This last winter I hooked up with a new Snowrider friend, a Teleboarder who rips rather aggressively, and he mentioned a long history of climbing in the N. Cascades. After rolling into Mtn bike season, and continuing a good training base with him, I began to consider his offers to come along on this year’s “big” objective for their group, Goode Mountain (9,200’) via the NE Buttress Route, (Grade IV, 5.5).
Some wild trip reports and the super-Imposing picture from Fred Beckey’s N. Cascades Guidebook kept me very respectful of this major undertaking, but stoked to be in training for such a big step up in my Alpinist career. For those that are not yet tuned into the N. Cascades, they are the single largest collection of Alpine mountains in N. America, with “dramatic local relief”, such as the 6,000 rise from valley to peak in just over 1.5 miles along Goode’s NE Ridge / Buttress. The granite is much like Yosemite’s, although more blocky, and with more opportunities for handholds than the pure glacial polish of much of the Valley.
One of the factors in making this trip a class IV adventure was the approach in to this remote peak, and the fact that it was a “carryover”, where you must climb with all 30-40 lbs of your overnight gear on your back. Rather than hiking in over 10 miles from the Cascade Pass Highway, we chose to take the boat shuttle from Lake Chelan to Stehekin, a small town with no roads leading into it at the head of the lake. To get better acquainted with the area, I took the family up early, and enjoyed a few days away from it all at the resort beside the lake. On Sunday, June 12, Scott and RAM, my partners for this adventure arrived, and we continued the approach by taking two shuttles from Stehekin up valley to the trailhead.
When pulling our permit for this trip, the ranger warned us of “extensive bear activity” along the N. Fork Bridge Creek valley we would be approaching Goode Mountain from. Since my wife is the one with the fear of bears in our family, I didn’t think too much of it, and after the shuttle rides, we began hiking around 4pm. After two of three miles of deteriorating trail, with continuous Bear Scat along the way, we arrived at Walker Camp, and set up for the first night. Our first climbing problem then presented itself, in the form of creating a bear hang for our food. After a couple of feeble attempts at throwing a rope over limbs, I scrambled like a bear up a tall tree, and fixed a sling around the tree to stow our food cache out of bear’s way. The bear threat, it seemed, WAS real!
That night, the group dynamics of our party began to play out. Having not climbed with RAM before, and only a little with Scott at Smith Rocks, I began to get more detail about the nature of our alpine approach, the glacier travel, the moat crossing to obtain the buttress, and probable multiple pitches of 4th-class free-scrambling to gain the upper section of the buttress and the crux 5.5 pitches below the summit. Scott had been dreaming of this route for over 10 years of climbing in the N. Cascades, and was really excited to finally be there, after all of the logistics required to get this far. I, however, was being hit with the full impact of looking up the Goode Ridge (not even the full route yet!), the skill set required, and some terrible blisters from the short walk in. In short, scared S*&tless!
RAM was the voice of reason, and a great resource. With over 70 peaks under his belt in the N. Cascades, and countless years of N. Cascades and other backcountry experience, he tried to reassure me by discussing each piece of the puzzle, and relating his experiences there, and finding my strengths and weaknesses. Knowing that I did not have the experience in bushwhacking approaches, he made it clear that his job would be to get me up into the climbing area without a lot of extra steps, finding our way through the lower cruxes of a river crossing, steep climbing through crash alder, heather steps, and up to the glacier. In turn, Scott would lead through the glacier problems of avoiding the crevasses, finding a way over the moat, and onto the buttress itself. What they were looking for from me was my technical rock experience in leading any difficult rock sections we ran into.
After sleeping on this (NOT!), we packed up camp (without encountering any bears!) the next morning, and headed out along the N. Fork of Bridge Creek towards the base of the buttress. Other trip reports had put the creek crossing right up there as one of the major difficulties of the route, but once we found a small rock cairn near the stream, we walked right across a log over the creek, and the first crux was over. I felt much better after this, and we began to immediately climb up snow, slabs, alder, and then streambed at a consistent 30deg.+ angle. After about an hour, I stopped, turned around, and OH MY! – We had gained some serious altitude!
Another hour put us up to the planned bivy site at 5,100’, the only flat spot on the ridge, and just a few hundred feet below the toe of the glacier. From here you could see across the valley (Black Peak), up valley to Mt. Logan, and directly above us, the seracs (hanging ice blocks) of the Goode Glacier. Being only about 1pm, and a beautiful day, we set up camp, and slept in the sun for a few hours before cooking dinner. A short foray up to the glacier found a couple probable spots to get up onto the glacier, and some snowfields to the left to skirt the many large crevasses.
Finally, after two days of work, we were here! The next morning broke cold and cloudy, and we got up around 4:15 for the long day of climbing. The peak was still over 2,800 above us, with glacier travel, and a lot of rock between. We scrambled up to the glacier, roped up, and Scott began leading onto the glacier on HARD ice.
