[TR] SE Mox, NW Mox, Mount Redoubt - West Ridge, SE Face, South Route 07/25/2019

[geosean]

Trip: SE Mox, NW Mox, Mount Redoubt - West Ridge, SE Face, South Route

Trip Date: 07/25/2019

Trip Report:

@Albuquerque Fred and I were at it again, this time up in the Depot Creek drainage over July 25-28. Fred had gone up a month prior to scout the approach and tick off the requisite easy Bulger peaks. Now we were back to get the ones he needed my help on.

We hiked in on Thursday none too early after Fred graciously picked up the permit in Sedro Woolley. If you follow Steph's approach beta you will do fine. The trail was decent, we lost it a couple of times, but only once for more than a minute. There was brush... and deadfall, and mud and swamps and bugs and waterfalls and fixed ropes and bear crap and loose moraines and stream crossings. No problem. It took us 7 hours to 7200' camp at Redoubt saddle. If you are used to climbing in the Cascades it's a little worse than the average for a trail, but better than off-trail.

 

Fred and the falls:

 

Me somewhere along the trail photo by Fred:

 

Redoubt N Face, photo by Fred:

 

Me below the glacier on the direct route to 7200' camp, photo by Fred:

 

Camp below Redoubt:

 

 

Friday we climbed both Mox Spires beginning with SE (or "Hard") Mox. This turned out to be much easier than "Easy" Mox. The route finding was my biggest concern going in as it sounded complicated, but Beckey was dead on. Follow his beta, we never went wrong. Ignore Klenke and his heavy-handedness, the best beta has been available in print for decades. It was a great climb; if you like loose gullies and lots of route finding on moderate ground to a very moderate rock climb, with more loose rock, as I do, then this is for you.

We did 6 hours Col Of The Wild to the summit and back to the col, exactly as Beckey states, with about 30-45 min on the summit.

 

Fred on the approach:

 

Col Of The Wild, photo by Fred:

 

 

Me downclimbing the "major snow gully" photo by Fred:

 

Fred's silhouette on route:

 

Pickets:

 

My favorite part, cleaning up old rap tat, photo by Fred. Please do your part too; if is not good enough to rap on, its trash. LNT!:

 

 

Next NW Mox, southeast face route from Col Of The Wild. We followed Matt Lemke's beta here from his NW Hikers report:

http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8028072

It was scary. The gully you climb is loose with lots of large detached blocks to pull on in the class 5 stretch. I lead the first pitch and I was scared; easy climbing, but no decent pro since everything is loose and/or detached. This was probably the most dangerous climbing I have ever done. Either we missed something or Matt was being ironic with his summit register comment of the route being 5 stars. Any comments would be appreciated.

The scramble was easy though and we made about 4 hours round trip. The rappelling was actually pretty safe and easy.

It was great to get both Mox peaks in one day and in reasonable time as well. If there is a better way up the SE Face of NW Mox it would be a spectacular paring. We did 13.5 hours camp to camp this day with good breaks on both summits and a long break in the basin in the afternoon.

 

Loose death gully, photo by Fred:

 

Victory pose, photo by Fred:

 

We slept in until around 9 the next morning due to rain, this was expected. All we had left to do all day was Redoubt.

We did a bit of a route variation and instead of trending left from the first snowfield into the second snowfield and the talus we continued from the first snowfield straight up a narrowing snow couloir to within 300' of the summit. Then we scrambled left in a rusty chossy gully to regain the standard route at a minor notch in a small buttress. The scrambling was easy with one tough move at the "cannon hole". We mostly followed Steph Abegg's beta here, limited but sufficient.

The views were non-existent on top so we descended fairly quickly, going down the more standard route.

 

View up-route from the basin on the south of Redoubt:

 

Fred in the couloir we climbed:

 

Me approaching the summit, photo by Fred:

 

Best photo I had of our couloir from the standard route on descent:

 

We ascended the right line and descended the standard route on the left:

 

Drying out camp that afternoon:

 

We did about 5 hours camp to camp on Redoubt moving fairly mellow with some route-finding in the fog. In the afternoon we went for a stroll on the glacier ice next to camp, it was way cool to just stroll and look around:

 

We slept a lot again and hiked out the next morning, 6 hours to the car.

