood between us and the main funnel of the route. It held him so he untied, coiled the rope and took off to catch up. We tried to move quickly through this main debris funnel, as it was here was saw big rocks come down last year that scared us off. Today, I had seen a fist-sized rock or two come down. We got through that constriction on a little bit of AI2 and traversed left, out of the majority of overhead hazard. After this we had about an hour of steep snow, kind of crusty, that brought us to another sketchy crack. After a short belay across that, we continued up and left. As we approached the last steep pitch we ran into a lot of smaller cracks with thin snow bridges between us and that last steep roll to the top. Peter put me on belay as I started poking my nose around the cracks, looking for a way through. I punched an arm or a leg through into air a few times. Eventually, I found a snow finger than I literally crawled across and a big step took me on to the upper face as the finger shifted under my feet. Now I was on the upper but still needed to find a belay for Peter. We had taken to one person testing crossings on belay and then coiling the rope. But this one was bad enough to warrant a belay. I found an exposed rock and cut a bollard around it in the rime. It seemed like an ok anchor but I wasn’t about to hang on it so I sat on my front points and told Peter to not fall in. Peter got over the crack and up to me. We were in an awkward spot so I untied and Peter continued, tagging the rope. Another relentless 55-degree slope took us on to the summit plateau. It was almost 4 and we had no interest in crossing the flat to climb another 15ft so we took a quick break, finished our food and water, slapped the skis on the feet and dropped down onto the Roman Headwall. We got about 10 very high quality turns on wind buff before hitting the rime. It’s been windy and the rime on the headwall is fist-sized and doesn’t ski great (it doesn’t really ski at all). We didn’t take our skis off, instead, we rattled our teeth and tried to stay upright. Once we got down to where w dropped right toward the glacier, the snow improved a lot. It was great wind-affected cold snow. We skied fast toward the col to enter grouse creek. From that col the snow became very good and just got better and better. We had a blast until the trees where the snow got soft. We got back to the car around 5:30. A few thoughts on the route: This is a pretty full-on route, despite that, it wasn’t terribly fun to climb. Peter and I agreed that none of the climbing on the route was particularly fun and there was a sense of unease the entire time as well. I’m glad to have climbed it, the day overall was very fun, especially since there was no wind and no clouds. We brought a 30m double and three screws and a 30m thin dyneema line. This rack worked well for how we did the route. Here is the line we took (have you checked out FATMAPS??) Polish looking pretty fat.CH looking very difficult right now Gear Notes: 3 screws, some skinny 30m ropes Approach Notes: Grouse creek is great right now.

Oh, we were still considering coming down the corkscrew so we wanted to leave our skis lower. I wouldn't do it again...

