daylward

Did a semblance of this route yesterday (Friday) with Tim Matsui. Definitely thin, but it was quite enjoyable. I think we were slightly off route, because we didn't see many of the landmarks pointed out by Nelson/Potterfield. We didn't see any section that required aid, any trees (other than a large old snag at the beginning of pitch 3 that isn't described in Selected Climbs), no 8" offwidth or chockstone... but we did find some fixed pins and our route roughly followed the line in the Selected Climbs picture... Here's our experience: We got on the route about 100 yards up Enigma Gully from the base of the face, moving leftward on mostly snow-covered slabs; it was the obvious place to start, because it formed a wide sloping ramp up towards the middle of the face. This matches the Selected Climbs description. We linked the first two pitches together in a running a belay. We made the first belay at a large snag in what could be considered a "box" (maybe we didn't go far enough up & left before making our first belay?). At the time we felt confident that we were in the right place, because we were at the bottom of the obvious right-slanting ramp that we'd seen from below which we had decided was the route. The ramp was sparsely iced, it turned out to be excellent and challenging mixed climbing; especially challenging to avoid the loose rock. About halfway up this pitch (our second belayed pitch, presumably corresponding to Nelson's 3rd described pitch) the ramp turns into a wide slot (in other words, there's a roof overhead). Before leaving the upper end of the slot, there were two fixed pins nailed into the face (an angle and an arrow) on the climber's left. Reaching the end of the ramp, the obvious course of travel turns left (straight up) up a snowy V-groove. We had to running-belay about 20 feet for me to reach the first available belay spot, just to the left of the top part of the V-groove, out of the line of fire, where I could stamp out a super belay stance and stick in a bomber 3" cam. Tim led the next pitch - above the V-groove to the right, up a steep slabby rightward ramp, he was thankful for frozen moss & heather to make up for the lack of water ice. He found a belay in 50 meters of difficult mixed climbing, up in the sun, in an alcove of rock above a thin snow slope. I took the next pitch slightly left and up dry rock, into another fairly steep ramp/gully facing slightly right, where some ice was formed and I actually got a few good sticks in among the many tool hooks and cams and actual handholds... then it emptied out onto a mellow snowy hump. I kept going to the top of the hump, then cut left up a rock ramp, before belaying when rope drag was too great from all the zigzags. Apparently Tim had to running-belay for 50 feet or so. The last pitch was easy & short to the ridge crest, but then we had to downclimb to the right and then traverse a steep high snowfield (hanging into the top of Enigma Gully) to get to the actual shoulder of Snoqualmie Mt. We realized we could have avoided the detour to the top of the ridge crest if I had simply gone around the corner to the right from the top of the snowy hump instead of going up into the leftward rock ramp. Forrest and Ade are doing it today. I gave them our beta, we'll see what they say, and if they figure out where/if we went wrong... Dan

quote: Originally posted by forrest_m: assuming that you're talkin' about the west side descent... from the summit, maybe 2-3 hours to get through the technical part of the descent. it's pretty straight forward but has some exposure. we only had to do 2 single rope raps. another 2-3 hours down the trail. depending on how tired you are. that side of the mountain is very dry! fill your water bottles with snow on the summit if you can (there's often a remnant cornice you can quarry), 'cause there ain't a drop until you get down to the road. once on your bike, it's maybe an hour (under normal circumstances, see below) to the highway, another hour back up the road and 45 minutes or so back up the dirt road to your car. the dirt road portions do not get much traffic, at least not as far up as you are leaving your bike. down lower, maybe, but i wouldn't rely on it, you might be waiting a long time. So, by your timeframe, it took 2.5 + 2.5 hours to get down to the road, + 1 hour to the paved road (+ 1 hour waiting for the artillery chicks), + 1 hour up the paved road to the other dirt road + 45 minutes up the other dirt road = almost 9 hours from summit to car. Since we got going from the summit at about 7:30, that would put us at the car at 5:30? I seem to remember driving back through Bellingham at about 2:00 pm, thinking about how nice it was to have a good portion of a day left after doing a climb like that; I think we actually got back to the car at about 12:30. So go ahead and chop Forrest's times in half for a more accurate schedule. The 2 single-rope raps can be done in half an hour, but there's still some scrambly 4-th class diagonal (rightward) downclimbing before you get to the beaten trail. After that, 1.5 - 2 hours down the long & steep, dry & dusty trail will get you to the bikes. Then it's only about 14 miles of mostly decent road between the descent trail and the car, so it really doesn't take super long on a bike; probably 1.5 hours at a leisurely pace (10 mph).

Naw, we were too busy eating and drinking.

Serpentine Crack... I did that with Mark Westman, I'm guessing about 6 years ago now? I remember the roof. Mark led. He vocalized loudly; he made it sound like it was the end of the world... but he worked through it, as he always does. I don't recall having much difficulty with it on toprope. Comparing it with Chianti... um... yeah, I'd say it was harder. More exposed-feeling too. But my memory is fading. The rest of the route was really fun. If you're quick you can do both it and the NW corner (another fun one with an exciting 5.9 runout in the middle) in the same day. Dan

You're right, the trail does cross the creek there. The weekend before (with forrest_m and Christopher Fast), we crossed it on a piece of alder that was sorta wallowing in the stream without getting our feet wet. We saw the trail sporadically (between snowpatches) going up on the right side of the creek. As Forrest explained in his post, it was easy going staying right of the creek and avalanche debris until we had to make the commitment and cross the debris. At that point, we found the debris field to be not as difficult as expected as we ascended up to the bench - we chose a line that was largely clear of obstacles, heading toward and then slightly right of an obvious outcropping of rock. We crossed the switchbacks of the trail several times on the slope, but it was impossible to stay on the trail very long due to all the fallen trees etc. so we just kept going straight up which was not very difficult. The advantage of staying right is that it ends up being a shorter distance. Cub Lake Pass is on the right end of the bench anyway, so you end up closer. You may even be able to stay in the forest totally to the right of the avalanche, all the way up to the bench? But it's good to know that it goes on the left side too. Thanks Dan [ 07-16-2002, 01:39 PM: Message edited by: daylward ]

I would recommend against an overnight for this route. It's a relatively short approach, not too long of a climb if you have previous Cascade rock experience, and the descent is quite straightforward. Even if you're not dialed and think it'll take you all day to do the route, doing the approach and descent in the dark would be preferable to carrying overnight stuff IMHO. It is pretty up there though; that might be enough reason for you to camp...

