Mary Green Glacier on Bonanza Peak

July 13, 2024

Colin and I had been talking about climbing Bonanza together for years. We’d read that early to mid-July was the best time of year to make the bergschrund crossing simple while keeping the upper scramble free of snow. With a perfect, albeit hot, summer weekend over July 12-14 and the ability for each of us to take Friday off work for the extra travel logistics, we conspired to make it happen.

We left Seattle early on Friday morning to get to Chelan for the 8:30am Lady Express. We learned a few things about the logistics. First, it’s a bit faster/easier to sail from Field’s Point Landing since the drive from Seattle is shorter and the boat goes there from Chelan, so it would have saved us a 5am departure. Second, the school buses to Holden Village only make the journey once a day, so even though we took the fast boat, we had to wait in Lucerne for ~1.5 hours before heading up the hill. No matter—the slowed-down pace forced us to get into vacation mode and enjoy the lake swimming and sunshine. Our bus driver to the village was a perfect ambassador, replete with a Hawaiian shirt and comical stories.

After an all-we-could-eat lunch at Holden Village for $12, we set off for Holden Pass at about 1:30pm. It was scorching hot and both of us had picked up daycare colds from our kids recently, so we were dragging, but the conversation helped pass the time and dousing ourselves in the streams we crossed took the edge off as well. We hadn’t been sure if we’d camp at the lake or pass, but upon hiking around the lake, it became clear it was good for swimming and not ideal for camping. After a wonderful dip, we continued on to Holden Pass through the hottest part of the day. We stopped to fill water at the last switchback, expecting the pass to be dry, which it mostly was.

The campsites at the pass were a medieval torture device of mosquito blood letting. Slapping one’s shoulder or neck would come back bloody with multiple carcasses of the foul creatures. Harried by this onslaught, we erected our tent and dove inside despite it still baking in the direct sun at about 5pm. Thankfully we were still able to take some naps despite the heat before dinner—an activity which continues to be one of my favorite backcountry activities.

We got moving at about 5:30am on Saturday morning, a little while after a party of four who were also sleeping at the pass had set off. At first, we were just moving to keep the mosquitos away. Once we reached the ridge crest, the breeze picked up and we could think again. The waterfall slabs had a straightforward path through them without much hazard and we put our harnesses and rope on at the top of them at the margin of the glacier.

The glacier turned out to be incredibly well-behaved without any real crevasse hazard. It was a bit of a trudge up the snow, but the increasingly motivating views more than made up for it. We caught the party of four as the glacier steepened into the switch-back snow thumb leading up to the East face. This section was steeper snow but our high-top approach shoes with aluminum crampons worked fine since the East-facing snow had softened quite a bit by this time.

It turned out that the bergschrund crossing was very straightforward, with just a few steps on rock through a moat before regaining snow on the other side. We scampered across and up this snow for a little bit before traversing right onto the rock and removing the rope and our crampons. The terrain from here looked to be 4th class, so we decided to solo until/unless we felt the rope was needed.

Just behind us, the team of four was making this same transition when the third member of their party lost his footing in the soft snow and slipped down about 10-15 feet, dragging the first two members of his party, who had stepped onto rock in their crampons and walked across to keep the rope taught, down the rocks. It looked quite ugly, with the first member of their rope team getting bounced and bashed down a series of rock bulges on his side. Thankfully the injuries didn’t seem to require an emergency response and they were self sufficient so, despite feeling a bit shaken, we pressed on up the route.

The scramble was pretty fun. It was reasonably steep 4th class in places, but the holds were all there and it wasn’t too chossy. We soloed past 6-7 rap stations, staying left of both snow patches, eventually traversing slightly climber’s left into a second gully system just below the summit, then following the summit ridge just a bit further to the very top. What a position and view! It had taken us a little over 4 hours from camp at the pass to reach the summit.

The descent wasn’t noteworthy. We down-climbed from the summit ridge a long ways, through the relatively steep terrain, all the way back to the bottom steeper section where we did three rappels with our 60m x 8mm rope, then scrambling back down a little ways to the rock-snow transition. We roped for the moat crossing and steeper snow, which weren’t as sloppy as we thought they might be at 11:30am or so when we were back on them.