Trip: Sloan Peak - Superalpine Trip Date: 03/15/2020 Trip Report: This past Sunday, Tavish and I climbed Superalpine on the west face of Sloan. After the incident last time I wanted to get back and climb the route to the top. We didn't quite tap the top due to wind slabs on the upper face. I'm going to mix up the order of this one and put all the route details first so those who are looking at climbing the route can use this page for reference. Kyle also has a great page about our first climb of this route with excellent photos and maps. https://climberkyle.com/2020/02/28/fa-sloan-peak-superalpine-wi3-4-1000/ Approach: Both times I've climbed this route we parked at the spot where 4096 merges from Mountain Loop Highway. 4096 had deadfall and snow which made it undrivable but if you can drive up a bit before there's too much snow or deadfall then that will cut off some distance. Follow the road (easy skinning or walking) to where the Bedal Basin trail forks off to the left. Take this trail through the trees for a few miles to where a slide path up to the left becomes obvious. This slide path leads to the base of Full Moon Fever. Skinning up this path is straight forward and takes you to the base of the West Face. A long traverse to the south will bring you to a ridge that leads to Superalpine. Here, options exist. Assuming you're on skis, I recommend leaving them at the base of the route and descending the route. There is also the option of descending the corkscrew route and wrapping around the south side to meet that ridge (it would be heinous to boot) or carry skis and descend the glacier to the North East that will eventually allow you to meet back up with road 4096. The ridge can be tricky. Once you decide your strategy, the ridge will still be engaging. It's not scary, just steep with deep snow. The Route: However you opt to get to the base of the route, you are first presented with 2 (or 3) options for pitch 1 to access the couloir itself. The first time Kyle and I climbed a WI4 step on the climbers left. It was vertical for 2-3 body lengths and fairly thin. This past time Tavish and I thought it looked even thinner so we scrambled the ridge further up (M2-3) then did one pitch that wrapped around to the second step of the first pitch and ended at the same place. Either way, you need to get to the bench at the base of the obvious weakness in the wall. A third option may exist to the climbers right of the ridge. Perhaps it's even easier (if so it would bring down the grade of the route to Wi 3-3+). Pitch 2: This money pitch leaves from the bench and provides a full 60m of steep sustained Wi3. Protection was generally good for this pitch. Make sure to go a full 60m if you are planning on simul-climbing higher on the route. Pitch 3: This middle section of the route was lower angle and about half snow and half low angle ice (wi2) for us. We found good pro every hundred feet or so. This section makes a lot of sense to simul-climb. Both times we did a 100-150m block. There was good ice at the top of a chimney-like feature, or, if you've saved enough screws, the next step had good ice on the right for us. Utilize rock gear to conserve screws through this section. Pitch 4: From the end of the last pitch, this is the last section before exiting to the face. Depending on where you belayed, you’ll either have a steep snow slope to a curtain or be climbing right onto the curtain. This curtain is where Kyle fell on our first attempt. This past time, I found a sub-vertical weakness (wi3/3+) on the right side of the curtain (not the smear further right which provides a good belay). However, when Kyle fell, there was spin drift blasting the section I climbed so he went further left where it is more like Wi4 with a heinous top out with sugar snow and hollow ice over sugar. I found good protection in the weakness but Kyle didn’t find good pro further left. Approach this pitch with caution, don't be afraid to back down. I found a great ice screw belay on the right about 20ft above the curtain. Another option to avoid this pitch if it is unclimbable is a snow ramp to the left. See photos to spot this snow ramp. This would avoid all of the upper curtain and put you on the upper face, however, it is steep and exposed and unprotectable. As with the whole route, use your judgment. This isn't just alpine climbing…. It's Superalpine! The steeps above: Look at photos of the big face above the route (and have them with you). There are a variety of options that exist to climb this large feature (700 vertical feet). When I climbed it most recently, we found deep unconsolidated snow, wind slabs, alpine ice, and rime features. This section is shared with the corkscrew route and is very committing. There are a lot of ways to get lost, falling is never an option and it's mostly unprotectable. Very reminiscent of the upper slopes of the Cosley-Houston on Colfax. If the snow is consolidated and secure, it would be a total blast to climb, if not, then maybe it should be avoided. On the first attempt we bailed due to injury, and on the second attempt, we bailed halfway up the face, after converging with the corkscrew route, due to thick cohesive wind slabs. The descent: Descending should be straight forward. Downclimb the steep snow, and rap the route. We took 5 or 6 raps to get down the whole route each time. There is no down climbing once you’re back down to the top of the curtain pitch. Each rap is a full 60m and ends at good ice, providing plentiful V-thread options. Other descent options exist as mentioned in the approach section but this option is quick and straightforward. Ski out the way you skinned in. Rack: In the conditions we found, 8 or 9 screws including a 10cm or two makes sense. Rock