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[TR] Mt. Goode - NE Buttress 8/16/2012


Eric T

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Trip: Mt. Goode - NE Buttress

 

Date: 8/16/2012

 

Trip Report:

Dave Back and I climbed the NE Buttress of MT. Goode on the 16th and 17th of August 2012. As much as I’d like to think this TR is for catharsis, it’s really a confession. I hesitate to use the word “Epic” but for lack of a better description we’ll go with that.

We left Grizzly Camp at 6am on Thursday and headed two miles up the trail and found a place to cross the creek. That commenced the 3000ft climb up to the ridge over 3rd class rock slabs and some slide alder bush whacking. That brought us to the nose of the glacier which in late season was very icy and crevassed. I lead a pro less pitch of WI2 to get us to the rock ridge. Dave and I chose to simu-climb the rock ridge to the summit in blocks trading off the lead every so often.

Dave admitted to me that he forgot his food so we decided to share mine.

We made the summit at 4pm and after a snack some pics and a discussion about the decent we started the raps back to the notch and made it over to the decent gully. Tat is not hard to find and that was going smoothly. I recommended we traverse under the summit block to get to the Storm king-Goode Col which was an error. After traversing 5 pitches we found ourselves on another rock route and decided to rap it to the glacier and continue our traverse at a lower elevation.

Being out of water and about to run out of light we weighed our options. We could carry on in the dark, drop into the valley and walk the trails back around the Mountain (14miles), or shiver biver till dawn with a small fire. We elected option three and dropped down to the wood line to get some wood for a small fire. I then discovered that I had left my food on the summit (lol) and now we were food less.

The night was almost windless so we caught little bits of sleep as we tossed, turned and shivered. We were up packed and moving at first light. It took us a good hour to make it to the Col. When I peaked over the edge I told Dave, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, we’re in the right place. The bad news is, the glacier looks knar-bar.”

After rapping across the shrund we started front pointing down steep snow and ice. We had to head back to the rock where we found tat to rap across another cravasse. The next crevasse had to be jumped and committed us to continuing down the glacier. Multiple ice bridge crossings and some creative route finding got us off the glacier and onto rolling boulders. Thanks Dave for your cool head and determination on that ice!

I then managed to do a full blown Wile E. Coyote crash on the rocks, landing with my left leg folded under me and my chin smacking a boulder…lol. After a short recovery we kept moving down over the 3000 feet of entry slabs, waterfalls and intermittent cliffs. We set four of our own tats and found one. This brought us back to the stream crossing more slide alder and two miles of trail back to camp.

In our 34 hour push we had eaten 1 snickers bar, 1 shot blocks and 1 gu packet.

This was the kind of experience that tests partnerships and Dave and I came out the other side a stronger and more experienced team.

Dave, next time you get a crazy idea like that, please call me first because I’d stand in line for this….lol I loved every minute of this experience and it was one of my best climbs this year!

 

If you head up to do Mt Goode take the advice an expert climber gave me…

“Get up early and move fast; it’s big country up there.”

 

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Gear Notes:

Single rack to three, 60m rope, crampons, ice ax.

 

Approach Notes:

We hiked in via the Bridge Creek trail head on Hwy 20 and it was 13 miles to Grizzly camp.

Edited by Eric T
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Hey Eric, Thanks for the TR!

 

I've been wondering what the conditions were like on Goode lately, I'll be heading up there tomorrow. Would you recommend bringing a screw or two for the WI2 to gain the ridge? Was there a good spot to gain the ridge without a bunch of moat issues? We'll be going up and over, so won't need to deal with the glacier descent at least. Thanks!

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Would you recommend bringing a screw or two for the WI2 to gain the ridge? Was there a good spot to gain the ridge without a bunch of moat issues?

 

Hi Val,

A screw wouldn't be a bad idea, it's definitely ice. The moat wasn't bad; we got under the ridge below the ice and ascended the ice 200 meters climbers right of the ridge. We then moved climbers left or south to gain the side of the ridge. The snow and rock touched at a point and stepping across was no big deal.

Good move on carrying over!

 

Val have fun out there; looking forward to seeing your pics!

 

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