Goode – NE Buttress – 7/8-7/13 2018

The Northeast Face of Goode Mountain,
viewed from Mt. Logan, August 2015.

I'm still trying to piece together my Goode-Forbidden Traverse – an effort to combine the two best moderate alpine rock routes in North Cascades National Park: The Northeast Buttress of Goode and the North Ridge of Forbidden. In this attempt Grace and I managed to climb the Northeast Buttress of Goode... over six days.

The plan was to start from Cascade Pass, hike down the Stehekin River, up Park Creek, and access the NE side of Goode via. the Goode-Storm King Col. Then, after climbing Goode, traverse the Wyeth Glacier to the vicinity of Park Creek Pass, cross upper Thunder Basin to access the Boston Glacier, and then climb over Forbidden via the North Ridge. This route has the advantage of allowing you to cache some food and fuel (appropriately protected from bear and snaffles), and not have to carry it over Goode.

The first couple days went as planned. We made it up to our high camp beneath the SW face of Goode early on our second afternoon; spent the rest of the day lounging in the shade and scoping the traverse over toward Storm King. Then the "inconsequential trough" moved in and we were stuck in our bivy tent for the next 18 hours. By the time the rain stopped on Day 3 it was almost noon. Still, we decided to go for it, as Becky claims the NE Buttress should take 6.5-8 hours. I figured 3 hours to get around the mountain to the Buttress, and 7 hours of climbing would put us on top by dark. It's probably good that this plan was foiled, as these turned out to be quite optimistic estimates.

Do NOT use this anchor!

The good anchor/line is at the right edge of the col.
Follow the red crumbly scree up to the rocky notch on the right

Getting to the Goode-Storm King Col was straightforward despite the lingering fog. However the obvious rappel anchor was not acceptable. There are about a dozen slings wrapped around a large but rotten horn at the lowest point of the col, with a boot track leading to it. Not only is the horn suspect, but the rappel line is horribly dangerous: a long vertical-to-overhanging line with extremely loose, sharp rock. I wasted a bunch of time setting up a more solid anchor, got myself on rappel, and only then decided that the line was simply too dangerous for us. Way too much risk of the second kicking rock down on the leader. Way too much spontaneous rockfall in the landing zone. This was a good decision. Searching up and right (closer to Goode) we found a disused piton and nut anchor in solid rock that provided an easy, safe 10 m rap to the snow. The webbing had been almost completely chewed away by snaffles, and what was left was faded and brittle. Years since it was last used, but so much better in every way!  I seriously considered cutting all the webbing off the horn anchor, but didn't in case it is necessary when there is less snow. It's still there for now. Use at your peril.

By the time we'd discovered this superior descent, backed it up, and re-rigged it, it was far to late in the day to consider continuing up Goode. Moreover the weather had not cleared as predicted. We headed back to our camp hoping for a better opportunity in the morning. The mountain remained shrouded in fog until after sunset.

Looking straight up the NEB of Goode.

This was decision time. We could either go up Goode the following day and scrap the traverse to

Forbidden, or press on along the traverse. We no longer had time to do both. Given the possibility that the Wyeth Glacier high route might not go –we could be turned around without climbing anything– we opted for the former.

Even with a pre-set rappel anchor at the col, it still took us 4.5 hours to get around the mountain. The glacier descent from the col is not completely straightforward; I wouldn't want to do it in the dark. Accessing the buttress also proved to be rather time consuming, eating another hour. We climbed the glacier around to the left side of the buttress as Beckey recommends, one or two hundred feet above the buttress toe. A quick (slightly terrifying) scamper through a zone of tottering ice blocks led to a short 5th class pitch of solid gneiss on a diagonal line up to the buttress crest, starting about 20' above the obvious red crumbly ledge that I believe is the standard access point. If I ever do this route again I'll probably try accessing the buttress from climbers right. That looked like a much better ice-rock transition, but it isn't quite clear how difficult the first pitch of climbing on the buttress will be if you access it this way.