pro isn’t super plentiful and there is a lot of ice so we took 4 cams, 4 nuts, and a pin or two. This is probably what I would recommend. If you try it earlier, then beef up the rock gear side of things, the rock is quite solid in places. Hopefully, people get out and climb this thing! It is like the NW Ice Couloir on Eldorado but way bigger. Lots of ice, great setting, not too heinous of an approach. Tavish and I did 17hrs c2c. We were not rushing but we weren't lollygagging either and we were ~350ft from the top. Kyle made this topo with the options. My opinion remains to descend the route. Good to know your options. Here is a topo I made on a John Scurlock photo of Sloan from February 2005 (low snow/ice year). Red dots show the route (note the three options for the first pitch). Yellow is the tricky ridge. Green is an approach that could avoid the tricky ridge. Aerial photo from Shane in February 2020. The ramp to avoid the curtain is obvious in this photo. Now, onto the story from yesterday. Tavish picked me up at midnight in Bellingham after an hour or two of restless sleep. We drove through Darrington and onto Mountain Loop. His Prius handled the road like a champ and by around 2 am we were packed up and walking up the road. I was in crocs since I forgot running shoes, they did the trick (they're the next big thing in climbing for sure! Breathable, waterproof, sorta, ultralight, cheap, comfy, and climb 5.12 with ease.) Anyway, we started skinning after about a half-mile and cruised up to the Bedal Basin Trail in about 90 minutes. There was a fresh half-inch of snow showing bobcat (?) tracks following the existing impression of skin track. From there we encountered a mix of booting and skinning in the trees, mostly skinning but lots of skis on skis off. There was a slight impression of the existing skin track (probably from Michael Telstad, thanks!) that we followed and got us where we wanted to go. We skinned up the slide path below Full Moon Fever and the snow transitioned from a few inches on a crust to a nasty wind board. I knew it would be bad since I skied the white salmon the day before but I was hoping to find wind scraped, not wind loaded terrain on this aspect since it would be indicative of the upper slopes. We continued to the tricky ridge as it got light, left our skis there and put on actual boots (last time I climbed in ski boots, this was better). While we transitioned, we got pretty cold. We brought big puffys since the freezing level was 0ft and it was probably 5 or 10 degrees. Fortunately, the sky was clear and there wasn't a breath of wind. We hurried through that transition and started booting up the ridge in all our clothes. Bobcat? Not a dog, not very big... It was slow going and I punched through to my hips or deeper at several points. We were toasty warm by the time we were at the base of the route. The left-hand variation Kyle and I took last time looked much thinner so we opted to climb the ridge above us and see if that would go. We soloed up easy rock to an impassable wall. Luckily we could traverse left and rejoin the first pitch from last time. Tavish led that and gave me a meat belay to the first bench. I led the next pitch which provided a full 60m of sustained ice. Very fun! Tavish took off from there and we simuled around 150m. It's so fun to move quickly, especially when it's that cold! We got further on this simul pitch than last time and I got worried that Tavish was going to get to the spot Kyle fell before I could warn him of the dangers. Luckily, he didn’t. He belayed from a thick clear smear, right of the curtain. I led the curtain up a weakness on the right and it wasn't too bad. Above that, there was an ideal ice bulge on the right to belay from. This was great because it provided an easy spot to transition from climbing to soloing and eventually to rappelling. I rigged a V-thread while Tavish soloed up the snow above. After threading the ropes, I took off after him. I caught up and he looked concerned. I could also feel the snow was not ideal. We could see snow plumes ripping over the ridge above us and the snow we were on was a cohesive wind slab. We downclimbed a bit and then went up further left through some tight constrictions and ice. Above that, there was another wide-open snow slope and we found two distinct layers in the snowpack. The top here was about 6in thick styrofoam-y feeling wind slab. Bellow that was another 4in thick older windslab, and below that was sugar. We had probably already gone too far but we decided to call it here and started down. Me on the second pitch (SO GOOD) Tavish getting to the top of pitch 1. Tavish taking off into the simul section. Tavish on the upper slopes It's hard to turn around so close but we were certainly riding a fine line with zero margin for error, given what was below our feet. Down climbing steep snow isn't fun but we got it done and got to the ropes. The raps went smoothly and we found great ice at the base of each 60m rap. The last pitch had to be broken into two raps last time, both off pretty small trees, so this time we tried another option. We went off a little more south off a slightly bigger tree and did an exactly 60m rap down rock that got us on to snow. We post holed in wet sun affected snow to our skis, and the rest of the descent went smoothly, albeit, pretty slow since we were tired. We got to the car before dark for 17hr c2c. Tavish on the final rap. Lots of ice above Full Moon Fever... Anyone interested?? That's it for now! Feel free to reach out with more questions! Sorry, I don't have more photos from on the route it's self. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Gear Notes: See Rack Section Approach Notes: See Approach Section

