DPS

Great choice! The camps are nice up there and you avoid the massive crowds too. Bring a shovel, you will most likely need to excavate your own platforms. Z-Man and I spent a crappy night on a half assed platform made with our ice axes once up there.

You could be correct about the name of the glacier. It might be labeled as the Wilson by that point.

We did carry wands a few wands for between Denali Pass and the summit ridge. Lots of guys on this site who can give you better info, I've only climbed the West Butt once. Gene, Jason Martin, Kurt Hicks and Chris have all guided it multiple times

Having two ropes is a good idea. The FF drops onto the Nisqually, which early season the crevasses are well covered and would be an easy ski, but requires some uphill skinning to get back to Paradise. Rockfall is possible on FF, but I've climbed it once and desdended it twice and did not experience any significant rockfall into the couloir, but have seen some big releases on the cliffs bordering the couloir. There are no crevasses in the FF couloir itself, but there are some big cracks above it. I would personally climb the FF, because it is a good climb, you can camp below it and pick up camp on the way out, and it is a good idea to ascend the descent route to get to know it and id any hidden moats, crevasses, etc. You will likely have to boot the FF couloir.

You mentioned skiing into Muir so I assume you plan on skiing the DC or Ingraham Glacier Direct. The DC IMHO, is not a great choice. The cleaver itself is exposed and is a high traffic area. The Ingraham Glacier Direct is viable probably only early in the season. Emmons Glacier makes a lot of sense, there are not too many bottle necks, it is less steep than other routes, but it is a high traffic route. The Fuhurer Finger strikes me as a natural choice for a ski descent, and it is less crowded. Since you will be essentially soloing and depending on the greater weight distribution of the skis to provide safety, you should plan your trip when the crevasses are most strongly bridged (ASAP). Should someone take a full on crevasse fall you will likely be extracting a seriously injured if not dead partner. Think about how you plan to do this. If your party brings one rope and the person carrying it goes in, what then? Just some food for thought.

My understanding is that as long as you are in a group you are not considered solo whether you are roped or not. I don't know how strong a skier you are, but the Emmons would be an easier ski than the DC. Another route to consider is the Fuhrer Finger route. Also, skis afford limited protection against crevasse falls, they are not a particularly safe substitute for roped travel.

He's still around but no longer climbs. He broke his back on the job as a high rise window cleaner. Coach is okay once you get to know him. That would be the guy. He was friendly and engaging towards me because my daughter would tape up and run laps on all the cracks at the UW wall when she was quite young. "She's so macho!" He would slink up to me, look around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and say "I'm telling you this because I trust you" and then divuge his highly secret climbing objectives.

I'm a third generation carpenter. I own mostly Hart hammers, and a couple specialty Eastwings (roofing hatchet). My grandfather, a SeaBea stationed in the Pacific theater during WWII, was a man of considerable predjudices. He worked with a carpenter whose name was Vaughn and did not like the man and for the rest of his life refused to buy Vaughn hammers as a result. He also felt bricklayers were of poor moral character. He also had strong opinons on scaffolding. (He was pro scaffolding). He had only an 8th grade education, but after seeing a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, he designed one entirely on the back of a 2 x 4 and built it as his workshop. On another note, my father employed quite a few climbers, friends of mine, including one prolific route setter. He gave him an Eastwing roofing hatchet as a gift and said climber used it for years to clean new routes. My father was rather horrified a fine tool would be used for such work, but apparently it was the shit for cleaning new routes.

Ravens, which are Corvids, are among the smartest birds, at least as smart as cats, look for wands which mark caches. If you don't mark you cache somehow, you might lose it. I guess have a system like three shovel lengths downhill from the wand is the cache or something. I have a burly, inexpensive duffle bag which was one of my checked pieces of luggage and also my sled bag. It is made by Eagle Creek and it has locking zipper pulls. You can use zip ties to 'lock' the zipper pulls so the ravens won't be able to open the zipper. The fabric is pretty burly, maybe they could eventually peck through, but we never left a cache more than over night. We buried our caches at least 3 feet deep and marked each corner and the middle with a double length wand (two wands taped together) with our expedition name and date as per park regulations. Never had a problem with ravens. Not sure it would have made any difference, but we put goodies in the bottom, and fuel and stuff like that on the top. I'm pretty sure my Fish duffel, made of haul bag material, would be Raven proof with the pulls locked, but it was bigger than needed for a sled bag. If you are just doing the West Butt, you can easily get away with two caches. Pull sleds to 11k, one double carry and cache to 14k, one double carry and cache to 17k.

In July your biggest obstacles will be crossing the Carbon glacier and rock fall from the spine of the ridge below Thumb Rock. St Elmo's Pass is a fairly short hike (3-4 hours at most). You may want to hike in a bit further so you can cross the carbon and ascend to Thumb Rock before the heat of the day creates too much rock fall. Of course weather is always a concern, that time of year it will come from the north so you can keep a good eye on it. Watch the summit, a growing descending lenticular cloud is bad.