Amazing climbing on the lower NEB of Goode Mountain

We started up the buttress around 12:30, and made it to the summit at 22:00, just at the very tail end of nautical twilight. The climb was both better and longer than I had remembered. Pitch after glorious pitch of solid 4th and low 5th class climbing. If you find yourself off to one side or the other for more than half a pitch or so, you're doing it wrong, and probably missing some great climbing. There are two points where the crest you are on fades into the face, and you have to move right to gain the new crest. Do so as soon as possible in each case! At the first of these junctures I passed up a ledge system leading to the crest in favor of climbing straight up the face above. I suspect this was a mistake, as this pitch was the hardest of the climb; quite loose, with poor protection.

Grace pulls through the last of the harder 5th class pitches, high on the buttress.

The last few hundred feet up the buttress was a race against darkness. Even so, we stopped for a few minutes so Grace could stuff ice into her pack from a handy snowfield. Although it made climbing that much more awkward for her, we were glad of it in the end. On the summit we collapsed onto our pads and melted it for water, ate dinner, and passed out.

Buckner, Forbidden, Eldorado at dawn.

Goode summit bivy!

Dawn on the summit of Goode is amazing. The bivy site is the summit, so you just sit up and stare at 360 degrees of awesome. It feels like sleeping on a pedestal in the sky. Sleeping here is half the reason this is such an awesome climb.

For the whole trip I'd been a little worried about the descent, as we only had one 60 m rope. I had memories of a horrific intermediate anchor on the rappel into the Southwest Couloir: a 500 lb block on the sloping ledge "at 70 feet" that Beckey describes in CAG Vol 2. On my previous visit (2008) we bypassed it using two ropes, and I was planning to leave a gear anchor rather than use it. However, it turns out that said block is gone; it must have slid off the ledge sometime in the last 10 years! Instead, a solid horn is found at 31 m. It is slightly too far to reach with one 60 m rope, but a good 1-2" crack is available for an intermediate anchor, which we used to avoid soloing to the next rappel point.

Meadows above the burn, SW of Goode Mountain, Park Creek drainage

After that it was just backpacking. We descended to our high camp and had a long break, then pushed

on to Cottonwood Camp for the night. Six thousand feet feet of descent and ten miles of flat hiking. We sighted the bear box at dusk, ate our dinner in the dark, and passed out under the stars – until a mouse bit my finger, and another one scampered across Grace's mouth. Argh! I stumbled back to the bear box to get the bivy tent, only to find a pair of lambent eyes staring back at me from head height. Just a big velvety buck ambling along under the trees, but he gave me a nice shock.  Luckily the bivy tent deterred the rodents, and there was no further wildlife related excitement. We were back at the car by 14:00 the following day. Cascadian Farms. Burger Barn. Coffee. Coffee. Grandview.

Gear:

Rack: Nuts and tricams, single BD C4 from 0.4-2, BD X4s 0.1-0.3; 12 alpine draws and 4 long slings.

Rope: Single half rope (60 m), doubled over for the rick climbing.

Ice: Crampons, one ice screw, and one picket each.

Footwear: mountain boots – I never wished for rock shoes, but this is a personal preference. I know many folks who've used rock shoes on this climb, and been glad to have them.

Shelter: we used an XPED BIVYBAG DUO UL as our "tent" with two pickets lashed together as the pole. 300g of useful shelter. It works, but it's pretty miserable to be trapped inside of during a rain storm.

We used every piece of gear we brought, except the ice screw. You probably don't need the pickets unless you intend to descend via the Goode-Stormking col, or if you do AND are comfortable on exposed 45-50 degree snow without protection.

Vermin: There's a rat that lives on the summit. Protect your food/gear if you intend to bivy there! Both Flat Creek and Cottonwood Camp are crawling with mice.