@AlisseGood question! We were all soloing (scrambling) up that area and I found a few moves to be tricky and could tell I was a bit more comfortable on the terrain (and I didn't have the rope) so I fixed the cord on a piece or two. So yes, I was already through the moves and fixed the line for them. @DPS Kyle was the photo rockstar, I usually come up short in that regard... Thanks @Kyle M

Trip: Dragontail Peak - North East Couloir Trip Date: 11/23/2019 Trip Report: I got out for a stellar day with Kyle and Daniel on Saturday (November 23, 2019). Following a few weeks of mostly high pressure and moderate temps, but with a storm front moving in, we were curious about conditions in the Stuart Range. Kyle brought this route to my attention, as I hadn't even heard of it. We found a TR on here from November 2008 and this inspired us to go give it a look. Be sure to check the trip from Kyles perspective at https://climberkyle.com/2019/11/23/dragontail-peak-ne-couloir-wi2-m5-r/ After leaving the trailhead around 5 am, we found more snow on the surrounding peaks than expected, which was promising considering the lack of recent precip, except for a day or two the week leading up to this. We knew the weather was supposed to deteriorate and winds were supposed to pick up throughout the day so we hurried to Aasgard Pass. We switched to boots and crampons where the creek down the pass was frozen and flooded over the boulders. At around 8 we started soloing up easy little water ice flows toward the base of the couloir. At the base of the couloir, we could see the first dry section that leads into the couloir and it didn't look too hard. We opted to rack up but solo up it. It was a tad techy so I fixed a cordelette as a hand line in a few spots for extra security. Above this, we were on variable steep snow. Throughout the couloir, we found everything from thigh-deep wallowing, to firm neve front pointing. About a third of the way up the couloir, there was a steep/overhung chockstone with a thin ice/snow flow on the right. I led up and over this with some mediocre gear (a tied off 10cm screw and a cam lower). Above this, we soloed a bunch more steep snow until our gully ran out of snow and we did a pitch traversing 30ft right over rock slabs to a different snowy gully. Now we were approaching the top of the couloir and it was starting to open up and become drier. Just 2 more pitches took us to the top but, wow, they were seriously full-on. The first pitch was a series of near-vertical granite steps with steep snow in between. This was perhaps the technical crux as there were quite a few delicate moves but also some dark brown ice that took good sticks, as well as generally good gear. I belayed off a horn, looking up at the last pitch, which appeared to be 100% dry. I was tempted to ditch the crampons but kept them on since the only bomber feet I had gotten on the entire last pitch were in the few small patches of ice and I was still hopeful that there would be ice above that I couldn't see. Once Kyle and Daniel got to me, I mentally prepared to take the sharp end for hopefully the last time of the day. There had been a lot hard and sketchy climbing already, and the hardest/scariest was still yet to come. I started up the pitch, immediately finding that the rock quality was deteriorating. I was mostly climbing with both my axes racked since the rock was so bad. It seemed like the majority of holds could be pulled off and gear was sparse. When I finally got good gear halfway up the pitch I yelled "take" and sat back for a sec to breath. I took a few photos, looking both up and down. From then on, I didn't get another piece of gear. Eventually, I could see the ridgeline 20ft above me and was eager to get there. All that stood in my way was a steep kitty litter chimney, devoid of any gear of course. At this point, I had my gloves off since I was just rock climbing with crampons and its nice to be able to feel all the holds that will inevitably crumble in your hands. I started up the chimney, with my pack pressed against the right wall, my crampons finding edges in the left wall, my arms finding chicken wings and armbars, and cursing like a sailor. Thankfully my gopro had already died. I wouldn't mind forgetting this pitch. Down below, Kyle and Daniel were experiencing a constant flow of gravel filling their hoods. I remember throwing one hand up over the ridge onto a jug and letting out a sigh of relief before mantling up and finding an extra bomber belay. The wind up here was absolutely ripping and I got cold quickly while belaying. I was wearing all my clothes and had sweated a bit on the previous lead. The forecasted winds (60mph) had arrived and there were now intermittent clouds, but the sky was still mostly clear. Our weather window was certainly closing. Kyle and Daniel enjoyed the pitch far more than I did and both arrived at the belay with big grins, especially since they could climb near each other and watch all the holds break off. Since I was cold and antsy to move I let them break down the belay and sort out the ropes while I looked for the "traverse to the notch." I found it, but accessing the notch looked just a bit spicy. I wanted to solo it but realized I was just cold and anxious to get down and out of the blasting wind and gravel so I lead it with one rope and gave each of them a terrain belay up to the rap station where a single 60m rap got us out of the wind and to a point which we could walk from. We were out of the wind and off the technical terrain. It was a big relief for me. However, the light was fading and Aasgard pass is never fun to head down. There was a set of tracks up to the summit proper of Dragontail which we followed downhill and down the pass. As the light faded I snagged a photo of the route from across the pass. It looked pretty impressive, I was briefly proud but mostly humbled. We talked briefly about the climb. Perhaps there were mistakes. It would have been possible to bail down the route once we saw how dry the upper pitch was. I was enticed to just climb it since the ridge was practically 80 or 100ft away and bailing down the route would have meant leaving gear and taken a lot of time. Hard choices. Of course, you will never know exactly how it will be until you're in the thick of it, but perhaps we/I made too bold of a choice and got lucky (on the other hand, down climbing the snow would have also been tricky). Food for thought for anyone who has made it this far through the trip report. I try to stay safe and climb hard, but its a tricky balance. Anyway, we got back to the car around 8 pm and headed to McDonald's. All in all, it was a very fun day with 3 competent 22-23yr old Washington born and raised climbers. And for anyone curious about this route right now, I would steer clear! In the coming days, I'll post some first-person climbing video on my insta @porter.mcmichael First, a photo of the route, taken on the descent. Looking up at Dtail Approach ice Still on Asgard Dry pitch to access the couloir Fun steep snow! Chockstone in the middle of the couloir Looking down on the last pitch (I think) Looking up in the middle of the last pitch From the ridge looking down the chimney Looking North from near the top Kyle on the last pitch Daniel on the last pitch Down the rap Gear Notes: 3 screws (placed 2), 4 pins and a bulldog (surprisingly didn't place any), nuts (placed a few), cams .2-2, some doubles in the smaller sizes (placed them all), 60m doubles. Approach Notes: On your right, halfway up Asgard, hard to miss it. The slabby approach pitch is the first obvious way to access the gully (farthest climbers right)

