May 23
Reed and Drew
Northwest Couloir, Mt. Shuksan, Washington
This is a weekend in the Pacific Northwest that is going to yield some awesome tales of mountain endeavors. Storms had been rolling through before the short-lived high pressure spells have been able to establish a solid melt-freeze cycle in the alpine. Until now. A consistent high pressure with reasonably low overnight temperatures perfectly aligned with the extended Memorial Day weekend. It was really fun making the phone calls to different friends in different areas; everyone was absolutely buzzing! It was clearly a time to go for it on whatever your balls (or ovaries) suggested you were jonesing for. Reed and I chose to try the Northwest Couloir on Mt. Shuksan.
We drove up from Seattle Friday evening and slept at the White Salmon parking lot at Mt. Baker ski resort. The mountain whispers good morning at ~4:15AM.
"Me marbles, where's me marbles?"
Approaching beneath some potential energy.
To summarize the day, we were slow. The approach included melted-out forest down climbing, stream crossing, skin failures, and Kokanee residuals. We took about twice as long as expected on the mountain, but in hindsight the delays were necessary for our climb and descent to occur during the right snow conditions. Reed's pile of high tech ski mountaineering gear.
We left that garbage behind, and up we went.
And up.
The climbing was pretty serious. Easy, hard-frozen corn, but waaay up in space. Let's just say we were wishing we had two axes each instead of between us. Two or three grapefruit sized rocks came down at 100mph whistling a not-so-happy tune as they passed, and when we gained a corner and saw the sun reflecting on the crux slope we said "fuck" and dug ourselves in to a nice meditation bench.
Don't drop Nalgene.
Larabee and environs.
At long last the snow began to soften. But we were still uninterested in climbing that mirror, so we clicked in to our skis and traversed to the opposite side of the slope to another great spot; a veritable ice cliff petting zoo. Note 10,000' volcano.
Oooh, I don't feel so good.
We ate, drank, applied sunblock and checked voicemail. I got the gojuice back in me and told Reed I was gonna head up, so I ditched the non-essentials and gave'er. I ended up climbing a slight variation on the ski route - it was more direct from our new perch, and it avoided the still-not-soft crux. The climbing was great, the snow softening rapidly, and I soon found myself high on the north shoulder. I was at about 8,300', still 700' below the summit pyramid, but this would have to do for today. Looking over at some ridiculous shit.
I'm going there. It about a vertical mile to the creek.
The upper glacier and couloir were money! The hanging traverse was acceptable (where I'm standing in this pic), and then I got to the business. I would either reverse my climbing route, thus avoiding the crux as we'd done all day, or if it seemed to have gotten soft enough to allow purchase, I could go down in there. It seemed good, so I went.
I sideslipped some of the worst, but then I was able to link some of the steepest turns of my life. Whoa. The place to be, right in the middle of this photo, as seen from below.
The angle eased just slightly and the snow improved a lot. I returned to our second break spot, and watched Reed descend from his high point a few hundred feet above. Then we skied. I probably didn't need to add camera tilt to this one.
Safe at the bottom, but as they say, "We weren't out of the woods yet."
Big photo with route illustration
here.
Up and down route with high point.
Lunch part one.
Lunch part two.
Climbing variation.
Fear.
Do want moar.
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