Photos:

Backpacking with Babies – Tips for Outdoor Parenting

Ruth Mountain, WA.

So, you're expecting your first child and wondering how to keep getting outside once you have a human larva to care for. I've been there. This post is supposed to help. At the same time, I'm not a medical doctor or expert of any kind. I'm relating my experience. Use your own judgment about what is safe for you and your child.

When to go:

In the first couple weeks or months postpartum it's probably best just to lie low. You have a lot to adjust to, Mom probably needs some rest, and it's a time when medical emergencies for the child are more likely. But eventually you're going to get itchy feet; you hear the call of the wild and just need to go. Our first overnight trip was at the 3-month mark.

Kid Carriers:

In the first year of life the Ergo Baby, or similarly designed kid carrier, is your best, best, best friend. With the infant insert, head stability need not be attained before getting active. I got pretty good at checking my daughter's pulse through a vein on top of her head, as sometimes it was hard to tell if she was still alive in there – she'd sleep for hours. I carried her around in our Ergo Baby all the time, both for hiking and just doing stuff around the house.

A front carrier lets you haul a full pack of gear.

This style of carrier has minimal weight or structure, just a strip of cloth with appropriately positioned straps and buckles. They are designed simply to hold the baby against your body, and distribute some weight to your hips. A useful consequence of this design is that you needn't worry too much about your baby getting too hot or cold: they stay at your body temperature. If you're working hard, hiking up hill in warm weather, your baby's going to get a sweat bath, but as far as I can tell this isn't something that will bother them. It only grosses out the adults. 

As the child gets older you may find that you want to stick with the Ergo as long as possible, as it enables you to carry a full size load of your own, and doesn't weigh much in and of itself. I have a love/hate relationship with backpack style kid carriers, as they have so little cargo capacity beyond the child, and weigh so much empty. When our daughter was 8 months old we spent 10 days out in the Wind River range, which would not have been possible with a backpack style carrier. You can achieve a lot with an Ergo, and a willing and able parent-mule. 

Eventually though the child will become too big, and probably too active, to tolerate the Ergo. A year or two of backpacking them will be required. For this reason alone, big backcountry trips are easiest in the first year of life. If you have a reasonably light camping kit, it's definitely feasible for one person to carry all the gear, and the other to carry the child. Just don't expect to bring climbing gear, or expect it to be a reasonable system with a second child.

8 mo. old. Cirque of the Towers, Wind River Range, WY. 

Clothing Systems:

Good technical clothing for children and babies is hard to find. Perhaps more importantly, none of it seems designed for the child's primary position: sitting in a carrier sling or pack.

In the first six months things are relatively easy. Oversized onesies in synthetic materials, lycra, fleece, etc. are reasonably easy to find. Patagonia has a good line of outdoor garments for kids and babies, but they are often out of stock, and it's expensive.

One item that we found indispensable is the Patagonia Synchilla. It's a fleece onesie that comes in sizes from infant up to 12 mo with a very clever design. You can either configure it to have separate legs, or zip them together to form a sleep sack. This also allows access for diaper changes without taking the garment off. It includes hand covers that fold back for active periods. Superb.

Patagonia Synchilla in the North Cascades

However, unless you always dress the child in pants that are 3-sizes to large, you have a problem in the kid carriers, as mentioned above. Their pants ride up, or are pushed up by the sling/pack leaving a lot of bare leg that us vulnerable to the sunburn and cold. The solution is a large pair of adult sized socks, which can either be thin liners or thick woolies depending on the conditions. These will go up to the child's hips to provide the needed protection, and can be worn over shoes and other clothing. The same trick can work for keeping their hands warm in the winter, as mittens sold for babies are always inadequate.

Hardshell jackets are useful to have, but shell pants and onesies are of limited utility because of the leg-length problem discussed above. It can be effective to close your own jacket around the child, but it has to be a pretty roomy shell for that to work. If it's raining that hard, you should probably just get the tent up.