Stellar photos!! Way to avoid the line up on Eldo ;D

Trip: Colfax Peak - Cosley-Houston Trip Date: 11/10/2019 Trip Report: Not going to do a long TR here since there are plenty of TRs on the Cosley-Houston. This will just be a quick update on conditions for those interested. First off, I was wrong when I posted a week or two ago that the approach is heinous/convoluted. You just have to stay a bit lower now and wrap around to the base, it's not an issue as long as you don't go up too early. I guess I, and several other parties, tried to go up too early and got blocked by cracks so people thought it was going to be difficult. See the photo below outlining the current approach. Anyway, Eric Carter, Paul Greenwood, and I left the parking lot at 4:11, tried the new glacier approach, it went smoothly and we were soon at the base of the route. The first pitch is great, decent pro (better than last year). The crux pillar is pretty full-on right now. Maybe 20+ft of dead vertical ice, pretty chandeliered at parts which makes sticks less confidence-inspiring and pro a little trickier. Right now, the vertical section of the pillar is perhaps twice (or maybe 1.5x) as tall as it was last year. It felt very hard to me and 4s normally feel hard, so maybe its a 4+ or maybe it's just that I'm not in ice shape (mentally) right now. Anyway, if you go up there, expect it to be hard and bring the screws to make it "safe". Above there, the snow traverse below the next step is in (barely) but the ice also looks climbable. We opted to not climb it because there was a lot of stuff coming down, including golf ball size rocks and smaller ice, but it looks fun if you can get it in, the top out looked a little thin so a belay might be tricky. Above there it was a cruise, perhaps a little thin for the last 200ft, one 5ft section of actual ice over rock just before the top. We topped out 7hrs after leaving the car. Finally, the descent is straight forward and the major crevasse we were worried about proved to be a non-issue because it's filled in enough at one spot that it can be downclimbed. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, I'll post a video of leading the crux pillar on my insta @porter.mcmichael Also, someone else got to the route before us as we were following several day old tracks up the route, awesome! Additionally, another team could be seen starting up the route as we were descending through the football field. Directions through the glacier: Polish is looking good... Anyone want a belayer up there? First pitch On the thrilling pillar... Entering the tight couloir to the top: Couloir near the top: View of Lincoln: Looking down over the problem crack: Looking back up: Lastly, a few route close-ups, sorry we didn't get an actual photo of the pillar! Thanks to Eric for a lot of those photos! Last time I climbed this route was exactly a year ago and the conditions were very different, as you can see here! Gear Notes: 12 screws, could use one or three less, brought a picket but didn't use it. Approach Notes: See above!

@seano- yeah the river is all changed and undercut the road so they had to reinforce the road there. The old log can be seen downstream on the side of the river, crazy... apparently upstream is the better crossing now.

Nice work and thank you for the tracks (and beta) to follow! That made things pretty straight forward for us. You also managed to get much better photos of the climbing...

