[Dolph Lundgren]

Little late on the report, as I'm sure conditions have changed drastically with the recent heat, but anyways... This was done over two days, with a bivy at Sahale Glacier Camp. Originally intended to climb Buckner, then Horseshoe on the way back. It seems that a double Bulger day will continue to elude me for a little while longer. 23.21 m 8,557' gain 21:37 moving time I met Garth and Ben at the Eldorado lot, drank a beer, and we hit the road at 1140. 1:20 later we reached the Cascade Trail parking lot, about 3.2 miles and 1400' gain. A couple of snow patches up to the pass, most definitely gone by now. A ranger stopped us and asked to see our permit, which we somehow left in the car. He called in to verify our party though, and we were good. So yes, they'll check if they see you with overnight/climbing gear in the area.

Cascade Pass

Sahale

Inconsistent snow along the Sahale Arm, and the tent pads were all melted out, with one that had some standing water in it. We picked one furthest east. From camp we had a pretty good view of Buckner, but couldn't quite see Horseshoe, from what I can remember.

Camp

Sunset

We reached camp in about 7 leisurely hours, gaining 5,400' and traveling 9 miles. Garth brought some gin and a gin/tonic mix kit, which was pretty righteous to have while enjoying the epic views, with Bonanza occupying the dominant position in our skyline. We woke up the next morning at 0500 in a pretty decent white out, so decided to see it would burn off as the sun rose, which it did around 0615. We ate, packed up, and took off around 0700.

Departing camp

Moving down the rib, a little steep in areas but nothing awful

Moving down the snow finger, which was quite manageable at this time

Good look back at the snow finger

Garth decided to head back once in the basin, he wasn't feeling too well, but Ben and I slogged on. We stayed generally along the 6600' contour line, before traversing up to 6800' at the next dominant spur moving down the basin. At about 7200' Ben decided he was ready to head back as well, which had me in a bit of a pickle. I decided I'd get up to the point to where I determined the route would split between Buckner and Horseshoe and go from there. I continued an ascending traverse to 8200', SE of Horseshoe and decided to go for that first. From 8200' its a traverse back West underneath the ridgeline. I hit some class 3 rock and ascended. The route is kind of odd, as I had to work back SW and then button back N to drop into the gully where the summit block begins.

Looking up at the summit block. The route is the fault line feature moving from bottom right to top left

I believe this one shows the exposure along the fault better, its quite significant

Buckner

Most of the tat has been cut

I left my pack at the base but brought up my rope to rap back down. The fault/crack begins quite wide and easily negotiable. However, the further you get, the narrower it becomes, and the rock face begins to overhang ever so slightly (at least I thought). To get to the final move, I dropped down to my hands and knees for a couple of feet, which worked well. As mentioned in previous reports (Alden's I believe), the exposure is tremendous and an unprotected fall below the final move would be horrible. Once you get past this though, grabbing the tat and climbing up to the summit is pretty easy. Currently there's just one sling and one piece of cord with a carabiner attached. The summit register was destroyed, but there was a piece of paper with some recent entries on it. I left a rite in the rain pad, which should work for a while, as I don't see this summit getting much action.

Ripsaw Ridge to Sahale

The rap down is more like a walk backwards, or atleast it was with my 30m rope, but that brought me back down to the base easily. It was kinda late and I figured the ascent up to Buckner would add several more hours, so I decided to head back to camp.

Should have fashioned a new axe out of this

The trip back was straightforward, though it was a little hard to find the easiest route back up the rib. I reached camp around 1600 in awful weather. Took a nap for about an hour. Ran the road back down from Cascade Pass TH, and reached my car at about 2130. Overall really fun climb.