From the base of the snow finger, we decided a rope wasn’t necessary and fast-walked back down our bootpack to the waterfall ledges where we had lunch and then scrambled back down the ledges and to our tent at 1:30pm, roughly 8 hours after we’d started. We packed up, marched down to the lake for another swim and brief laze, and then pressed on through the heat back to Holden Village. We arrived just in time for dinner and enjoyed all the pizza we could eat with an accompaniment of cold beverages before a river swim, then whiskey on the rocks in the Adirondack chairs. It was a lovely evening, save the bugs.

We spent the night at the Ballfield Campground about a mile back up the trail, came back into the village for breakfast, and caught the school bus convoy down to Lucerne. Given the option to wait there for 2.5 hours for our boat or take the same boat up to Stehekin for a brief stay up there before coming back and then out, we chose the latter and thoroughly enjoyed burgers and beers on the deck in Stehekin along with a view of Buckner.

This was a fabulous adventure into the heart of the Cascades which made me feel like a tourist in the state I’ve been living in and exploring pretty extensively for 14 years. Thank you, Colin!

Chair Peak Circumnav CCW

April 13, 2024

My first circumnavigation of Chair Peak was in February of 2013 and went clockwise, finishing across Snow Lake. Colin suggested going counterclockwise this time and cutting off the Snow Lake portion with the direct route near Chair Peak itself.

We left Seattle at about 6:45am and started our tour at 8am. It was already hot in the open sections with the sun beating down and isothermal, sloppy snow already. The first section brought us up about 2,000 feet to the shoulder of Chair Peak in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. We stopped for a snack and transitioned to ski mode. The skiing was pretty horrendous breakable crust and wet slide avalanche debris most of the way down to the West edge of Snow Lake, but it was still fun given the ambiance.

We started back up about 2 hours and 15 minutes into our day, making our way up increasingly wet snow beneath Roosevelt, but never seeing significant instability. This climb was about 1,000 feet and we reached the saddle above Chair Peak Lake about 3 hours and 15 minutes from the car. We sat here and had lunch, basking in the warm sun and soaking up the mountain views. Rather than ski down the short pitch to the lake, we traversed on skins down, then across the lake and up to the saddle below Kaleetan just under 4 hours from the car. From here, it was a quick side-hill traverse in ski mode down near Melakwa Lake where we put the skins on for the last time and made our way up to the Bryant col about 4 hours and 45 minutes in.

Given the very warm conditions and clear wet slide debris in Bryant Couloir that we could see earlier in the day, we opted for the safer descent over the shoulder of Bryant. The first few turns were pretty buttery even if they were heavy and the skiing had its moments down into the standard Pineapple Pass descent and then back out the trail to the car. We were back just shy of 5 hours and 20 minutes after leaving the car.

Great day to be outside with a good friend even if the skiing was pretty poor!

Mount Aspiring NW Ridge

December 14, 2023

In December of 2017, Dale, Owen, and I traveled to New Zealand and climbed Mount Cook before the weather closed in, necessitating a shift to a driving wine and cheese tour for the rest of our time on the South Island. Six years later, I returned with my wife, baby, and our friends Jen, Colin, and their baby for a visit. Mount Aspiring had been stuck in my mind since the research for our first trip and so I (easily) convinced Colin to pack mountaineering gear so we could give it a go during our time in Wanaka.

To minimize our time away from wives and babies and with a 2-day weather window, we decided to take the helicopter ride up to Bevan Col. Trip reports online varied widely in terms of durations for the climb and descent from Colin Todd hut. The stats suggested it could be done faster than most estimates, so we hoped an early helicopter ride in on our first day would enable us to traverse to the hut, drop overnight gear, and then climb the mountain starting around 11am. We were dropped off a little after 9am and quickly traversed to the hut across the Bonar Glacier in just over an hour but, upon arriving, discussed with a Czech team of 3 at the hut who had been waiting out weather and wind for multiple days and could see that the wind was gusting at the summit at dangerous speeds, so we settled in for a day of leisure at the hut.

