[ira]

Went up the north couloir of McClellan's Butte yesterday. Being north facing we figured it would be in pretty good condition which it was. We drove up to the upper TH saving us 2 miles each way. Took the main trail to 3200' where we headed off west to get to the base of the route. We had to fight our way through slide alder as there just wasn't that much snow down low this year (in past years i've done this easily walking on snow to the base of the route). Took out our helmets and ice axe for the route up which starts at about 30 deg. there was a small cascade we had to work around which isn't too hard but you don't want to slip into it as you would go under the snow with the stream coming down on you. We had great conditions all the way up the couloir easily kicking steps most of the way in the relatively soft snow. About 2/3 of the way up i measured the angle at 41 deg and the upper third at 47 deg. The upper part had a pretty hard surface but we were able to kick small steps into it which we felt comfortable with. Got to the top of the couloir about 3 hrs after leaving the TH. Had some lunch in the sun and discussed our route down. we had brought along a rope and webbing to rappel the trees on climbers left but the snow seemed soft enough through the upper trees to plunge step. Did this for a little while until we got to snow in the shade which was quite hard so we were forced to turn around and kick steps as we downclimbed. Rather than continue this in the shade we headed back to our climbing route and were able to again plunge step along climbers far right side side as it was in the sun. Once we got lower down we were able to glissade the majority of the couloir until we got to the cascade. We decided it was too dangerous to downclimb this with the possibility of ending up under the snow in the creek so instead of rappeling we went up climbers left side of the couloir into the forest to bypass this section. This worked great. At the bottom of the couloir we decided to stay high to avoid the slide alder and while standing there we saw a bear in a tree about 20' away from us. We had clearly scared it when we were coming down so it climbed up a close tree. We stood there looking at it and it looking at us for a little bit. We left pretty quickly as we really didn't want to bother it. The route through the trees was much better than our inbound route and took us back to the trail at 3400'. Other than the small cascade which you can work around the route is in excellent shape. If going out there i would take the trail to the switchback at 3400' and then angle up and right through the forest to avoid the slide alder. If you like steep snow this is a nice close in climb that can be done in 4-5 hours.

[puzzlr]

I'm glad to read a report about this route. It was on my list of things I wanted to do for many years, but fell off as I got less comfortable with steep snow. Great report, but one or two photos would make it better

[ira]

Didn’t go all the way to the summit. Requires rock gear which we didn’t bring.

[Mikey]

With reference to your seeing a bear which climbed up a nearby tree, I think that is something young bears do. Once I was hiking up the Pratt lake trail from the Granite-Pratt lake trail head and I came across a young bear on the uphill (north side of the trail), the young bear ran downhill across the trail, about 20 yards south of the trail and climbed up a tree until he was about the same level as the trail. The bear looked over at me (I was at the same level as the bear) and the bear had a look on his face like "this did not work out like I thought it would", and slowly descended down the tree and walked off.