by Chris Comair
climbs in the USA’s Pacific North West
Jess and I had spend the last week tracking the snowfall closely. Our goal was to climb a north side Rainier route on the Memorial Day weekend, but a half-yard of snow dump a few days before ruined our plans. We drove as far away from the snow we could get- out to Vantage for [...]
A week beforehand, a bunch of mixed alpine route beta from WA Pass started spraying on Instagram, and we wanted to partake in the fun. We arrived to the iconic hairpin turn on the highway. The weather was colder than the warm forecast, and we were feeling good after a few glugs of Yerba Matte. It was fairly clear where we were going even in the pitch dark, and after about an hour of following some boot pack and crossing over some shitty tree wells, we found ourselves at what seemed to be at the bottom of the route. [..]
There are really 2 ways to climb the Cathedral Ridge. Either approached by Lolo Pass, all the way from the far northwest flank of the mountain. While scenic and pure, it requires climbers to somehow get back to their car when descending to Timberline. Alternatively, it can be approached from the good ole south side. It begins with crossing over the Illumination Saddle, then the Reid Glacier, then the Yocum Ridge, then the Sandy Glacier, and then finally make the way onto the Cathedral Ridge. This effectively circumnavigates half the mountain. [...]
Bad luck or poor planning, whatever it was, Jessica and I set our eyes on this climb a couple years back but never managed to send it. Whether it was bailing in very dry conditions or forgetting our boots at home, we ended the 2019 season shot down by this “fairly straightforward” Mt Hood south side techy classic. And as 2020 came and left, we managed to keep ourselves busy with plenty of other climbs. But this spring, spotting a splitter sunny but cold weather window, we snuck out to Oregon to finally (hopefully) bang this one out together. [...]
I mentioned to Will that Jess and I were looking at climbing the NE Face of Eldorado. His AMGA Alpine exam happened to take him pretty close to our objective, the relatively untouched North Ridge of Eldorado. Kind of a coincidence because I had just been looking at the N Ridge topo wondering if it would be a viable ascent. Turns out it was, and Will was ready to get back on it! [...]
We had spent the previous day hauling up to the 7400’ camp of Eldorado. This camp is such a long way to go that it doesn’t particularly make sense to me for anything except mini-basecamping. Our primary objective of the trip was to climb the rarely touched North Ridge of Eldorado, with the NW Ridge of Dorado needle as a warmup. Being the slightly overlay ambitious people that we are, chatting over our rehydrated meals, the East Ridge came up. “Why not!” [...]
2018, sitting on the summit of Forbidden having just climbed the classic West Ridge, Jere and I watched a team make their way up the North Ridge. The route just struck me. The increased solitude, the variety of terrain, and the overall burliness of the ridge just had me impressed. It looked like the true classic. [...]
After a fairly intense (ie. extremely dangerous) experience on Mount Hood’s North Face recently, Jess and I were feeling pretty risk adverse in approaching a tight weather window between periods of heavy unseasonal precip. We’ve been wanting to climb Colchuck’s North Buttress Couloir, but had never actually climbed Colchuck to begin with. Why not check it out? [...]
As we began to make our way up the chute, the climbing stayed drama free. It was exactly what it looked like from below, fun and cruiser. We could see a trio of climbers below us in the distance below looking up at us. Below I knew it, I could feel the sun cresting over the ridge above. A few kicks later, looking over my left shoulder I could see the Wy’east ridge to the summit soaring up above us. “Woahhhhhh, Jess, this is beautiful! When you get up here look over your left shoulder!” [...]
Last year Jessica and I had so many failed attempts at the Devils Kitchen Headwall that we ended up deeming just uttering its name to be unlucky. The fails were not climbing fails, per se... forgetting our boots at home, seriously bad ice fall conditions, etc. By the time we actually managed to give it a shot, it was in condition thin enough that I didn’t deem reasonable to climb half-way through. I bailed off an extremely sketchy screw placement in aerated ice and called it a season for the Headwall. [...]
