West Ridge on Mount Stuart

October 5, 2014

After comically getting snowed and rained out of Boston Basin on Saturday, dashing hopes of climbing the East and North Ridges on Forbidden Peak, Skye and I drove South to the trailhead of Mount Stuart, arriving at about 10pm. We slept until a little after 5am, packed, and were moving around 5:45am.

We did the approach pretty quickly, passing a beautiful field of larches near Ingalls Lake at sunrise and reaching the talus traverse below the route at about 9:30am. The gully starting the climb went quickly and was fun 3rd and 4th class scrambling. We reached the top of the gully in about 1:15, then spent the next 3 hours weaving our way up the ridge. As described, there's a bit of steeper climbing on the way up to Long John tower, one airy step around the West Horn, and then a little more easy 5th climbing past the West Ridge Notch to the summit, with the last pitches being the most fun. We had a great time and roped up for some simul-climbing any time we needed to.

The descent went better than my experience coming down from the North Ridge with Dale, but still hurt. There's no great way down the Cascadian Couloir. Unfortunately, near the bottom, I'd descended faster than Skye and she'd taken a turn out of the couloir, so we didn't end up in the same place. After a few feverish moments yelling each other's names, we reunited on the trail and hiked out via Long's Pass. Just as we were getting to Long's Pass, the sun was setting, lighting up the West and South faces of Mount Stuart—it was gorgeous. We descended back to the car, finishing around 8pm. It was a perfect fall day for an easy ridge climb.

NE Ridge on Mount Triumph

September 28, 2014

With my thumb still recovering from UCL surgery in late July and Kelsey's finger tendon on the mend as well, we searched around for fun, easy alpine trad routes for what promised to be a great fall weekend. Mount Triumph's NE Ridge quickly jumped to the lead and we set up the plan to drive up Saturday morning, approach, bivy, and then climb/descend on Sunday.

We started hiking at noon on Saturday and made good time, so we stopped at upper Thornton Lake for a brisk dip and some sunbathing on flat rocks before finishing the approach. It was a perfect, warm fall day for it. We made it to the col by 4:15pm or so and dropped down to the rocky ridge below the col where we experienced one of the better bivy sites I've ever encountered. We were cozy and falling asleep in the open air (we didn't bring a tent) by sunset, just shy of 7pm, with a great view of The Pickets.

Knowing that we'd be hiking out Sunday evening and having read widely varying trip report times on the ridge, we got started early, waking at 4:30am and moving by 5am. It was a pretty easy 1.5 hours to the notch at the start of the climb despite the darkness and a little wandering high and low to stay on the snow. Approach shoes with lightweight crampons and a stubby axe were more than sufficient for the glacier travel. The timing was perfect—we reached the small bivy spot a couple of pitches up right as The Pickets were starting to pink up with the sunrise, but didn't need headlamps for the climbing.

We simul-climbed the whole ridge with a single 70m rope doubled in half and a single rack to 3", which was overkill but helped with lengthening the simul- blocks. Memorable spots were the knife-edge ridge (reminiscent of the North Ridge on Stuart) and the steeper section around the crux. We didn't experience much loose rock and it felt like Type I fun the whole way—a bit of a rarity for me after doing lots of colder, snowier, icier climbs this year. Apparently I haven't been rock climbing enough recently!

We topped out at 9:30am, so about 3 hours up, with an amazingly clear view South to Rainier, West to Baker and Shuksan, North to the Pickets and East to Eldorado and Forbidden. It was truly breathtaking.

After leaving the summit at 10am, we spent the next 3 hours getting down to the notch, which really wasn't bad with a single 70m rope. Don't bring doubles. Only a couple of places required taking some unprotected steps after rapping off the ends of the rope on easy terrain. Simul-climbing back across the knife edge was pretty quick. We ran across another party on their way up just below the crux. I hope they had an awesome day as well—we were worried to see them left of the crux OW as we continued down...

From the notch, it was another 1.5 hours back to the col, so about 9 hours camp to camp and getting to that point at 2pm, so we decided to have a leisurely hike out with another swim in the upper lake. What an awesome weekend in a beautiful area with an exceptionally high Type I : Type II fun ratio.