Nice climb! Where did you come in from, and how long did the whole thing take you? I was looking longingly at Goode from Liberty Bell last weekend, I gotta finally get my ass in there.

Great report, good to hear it worked out for you; perfect timing! The Ptarmigan high camp is a long way to slog just to retrace your steps the next day, and it sure is frustrating having such good weather everywhere in sight except for the the 2 or 3 square miles where you want to go! We'll get it eventually...

No, these were a couple of intense kids and an old guy from Toronto. They said they made one feeble attempt and barely even got to the base of the route. They did watch one party who summited (must have been the guide & client) come down, and it looked like they were hurtin'. Narrow misses with calving off hanging glaciers, wallowing in slop, etc...

Jeez, I wish I had read your post before we went up there... We left on the 31st and got to Talkeetna just as everyone was leaving. We were going to try 11,300, but talked to the last group to be flown out of there, and they said they'd been there for 3 weeks waiting for conditions to improve, and they did the opposite. So we turned our sights to the W. ridge of Hunter, but before we flew out I got ahold of Joe Puryear on the radiophone who was hanging out at Kahiltna base, and he said not to bother, there's nothing but chest-deep slop out there. He recommended going to the Ruth to climb rock. We didn't have rock shoes or a big enough rack for that, and though we may have been able to beg/borrow, we figured it was just best to cut our losses and come home. Now I can use a week & 1/2 of vacation for something else, but Talkeetna is a relatively expensive place to spend a weekend... Oh, the McKinley Deli & Pizza burned over the weekend! The girl who was renting the room in the attic fell asleep with a candle burning. Plastic melted all over her hand, but she made it out ok. Tough break for a Talkeetna landmark!

Yep, that must have been me. I don't remember seeing a green Subaru, guess I was blinded by speed. It took about 45 minutes to go down, get the car, and bring it back up. And amazingly enough, we didn't get a ticket in the Snow Creek parking lot without a pass! No note or envelope or anything. I was stunned!

Did the Enchantments traverse with my two sisters and girlfriend on Saturday (Nolanr, our tracks were probably among those you saw on Colchuck Lake). Just over 13 hours from Snow Creek trailhead to Mtnr. Creek trailhead, a great time for three who had never done anything like it before! Up the Snow Creek side, the snow started in patches just past Snow Creek Wall and gradually increased. The switchbacks before the first bridge were ravaged by trees taken down by some huge avalanche a few months ago; it was easier to walk up the logs than try to follow the trail. Snow stayed reasonably firm most places despite the hot weather; we all took snowshoes, but didn't need them. Asgard pass was powdery with a thin crust; littly avy danger and a cruise to get down. All lakes except Nada and Snow were easily strong enough to walk on. Worst postholing down in the woods below Colchuck Lake. Dirt patches began to appear in earnest at the first Mtnr. Creek crossing, but patches of snow continued sporadically all the way down to the trailhead. Beautiful day!

Ok, MattP wrote me a message saying he had received some inquiries as to whether parts of the route were as steep as I claimed. Who do you people think you are, questioning my superior route describing ability??? Seriously, I tried to describe the route in a way that people would not disagree with if they climbed it themselves, and re-reading it, I believe I achieved that goal. However, all I had to go from as reference when writing were the impressions in my mind and not tape-measure or inclinometer readings, so bear in mind that some of the figures may be slightly inaccurate. It is not my intention to mislead or make my accomplishments sound bigger than they actually were. Ok? Time for a

