Entries from North Cascades

The final Mount Shuksan climb of the year ushered in the autumn season with some winter weather last week.  The occasional storm brought us fresh snow and great training conditions.  The whole team was able to learn a ton of mountaineering skills and summit the classic peak via the Southeast Ridge.  Great team. Great trip.

RMI Guide Ben Liken

Today RMI Guide Billy Nugent and the Mt. Shuksan team reached the summit!  Climbing the Sulphide Glacier Route, the team’s round-trip was eight hours and 40 minutes.  The weather was sunny and not a breath of wind.  After returning to camp, safe and sound, Billy was able to send us the photo below.

RMI Guide Billy Nugent

Hello, this is Eric Frank checking in from the bivouac below Winnie’s Slide on the Fisher Chimneys Route of Mt. Shuksan. After all the rain of last week, the skies have turned blue and we climbed up the Chimneys under a full sun today. Thanks for following and expect a call from the top tomorrow.

RMI Guide Eric Frank

Hi, this is Eric Frank calling from the summit of Mount Shuksan. We had a cold and windy, but enjoyable, morning climbing up here today. It is gorgeous! We can see into southern Canada, over the city of Vancouver, out at Mount Baker, and even down all the way to Mount Rainier. We feel pretty fortunate to have the views that we have today. We will talk to everyone soon.

RMI Guide Eric Frank

Hello to everyone following the Mt. Shuksan Seminar. Tonight we are checking in from the North Cascades logging town of Sedro-Woolley, at the foot of Mt. Shuksan. Today was meant to be our summit attempt, but instead we awoke to pelting rain on our tents, similar to the weather we have been struggling with for the last four days. After having a group meeting and considering the options, we decided as a group to forego our summit bid in favor of descending to focus on training tomorrow. The weather forecast called for improving skies, but that has been the case each day and yet it continued to rain. We opted to find a dry place down here to ensure that we we able to finish all the training, rather then take the gamble on climbing and sit in a tent for another day. A hard decision to make, but one that we feel was right.
Thanks for following along this week.

Best,
RMI Guides Eric Frank, Solveig Waterfall, Jenny Konway and the RMI Shuksan Seminar crew

Hello, this is RMI Guide Jenny Konway calling in from the low camp on Mount Shuksan here with the Shuksan Seminar. We had a great morning of training today out in the fog. It cleared up a little bit, and we saw some blue sky. This afternoon we attempted to go out and have some additional training, but got some heavy rain so we all retreated to our tents and had a good dinner. We are tucked in for the evening, hoping that the clouds we’ll part in the morning and have a shot at the summit. So we’re keeping our fingers crossed for nice weather. That’s it for now. Thanks for following along. Have a good night.

RMI Guide Jenny Konway

Hey, This is RMI Guide Eric Frank calling from the south side of Mt. Shuksan on a week long skills seminar. Just wanted to let everyone know that we are in our camp for the night had a great first day. We made it up just to the edge of tree line and it started to rain, so we made camp here. Everyone’s doing well.  Tomorrow Weather permitting we’re hoping to go up to the glacier and do a little training for the day. Wish us luck and thanks for following along!

Good morning!  This is RMI Guide Eric Frank calling from Goat Creek Camp right in the heart of the North Cascades National Park. This is the final day of our climb of Mt. Goode. We couldn’t get a signal to call out last night, so we’re just checking in this morning. Yesterday we actually woke up to a fair bit of snow on the rocks for our final 5 pitches to the top of Mt. Goode. We had a pretty entertaining time climbing up through mid 5th last climbing with snow on it. We were able to rappel off the the opposite side of the mountain drop down and walk about 10 miles out to this camp.  Today we have 20 beautiful miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. We will be out this evening and touch base then.

Take Care!

Our team got shut down by weather on our summit push, but that didn’t stop us from having an amazing trip. The climbing and views on our way to high camp below the Upper Curtis glacier were worth the hard push getting there.

The Fisher Chimneys is an incredible route- alpine rock, a pitch of easy ice climbing, and outstanding views of Mount Baker and the Curtis glacier make it a classic!

We got out last night and the team celebrated a great, safe and fun trip!  Until next year Washington.

RMI Guide Zeb Blais and Team

Hey, this is Eric Frank calling from high up on the Northeast Buttress of Mt. Goode here in the North Cascades. We are just getting ready to lay down for the night. It’s been raining off and on for about the last two hours, but fortunately we’re tucked in on a little ledge about 3,000 feet above the glacier. That puts us maybe 80% of the way up the route. Tomorrow morning, hopefully if it’s not raining too hard, we should be able to climb up and over and begin our descent down. We’re doing well. Had a nice dinner, and we’re just floating around in the cloud up here. Take care. Hope everyone has a good night.

RMI Guide Eric Frank