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Buckner's NF 2 July 2014

7/2/14
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Posted by dave095790 on 7/5/14 7:50am
In my attempt to tick off some more of my goals before moving back to NY in a couple months, Ryan (with only mountaineering boots) and I (with skis and rock shoes) blended climbing and skiing into a great trip to the North Cascades. 

We left Cascade Pass parking lot mid morning on Tuesday and took the normal trail up to the pass.  I transitioned to skinning around 5800 feet, probably could have done it a lot sooner, but it was still pretty easy and fast to boot and take the trail - plus Ryan was still having to boot.  We cut up left and took the arm to the Sahale summit, rappelled down and traversed below Boston and over to Buckner's North Face. 

We spent the night protected by a large rock island about 1/3 of the way up the face and woke up and quickly reached the summit.  The previous day the snow had been very, very soft and I was thinking that it would have been too soft to make the descent through the tight steep sections between the rock and the runnels.  Fortunately the clear night allowed the surface to cool and stiffen just enough to make the descent reasonable. 

I skied the top snowfield and verified the stability and that the snow conditions would allow for acceptable margin down low when it got steeper and tighter. 

Everything went smooth and I transitioned to boots and crampons for our descent back down to the glacier where I again transitioned to skinning for the trek over to the Sharkfin Col. 

We finished with the TFT.  More detail about the climbing aspects on CC.com

Crevasses are opening up pretty big, but still pretty obvious where they are and the travel was still fast and straightforward. 

First is the route from Boston to Buckner.  We ended up starting the traverse too high and backtracked and downclimbed farther to reach a better line. 

Second is some off-road skinning on the Sahale Arm. 

Third is the line of descent with our bivy site circled.  There were significant runnels down the main face centerline and I was able to stick between the rock and the right-most runnel for a continuous descent.  The tight squeeze was the line of ascent, hence why I chose to retrace that section and avoid crossing one of the deep runnels had I gone through the gap higher up. 

Nice!  I thought it would be too late season for Buckner, but that actually looks pretty reasonable still.



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buckner-s-nf-2-july-2014
dave095790
2014-07-05 14:50:00