Throughout the winter, I find myself under constant pressure from multiple directions: work, skiing, and climbing. I gotta ski every weekend, but I really want to do some winter climbing, therefore to do that I have to take days off work, but my schedule at work is so tight that I find it difficult to ask for days off. I also have pressure from my schedule-free roommate Tim to go out and do something whenever the conditions get good. Well, this last week in February the forecast indicated the conditions were going to get good, and I was uncommonly ahead of schedule at work, so I asked for Tuesday off, told Tim I'd go do the N. Face of Index with him, and then I headed off to Crystal Mt. for the weekend. However, upon my return to the Billiken Ski Club on Saturday evening, I found there was a message waiting for me on my cell phone... Tim had decided to do Index with Kevin Kanning on Sunday/Monday instead, and if I wanted to join them I'd have to pack up and go right away. I opted against that, and in retrospet I'm glad I did. In the meantime, Jim Nelson had suggested to MattP that I might be a willing partner for his ambitions on Big Four. Seeing as how my plans had been so rudely ripped out from under me (no offense, Tim ;-) and I was partnerless, I jumped at the opportunity. And so it came to pass that MattP and I were headed toward the Mountain Loop Highway on Monday afternoon. We figured the conditions would be perfect; that four days of rain and up to 8000' freezing levels the previous week would have brought down most of the unstable snowpack from the otherwise extremely avalanche-prone face, and then the subsequent 1000' freezing levels on Sunday and Monday would have refrozen everything and increased the quantity of pure water ice. We made a brief stop in Granite Falls for some food and headlamp batteries, and arrived at the end of the plowed portion of the road (Deer Creek) at about 4:30. I parked my Subaru near two other cars by the turnaround. Matt said we were about two miles from the Big Four Ice Caves trailhead, so we decided to run up there before it got dark and take a look at our potential lines. The snow on the flat road was packed solid by many layers of footprints, ski tracks and snowmobile treads, so our progress was rapid. We passed several people on our way. We asked one snowshoer with a stout build and a large white bushy beard if he had gone to the ice caves. He replied that no, the ice caves are way too dangerous, there's "extereme avalanche hazard" (an exact quote from the prolific nearby signage on the subject); they had gone up the drainage opposite Big Four. As we passed by him, we chuckled... Avalanche Shmavalanche, we ain't afraid of no Avalanche! Seriously, we couldn't imagine circumstances less prone to avalanches, though we were well aware of the general power of that mountain to continually beat down the forest at its feet with vast torrents of ice and snow... We arrived at the trailhead, which afforded a grand view of the face in the pre-twilight. What an impressive mountain. Nearly 4000 feet of elevation lay between us and the summit, and any way you cut it, it's clearly not a lolly-gag to get there. The question was, which non-lolly-gag route should we take? Matt had envisioned something like the N. Face Couloir, which is sort of on the left side of the mountain. We could see patches on it that appeared to be water ice, and it certainly looked like a fun route. But another line struck my fancy... an obvious couloir that ended between the two rightmost peaks of the mountain. When I had told people earlier that day that I was planning on doing Big Four, a nearly unanimous response was "Are you going to try Bart's route?" They were referring to the Spindrift Couloir, which Bart Paull and Doug Littauer had done the first ascent of in 1996 (article in 1997 AAJ) when Bart was only 15. An impressive feat for a climber of that age, but I think Bart's widespread reputation as a "dramatic overstater" was born with the publication of his article; no one had tried the route to prove him wrong, but many were skeptical that it was how he described it, either from knowledge of the mountain or knowledge of him... Anyway, I had answered "No, probably not". But when I saw this couloir and the condition of the mountain, I suggested to Matt we might oughta try it after all. He responded "Well, I really shouldn't... but when am I going to be here again?" (or something to that effect). So that was it, our decision was made: Spindrift Couloir! We sauntered back to the car, cooked up some noodles, packed our packs, ate the noodles, ate our packs (mmm, vinyl) (no, not really, silly), hopped in our sacks, and drifted off into a sleep punctuated by startling "Is it time yet?" reawakenings. Of course it never was time yet, and at about 3:00 am we both happened to do it at the same time, so we thought we may as well make it be time yet, and we thusly got up. We had planned to wake up at 4:30, so we didn't feel too rushed as we boiled some water, ate our breakfast, and got ready to go... We left the car shortly after 4:00 am. The walk along the road went quickly, and before we knew it we were thrashing our way through the windfall, following the tracks of crazy people who did not heed the "Extereme Avalanche Hazard" signage. Pretty soon the windfall became avalanchefall where the forest came within reach of the torrents of ice and snow hurled toward it by Big Four. We topped a rise and the lower half of the mountain was barely visible in the moonlight diffused by the thick layer of clouds 2000 feet above us. It was anowing. A minor tickle of concern entered my mind... We debated how to ascend the lower cliff bands into the main snow bowl. Bart and Doug had apparently found a thin runnel of ice that ran a diagonal up and right from near the ice caves. It didn't look like there was much ice formed on the lower cliff bands this time, so we decided not to even briefly entertain that option. Instead, there was a large cone of avalanche debris piled up in front of the slabs to the right of the ice caves that looked relatively easily passable, at least from what we could tell from there. The snow started falling thicker as we moseyed across many layers of avalanche debris, of increasing thickness and number the closer we got to the foot of the mountain. We gradually mounted the cone, made of large chunks of icy snow covered by 3 or 4 inches of fluffy stuff. The sky began to get light from the east, and when we were right under the slabs it was very difficult to tell how difficult it would be to ascend them. We pressed on. At the top of the cone, we donned our crampons and harnesses. Not quite ready to rope up yet, we thought we should be prepared to do so at any moment! Matt started up first, crossing a moat and moving from snowpatch to snowpatch between the thinly snow-coated slabs, and I followed in a slight variation of his path. The going was easy. Shortly, we attained a wide bench, on which we traversed right on snow to where a narrow tree-step led to a thicket on the next level up. Matt briefly considered roping up for the tree-step, but I convinced him he could hook a tree with his tool and yard up, which worked quite well. I followed. We did some fun vertical bushwhacking. Matt said "This is the Big Four I know!". Hmm, indeed... It sure wasn't long before we broke out of the trees to find ourselves at the bottom of the main snow bowl. We happily noticed the snow had sort of stopped and the clouds were lifting. By this time it was light enough to read the watch without a headlamp: 7:30. Time to start the grunt! Step step step, slog slog slog, up the snow bowl we went, heading for the base of Spindrift Couloir. Every time we looked up at it, it was living up to its name... almost a constant stream of spindrift coming down it! I secretly hoped it would stop before we had to climb through it... Because of the volume of the torrent, we headed slightly left of the main gully. I looked up in the sky and noticed a blue patch and pointed it out to Matt. He said "Sucker hole". As we ascended, we scoped out our descent. Looking to the right, we could see a gully that came down from the right side of the large treed col to the nortwest of the summit of Big Four, just as the col starts trending up to its neighboring peak. The higher we got the better it looked; we could see it went nearly all the way to the top, and emptied out in lower-angle terrain in the middle of the main snow bowl. Perfect! The first sort of technical sections were perfect styrofoam, maybe 50 degrees, 60 in short bits; I started up ahead of Matt. "Rumble" went the spindrift. Suddenly, some spindrift came down our path! I hunkered down and felt it blow by... and keep blowing by for what seemed like several minutes... "Gee, this is going to be unpleasant" I thought. But then it stopped, and we continued up. We moved right, and found some bumps of water ice. I asked Matt if we should continue soloing. He said, "Sure, why not". Ok... It kept going. Awesome ice, awesome styrofoam... and the spindrift seemed to have stopped, and the sucker hole was getting bigger. I said to Matt "We sure must be suckers!" There seemed to be many possible options to continue upward progress; I chose a 3-foot-wide chute (possibly the same as the one described by Bart, though there was no exposed rock), kind of steep (75 degrees) but short and lined with white stuff of great consistency. Matt followed. We kept winding our way up WI 2 bumps interspersed with slightly lower angle consolidated snow, averaging maybe 60 degrees. It kept looking steeper ahead, and we talked about roping up, but figured we'd just "get up to that next bulge first...". But then, at 11:30, it got too steep. This pitch was definitely made to be done with a rope. It was roughly 40 meters of nearly vertical spectacular blue ice, what I would consider solid WI4 or WI4+. We planted our tools in the firm snow beneath it and gazed at the spectacle, then got down to business. We pounded in one of our two pickets as a belay anchor (about the most solid picket placement I think I've ever seen). I opened my pack (containing the rack & one of Matt's two 50m 9mm Stratos ropes; he had the other in his pack) and arranged the 6 ice screws, 4 cams, 4 pins, 2 Yates Screamers, and several assorted slings/cordalettes and biners on the various gear loops afforded to me by my harness and pack waistbelt. I tied in; I was amped & giddy. Off I went. The angle steepened quickly as my tools found solid purchase in the plastic ice. I angled up and right, and found a stance on a knob about 30 feet above Matt, where I twisted a 22cm BD Express all the way to the hilt. Bomber! I