Our Czech friends woke up at 2:30am, which seemed a bit early to us, so we let them head out and then mobilized ourselves at 3:30am to be moving around 4am, expecting it to take about 1.5-2 hours before we hit the rock buttress and more route-finding challenges so we’d be aligned with dawn. We had scoped out The Ramp and the Kangaroo Patch on our hike in, but the snow was quite soft and didn’t refreeze, plus the guidebook suggested the Kangaroo Patch didn’t save much time and was less scenic than the full ridge.

From the hut, there were cairns everywhere on the ridge and we soon found an easy snow ramp heading onto the margin of the Iso Glacier, which we followed up to the saddle and then across onto the edge of the Therma Glacier as we followed the ridge to the right. We benefitted from the Czech party’s boot pack and switched onto the rocky ridge in under an hour. It was easy going and so we kept the rope in the bag. After traversing the gendarme, there was a brief down-climb step that was exposed enough we decided to put the rope on and protect it. It proved easy enough, as did the subsequent terrain, but having a short rope between us and simul-climbing didn’t slow us down and enabled us to place protection here and there. A few sections had snow and drop-offs, so we switched into crampons with axes a couple of times.

We caught the Czechs after skirting the buttress to the left. Our beta showed continuing a rising traverse below the ridge crest, but we could see this took us over steep snow. We followed this while the other party cut right and up to the ridge crest. Our path was efficient for the way up, with firm snow and good rock protection on our right, which we simul-climbed. After a bit more ridge scrambling back out of crampons, we were below the final ramp to the summit about 4 hours after leaving the hut.

We’d been nervous about the winds up high, but as we made our way upwards, we only felt a few gusts that threw our balance off—it was otherwise not too bad. The snow was firm and somewhat icy, but had just enough give for secure steps. After a little over an hour, we reached the summit at 9:15am. It was miraculously calm at the very top and we soaked in the views, including a really cool undercast marine layer blowing up the valleys to the West from the ocean. We could see Mount Cook in the distance.

A few moments later, we started down the long section of side-hilling descent back to the ridge, which took us an hour since the snow was still so firm. Back on the ridge, the temperature was rapidly rising and the wind was reducing, so we took off most of our layers and fueled up. We decided to avoid what would now be slushy snow from our path up and stayed on the crest of the ridge as the Czechs had done. This worked well and we eventually found a ramp that traversed back skier’s right as the ridge steepened, which eventually brought us back to our track from the way up.

The rest of the scramble went quickly, now knowing the best path up, down, and around the features of the ridge. At 12:45pm, a little over 3 hours after leaving the summit, we were back on the snow of the Therma Glacier, sinking in about a foot with each step. The rest of the way down to the hut went quickly and we arrived there at 1:15pm, about 9 hours after leaving.

We fueled and packed up at the hut and got moving around 3pm. We’d heard that the Bevan Col descent had wet slide avalanche overhead hazard risk and it was so warm that we decided to traverse the Bonar Glacier all the way to Quarterdeck Pass to go down French Ridge instead. This ended up being just over 4 miles and 2,000 feet of gain on the glacier, which was pretty soft at this point in the afternoon and arduous. Thankfully, the marine layer blowing in from the West provided some cover for us since we’d otherwise have baked to a crisp. That said, it ended up putting us in a full whiteout for about an hour of our journey. It took a little over 3 hours from the hut to the pass, which we crested at 6:30pm.

The descent from Quarterdeck Pass to French Ridge hut was quite quick on the soft snow, which was almost continuous to the hut. Since it was 7:30pm at that point, we decided it was best to spend the night there. Our boots were completely soaked from the wet snow, so it felt really good to get everything off and dry it out a bit. Some kind souls at the hut boiled a bit of water for us and we enjoyed an evening chatting up the other parties. The weather was expected to worsen significantly overnight and through the following day, but we needed to get back to our families, so we got moving with dawn at 5:30am.

It took us about 1.5 hours down the steep ridge and then jungle trail climbing roots through steep sections to the river ford at the base of French Ridge. Just as we reached that point, the rain started dumping and the wind kicked up. We put our heads down and marched down the trail, enjoying the ambiance as much as we could despite being completely soaked and a bit cold. It took about 5 hours from the hut to the car—not as bad as the guidebook suggested. When we got there, we piled straight into the car as the rain dumped down outside and then rallied our way out to Wanaka, meat pies, wives, and babies. Great success!