Brothers South TR

[Red_Carter]

Climbed the Brothers South this weekend (7/7/02). We camped at Lena Forks. I walked in Saturday eve to meet the rest of my group as I couldn't leave Seattle until the eve. By the time I reached the forks it was dark and I couldn't find the through trail, and finally just bivied by the river and awoke early Sunday and was able to pickup the trail in the light, and meet up with my group. We met several parties on the way up who had turned back due to wet conditions, which reportedly made the rock slick for scrambling. We decided that we would make it far up as we could. Luckily, the rock had dried by the time we were well on our way up (it had rained lightly that morn). The snow in the final colouir was soft, thus crampons weren't necessary. The final 200 feet of snow or so steepens before leading to rock/scree. We had nice weather on top with high cloud cover and excellent views of surrounding peaks, hood canal and south puget sound. We had just gained the snow again on the way down when a light rain started to fall. We lucked out with the weather.