clipped it with a single 'biner. I moved on up another 15 feet of vertical ice, my horizontal-point S12's reluctantly succumbing to my beating them against the solid ice. Ok, time for another screw. I set my left tool in a patch of styrofoam, it felt solid; then set my right tool in a blue lump of ice. Solid too. I took my hand out of the leash and grabbed a screw, hanging all my weight from my left hand. "Twist.. twist...twist.. it's not quite in... gotta press a little harder..." Crunch!!! Suddenly, my left tool popped out! The pressure I was putting on the screw had applied equal and opposite tension on my left tool, tension it apparently could not cope with. Doh! My horizontal pointed crampons did little to arrest my rapid descent. Matt acted quickly however, and the combination of the 9mm dynamics and decreasing slope angle and softish snow below made the experience relatively pleasant (compared to many ice leader-falls, that is). I had fallen about 35 feet, so I was just about level with Matt! The one ice screw was a solid as I'd imagined it was, I still had my screw in my right hand, and I was completely unscathed. However, my other tool was still firmly placed in the ice lump above. Definitely interesting getting back up there with only one tool! I got myself together and started back up. I had to switch hands on my tool a couple times, depending on where "handholds" were (kicked steps, thick icicles, etc.), but managed to make it back to my tool, huffing and puffing. I grabbed it. I set my left tool again, this time in a much better spot. Screw, screw, screw... this time it went in. Solid. Hooray! Onward and upward. Thwack, thwack, chunk, chunk. Awesome. The sky was almost completely blue, with a few puffy clouds here and there. I got up another 20 feet or so, and put in another screw, this one hit a hollow section inside so I didn't trust it as much. I was running out of steam, but I kept going because I didn't want to hang on that screw. I went over some bulges and it started to become very difficult for me to swing my tools... I hung for a while, but with my hands over my head and my feet not so solid, I couldn't really relax. "Ok, I'm just getting more and more tired, and I can't even get to that little platform 5 feet up there... And I don't want to fall on that last screw... I gotta put in something!" I thought. With all the strength I could muster, I forced my spongy fingers to respond. I screwed got the screw out, pressed on it with my body as I wormed my fingers around it trying to get it in. Thankfully it relented, threaded, and started sinking. It was solid, woohoo! I got it all the way in, clipped a biner, yelled "Take!", slipped out of my leashes, and hung! What a relief. I hung there and shook out for a long time, looking around in awe of the position. What a spectacular place to be! "Alright, enough introspection... I know I have a Gu in one of these pockets." I sucked down a Gu, did a final shakeout, and started up. As I had thought, there was a good rest 5 feet up. I hung out there for a little while, then kept going. One more section of steep, one more screw, then the angle kicked back. I went another 5 meters and I heard "That's me!" echoing up from below. Time for a belay. I put in my last screw, a solid placement, and backed it up with my tools and spent the next half hour belaying Matt up. "That was a hard pitch!" he said as he arrived. Yeah, especially since he did it with one Grivel Light Machine and one SMC mountain axe! It was 2:30. Nice, up ahead looked like more of what we had below. We decided to simulclimb since we were already tied in. Matt took off, blazing the way between knobs of blue ice and channels of styrofoam, sometimes the other way around, roughly 60-65 degrees. Matt decided to belay just about one ropelength up because he was unsure about which way to go, so I followed up and continued on above him. I tended to the right side of the main gully, it looked like there was more solid ice there, then a ramp that led back left, however I found that at the bottom of the ramp there was only thin verglass ice and snow over slabby shale. Matt was already coming up behind me, so he stopped about 30 feet down, with the rope looped below us, and pounded in a picket. I downclimbed to him, then he belayed as I led up and left, avoiding the slabs. It was all good. On and on it went, until I sort of came upon a bit of a headwall. I pounded in a questionable picket in the softer snow near the base of the headwall, and headed up toward an exposed rock where I thought there might be some pro potential. I bashed at it a bit and found no cracks. So I continued up... I rounded the crest of the headwall on its left side (maybe 80 degrees at the steepest for a short section), after which the angle mellowed a bit and I traversed right. I looked up. Above I could see a corniced ridge running perpendicular to our couloir. "Is that the summit ridge?" Then I saw the wind blow some snow up from above the cornices, and it was lit up by the sun shining from behind. "It has to be the top!" It looked like one more simul-climbing pitch. I belayed Matt up, and he shimmied below me to avoid a rope snarl. It was pretty mellow... 65 degree consolidated snow, leading up 500 ft. to what appeared to be several possible escape routes. Matt led, placing sparse protection, until he arrived at a choice and felt he should belay me up to partake in the decision making process. I took over leading, opting to go straight up (rather than right or left), entering flutings on the right side of a section of partially exposed shale. I placed a screw in some ice covering one of the rocks before entering the flutings, but it only went in 3/4 of the way before hitting rock. Doh! Oh well, I'll just be careful. The flutings were crusty on the surface because of the rain, but soft underneath. I saw a notch in the looming cornices overhead and headed rightward toward it. I straddled the flutings, impaling their flanks with my ice tool shafts. I could kick reasonable steps, but it was so steep it was hard to keep my weight over them. I wallowed my way up and right without any protection, and just as it reached 90 degrees I reached my hand over onto the ledge that had formed just below the cornice, jammed my ice tool in, bashed away at some loose snow, and emerged through the notch on the summit ridge! "Yeeeeee-Haaaaaaaaw!" I screeched with glee! The south side of the mountain was all socked in, couldn't see a thing, even though the sky overhead and north was clear and blue. I glanced over and found a large tree to make a perfect anchor, girth-hitched the cordalettes together, and sat on the edge to belay and watch Matt come up through the flutings, which he did using a combination of opposing pressure and footkicks and gratuitous wallowing to achieve upward progress. We were both standing on the summit by 4:30. Yeah! Now all we had to deal with was the descent. I reckoned we'd be at the car at 10:30. We packed up our stuff, ate some food, and began a descending traverse around the southwest side of the mountain. The sun came out in all its glory, and we were able to link snowfields and descend about 300 feet, until the terrain became more complex and we opted for a rappel southwest rather than downclimbing trees south. We did one 50m rap of a tree, which ended at another tree with an aged sling around it. We simul-rapped off that tree (without using the sling), and found that the gully we were rapping into got steeper, so we started moving northward toward the NW ridge where things looked mellower. We kept moving across, dragging the ropes with us, and when we got to the ends of the ropes Matt got off rappel and I tied mine off, to drag the rope with me as I went. We went over some ribs, downclimbing 50-60 degree snow, until we got right on the NW ridge and could look straight down the face we'd climbed. I descended to a tree, and thought we oughta make one more rappel before the angle lessened as we reached the col, which we did. The sun was going down fast, and by the time we were walking along the flat, forested col, the sunset was beautiful and the full moon was rising and shining on the peaks in front of it, making a peculiar and beautiful spectacle. We had no trouble finding the top of our descent gully. We went up and down, until it started going more up than down, and when we looked down to the north, we could see the gully stretching below us into the middle of the main snow bowl. There was a horizontal tree at the top that made a perfect rap anchor, and one single rope rap got us to downclimbable terrain. I rapped last and kept the rope tied off in my device, pulling it down as I went. Man, that gully went on and on; it was much longer than it looked. But it was very pleasant. 60 degrees, mellowing to 50 here and there, brilliant moonlight, and finally we found ourselves in the avalanche fan below the gully. I packed up the rope and we turned around and walked downhill, trying to shoot for a collision course with our uphill tracks. We crossed avalanche track after avalanche track, and before we knew it we found our tracks, followed them down into the grove of trees, down through the one-tree-move wonder, onto the slab ledge, across it, picked our way over the islands of snow on slabs to the top of the avalance cone we'd come up, and there we were, terra firma! I was sort of anxious to get out of the way of objective hazard, even though it was good conditions and unlikely to slide, so I booked it across the debris below the mountain to the rise we'd stopped at in the morning. I looked back at the face from there, which glowed coolly in the moonlight, nearly every feature visible. I watched Matt work his way toward me, his headlamp making erratic yellow flashes across the landscape in front of him. It was 8:30. Clear. Calm. Perfect. I read Bart's article in the AAJ last night. I'd have to say either he went out of his way to make things more difficult than they had to be (in which case he'd have to have taken a slightly different route than that described in the article), or conditions were a lot less fat than we found them (which doesn't seem likely, given the time of year and the way he described the weather pattern at the beginning of the article), or he was embellishing the truth a bit. Understandable for an aspiring alpinist at age 15, I suppose; and regardless, it was a fantasic route and a commendable first ascent for him. I would rate it at grade IV, WI4+ (no rock or mixed ratings, since we encountered very little rock). It never got steeper than 90 degrees and even that was only one pitch. Matt took several pictures with his digital camera. They can be found here. Dan