Trip: Eldorado - NW Ice Couloir Trip Date: 11/03/2019 Trip Report: Camille and I had a great alpine romp on Sunday. Fall alpine ice season is in full swing!! Anyway, we left Mt Vernon at 1 am and headed toward Cascade Pass. We arrived at the Eldo trailhead at 1:45 am. Confused? so were we. Turns out, it was daylight savings and 2 am became 1 am. We started uphill at 2 am. Immediately I realized it had been a while since I'd been up Eldorado as the giant log we used to use to cross was gone and the river had clearly changed a bit. We explored downstream for a dry option to cross and found an icy, uphill log. This worked but it wasn't graceful, felt like climbing a squeeze chimney. Once across, we started up the trail, it felt warmer higher, the cool calm air must have settled in the valley. Near the top of the boulder field, Camille took a spill and smashed up her shin pretty good, lots of blood, very deep (sorry, no photos). But, she's a trooper and after a tight gauze wrap, we continued up. Snow started at 5000ft right at the end of the boulder field. It was refrozen week-old snow, that was mostly supportive and we switched to boots above, around 6000ft. We cruised up to the flat glacier below the summit and saw two guys walking downhill toward us. They had technical tools and said they had climbed the couloir the day before and found great conditions. This was exciting news as the several days prior had 9 to 11k freezing levels and that had me worried about the condition of the route. With tracks to follow and knowledge of a high-quality route, we crossed to the east ridge campsite and stopped to put on crampons. It had taken 5.5hrs (7:30 am) at this point and the sun was just rising. From there we had tracks to follow in the snow crossing the inspiration glacier to Deans spire where we found a 2 piton anchor with cord for the first rap. (Lucky that we have tracks to follow) We racked up while we still had sun and rapped the first 30m. We brought a single 60m rope so we had to get a bit creative on the raps since we couldn't find an obvious intermediate anchor. I found a good spine to the skiers right and we went another 30m off an equivocation hitch. That brought us to above the last vertical step and there was a single small fixed nut (perhaps a bit rusty) on the side. I backed it up, sent Camille first, then pulled the extra gear and headed down. In retrospect, I should have just left another nut to back it up. The raps left us just about 100m from the base of the climb and it looked pretty ideal. (HUGE thanks to the guys before us who replaced the tat at the top anchor and left tracks for us to follow all day). We tied in and started up, just simuling up the steep snow. It looked like there was going to be a lot of ice and based on trip reports, most people preferred fewer screws and more rock gear but these were not the conditions we had. We brought 3 screws and a bit more rock stuff so I was pretty bummed and had to be quite selective with where I put screws. We simuled through about 70m of actual climbing before reaching a near-vertical step. There was a nice crock on the climbers right so I belayed there then started up the step. All of the following pitches were a blur, a lot of AI2 type ice, sparse gear (maybe not if you had 6 screws), and a healthy dose of simuling through progress captures took us to the top. What I do remember is a ton of very high-quality ice, slightly soft but not wet. Not too many dinner plating issues and one ~20ft step that was AI3+ or maybe even 4. Quite steep, found a great pin at the base and halfway up put in another screw. (see a video of this on my insta @porter.mcmichael) There was an equal amount of steep neve connecting the ice pitches and a few short sections of mostly unconsolidated sugar. One thing that was perhaps slightly alarming was due to the warm temps, there was a near-constant barrage of ice pellets coming down the couloir. Not a big deal until something bigger knocks ya off when you're 100+ ft run out. I never saw anything bigger come down and around the top, there wasn't much that looked like it could come off in a bigger way. I suppose this is to be expected on bigger funnel-like routes when it's warm. I think I did 4 belays in the couloir (could be 5 or 6) before topping out on a fun 30ft roll of wet ice. We tied off short and went up to the left about 40ft before gaining the ridge that led ~100ft to the summit. Spectacular as always. Seemed a tad knife-ier than normal which was fun! (I wore tights, sue me ) After a few photos, we headed downhill. It was now 1 pm and we (or maybe just I) were slightly confused about the whole daylight savings thing so when darkness would arrive was something of a mystery... The descent was cruiser until we got off the glacier. There, the snow got very soft and we started punching through the crust. This was slow, tiring and hard on Camille's banged up shin. We got down off the boulder field before true darkness set in. (Jburg looking dashing as always) Upon getting back to the river, neither of us wanted to bushwack to the sketchy log so we just walked through the river and hopped in the car for 16.5hrs c2c. Not the fkt I'll bet but we were worried about timing since we were going c2c and it worked out alright. Thanks for reading along and hopefully this provides some good beta for future climbers as well as anyone who wants to go get after it in the next week or two! See you in the mountains! ~Porter PS. I'll put a few first-person vids of the climbing on my Instagram @porter.mcmichael (Shameless plug) Gear Notes: Cams .3-2, 3 pins, a few nuts, 3 screws (10,13,19), forgot pickets, 1 would have been nice for the conditions we found, more would be nice for more normal conditions). Approach Notes: Standard now seems to be the rap by Deans, could use better rap stations (or I missed them or they're buried.)

