[ngie]

I took an alpine ice class this past week around Mirkwood up on the north side of Koma Kulshan (Baker), but given the conditions and a variety of issues--soaked gear, tweaked ankle from 'poning on the ice, and a Petzl locker stuck on my belay loop--I bailed early and walked out the long road with one of the guides on the trip. I didn't want to give up on the week though and planned to get back together with the class post-descent at Beer Shrine, so I decided to come back and tag something in the area. Tomyhoi looked like a great choice since it's on Smoot's List and it didn't seem incredibly technical, like some of the other available options, but was technical enough for me to cut my teeth on. I got to the trailhead the evening before with dry gear, chatted up someone from out of state who was trying to get up to Winchester Lookout--borrowing his lighter since my Jetboil's lighter was foiled and my secondhand Bic (found it on the trail 2 years ago) was toast. The joys of dehydrated food... We parted ways (he was headed to BC because of the 4th of July weekend craziness), and I started hunkering in for my alpine start. It was toasty in the evening (~72°) and the mosquitos were hungry, so I decided to move into the shade (conveniently in front of the trailhead privy ). I finally got to sleep around 8pm. Woke up to my happy alarm at 2am, got prepped for the day, then started heading up the trail at 3am. I used to not love hiking in the dark, but with the prospect of seeing Koma Kulshan and Shuksan in all of their glory, I knew I needed to get up the hill quickly (pre-sunrise). I ran into some snow, overestimated how much there was, and decided to cut a switchback for a few hundred feet to "save" distance. As is typical when I go off-trail, I ended up doing a bunch of silly hopping over blowdowns with class 3 moss--this time finding sharp veggie belays to grab onto (yowch!). Lesson learned this time; we'll see how long it takes to unlearn it . I got back up to the trail--mostly snow free, but soggy (womp womp!). Soon after though I hit persistent snowpack which was quite nice to travel (I noodled my way around the trees in the snow). The first major creek drainage was pretty deep and quite loud, so I decided to head further upstream and cross over a snow bridge. Success! After that I started making my way uphill handrailing a drainage, and the blue hour kicked in, making for a really awesome show! Given that I couldn't find the trail and the snowpack was super steep, I tried doing what I could to walk over the bootpack in my approach boots without traction and a single trekking pole (more on that later), but it was a bit too steep for just a single trekking pole and the boots, so I slapped on my new microspikes, my trusty climbing helmet, and got out my ice axe for the descent down to what I thought was a slightly flatter bench. So continued the steep traverse until I intersected with trail that went under East Yellow Aster Butte (YAB) and YAB proper. Blue hour had transitioned to pink hour (..), making the views of Shuksan and Koma Kulshan even more stunning. What also awed me was how deep the drainage was coming off YAB and how large the avy debris was from a recent slide avalanche on the south facing slope. I gave the slide path plenty of breather room, even though I figured the snow was pretty solid. I rounded the corner to Pk 6178, finally getting a view of the expansive backcountry by the YAB tarns! Keep Kool Butte (so Donkey Kong Country..), YAB proper, and the south ridge of Tomyhoi finally made an appearance, along with some cute marmot tracks in the snow! Knowing I had to make a major descent down to the tarns (ughhhh...), I looked around for a safe-ish way down. I didn't see anything obvious, so I decided to down climb, kicking steps in with my approach boots. I slipped, slid about 10', and self-arrested with my lower body and ice axe. I totally missed the fact that I was descending under a cornice until later on in the afternoon . Trying to cut some distance, spotting a tempting looking snow wall on the east side of the ridge. I tried snaking up the SE arm of the ridge, following a game trail, but ran into some gnarly looking cliff bands on the south side, and the ridge wasn't snow covered enough to snake through the trees up to the ridge. Ok, standard route it is I guess (I didn't want to climb up several hundred feet of snow over a steep funnel drainage). Sure enough, the southwest side of the ridge was pretty easy to get up. A couple hundred feet of kicking steps later in my mountaineering boots and with my crampons and I gained the ridge. It was getting a bit later in the morning and the snow was starting to heat up a bit, along with my activity, making for a toasty hiker and softer snow which wasn't fun with crampons. I did what I could to shoot for what little shade was available along the ridge, provided by the trees, staying in the huge runnels from the recent rainstorms. Some time later, I got over the hump on the ridge and finally spotted the first fun saddle. Holy moly... it was steep (there was no way in hell I was going to descend it