quote: Originally posted by mattp: Sugar coated shale would not be near as fun as what we had. Maybe we had MORE fun than you did! Its an excellent route and, despite Dan's critique of Bart's prior report, I can tell you that both of us tip our hats to you guys for doing it. Absolutely, my hat is off 100% to you guys. I heard about it that year (1996), before I had done much winter climbing at all, but I had seen the face when visiting the ice caves. I remember being blown away that anyone would consider going up it in the winter! Since then I've heard multiple people question how serious the route actually was, and I've heard many more times about Bart's reputation as a big-talker (though mostly by people who know him and like him in spite of it), so I was pre-disposed to thinking of his description as a bit of an overstatement, and certainly the conditions we found supported that predisposition! But I don't mean in any way to belittle your accomplishment, Avypoodle; it was very impressive. And I'd love to have a sometime if you're in town!

Right, thanks for pointing that out, Mike. The show is on Monday the 22nd. Dan

The UW climbing club has now convinced my (sort-of)roommate Vance to do his show of the first-ever complete human-powered traverse of the entire coast range, from Vancouver BC to Skagway Alaska. It took 'em 6 months! Check it out! http://students.washington.edu/climb/coast_range.html Dan

http://students.washington.edu/climb/patagonia.html

The Climbing Club at the UW has cunningly coerced us into showing our acclaimed (does being mentioned in Climbing Magazine count?) slideshow: Reduced Expectations - A Season in Patagonia We were one of the very few parties that lucked out in the face of what some have claimed was worst weather in 40 years and actually summited a peak there last season! Where: HUB Auditorium on the UW Campus When: Monday, October 15, 2001, 7:30 pm Admission: $3, unless you are a student or faculty and want to join the club (don't know how much that costs now), in which case admission is waived. See ya there!

