Climbing courses, big alpine climbs, and big wilderness in the North Cascades National Park

The North Cas­cades will always be a spe­cial place to me. It was where I cut my teeth into larg­er alpine objec­tives and began my guid­ing career over 13 years ago. The past few sum­mers guid­ing in the Euro­pean Alps has replaced my Cas­cades sea­son. Giv­en the cur­rent pan­dem­ic I switched my gaze clos­er to home for the sum­mer 2020 sea­son and returned to Wash­ing­ton State.

North Cas­cades Nation­al Park (NOCA) is a time cap­sule of sorts. The roads are prim­i­tive, and there is min­i­mal infra­struc­ture. In my hum­ble opin­ion it is a look into how our pub­lic lands should be man­aged. While oth­er nation­al parks look more like Dis­ney World, NOCA is large­ly an untouched wilder­ness ready for any moti­vat­ed per­son to lace up their boots, put on a pack, and start walk­ing. Mov­ing through the mature forests it is easy for me to imag­ine what the first explor­ers to the area felt. As you move high­er and break tree­line there is often no evi­dence of mod­ern soci­ety in sight. 

Over the past cou­ple months in Wash­ing­ton I found myself with­in the park bound­aries for a few trips. The first was to do the Tor­ment For­bid­den Tra­verse with John. We have climbed togeth­er for a cou­ple weeks in Europe, sum­mit­ing Mont Blanc, the Eiger, and the Mat­ter­horn. When our trip to Alas­ka was can­celled this spring, we began talk­ing about a plan b to still do some climb­ing togeth­er in 2020. We decid­ed on the Tor­ment For­bid­den tra­verse, which is one of my favorite objec­tives to guide. It is nev­er over­ly hard climb­ing, but con­tin­u­al­ly engag­ing as you move through con­se­quen­tial ter­rain. The climb­ing is very much like some of the clas­sic ridges in the Euro­pean Alps. 

I also trav­eled across the Boston and For­bid­den Glac­i­ers to reach the NW rib of For­bid­den Peak with a very capa­ble father and son team. This com­mit­ting objec­tive essen­tial­ly has you cir­cum­nav­i­gate For­bid­den Peak. As you approach from the south through Boston Basin, then you climb over the east flank of the moun­tain via shark­fin col, tra­verse below the NE face on the mas­sive Boston glac­i­er, then final­ly a descend­ing tra­verse across the for­bid­den glac­i­er below the North face. After all that, you are at the start of a 20-pitch rock climb to the sum­mit of Forbidden! 

My sum­mer guid­ing sea­son end­ed with five days around the Inspi­ra­tion and Eldo­ra­do glac­i­ers on an Inter­me­di­ate moun­taineer­ing course. This big glacial sys­tem is home to some dra­mat­ic ter­rain. It’s a great place to teach skills that will help peo­ple progress to the next lev­el in climb­ing. On this course in addi­tion to cov­er­ing a lot of skills, we were able to climb Eldo­ra­do, Klawat­ti Peak, and a Tepeh Tower. 

I was grate­ful this sum­mer to be able to con­tin­ue to prac­tice my craft. I am hope­ful despite what hap­pens in the pop­u­lat­ed zones of the world, the North Cas­cades will con­tin­ue to be a great wilder­ness. Thank you to every­one that joined me in the moun­tains this sum­mer, I hope we all get the chance to rope up again in the future.