Backpack or bivy bag?

Sleeping Systems:

For swaddled infants this isn't much of a problem. Use a hooded fleece onesie and as many fleece swaddles as seems necessary. You can even tuck a baby into the top of your backpack for extra protection. Once past the swaddling phase, it gets harder.

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a good toddler/baby sleeping bag, at least not one sold as such. I found more appropriate items marketed for dogs than for children. My solution: the Feathered Friends Vireo. This is a bag marketed to alpinists as a minimal ultralight bag for big routes. I still use it for that purpose occasionally, but it ALSO excels as a sleeping bag for toddlers and babies. It weighs less than a pound, and packs down to about 1.5 L. It has a graded down fill, such that at the toe it's rated to 20 F, and at the shoulder 40 F. No hood, no zipper. The idea for the adult user is that you'll be wearing a puffy jacket as well. the trick for using it effectively with a child is to half-invert it and synch the draw-cord below the toe box so it cant ride up. Voila: a half-length, ultra warm, ultra-light down bag. Bonus: for those of you worried about suffocation/SIDS (and what parent isn't these days) it flares well at the top making it much harder to cover the face accidentally. You can also just keep pulling it down in the inversion process until it is no more than shoulder length on your child. I'm hoping an added benefit will be longevity. They won't outgrow the Vireo, and it could be they'll still be using them when/if we start alpine climbing together in their early teens.

Ground padding is easy, since kids are made of rubber and not at all picky. Buy a basic foam pad from REI, or wherever, and cut it down to size. Use two layers. We used this as our crib mattress, let alone backcountry!

Backcountry Food:

In the first 6-12 mo. this is really easy: bring Mama. In this context the hand powered Medela (Harmony) breast pump can be very handy too. It's really small, light, packable, and effective! This is mostly for Mama-comfort if there's an over-supply problem, but can also be used to allow Mom to do something more exciting while Papa takes baby duty for a day. Snow can be a handy backcountry fridge to keep pumped milk drinkable for 12-24 hours.

Once solid food is on the menu things could get difficult if you want it to be. Our solution was simple: feed the kid exactly what you eat. The trick is that you may have to pre-chew it for them. Think dried fruit, nuts, salami. It works. Parenting isn't for the squeamish.

Tent bound. Little does she know, we're almost out of dry diapers!

Diapering:

For short overnight trips you can go disposable and pack it all out. This is a very limited strategy though, as you're carrying not just the weight of the diapers, but all of the babies urine as well. This gets very heavy, very fast.

Cloth diapers and wipes are the only choice for long trips, but you have to have conditions in which you can dry them out. On our Wind River trip we just washed and dried as we went, burying any solid excrement. I think we had six cotton diapers in total. There was an exciting few hours toward the end of a long period of foul weather when we thought we were going to run out of dry diapers, but we squeaked by. Note that washing is not done in streams or other surface water. We brought a rubberized collapsable cloth bowl as a washing tub, used biodegradable soap, and emptied the effluent into organic soil far from water sources. This is a very good, and not especially messy solution when your baby is still primarily breast fed. Once solid food becomes a major part of babies diet though, it could get really rank. 

24 mo. Shelf Road, CO

Growing up:

The hardest age for backcountry trips is 24 mo. By this time your cute little infant is not so little any more. They want to walk, but aren't very good at it, and are very distractible. They are still in diapers, but producing huge, rank fecal logs. For us, this is also around the time our second child came along, and long trips with them have not been manageable since, simply because of the amount of people and things that need to be carried. We've fallen back on day hikes, and short overnight trips until our youngest gets his legs under him, and his diapers off. We're hopeful about next summer.

At the same time, this is the age when your kids are old enough to really start engaging and enjoying the experience. You have to move slower, pick exciting trails, let them play with dirt and rocks along the way. That's where our little experiment rests at the moment. We'll see what the future brings!