The first time I did Backbone, we missed the last part of it too and went into the top of Triple Couloirs. Turns out this is a common mistake; as you're traversing across the ledge at the bottom of the fin, it's easy to get suckered into the crack system that goes up about the middle of the face of the fin. Those take you up a couple pitches of great climbing to a notch in the ridge (a bit of a slabby step-across is required to get from the top of the crack to the notch), where you drop over the other side and down into TC. I remember not being able to reconcile this with the description in Selected Climbs. The second time I got beta from good ol' SMC (who was about to do Colchuck Balanced Rock) right in the parking lot before we headed up. You just have to stay on that lower ramp/ledge a bit longer, even though it seems to peter out a bit as you go past the sucker cracks. Just when you think you've gone too far, there is another set of cracks you can go up. Doing this, it matches Nelson's description exactly, undercling flake and all, and it avoids the top of TC, staying on good clean rock right to the summit.

Oh yes, there are a few things I'd like to add... First of all, I was extremely impressed with the way both Andrea and Christopher handled themselves on the route. Though they have spent a lot of time in the mountains, it was the biggest thing either of them had ever done. I did lead everything, but I set a fast pace and ran it out, and they kept right up without complaining. At one point Andrea did ask me to put more protection in... and that brings up a bigger point: I think it was unwise to take them both at once on such a big climb. Climbing with the more experienced partners that I usually do, I get accustomed to taking more risks in the name of speed, and I feel that is somewhat justified because I can count on my partner to be solid and comfortable with the terrain and my decisions, and vice versa. In this case, it turned out alright, but the incident where Chris fell while simul-climbing illustrates that we were pushing it a little beyond his ability. That combined with 3 people on one rope makes it even more risky. If he had fallen while I was in a less stable position, the weight of the three of us shockloading one piece may have pulled it, and we all could have taken the big one-way ride. There were several root causes of the situation: Chris decided to wear mountain boots instead of rock shoes, a decision that only benefitted him in the upper snowy sections. He is very fit, but not a super strong climber, and the mountain boots hindered his ability even more. We chose the wrong route. If we had gone for the regular West Arete, which is a bit shorter, we wouldn't have had to floor the accelerator so hard to get up the mountain. A learning experience... Dan