Trip: Colfax Area - Unnamed Ice Line Trip Date: 10/29/2019 Trip Report: I couldn't bring my self to go to class on Tuesday so instead, I woke up at 2 and drove out to Heliotrope trailhead with dreams of epic long solo ice climbing on Colfax. This didn't happen but it was still a great day. I ended up leaving the trailhead around 4 or so and cruised up the trail to the Coleman (microspikes on running shoes were perfect for all the ice sheets in the trail). It got light around when I got to the football field above the toe of the Coleman. The snow was very firm and icy from freezing levels being high (~8-11k) for a few days before dropping to 1600ft the night before. It was downright frigid up there but blue skies and generally calm conditions made it enjoyable. I knew that people had run into impassable cracks approaching Colfax 3 days prior and I found their tracks and followed them (WHY???). Naturally, they led me to a section of impassable cracks where I had been able to walk across last fall. I poked around briefly but didn't see anything promising. I could have rapped into the crack and climbed the far wall but there were obvious holes in new snow leading to darkness in the bottom so, being solo, I decided that wasn't prudent. Besides, the upper slopes of the Cosley Houston looked thin and the ice pillar looked a little thinner and taller than I remembered. (Photo: CH looks like it goes, maybe thin down low, and up high) (Photo: Colfax (left) upper half of CH and Polish routes. The closer face (right) has the ice lines I looked at. The line I climbed is hidden above the snow fan on the left. The dead straight smear near the right was climbed over the weekend.) I wasn't terribly stoked on soloing that, so I opted to turn and head down ~100 yards to a north face of a little peak that separates the Thunder Glacier and the Coleman. I saw about 4-5 obvious, steep long lines of ice leading to a steep upper slope. Basically a half-scale Colfax... I chose an obvious, fat, steep line that looked to be in the WI3 or 3+ range. (Photo: I believe this feature is unnamed and the line I climbed is also unnamed (and maybe unclimbed?) regardless, it's worth getting it out there that this exists for people to have a bail option/out of time option/easy introduction option near Colfax. (Photo: looking up at the line I climbed). Approaching the base, over some avy debris from last week, was fun and the steep snow to the base was great. A few hundred pounds of serac popped off and rumbled down a hundred feet to my left as I approached the ice, I knew I was out of the way, but it's still a little spooky to see/feel that so close. The first 100-130ft of the route were water ice with a few neve shelves. The movement was great fun and I was set up to self-belay if I felt I needed it. I never did but was glad to have to option close at hand. There were two steps ~15 ft each that were dead vertical or very close and felt very exposed. It was just right, a few brief moments of fear but mostly just good fun. Above the ice was ~400ft of steep snow with a few sections of ice. Right before the summit, the slope kicked up to perhaps 65 degrees for ~30 ft. There was a small cornice that could be stepped over (read: heel hooked) onto the top but I imagine other times of year the cornice could be problematic. I descended to the northwest down a steep glacier. I just had a 30m rope and did 3 V thread raps. Looking back I may have been able to avoid rapping all together by down climbing a gully/crevasse in the glacier. I debated hitting another line on the face but felt I had had my fill and chose not to push my luck. I took a nice walk down the glacier to my shoes and jogged down to the car, getting there around 1:30 pm. I enjoy the long peaceful days, solo in the mountains. It's good to have no one to bounce ideas off and be forced to make decisions without input. For those who want to hit Colfax this coming weekend, I've included a photo of an approach I believe will work to get to the face. Maybe you can go way lower and come in the east but up the face, I climbed (or up the glacier I descended) and over should bypass the problem crack and get you where you need to be. Below are a few photos from the bases of the other obvious climbs on the face for those interested! The straight-up thin line was climbed over the weekend and I saw their tracks and a bollard they rapped off on the descent. Gear Notes: 30m rope, used to descend, a few screws and a picket I didn't use. Approach Notes: See above

Trip: Snoqualmie Mountain - New York Gully Trip Date: 03/16/2019 Trip Report: Lael and I climbed New York Gully yesterday on Snoqualmie Mtn. We had great conditions and were treated to warm temps and high quality ice. We left Bellingham around 5, left the car around 7 or so on skis. The approach was fairly straight forward once we found the right parking lot/skin track (which took a bit, below is a pic with the approach laid out and where to park.) We left our skis on the ridge before dropping down to the north side of the mountain. The boot pack to the base of the route was slow and tiring as I post-holed about hip deep. We started up the route around 11, opting for the Direct NY Gully variation (mostly because we were so done with post-holing but also because there was another group right behind us and I was hoping this would space us out). Forecasts called for freezing levels around 6-7k so we expected any ice to be pretty rotten. It actually turned out to be pretty good! First pitch of the Direct variation was very high quality and quite fun. Only got one piece of gear but the climbing wasn't very hard. We then met up with the normal route and belayed there because the other team was a bit ahead of us. The next pitch was shorter, a left-hand traverse to another belay as we were moving a bit quicker than the team ahead of us. They were very nice and then allowed us to pass at the base of the box gully. We had a 60m rope so I knew there would be some simuling and communicated such to Lael. I had 9 draws and led about 90m through the box gully to near the 5.8 crack. I had to run it out more than I'd like given that the climbing wasn't super easy. It was a blast of a pitch though, the ice was good, the movement was fun and it was practically bolted with the pins in there. In fact, I don't think I placed more than a piece or two on the whole pitch, just clipped fixed pins. Lael followed every pitch much faster than I lead them. I topped out at a nice crack for a 3 piece belay from which we climbed about 40ft to the base of the 5.8 crack. It wasn't as hard as it looked but conditions were in our favor. I traversed to the base and put in a #2 then racked my axes and took off my gloves since it was sunny and warm. I jammed up the crack, pulled on the old webbing around a chock block in the top, clipped a biner on that webbing, and just like that, the crack was done. The difficulty didn't immediately ease though. I got out my axes and climbed some pretty steep turf and ice to a tree which I passed in favor of a rocky spine to belay off of. From here we traversed across a solar face with some pretty bad roller balls, so we simuled across to the trees where we unroped and headed for the skis, got there around 4:30 so we spent perhaps 4hrs or 4.5hrs on the route, in 6 pitches. The snow was atrocious from a whole day of sun and warmth but it still beat walking down! Had a great day of fun and hard climbing. Gear Notes: single rack from .4 to 3, 2 knife blades, 1 13cm screw (would have liked more), some nuts. 60m single. Approach Notes: Short, but a bit slow..