Thankfully, it quickly changed to snow, and we carefully avoided the crevasses which were covered, but evident along the way up to the top of the glacier. The top of the glacier had pulled away from the rock creating a bergschund, or moat of about 10-15 feet. An obvious snow bridge was still linking the glacier and rock, and Scott carefully led over it without incident, so RAM and I followed over. Once above it, we noticed how arched it was, and were thankful that arches are one of the strongest shapes in nature – A scary moment which caused us all to pause before looking at our next problem – Gaining the buttress.
The snowbridge had placed us on the left side of the buttress, with some steep and loose rock ahead to get up to the more moderate lower buttress slope. Again, Scott charged forward with 3 pitches of good leading to take us to the buttress proper. Careful climbing through this section got us through without any rockfall, and we stopped to take in the view, and assess the upcoming climbing. RAM unroped to check out around the corner, and found much cleaner, lower angle rock, and a decision was made to continue unroped until one of us felt we would prefer to rope back up.
This was where I had the most trouble, since my climbing experience has been mostly either roped climbing, or hard bouldering comfortably close to the ground. To continue unroped with such a large expanse of air below was very uncomfortable, but the climbing was 4th class scrambling, and to complete the entire 2,500’ above us, we would not have the luxury of roped and belayed climbing for the entire route. After a few minutes of carefully climbing nearby, but out of the line of any potential rockfall from each other’s path, I relaxed, and became more comfortable, and the climbing eased up even more. Soon we had gained another 1,200 feet, and we came upon an obvious steep section of rock about 1,200’ below the summit. Finally, the crux was upon us!
Not wanting to attempt the steeper stuff without a rope, I asked for the lead, now finally comfortable with what lay ahead, and assured the “Beckey 5.5” couldn’t be too hard, could it? My first pitch began with some awful white rock that upon closer inspection should have already fallen away. I quickly moved right, around the prow of the buttress to better rock. Unfortunately, I continued on around the buttress after placing a piece before and after the corner, creating unbelievable rope drag, and slowing my progress. After bringing up Scott and RAM, I lead off again, and climbing three more pitches of beautiful rock, mostly 5.2 moves with an occasional 5.4 or 5.5 move, steep climbing with lots of handholds. This brought us to within 750’ of the summit, and the climbing began to back off a little, but remained steep to the summit.
We decided to continue up with roped simul-climbing, where I would lead out, place pieces of protection until I ran out while Scott and RAM followed on a snug rope behind me. This allowed me to climb a 400’ “pitch”, set a belay with a sling around a block, and bring them up on standard belay. Scott then came up with all of the gear in hand, and he continued on, leading the final simul-pitch towards the summit. By this time it was after 5pm, and we knew we still had to get off this thing! Near the end of Scott’s pitch, we dropped our packs at an alcove heading left where we would return to traverse across to our descent route down the other side. A few more moves, and we gained the summit, looking over the abyss down the other side, and taking in the views of nearly a hundred major peaks in a 360 degree panorama that is still indescribable. A short sign in on the register (only about 20 names in over two years!), and we were off to descend this huge peak!
A short stretch of downclimbing and a rap back to our packs led us to another crux. The left hand catwalk went about halfway across to our descent col, called Black tooth notch. A short, 8-10 foot section of upclimbing would lead us to an upper ledge to complete the traverse. After of 13 hours of climbing, we decided to rope up for this short, but 2,800’ off the deck boulder problem. At the notch, 
we found more rap slings, and three more raps brought us to the SW couloir, where we finally changed out of our rock shoes for the day, and began a glisse descent though the soft snow, combined with careful downclimbing in loose rock. We plummeted 3,000’ from the summit in just under 2 hours, finishing in a beautiful heather bench above a cascading waterfall at 6,200’ around 8:30pm. Celebrations abounded as we dug in for our third night bivy, safely back down from a huge day of climbing.
Another 3,000’ of steep downclimbing through brush, loose Talus and beautiful old-growth forest (made much easier again, thanks to RAM’s unbelievable route-finding skills) led us back to the Park Creek basin, and a good trail back to the shuttle pickup spot. The last 2-3 miles were nearly a full-on sprint, as we dallied a bit when we finally hit the trail, and then realized we might be late for the shuttle bus, 2-3? miles away, with less than an hour before he was scheduled to leave! Knees grumbled, but we made it back with a few minutes to spare. Another shuttle down the valley, and a mandatory stop at the Stehekin Pastry company brought us back to the boat landing, and we waited for our 1pm boat back to civilization.
While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that anyone jump right into Class IV Alpine climbing, I am thankful that my choice of very competent partners, coupled with the piecemeal experience in the skills required allowed me to join in on such a great adventure, and contribute to its success. The N. Cascades are another complete step up from the types of alpine peaks I have been on in the Oregon Cascades, with their own set of challenges, different rock, and an incredible ‘big wilderness’ feel. Go in fully respectful of the scope of this wilderness, and you will have an incredible Alpine experience!
