Goode N.E. Butt. June 25-27

[Juan]

I need a solid partner (or two or three) to join me on Goode N.E. Butt. June 25-27, weather permitting. I have climbed the N.W. Butt. in 1995 but want to do the classic route.

 

Please PM me here, or e-mail me at jsharp@windermere.com.

 

I'll carry the whiskey, you carry the rest.

 

Just kidding about that last part,

 

John Sharp

Bellevue

[Alex]

If the weather holds, i am in.

[Juan]

Cool! What is your tele no. and regular e-mail again?

 

John

[Winter]

I'm looking at this a week or two after your date.

 

Do you know if you have to hike in from Rainy Pass or is the road from Stehekin open? Thanks.

[Juan]

Hiking from Rainy Pass as I understand it. But I'll call the ranger just for grins.

 

John

[Winter]

muchas gracias.

[mattp]

I don't think it is all that much shorter from Stehekin, especially if you plan to downclimb the route as we did. It is a fairly casual route, all in all, and you can avoid any carry-over nonsense. Stash your hiking boots and ice axe where you get onto the rock and climb with a light daypack. (This assumes you are comfortable down-climbing 4th class rock. If you are, you'll do no more than a couple of rappels.)

[Blake]

I'm looking at this a week or two after your date.

 

Do you know if you have to hike in from Rainy Pass or is the road from Stehekin open? Thanks.

 

 

See this thread: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/s...dbeb#Post465599

[Alex]

I've found the approach from Stehekin to be an acute pain in the ass, actually, I'd much rather go in on the PCT.

[Juan]

Hey Matt:

 

I know you advocate downclimbing the route. I may have this wrong, but I think Forrest et al. topped out at 1:00 recently and reached the glacier at 9:30, after downclimbing. That seems like a fairly involved descent. Maybe because the route had snow?

 

Anyway, you are right about the potential speed without overnight pack.

 

We'll hope to find out one way or another.

 

Cheers,

 

John

[Kyle_Flick]

Juan,

We liked the notion of carrying over so that once we topped out all we had to do was descend into Park Creek--no further worries.

[mattp]

I don't know what conditions Forrest et all found, but I can tell you that when I did this, in dry conditions, we were very glad we did.

 

We wore rock shoes, and it was really quit easy -- and neither of us do a lot of downclimbing or anything but, compared to the alternative - carrying camping equipment over the top of the mountain and maybe climbing in hiking boots or sneakers because you are trying to "go light" - I am quite certain we climbed up and back down the route faster and more enjoyably than we would have if we had climbed up it and descended to the basin on the other side. With packs and especially if you climb in some kind of hiking boots, you'll almost certainly do a LOT more belaying and it will involve more work.

 

If there is snow on the route, you probably won't be climbing in rock shoes and you probably will be belaying quite a bit of it anyway, so in these conditions the up and down approach may not be quite as good. My bet is that if Forrest et al climbed it any time recently, they found quite a bit of snow on the route. It has been cold and wet for a couple of months now. I'm sure that right now it is not near as friendly as when I did it late-summer.