North CascadesWest Ridge Climber's Log
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| haishan | Solo  Date Climbed: Aug 21, 2012 | |
| Soloed the route via bypass gully approach. Was glad to run into cool mother-son team on the approach who helped show me the way past the moat... crux was definitely just getting from the glacier onto the rock. | |
| Posted Mar 13, 2013 1:44 am | ||
| Matt Lemke | With Josh Lewis Date Climbed: Sep 21, 2012 | |
| Thanks Josh for a great trip! I really enjoyed this one. Rap anchors are everywhere. All were good to use. | |
| Posted Nov 21, 2012 2:03 am | ||
| Josh Lewis | Amazing Route! Date Climbed: Sep 21, 2012 | |
| This is probably one of the best routes I've ever climbed on any mountain. Great quality, perhaps a little bit of loose rock in a few spots, but the West Ridge itself was very solid. The entire mountain can be down climbed, but there are rappels all over the place. As Steph Abegg says, use the more Western gully. | |
| Posted Sep 23, 2012 12:49 am | ||
| relic | good rock, tricky approach/exit Date Climbed: Jul 9, 2012 | |
| Easy, solid rock, mostly an very exposed scramble. The coulair is another story, took way more time than expected, especially the descent. | |
| Posted Aug 20, 2012 1:22 pm | ||
| SKI | Solid Rock, Tremendous Exposure Date Climbed: Jul 23, 2011 | |
| Car to Car in 12 hours. Lots of slow groups going up and coming down. DOWNCLIMB THE GLACIER CHUTE. Don't try to rappel any of it. It will cost you time and it is much easier than ANY of the other ways. Period. | |
| Posted Jul 25, 2011 9:34 pm | ||
| thekossack | Awesome Bivvy, Exposure Agogo Date Climbed: Jul 25, 2010 | |
| Made the low camp from the car in 2 hours Saturday, but slowed down on the glacier as we ascended with fully loaded packs. The snow in the gully was in good shape (only one moat to negotiate), then a chossy scramble to the notch (arrived by mid afternonn). We had a long and spectacular bivvy on some ledges just left of the notch, then set off for the summit at 6:30 am the following day. Great climbing, mostly chill stuff, and sustained exposure the whole way. The descent, however, proved tedious, a traversing down climb, with only two short repels on the way back to the notch. The schrunds in the gully also complicated the descent. Did not get back to the car until after dark. Very hard day for us, but a trophy trip by any standard. | |
| Posted Aug 5, 2010 10:03 pm | ||
| klwagar | great views Date Climbed: Jun 29, 2009 | |
| great views, great partner, great route. | |
| Posted Jul 2, 2009 9:58 pm | ||
| Sierra Ledge Rat | Fun climb | |
| We carried up bivouac gear and spent the night up there, really cool | |
| Posted Aug 28, 2008 11:31 am | ||
| johnsonfam77 | West Ridge hairy Date Climbed: Jun 23, 2008 | |
| Started up the coulior early (around 6 am). Snow was excellent up the 45-50 degree snow slope. Parties need to determine here if rope would cause the fall of whole party or go unroped with crampons and axe. We simul-climbed the ridge at the notch. First time for me. 90 percent of the moves on the snow-free ridge are exposed (like 500-1000 ft). Stressful for me. Three chimneys were the most difficult (5.3 to 5.6). Ridge ascent took 2.5 hours. Descent involved three rapps that were nice (anchor was well above our heads). Think we found Beckey's green rusted piton on route. Once off ridge we rapped down coulior with 2 40 ft raps and then down climbed the remainder to below the shrund (I recommend the face-in method). Whole climb from camp in Boston Basin was 11 hours. Good luck. | ||
| Posted Jul 4, 2008 5:29 pm | ||
| Aaron Dyer | Horrible Descent Date Climbed: Aug 7, 2006 | |
| I second Johnhl's comment, the descent down the ridge is way harder than climbing it. We were slow getting up the chute, dropped a camera and had to go down and get it. Coming down, we rappelled into the snow gully and I would much rather had down climbed it. We found rusty, crummy pitons, odd stances, and difficult changeovers. Apparently there is another rappel to the west of this gully, but we didn't look for it. Take that one, or descend the east ledges. | |
| Posted Sep 21, 2007 3:11 pm | ||
| lavaka | Torment-Forbidden Traverse Date Climbed: Jul 19, 2006 | |
| Climbed W. Ridge as part of traverse. The rock is exceptionally good on this part of the ridge, much better than the rest of the crest. Excellent climbing. | |
| Posted Aug 30, 2006 1:50 am | ||
| Johnhl94563 | Beautiful Climb Date Climbed: Aug 1, 2003 | |
| My hat is off to the regular cascade climbers. I found the approach trail the hardest part of the trip (made the mistake of carrying 4 days of supplies and a heavy pack). Definately much harder than the trails in the Sierras. We had a nice clear day for our climb. Started out at 4am and couldn't manage to find the trail from the "lower high camp" up to the climb so we pretty much made our own. We managed to get back on track at the "upper high camp". Snow conditions were firm and the air was crisp. A large 15 foot gap had formed on the middle of the snow chute. This required us to exit the snow onto the rock with our crampons, work up some ledges (very nice ledges) and back onto the snow. A couple of weeks later this would have been tough. We found the rock climbing very straight forward and quite easy. I don't know if we ever found a move that we felt was over 5.0. But it is possible that we traversed around any potential "cruxes". Got to the summit around 10:30. Unfortunately the descent took MUCH longer. We down climbed most of the route (quicker than rappelling) until we got to the top of the snow chute. The snow had softened up quite a bit and it was quite unnerving downclimbing the steep soft snow. I would recommend trying to rappel past this. We returned (found the trail) to "lower high camp" around 6pm (14 hour day). Nothing was real special about this climb, but the over all experience was quite rewarding. | |
| Posted Feb 17, 2006 6:22 pm | ||
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