Advice for getting feet wet in WA

My brother and I want to get into the challenging hobby of mountaineering. We have some beginner experience with outdoor sport climbing and a bit of crampon type hiking. We are looking to get our feet wet with a mountain in Washington and are looking for any general advice and route recommendations.

Thanks in Advance!

Check out the WTA website, look thru the trip reports. A lot of mountain trails seem a lot more like mountaineering this time of year and they’re often the easiest way down other times of the year 

What he said. Also just make sure to watch nwac.com. avy training and gear saves lives but at the very least only go out on green days if you don’t have the knowledge. Normal hiking switchbacks in the summer can become loaded slopes in the winter.

You might want to look into jointing the Mountaineers club.

https://www.mountaineers.org/locations-lodges/seattle-branch

Depends how you like to learn. There are lots of videos online. Freedom of the Hills is a worthwhile read. Lot's of classes (Mountaineers as mentioned above, but also guide services like AAI). 

You will also notice that there are a lot of skills but not all of them will apply to what you want to do. I would pick a climb that you want to do and break it down into the skill components. If your goal is summitting Baker, then you focus on snow climbing and glacier travel. If your goal is Liberty Bell, then you focus on traditional rock climbing and multipitch skills. If you want to climb W Ridge of Forbidden then you need to do both and Baker/Liberty Bell could be intermediate goals. If you want to climb Triple Couloirs, then you need snow climbing skills and a trip out of state for ice climbing mileage, which should probably come after you've figured out your traditional/multipitch basics on rock, but you won't need glacier travel. 

If you want to share some goals you aspire to we could probably provide more specifics.

Hey Luke, that's awesome!  I think formal instruction is really helpful for this particular sport, mostly because the downside to messing up can be pretty high.  It also allows a faster entry into actually getting into the mountains.  

AAI offers their AMTL  course series, which I think is an awesome experience.  It's very instructional compared to what most guide services offer, and it's long enough to actually get some real experience in.  Most of the other guide services offer courses that are mostly summiting a peak, with a tiny bit of safety training. If you and your brother both do it, you have a built in partner, which is often a crux for people haha.  All the PNW courses tend to happen in the summer, which is pretty far our.  If you want something in the near term future, AAI offers variants of their courses in Ecuador during our winter season; those are a bit more summit oriented than their AMTL courses.  It's definitely a cool location that I've enjoyed a lot.

Ps. Do we maybe know each other from Luma..?  If that's you, awesome!

Mt Adams