Wow, what a trip! Thanks for sharing!

Solid! looks like a fun winter route!

Maybe look at the scarpa zodiac tech gtx? Same idea as the trangos but far more flexible and a more supple upper. Theres also the ribelle tech OD. Both will climb rock well and are semi auto crampon compatible but the zodiac seems to fit your requirements a little better (and are far "cheaper")

Lots of very fun ice to be had above heliotrope! We found mostly cold dry ice. Conditions were generally not conducive to leading (short pitches with snow below or thin ice or not hard enough to justify it, ymmv). There is ice to be had! Up and left of where the trail goes right to heliotrope (trigged a wind slab below this) Same area as above FAT flow to the west of the trail on the way up, kind of wet, very easy, about 80-100ft same as above (this ice is grin worthy) Up and to the right of the last climb (cliff band below heliotrope) (sorry for the quality) same as above Hope this inspires some hope for the winter to come!! ~Porter

There was a little spice to be had, nothing unreasonable though!

Trip: Argonaut Peak - North East Couloir Trip Date: 11/17/2018 Trip Report: Yesterday Conrad and I climbed the North East Couloir of Argonaut. We found fun, and challenging conditions. We left Leavenworth around 3:20am and were headed up the trail by 4:00am. We moved quickly along the trail to the spot we had decided we would branch off and cross mountaineers creek. Upon crossing, we filtered more water and started our bushwhack as it became light. After a while in the trees we ended up in a small boulder field and found a string of cairns. Though headed more toward Stuart we opted to follow. This proved to be fruitful as they led us toward the tree finger that allows one to avoid the bushwack from hell in the slide alders. We followed the beta from Jens Holsten posted on a previous TR that said "Here is the beta: After crossing Mountaineers Creek, cross over a wooded rib or two and then head straight south through the woods. DO NOT enter the boulder field until you have literally walked out the end of the woods as far south as the trees extend. At this point you can hook back left on a talus finger that avoids all that nasty bush whacking." Posted on a TR from 2011. This beta proved to be key and accelerated the approach. We ascended the talus and frozen dirt and caught up to a group of three. We never were close enough to talk as we went futher left to climb some approach ice smears. Approach Ice Once in the Couloir we soloed up to the first rock step. This had a steep smear of ice and proved to be great fun. The ice filled the crack enough that I had to run it out on the smear but felt pretty secure. From here we unroped and continued booting up the snow with a few sections of easy rock mixed in. We passed the alternate route that Jens mentions and opted not to take it due to it appearing to not take any gear. (Thin ice line in right of photo, will definitely take if I climb this again) Above this there was another steep rock step which we climbed on its right and turned out to be a one move wonder, one hook over the top followed by lots of grunting to pull myself up the to top of it. Following this pitch we unroped and continued all the way to the notch looking south. Should have gone right to gain the snow slopes at some point but we ended up here and wrapped around on to the south face. We found what looked to be our easiest line up from there and Conrad led this feature up mostly rock with a snow dusting to the snow slopes (sorry, no photo, but it was very difficult and pretty heady, glad I didnt lead it). We booted up a nasty breakable crust to the summit ridge. This was exposed but fairly easy and we opted to solo everything. After a summit snack around noon (I think??) we retraced our steps and following one rap on tat we were in the col at the top of the couloir. (Photo climbing on to summit) Retracing our steps: We continued down the East ridge another 30ft to another tat anchor and rapped from here into the top of a snow gully leading south.We booted down this to the flatter southern slopes. We chose to descend the col between dragontail and colchuck peak to colchuck lake so we started our sunny slog to there. Once at the col we could tell light was starting to fade and we had long since finished out water so we didn't lollygag. We started down the Colchuck Glacier and quickly hit the bergshrund. There was a thin snow bridge that we chose not to trust and instead took the leap... We found lots of steepish exposed glacial ice and spent a lot more time on the front points as we climbed down toward the lake. Eventually we ran out of snow and ice and switched to approach shoes and started walking down the rocks (now covered in frost). We made it to the trail right about when we needed our lights and has a nice (read: long and tired) walk out, arriving back at the cars at 7:00. For future fall climbers, the thin ice line to the right in the third photo appears that it would be a very fun alternate route. This is a very fun fall alpine route! GPS Track, (disclaimer, we didn't follow the best route 100% of the time) http://www.movescount.com/moves/move254799988 Gear Notes: We took 3 screws and never placed one, but would still take one or two because ice was around. A few nuts and a few cams from fingers up to bd #2 proved to be most useful. Had pins but never placed any. Approach Notes: Follow the cairns if you find them and take the tree finger up as much of the talus slope as you can (stay further right than you'd expect).