Trip: Mt Goode - NE Buttress
Date: 7/17/2009
Trip Report:
Inspired by a recent trip report Nick Strait, Stephanie Savage, and myself climbed the NE Buttress of Mt Goode.
We left the Brige Creek trailhead at 9 AM. The first 10 miles went easily enough as it was mostly down hill. With a few breaks we made the turn off to North Fork Bridge Creek trail in 3 1/2 hours. The next five miles went a bit slower. We forded the river without too much trouble and by 3:30 we were at the opposite bank. We hiked up a talus slope to the base of the cliffs below Mt Goode then traversed climber's right to some rock benches.
These benches took us to a patch of slide alder before leading to a wooked ridge to the right of the furtherest right waterfall. We followed the wooded rigde over cliffs until able to cut back left across a snow field to an excellent bivi on rock next to the creek.
In the middle of the night Nick faked a lung infection, complete with coughing and hacking to get out of climbing the next day, so Stephanie and I climbed without him. We left camp at 3:30 and made our way to the glacier.
At the glacier we strapped aluminum crampons onto our approach shoes. We hiked up to the buttress toe and made a sketchy traverse across the moat on a snow bridge to the rock. Stephanie led a 5th class pitch to the buttress crest then we simu-climbed a lot of 4th class rock switching leads once. The climbing steepened so we belayed pitches to the summit where we arrived at 2 PM.
We found a gulley imediately to the south and west of the summit which we decided was the Bedayn couloir. We scrambled down to it and started down climbing the horrendously loose gulley. Down aways we found a rap station which we beefed up and made a rap and down climbed some more to a two nut station. We beefed up the slings and I cast off onto an over hanging rappel. The ropes ended in the middle of a cliff. I was able to travese to a tiny ledge and set two more nuts. Anther rappel brought us to more down climbing. This continued for 8 rappels and a lot of loose down climbing until we hit snow. I really had to dust off my anchor building kung fu- we rapped off on nuts, boulders, horns, and chockstones.
Once on the snow we hiked around to the Storm King-Goode col where I found a two piton anchor with a single, old sling. We had used every piece of tat we had, so I used a couple of sewn slings to beef it up. We rapped down to the glacier and proceeded to down climb the icy, broken glacier. In tennis shoes this was a bit more than exciting. Stephanie punched through a hidden crevasse.
Once past the difficulties we spied Nick who had hiked up to meet us. I was so happy to see him I started running down the glacier. We followed him back to camp and were making dinner by 9 PM.
The hike out was uneventful, but long and hot. And we saw a bear.
This was a very challenging and rewarding trip with two awesome partners! Thanks Nick and Stephanie.