Kautz Glacier on Mount Rainier 2014

September 1, 2014

My first climb on Rainier was via the Kautz Glacier in late July of 2012. At that time of year, the approach was all of 5 hours to high camp, the ice was fun, but short-lived, and the slog to the summit wasn't too tricky. I was glad to have ascents of Liberty and Ptarmigan Ridges under my belt before trying the Kautz on September 1st.

Our team of 5 slept in the parking lot on Saturday night in light rain and low visibility. That night, I comically learned the hard way that piling 3 dudes into a pickup camper is a bad idea. By the time we'd eaten breakfast at Paradise and checked in for the climb on Sunday morning, the clouds and fog had lifted a little bit, but it was very much socked in on the moraine. Route-finding in very low visibility across the Nisqually and Wilson Glaciers in late season was interesting to say the least. We crossed the Nisqually toward the waterfall at about 6,300 feet, weaving our way around some large crevasses, turned North and roped up at the edge of the Wilson (given that the normal fan approach was a death trap at this time of year).

The route up the Wilson looked improbable and we could only see it every so often through the clouds. I snapped a photo during one of those breaks to reference later, if necessary. While it seemed improbable, it ended up not being all that challenging. Some of the crevasse crossings were a bit spicy, but things were open enough that we could see what to trust and what not to. We traversed over toward the rock and stayed pretty close to it on the left edge, continuing past it to the NW. Once we rounded the corner around 7,400 feet, it was smooth sailing over toward the normal exit from the fan and some faint boot prints were visible.

On my earlier ascent of the Kautz, we stayed on snow almost the entire way to camp. This time, we were on and off it, spending much of the time from 8,400 feet to The Turtle at 9,800 or so on rock. The Turtle was heavily sun-cupped and offered an easier way up than the ridge. We found a good site at 10,800 feet with running water just to the East and turned in around 9pm. What had taken 5 hours in late July had taken 8+ this time.

*Adams, Hood, and Saint Helens, with Joe below on the extended first pitch*

We decided to get started early, expecting more ice and route-finding challenges, so we awoke at 3am and were moving by 4am, fueled by Sin Dawg and coffee. It only took 45 minutes to ascend to the rap, drop down, cross the icefall, and hit the base of the route. The first pitch was pretty straightforward, but much longer, more sustained, and with steeper sections than when I'd done it before. There were few sun cups for rests. Some of it was blue ice, but much of it had a snowy crust that produced great sticks. We simul-climbed much of it and I put in an intermediate anchor to re-rack about 60m up before climbing another 30m+ of lower-angle ice. From there, the snow between pitches was short and still icy. I ran us up to the base of the upper pitch and set up a belay off a screw off to the right side.

The upper pitch was great. The lower snow level had revealed much more ice than usual and, when the steeper part (which was about 40m on its own) eased up, it was still icy for another 60m or more. I led and spaced the combined team's screws (about 12 total) and we simul-climbed this whole section up to an area where the angle eased and we could rest on sun cups. The amount of ice on the route was close to on par with my experience on Liberty Ridge and I was really glad that we all brought two tools and a pole as opposed to one tool and an axe.

All of that ice took some serious time despite the simul-climbing and it was about 11am by the time we were out of the upper Kautz at about 13,000 feet on the rock rib. We melted some snow there and then set off around a large ice fall on the upper Nisqually. We had to navigate around a bunch of big crevasses up there, including a huge one that pushed us most of the way back across the saddle to Point Success before we were able to swing back East and hit the summit crater.

It was about 2pm at this point and the wind was howling out of the NW. Given the time of day and conditions, we made the right call to consider this point at little over 14,200 feet our summit. The 50 mph winds pushed us down the DC, which was uneventful, albeit long. The sunset from Camp Muir, with Adams poking above a bed of clouds was pretty memorable.

I'm pretty proud of this late-season ascent of the Kautz and have to say how impressed with the 3 members of our team who had never been up Rainier before. Nice work, team!