Acid Baby on Aasgard Sentinel

August 16, 2015

Will and I drove out to the trailhead and slept in the car on Saturday night for a car-to-car mission. We woke up at 4:30am and were moving by 5am up the very familiar trail to Colchuck Lake. As expected it was a little over 3 hours to the base of the route. Despite being mid August, it was actually pretty chilly when we started climbing at about 8:45am in the shade.

The first pitch was fun and a nice warmup. The dihedral looked tricky from below, but had some perfect stemming to work through it without needing to pull very hard. The belay ledge was awesome. From there, we headed straight up the physical crux on pitch 2. It was a bit pumpy, but too tough. Only one offwidth move was needed and the rest was a combination of stemming, laybacks, and jams.

The third pitch had some spooky loose blocks (which had been directly above the belay) before a really easy traverse to a corner. It would have made the most sense to head straight up the corner, but the beta suggested a hand crack down and right, which was awesome. We'd set up the belay in the corner, so I had a great vantage point on Will as he led the hand crack. The movement above was really fun and included some thin face moves. I was able to stem a bit and keep the pressure off my bad pulley tendon.

The penultimate pitch was really fun and brought us to a nice ledge belay below the final ridge. The ridge was exposed, but not very difficult and was lots of fun. We finished the route at about 1:15pm, so about 4.5 hours on route. Unfortunately, the route ends at a notch well below the summit, rather than on the summit itself, so we scrambled up and left on sandy ledges until we were able to step over onto the summit plateau. While there was some smoke, the view was still pretty awesome. We hiked up to the true summit to take in the view before scampering down the easy gully and back down to our gear at about 2:30pm. From there, it was a little under 3 hours back out and we hit the car at about 5:15pm for just over 12 hours car to car.

What a high-quality, consistent, fun route!

Kautz Glacier on Mount Rainier '15

August 2, 2015

With a nice forecast and some recent views of Rainier from Seattle making me feel like the window to climb it again in 2015 was rapidly closing, Kelsey and I switched plans from a WA Pass rock weekend to the Kautz Glacier on Rainier. This was my third time up the route, but felt somewhat different, given our decision to follow the ranger's advice and begin from the Comet Falls trailhead.

We left our car at Paradise and found a random, willing couple to drive us down the few miles (and 2,000 feet of elevation) to the start. From here, at about 10am, a very pleasant trail brought us through the woods and away from the crowds up past two waterfalls and eventually to Van Trump Park. We had a great view up to our destination for the day—the Wapowety Cleaver—and the Kautz Glacier above. The trip went smoothly and didn't require roping up at all. We finished up the Turtle by 5pm, which meant that we had plenty of time to nap before dinner. Huge win. It was pretty mild and we had decided to just do an open bivy so we didn't have to carry a tent over.

We started moving on Sunday at about 4:30am and were quickly at the ice. It went pretty fast as a party of two simul-climbing everything and we got to the top of the second pitch difficulties at about 6:45am. Some thick smoke had blown in from a big forest fire, so visibility wasn't great, unfortunately. We passed the only other party we saw on the route in two days at that point and continued on our way up toward the summit. For a few minutes, the clouds got dark and rained, then snowed on us. Thankfully the weather was short-lived and cleared up quickly. It was pretty uneventful and we focused on keeping a slow and steady pace that got us to the DC route about 1,000 feet below the summit at 10:30am. We dropped our packs here and scampered to the summit unencumbered. It took less than 45 minutes from there.

The DC took a while to descend given how broken up and circuitous it was, but we made it down to Muir in about 4 hours and then had another 2 down to Paradise, which meant that we were done around 5pm. Good times! I'll have to find another go-to route on Rainier for next year.

*Kelsey on the ridge with Boston Glacier and Buckner*

East Ridge Direct on Forbidden Peak

July 4, 2015

With the Torment-Forbidden Traverse and, more recently, the North Ridge under my belt, the East Ridge Direct was the natural next line to experience on this classic North Cascades peak. Kelsey and I drove up on Friday night to bivy at the trailhead and get started early enough to hopefully return to Seattle in time for fireworks on the 4th.

We got 4 to 5 restless hours of sleep in the parking lot and woke up at 4am to get going by 4:30am. After ascending the now-familiar trail to Boston Basin, we ran into a pair of climbing rangers who were headed up for the same route. We leapfrogged each other on the way up to the col near the solitary gendarme and racked up together in the sun.

We were climbing by 9am or so, quickly rising to the ridge crest and enjoying an awesome position and exposure with very moderate, well-protected climbing. We did a few simul-climbing blocks and passed the ranger ladies just after a fun au cheval knife edge. The 5.7 face moves were fun, though I think I stayed too far left and climbed some more difficult moves straight up with little protection. After a short rap, we tackled the 5.8 crux, which I thought was super fun and well protected. Easy 5th class brought us to a quiet summit with no other climbers—pretty novel for Forbidden Peak and especially for July 4th on a long weekend. Not bad!

The East Ledges descent has received quite a bit of hype, but we found it to be pretty straightforward and relatively tame in the grand scheme of things. Don't be too concerned. 5 raps with a little down-climbing or 6 should do it. There are cairns at most of the rock rib crossings showing the easiest way.

We finished up, boot-skied as much snow as we could, and were back at the car by 4pm for about 11.5 hours round trip. Plenty of time to get home and catch an awesome fireworks display!