Fred on the Redoubt Glacier on descent:

 

In the falls:

 

More falls, photo by Fred:

Gear Notes:
60m rope medium rack (small would be better) crampons axe rock shoes (would skip if there is a next time)

Approach Notes:
Long and arduous, as advertised.

[JasonG]

6 hours ago, geosean said:

if is not good enough to rap on, its trash. LNT!

Actually BD did some testing on this a long while back.  Most old faded slings failed between 5-16kN.  If you have enough crappy tat (~5 relatively intact pieces), you don't need to add anything new.  And, if you leave the old while putting a new sling at the station, future parties might not have to add anything when they come upon your bleached tat (it gets crusty faster than you think).  Reduce, reuse, recycle, and all that. 

It is somewhat laughable that the cry of LNT echos from a rap station with shiny new webbing.  Maybe you meant Leave a Tidy Trace?

[Rad]

Impressive! 

[geosean]

15 hours ago, JasonG said:

Actually BD did some testing on this a long while back.  Most old faded slings failed between 5-16kN.  If you have enough crappy tat (~5 relatively intact pieces), you don't need to add anything new.  And, if you leave the old while putting a new sling at the station, future parties might not have to add anything when they come upon your bleached tat (it gets crusty faster than you think).  Reduce, reuse, recycle, and all that. 

It is somewhat laughable that the cry of LNT echos from a rap station with shiny new webbing.  Maybe you meant Leave a Tidy Trace?

Yeah, the "LNT" was pretty tongue in cheek I guess. Obviously I'm still leaving a trace. I always leave at least 2 pieces at a rap station, but I try to clean up all the old rat eaten stuff, I just hate the clutter when there are like 10 pieces and you cant even inspect them because of the nest of tangled webbing.

Also my opinion of good enough to rap on is pretty liberal, a couple of bleached pieces are great in my book, I took some stuff off of Redoubt that was cut loose and left lying there.

Edited August 1, 2019 by geosean

[kmfoerster]

1 hour ago, geosean said:

Yeah, the "LNT" was pretty tongue in cheek I guess. Obviously I'm still leaving a trace. I always leave at least 2 pieces at a rap station, but I try to clean up all the old rat eaten stuff, I just hate the clutter when there are like 10 pieces and you cant even inspect them because of the nest of tangled webbing.

Also my opinion of good enough to rap on is pretty liberal, a couple of bleached pieces are great in my book, I took some stuff off of Redoubt that was cut loose and left lying there.

Yeah I'm far more concerned about physical damage to tubular webbing as it doesn't have a rip-stop weave to it if I remember correctly. So tears and nicks can propagate easily. Sun bleaching comes very quick to nylon. I agree that tat probably gets added way more often than it needs to. I like a nice tidy rap station where you don't have to ask "What the hell is going on here?". Some of the stations on Chimney Rock last year had ten pieces of tat each which is just insanity. Very safe, but insane and an eye sore.

[JasonG]

3 hours ago, geosean said:

I try to clean up all the old rat eaten stuff, I just hate the clutter when there are like 10 pieces and you cant even inspect them because of the nest of tangled webbing.

[TwoFortyJeff]

The rangers will make an exception for Depot Creek and issue you a permit for this one over the phone. Super easy and they were quite helpful as it encourages compliance.

[seano-]

On 7/31/2019 at 1:00 PM, geosean said:

My favorite part, cleaning up old rap tat, photo by Fred. Please do your part too; if is not good enough to rap on, its trash. LNT!

Yay! It's good to hear of others cleaning up the climber garbage up there.

 

On 7/31/2019 at 1:00 PM, geosean said:

Next NW Mox, southeast face route from Col Of The Wild... It was scary.

Agreed.  I downclimbed this to get from Easy to Hard Mox, and had a foot blow on the loose, steep first pitch above the ground.  It's not a place I would like to revisit.