Kelsey on her way to The Castle with Unicorn Peak in the distance

Tatoosh Traverse

April 16, 2017

I've been recovering from wrist reconstructive surgery since last November and am not yet ready for more technical ice and mixed routes, so this spring has been a good opportunity to stick to the skis and check out some areas I might not have explored otherwise. With one day this weekend to get outside, Kelsey and I agreed that traversing through the Tatoosh Range just south of Rainier would be a good choice. Temperatures were supposed to stay low, the wind was supposed to be up, and high cloud cover was in the forecast—a perfect combination to avoid dangerous wet slides on the low-elevation southern aspects.

We drove down to Longmire early in the morning and waited a bit for the gate to open. Just shy of 9am, we cruised up to Narada Falls and hopped on our skis. The road was nicely snow-covered and went quickly. We dug a pit on the steeper slopes below Unicorn and found a hard rain crust about a foot down, but the snow on top was reluctant to move, so we continued on, skinning up to the top of Unicorn at about 12:30pm. The wind was howling and sending snow and ice at us like a sandstorm, so we didn't linger on the top.

Some fun turns brought us to the saddle separating Unicorn and the rest of the range. We did a long, downward traverse towards The Castle and battled some old avalanche debris along the way, eventually scrambling to the summit of The Castle at 3pm. The wind had calmed a bit and the Southern aspects were getting a bit warmer in the afternoon sun, but the cloud cover saved us from scarier conditions.

We skied down, around the rock band separating The Castle and Pinnacle Peak, and then headed up toward Pinnacle's West Ridge. A couple hundred feet from the top, it got too steep and crusty to skin, so we dropped the skis and boot packed the rest of the way up. It got decently steep in a few spots and was enough to make me be careful, but not so bad as to need a rope. I scrambled to the top of the summit blocks on Pinnacle at 3:45pm.

We could have kept going on to Plummer, Denman, and Lane at this point, knowing the downhill gate would close by 9pm, but we felt pretty happy with the day so far and knew we'd be back to finish up the full traverse another time, so we called it good at the Plummer-Pinnacle saddle and enjoyed some fun skiing down to the Tatoosh Creek and back to our car by 5:30pm. Great day!

The Valkyrie on Aasgard Sentinel

August 27, 2016

Climbing Acid Baby last August with Will was awesome—the route and rock were both of very high quality. It only made sense that The Valkyrie would be similarly awesome.

Dale and I got an early start from Seattle on Saturday morning, leaving town at 6am and then leaving the car at the trailhead just shy of 9am. We arrived at the base of the route before noon and found a bunch of parties on Acid Baby while there was only one group of three on The Valkyrie and they were already well into the second pitch. Whew. Our plan to take the second shift worked out. We ate lunch and then headed up.

Hand jams of glory on pitch 2 (photo by Dale Apgar)

The first pitch crux was a little tricky but not too bad. Pitch two was much more sustained and quite fun, with a long hand crack section on very grippy rock. The rightward traverse on pitch 4 into the hidden hand crack was especially memorable. From there, more fun moves and lower-angle climbing brought us to the knobby face and then on to the shared ridge finish. We completed that by 5:45pm, having taken our time on the route to enjoy it. A weather system had threatened us around 2pm, but it ended up blowing past us to the West, so we lucked out.

The summit had great views and was an easy walk off. We descended quickly and floated on some whiskey from the lake down, arriving at the car just after 9pm for a 12-hour car-to-car time. Great route—perhaps even better than Acid Baby!

*Sunset on the Southern Pickets - Inspiration is the M-shaped one in the center*

East Ridge on Inspiration Peak

August 21, 2016

I'd been hoping to get into The Pickets for a couple of years now and jumped at the opportunity with a perfect weather window and Dale in town over a weekend when I could take an extra day off work. We planned our adventure on Thursday night, left Seattle around 8:30am on Friday, grabbed permits for the Terror Basin, and started hiking up Goodell Creek at about 12:30pm.

Much has been written about the intensity and duration of Pickets approaches, so we were mentally prepared for a slog. Thankfully, a pleasant 1.5 hours along the creek with some brush, but nothing crazy, took us to the turn uphill. While it was steep and unrelenting for nearly 4,000 feet, it really wasn't that bad either. At 5,200 feet or so, we got our first full view of the Terror Glacier basin and our objective. It was striking and motivation enough to make the long, open traverse to the saddle at 6,200 feet and descend to camp. We met one other party of two there who decided to go for Terror. Another party of two came in after we'd set up camp; they were headed for West McMillan. Behind them was a party of four who were also aiming for Inspiration's East Ridge.

We got to bed early, woke up a little after 4am, and were on the move a bit after 4:30am. The benches weren't hard to navigate in the dark and we eventually made it to the outlet of the lake below McMillan before starting to head up slabs toward Inspiration. A little after 7am, we had crampons on and were crossing snow toward a narrow ramp which we hoped would take us to the upper glacier and the base of the route. After getting most of the way up it, we decided that it was too tenuous—the snow bridge wasn't very thick, the ice was pretty steep, and the crevasses below us were big.

We headed climber's right to the rock rib separating McMillan and Inspiration instead. It was mostly 4th class with a few 5th class moves. It brought us exactly where we wanted to go—to the upper glacier just a few hundred feet from the base of the route. We quickly traversed over and found a thin tongue of snow laying up against the face with significant moats on either side across the whole face. Lucky!

The first few hundred feet of the route were engaging, but forgettable. The climbing was pretty steep for approach shoes with packs and we gingerly simul-climbed our way up until things eased near the top. At the top of the saddle, we switched to rock shoes for the crux pitches and thoroughly enjoyed the first 5.8 pitch before arriving at a lovely ledge below the crux with stellar views from the Northern Pickets all the way around to Glacier Peak. We could see our friends cruising up West McMillan Spire as well.

Dale set off on the crux pitch and thoroughly enjoyed himself. The climbing was pretty physical with packs on and the crack was awesome, ranging from wide hands to perfect hands. I seconded and took a look around at every rest. The climbing would have been an amazing pitch on its own at Index, but to be on that face with that position in the wild Picket Range was something else. We finished the pitch with high fives and many a superlative uttered.

From there, it was easy ridge scrambling to the summit. We switched back to approach shoes and were glad we did. It was 12:30pm when we hit the summit, so we decided there was time for a short nap after lunch, and then it was time to begin the tedious descent. 3 double rope raps off the summit down the West Ridge got us to a station above the South Face. The rap from there was nearly a full rope length free hanging before touching down a little bit above the next rap. Invigorating!

The rest of the raps went without incident, as did our long end run across the glacier to make it through the maze of crevasses (photos from the summit were helpful). We retraced our steps from the morning at that point and were back at camp around 7pm to make dinner before dark.

After a leisurely start on our last day, we thoroughly enjoyed our descending traverse out, including foraging a bunch of wild blueberries. The hike down the steep ridge really wasn't that bad and put us back at the car at about 2:30pm. Our friends who had climbed McMillan told us about a great swimming hole from the group campsite, which we enjoyed thoroughly before heading back to town. Great weekend and an awesome realization that a place so wild and exciting was so close by. There's so much more to do!