down the snow unprotected). I looked off to the left and found a nice bootpath through the heather down to the bottom of the ridge. This turned out to be a common theme of the day: don't be like Zoolander--look left and follow the rock. After some loose class 2 scree scrambling down (why did I only bring 1 pole?!), I got to the bottom of the saddle then started my way back up to the next part of the ridge. Once I got over the next hump on the ridge spine, I looked around and spotted a potential path through the snow which coincided with my GPS track. Sure enough, it was an easy send! I finally found a dry spot to sit down, eat a snack, and enjoy the scenery (although it was obscured with the clouds moving in). After I got further up the crest, I decided to make my own way up it instead of following the older GPS track I had loaded in CalTopo. There was another funnel drainage that fed into a tarn at the bottom of the basin, and I figured it would be better to take a few bites at the ascent at a time, instead of sliding downhill and potentially going for a swim (if my luck was really bad). Some huffing and puffing later, I finally topped the bump. The next section was a bit tricky--I was hugging a deep moat over yet another bowl drainage in approach boots and wasn't wearing traction, so needless to say, I slipped, fell ~5', and self-arrested yet again with my axe and feet. I decided to not make that mistake thrice (..) since the consequence was higher, so I put my mountaineering boots and 'pons back on and pushed up to a col which let me cross over the ridge. Surprisingly, the west side of the ridge was snow free, so it made for easy travel. I plodded along heading toward the false and real summit, with a bit of hesitation since I knew there would be a steep section at the end. And... yet another steep down climb (at least 50')! My eyes gravitated towards the snow finger which hooked on to the partly broken glacier, and I yelled some obscenities since I thought my journey would end here and I'd need to come back another time. I didn't have pro and was soloing, so there was no way in hades I was climbing up the snow wall to the rock on the east side of the south buttress. I calmed down though, decided to look left (don't be like Zoolander principle!) and sure enough.. there was a class 2/3 scramble down to the next col. There wasn't an obvious path up the south buttress and the Summitpost page describing the route was a bit handwavy/Spartan, but I decided to head down anyhow ("aw heck... if I have to come back, I'll at least know which way to go"). Getting a closer look, I finally spotted a staircase-like structure with exposed class 2/class 3 holds clear of lichen leading up the south buttress. I stepped up one bit at a time, gaining a few feet at a time. I did a couple of class 4 moves to get to the top (chaval'ing++!), but I felt reasonably safe given the exposure, testing the rocks to make sure they weren't loose AF. Nevertheless, I took it slow because of the loose rock and runout/consequence. There was another section that I climbed up and over in the last 100', but I opted to go up over the solid rock instead of negotiating the ballbearing scree with bad runout (I hate that junk). The last little bit I did some stemming and mantling in a corner, then pushed myself up to the summit (turns out there's an easier walk around route which allows for an easy hop up the north side of the buttress). I ate my summit Skittles, enjoyed the socked in views, sent some texts to a couple of my friends, then started the slow descent down. I was doing a lot of butt scooting and crab walking down the buttress. Once I got up and over the ridge to the next col, I deviated a bit after the moat section heading down the snow wall/funnel drainage. It was softer snow later in the day, but I felt ok following the runnels in my mountaineering boots with crampons. I ran into several grouse parents protecting their young on the way back. I knew that blowing snot rockets is pretty offensive in polite company, but I didn't realize it was something worth aggressively approaching me over :laughing:. The way out the snow was a bit softer than on the way in. I got a bit of bootskiing in though and did my best to stay away from the cornices coming out of the tarn area (heh). The water was definitely flowing pretty hard below the snow. The wildflowers on the way out were well worth the hike: tiger lilies were in their prime; beargrass and avalanche lilies were starting to come into the fold; the bleeding hearts were well past their prime. In the end, I sadly didn't get a chance to meet up with the ice class (I was out of service on the hike and we hadn't set an explicit meeting time), but I did score a beer and some pizza from the Beer Shrine though. All in all it was a fantastic day and a fantastic hike/scramble. Strava claims I did ~11.5 miles and ~5.9k'. * Dropbox Link * Peakbagger Link (GPX attached)

[brewermd]

The Keep Kool trail is an excellent way to get to the YAB tarns without the up then down.

[ngie]

Interesting! I'll definitely keep that in mind for a later trip .. Thanks for the info!