Southwest Ridge-Buttress of Eldorado 9/29,9/30,10/1 Background: The West Arete of Eldorado is a well-known if not super-popular way to get up this remote peak, second only to the relatively easy east ridge, especially due to the fact that those are the two routes in volume one of Selected Climbs in the Cascades. However, there is another, longer, roughly parallel ridge to the south of the standard West Arete that rarely (if ever?) has been climbed. The green Beckey guide shows a 1951 line, the first ascent of the West side of the mountain, largely to the left (north) of this "rounded rock buttress", but coming up to the ridge crest for a short while in the middle. Beckey notes, however that "an attempt on the long SW ridge-buttress flanking the W face, in 1972, was halted after seven pitches because of insecure and dirty rock, and scarcity of anchor points". We found a very old rappel sling in the grove of trees several hundred feet up from the toe of the buttress, which may have been from that attempt. We saw no other signs of anyone having been on the route. One of the factors in it not being a popular climb, I would guess, is that it doesn't go directly to the summit of Eldorado, but rather to a sub-peak on the ridge that extends south from the summit towards Triad Col. Approach: Our intent was to take advantage of the good forecast and do the West Arete. Andrea Leuschke, Christopher Fast and I took off from Seattle reasonably early on Saturday. We got to the Eldorado Creek parking lot at about 9:00 and wasted no time taking advantage of the plush new outhouse the NPS has installed there. I wonder if that's a result of our faithfully paid Northwest Forest Pass fees? We saw Dave Burdick and Phil Fortier's truck at the trailhead; we knew they would be there because we saw their sign-out sheet at the ranger station. Hoof up trail through woods, hoof up boulder field, hoof up trail through heather and blueberries... wait, blueberries! MMM, scarf gobble munch blueberries. Go W over spur ridge, up copious slabs (this was the least snow coverage I've ever seen here!), onto broken Eldorado glacier... We had to hug the right edge on the steep first part to avoid crevasses. Followed Dave and Phil's footprints around the crevasses over the flats to the east shoulder of Eldorado where we found them huddled in their Marmot single wall tent at the bivy site on the rocks. Just as we got there the clouds that had been threatening us with sprinkles all day let fly with some more sprinkles, so we quickly set up the 2-person Sierra Designs Clip FlashLight tent that Christopher had brought for the three of us. We ate a scrumptious meal of couscous, tuna, olive oil, parmasean cheese, and vegetables, and stuffed ourselves into that little tent where we slept very little before the alarm went off at 3:00 am. We got our stuff together and tied into the single 50m 9mm Stratos rope and headed out into the moonlight, which was quickly shadowed by the bulk of Eldorado Peak as we traversed around the northeast side of it on the Inspiration Glacier. We spent a couple hours winding between large crevasses on the badly broken sheet of ice in search of the col to the N of the Tepeh Towers (also apparently called Dean's Spire?), where we could drop down onto the McAllister Glacier. Which we did. Another set of crevasses thwarted us temporarily until we found a tiny snow bridge to cross and then it was a straight shot down through the col to the left of Dorado Needle and down into the Marble Creek cirque. A large snow wall created by a hardened wind scoop marked the top of the unnamed glacier below the col. We descended down the glacier, keeping right at first and then angling left to avoid steeper ablated ice, then through the notch in the spur ridge, down past the toe of the West Arete, down all the way around some broken ice chunks to the bottom of the Southwest Ridge-Buttress. Here's where we were confused, and moreover, there was confusion as to whom to blame the confusion on. You see, we forgot to copy the route description. All we had to go on was our memories. I remembered the picture in the Nelson guide showing the West Arete being on the sort of northern side of the face. But we figured the real West Arete would be the one that so obviously pokes the farthest down towards Marble Creek. We began our climb up our chosen ridge without a clear idea which ridge it was. In any case, it looked like it would go. As we ascended, we kept looking across at the real West Arete and noticing how closely it matched what we remembered of the route description... Route: Due to the relative inexperience on this type of climb of my partners, I led all the pitches, with Andrea and Chris tied in 30 feet apart on the other end of the rope. The majority of the route was simul-climbing; we belayed 2 pitches. We got on the rock at 9:00 am right at the lowest point, by wandering into the moat and climbing reasonably-protectable glacier-polished granite. We simul-climbed several hundred feet of class-4 and occasionally low class-5 up to the lone grove of trees on the ridge. From there, another pitch started out as an unpleasant vertical-bushwhack through the grove of trees (where we saw that old rap sling) and then out to the right and up more open and less-protectable but easy ground, finishing at the base of a steeper headwall. I then led two belayed pitches (maybe 5.8 in places and hard to protect). Above the headwall, it eased off and became very beautiful, lots of bright green moss-covered rock... we just motored for over 1000 feet. We then came to the base of a second headwall, where the SW Ridge comes up from the right and causes the Southwest Ridge Buttress to do a sort of zigzag. I led one simul-climbing pitch up essentially straight up (with a lot of meandering, but with infrequently placed protection to avoid rope drag). INCIDENT! I'm standing on a 2-foot wide dirty sloping ledge, my fingers on a crimp, I'm pretty solid. I'm 20 feet above my last piece. I hear a yell. I brace myself. Chris had fallen. He pulled Andrea off. I feel the rope slowly come tight on me, thanks to the extremely dynamic nature of the 9mm. My crimp holds, with most of the weight borne by my feet. I ask if everyone is OK. They are, except for some big bruises on Chris' ass. I plead with him to take the weight off the rope. He finally does. We continue climbing. I set up a belay the first chance I get, an uncomfortable hanging belay right on the ridge crest, and belay them up... when Chris gets to me he informs me that my ice axe, which had been on his pack, is now missing, along with the ice axe loop that had held it there. Apparently it came off in the fall. Doh! Chris is a bit shaken, and begins to doubt his abilities. I calm him down and tell him he can do it, and I push him up onto the large ledge above the hanging belay. The thought flashes across my mind of trying to descend the snow on Eldorado without an ice axe... In my track spikes (which is the only glacier travel footwear I brought...) Now we were on a knife-edge ridge of excellent rock, just in front of a big sharp gendarme with a notch on the other side about at our same level. I led a traversing pitch across the southeast side of the gendarme to a belay just before then notch, then another one up the steeper rock on the far side of the notch. We could see that our ridge didn't go to the true summit of Eldorado now, and it was beginning to get late, so I made a beeline for the ridge between the main peak of Eldorado and the sub-peak that our ridge went up. We started hitting new snow that had fallen the previous week, and the rock and protection quality got much worse. As the sun was setting, we were traversing basically scree and dirt covered in most places with several inches of snow. But we knew we were almost there. I made one last belay before it got completely dark, and we donned headlamps and ate jolly ranchers and the last of our GU, which hit the spot. From there, I couldn't tell how far it was, but as I led through slightly improved geology I began to notice that we were almost there, and then there I was, on the ridge, overlooking the Eldorado glacier reflecting bright full-moon-light. 2 rappels got us to the snow, and 45 minutes later we were back at our camp on the shoulder of the East Ridge, at about 10:30. We decided to stay there instead of hike out, even though we had to work the next day... and I'm glad we did... as we lay down under the stars (we decided to go sans-tent), and ate our makeshift meal of cheese, olive oil, and powdered milk, we were treated to the most spectacular display of Aurora Borealis! The whole sky was pulsing and shimmering, with streaks running up and down, moving back and forth, even in the bright moonlight it was clearly visible! When we awoke to begin our descent at 4:00 am, it was still going... The descent was uneventful. We enjoyed a tasty breakfast of blueberries and got back to the car by about 9:00. The rangers had already called Chris' wife Leah, who had stayed up all night worrying, but we found a spot where we got cell phone reception and quickly allayed her concerns. I was useless at work that day! [This message has been edited by daylward (edited 10-04-2001).] [This message has been edited by daylward (edited 10-04-2001).]

Lowell, No, I don't think you were intentionally sandbagged. On our first attempt we found a rap sling that seemed about 10 years old, and I can see why they bailed there! As shown on Forrest's route picture, the first time we started up the slabs to the left of the big gully. There we found vertical bushwhacking and lots of bad rock and lots of wasted time. The second time we just climbed up the left face of the gully, which was much better. Much of the face does have bad, rotten, and loose rock, but generally staying close to the buttress crest you avoid the majority of it. The steeper pitches in the middle were great; quite solid. Dan

quote: Originally posted by philfort: Wow, good job! This is a picture from near Snowy Lakes - that's Mt Hardy in the clouds in the background. Is the dark buttress the thing you climbed? That face looked like it had some nice winter gully lines on it too. Yes, that black thing is the headwall, the top of it is right where the cloud is moving over it, but the summit of the mountain is obscured by clouds in your picture. Our approach took us from the obvious col you can see in the picture to the right of Hardy, down the slide path below it, and then traversed over scree to the base of the buttress. As for winter routes, I'd guess it would provide many options. Being NE facing it stays out of the sun a lot of the time, and the whole face is basically undulating with ridges/gullys. Might be hard to get in there in the winter though... how did you guys go in when you took the picture? Dan