That dependends upon the snow conditions, weather, personal fitness, how much weight you carry and so forth. If weather is not too bad, (July is usually quite stable) 5 days should be plenty. We did it in 30 hours CTC in mid July.

It has been a few years since I climbed there, but the only route with serious lines was Diedre. Maybe that has changed, but there is a lot of very good rock there, hard to go wrong unless it is mossy and/or overgrown.

There will be a distinct trail on the DC and there will be open crevasses. Some years the route is so broken up the route detours around the cleaver, but that is rare and this is a high snow year. The guide services put in effort to keep the trail open. They fix pickets and fix ladders across crevasses.

The route is usually a cattle trail. You will need wands for caching gear. TAT has a garbage can full of wands that departing climbers donated their used wands into - no need to lug your own from CA.

The new 6000 meter boots, and many others, have built in gaitors and many pants have both elastic cuffs and grommets through which a cord can be attached to create integral gaitors. I still use gaitors but then I am decidedly old. School. As for your axe, I am 5'9" and my axe is 58cm which seems pretty ideal. For low angle terrain I use trekking poles.

I did these so long ago I forgot I could climb that hard. I thought they were easier. I was also thinking of mercy me. Is that still 5.8?

St Vitus Dance, Snake, Cruel Shoes to Apron Strings (basically the first few pitches of the Grand Wall. Bananna Peel, although pretty easy, is fun, longish, and usually not crowded.

Good choice. Park at the White River TH, hike to Glacier Basin (same approach for Emmons), head up St Elmo's Pass, cross under Curtis Ridge, drop down onto the Carbon, cross the Carbon, up Lib Ridge (bivis at St Elmo's Pass and Thumb Rock on Lib Ridge). Summit and descend down Emmons, the Inter glacier, glissgade down to Glacier Basin and hike out to the car. The hump from the TH to Thumb Rock is long, it took me 12 hours, and many parties break the approach up into two days, spending the first night at St Elmos Pass or thereabouts, the second night at Thumb Rock.

I was bouldering at the UW wall and 'The Coach' who uses about a roll per hand was telling me about his latest plan to bike to the Sierras and climb this and that when a young woman came up and asked if we had any tape to spare. I had just run out that day and I apologized and said as much. Without skipping a beat the coach turned his head and barked 'NO!' The poor girl slinked away probably thinking we were both assholes.

I was reading the current issue of Alpinist about K2. A Polish expedition burned thier novel to melt water when they ran out of fuel. Can't do that with a Kindle.

Is this a serious response? Does this produce any reasonable amount of water? The water will taste bad. The reason it tastes bad is because of who-knows-what leaching out of that black plastic into your water, probably greatly increased by UV degradation. I doubt that shit can be good for you. This technique was described in my 4th edition of Freedom of the Hills. The product was described as 'not water' but 'melted snow'. Gene had a great idea (was even printed in Climbing magazine under the Tech Tips). Wrap a Nagene water in black tape and stuff it with snow. It will melt and not taste nearly as bad as the black garbage bag. I have a black nylon water bottle carrier that hangs off my waist belt that accomplishes the same thing.

My research agrees with this. I investigated the feasibility of using Platypus water containers as light weight white gas containers. Platypus containers are made of a bilaminate material; nylon on the outside, food grade polyethylene on the inside. For the four chemical constitutents of white gas (vis a vis Coleman Fuel) nylon had good to excellent resistance. The polyethylene had good to poor resistance. The polypropylene cap also had good to excellent resistance. I wondered if Cascades Designs would do manufacture a few custom Platypuses with the material flipped over, but I suspect if I told them it was to hold fuel they wouldn't do it.

Is this a serious response? Does this produce any reasonable amount of water? Yes, this had been done for a long time. It depends on how sunny/hot out it is. Snow goes in the black bag, the black bag absorbs heat and melts the water inside. The water will taste bad. It will not replace a stove, you still need to bring a stove and fuel. This is a passive way of creating more water to save fuel.

To answer you question, there are no shuttles that I am aware of that run from Paradise to Ipsut Creek or White River trailheads, the two choices for Liberty Ridge. If for whatever reason, you have your heart set on descending to Paradise, bring $100 cash and start asking folks in the parking lot (there will be alot if you get down in the middle of the day ) for a ride halfway around the mountain and bribe them $100 bucks to do so. Some broke climbers might take pity (and your money) to drive you, but this is hit and miss. I am guessing driving east on Hwy 12 and then back west on Hwy 410.

Just a thought, most folks approach from White River and descend Emmons back to White River, negating the need for a car shuttle. This is how I did it and it was pretty reasonable. One day drom White River TH to Thumb Rock, one short day to summit and descend to the TH. I don't see any advantages to descending to Paradise. Emmons is more straight forward with fewer objective hazards than the DC route.