Woohoo, we did it! After one failed attempt, and much secrecy, Forrest and I have done what we believe is the first ascent of the NE buttress of Mt. Hardy! Mt. Hardy is an 8080' granite peak located at the headwaters of the Methow river, across the valley from Snowy Lakes and Goldenhorn and the PCT. To get to it via the PCT, it's about 10 miles north of Rainy Pass. But there are some things about this mountain that have presumably diverted attention away from it. First, to most people, it seems far away because it's 10 miles from highway 20 by trail. Second, it's mislabeled on USGS and Green Trails maps as a smaller peak farther northwest. Third, in Beckey's guide, he says something to the effect of "The NE face may offer technical climbing possibilities but is devoid of obvious classic lines". He's a big liar. I think he wrote that purposefully to deter people for some reason! About two years ago, I hiked N on the PCT and looked across the valley from Snowy Lakes at the NE face, and thought it looked very promising as a climbing objective. It's about 2500 feet tall, with what appeared to be several prominent ridges. The perrenial snowfield at the base was still white late in the year, indicating little rockfall and implying high quality rock. When I got home and looked Hardy up in Beckey, I was surprised to find that there was no mention of any existing routes on the face! When I saw Beckey's wording, I immediately had the impression he was hiding something... so on the tick list it went. Looking at the map, we discovered that Hardy is actually only about 2 miles from hwy. 20, if you took the bushwhacking approach; you can actually see the summit from the road in several places. It doesn't look like much from that side, so no wonder it doesn't draw much attention. Two weeks ago, Forrest and I went in there carrying overnight stuff and found that it took us a mere 2 hours to get from the road (at the Easy Pass trailhead) to a col in the ridge crest about a mile NW of the summit of Hardy. We set up camp there, and did some reconnaisance. We traversed from the col around the buttresses of a sub-peak, until we could peer across at the NE face from the NNW. Forrest, who had not seen it before and may have retained some skepticism, was visibly blown away. Seeing it from that angle in profile, we could tell that there was one promient buttress with a steep headwall about halfway up, then a long ridge traverse to the summit. It had to go. We then climbed straight up the buttress of the sub-peak back to the ridge crest, then traversed the ridge to the summit of Hardy, so we could look straight down on our intended route. We could see that the upper part was a spectacular knife-edge, and the SE side of the buttress was super clean and overhanging. After getting our fill of the views, we returned to our camp (thereby figuring out the descent). The next day we made our first attempt on the route. It took a little over an hour to decend into the upper Methow Valley and traverse to the base of the route. We were stymied by some poor route-finding decisions and then, up toward the base of the headwall, I dislodged a huge rock that rolled over my hand and bashed my leg. I thought I'd broken it, so we turned around, accepting defeat, but knowing in the back of our heads that it would go someday. That someday was yesterday. We decided to try it car to car in a day, now that we had the terrain figured out. We left in the moonless pitch dark of 4:00 am, but it still took us only two hours to reach the col we'd camped at before. By the time we got to the base of the route at 7:00, we were a full hour earlier than the previous attempt. Then we chose a much better line up the lower part of the buttress, and reached our previous high point by 9:00, 3 hours earlier than the first time! At that time I commented "At this rate, we'll be on top by noon!" But the climb had only just begun. The route begins up an obvious gulley about 200m right of the low point of the buttress. The gulley angles up and left, and the left face of it is actually very good quality rock, low 5th class with the occasional 5.7 move. Forrest led our first simulclimb pitch up the gulley to where a large chockstone clogs the gulley, crossed the gulley and ascended via a short step onto the grooved apron to the right of the gulley. We continued simulclimbing up the grooves to a large sandy ledge with larch trees (our high point the first time). From there, I led up some corners to the right, then moved left into a broken 5.9 crack system, and I belayed Forrest up it from the top. He took over leading again, we were just below the base of the headwall, and Forrest follwed the obvious cracked arrete up to where ended in a steep face, and then traversed around to the left, up some very juggy rock and dead pine trees, into a wide chimney, up which he climbed the right side, which was actually a lot better than it looked. This brought us to the ridge crest again. I led a looping pitch that traversed left, then around a corner, and up right with a short but sweet 5.9 finger crack, to a good ledge. This is where things started to fall apart a bit. The obvious line goes straight up from there, up a ledgy slab and then into a classic 5.9+ offwidth chimney thing. Forrest did a heroic lead up through it and the corner system above it, and set up a belay about 20 feet below where he could see that the crack fizzled out. For my next lead, I went to the top of the crack and couldn't see where to go from there without getting super run out into steep slab land. I lowered down, and pendulumed around a bit and couldn't find any other real options. We were stuck. Time was flying; it was already 4:00. We decided to bail; it would have to wait 'til next year. We rapped off a hex back to the ledge. But then I saw something that caught my eye... the ledge worms around to the right, around the corner, to a lower-angle place filled with sunshine. I felt drawn to it! So I belayed Forrest over there to check it out. He was happier when he got there, so I followed him. Above us was a gigantic clean corner system that looked difficult but aesthetic and fun and definitely climbable. It looked like it led all the way to the top of the headwall. To the right a little, there was another crack system. Many options! I led up the corner system (5.10), and then found a slightly dicey traverse over to the crack systems on the right (it looked better to me than continuing up the corner), and set up a belay at the base of a large offwidth. Forrest went from there, leading the key heroic pitch of the day... over 200' of 5.10 and A1 with a bit of gardening, punctuated by a scary but short episode of misdirection, that took an hour and a half to finish. But it took us to the top of the headwall at 8:00! After that it really got fun. It was the knife-edge ridge we'd seen from above two weeks before, which was as good climbing as advertised, fast, interesting, exposed in places but easy, similar to much of the N. ridge of Stuart. We summited at about 9:00 just after sunset and decended back to the col and then to the car in the dark, arriving at about 12:30 am. Being biased as usual, I'd say this route has the makin's for being a true classic. There is a lot of good rock on it, but there is definitely a fair amount of loose and rotten rock as well... Not more than many other similar but popular routes in the N. Cascades though... The line is very aesthetic, and there are several pitches of difficult and sustained climbing. Forrest and I figure it's a solid grade IV, and our particular line was 5.10 A1. Further exploration will undoubtedly uncover better lines, one good possibility being the super steep SW face of the gendarme. That would be a good project for better climbers than us. It's way shorter of an approach than we'd originally expected, and certainly a pair of fit and experienced climbers could beat our time by several hours if they followed our established line and avoided getting off-route. Dan