Alpinism in the Olympics

Looking for someone who wants to spend time on the steeper and less accessible faces in the Olympic Mountains. There's not much to climb right now but I'm down to meet up and go on a hike with anybody who's interested. My main goals for 2022 are to traverse the glaciers around Mt Carrie (summit from the west via Cat Basin, then drop down the north face and eventually summit again from the east) and to get somewhere near the southeast face of Mt Deception. I am really curious to see if some of the loose but interesting faces could be climbed mixed when the wind comes from the east and provides a deep freeze. I live in Port Angeles and spend much of my free time in the national park. I'm not going anywhere and neither are the mountains so if you're nearby and you've spent a lot of time staring at the topo map and dreaming I want to know you.

Tommy Sweemer wrote:

Looking for someone who wants to spend time on the steeper and less accessible faces in the Olympic Mountains. There's not much to climb right now but I'm down to meet up and go on a hike with anybody who's interested. My main goals for 2022 are to traverse the glaciers around Mt Carrie (summit from the west via Cat Basin, then drop down the north face and eventually summit again from the east) and to get somewhere near the southeast face of Mt Deception. I am really curious to see if some of the loose but interesting faces could be climbed mixed when the wind comes from the east and provides a deep freeze. I live in Port Angeles and spend much of my free time in the national park. I'm not going anywhere and neither are the mountains so if you're nearby and you've spent a lot of time staring at the topo map and dreaming I want to know you.

I spend a decent amount of time in the Olympics but might be interested in some spring time approaches with you. I climb the south and east sides most of the time. I have a few I would like to tick off though that maybe we could relate on. Mt Deception is pretty deep, where you planning a winter approach?

There's a lot of different plans for Deception. I got visuals on the Southeast face from the top of Hal Foss Peak this past spring and it's 3,000 ft of steepness. There's one section in the middle that's this wide horseshoe shaped vertical wall. My first trip out there I'd like to summit from the North via Royal Basin and swing down over to that horseshoe wall and drop a rope down in several sections and see how the rock is like. This would be sometime in summer and climbed with rock shoes. Doing the approach from Dosewallips looks miserable so all attempts would start from Royal Basin. After getting familiar with the face the main goal is to link up the whole thing from the bottom of Deception Basin. There's this really cool tower on the eastern part of the ridge that looks like a lot of fun. The quality of the rock will determine the best way to do the full link up. I'd like to be proven wrong but I think it's going to be very loose. I have a feeling that the best chance would be in November or December before there's several feet of snow in the area and when the wind comes in from the Fraser valley and freezes all the rock together. Being real though, I'd like to go to this mountain every year until I'm too old to do it lol.

It's been some time since I've been in the south part of the range, it'd be fun to spend time there again. I've got the ability to pounce on the weather on the Northern side but I can plan to take vacation days for Mt Anderson or other worthy peaks. I'm sure we can find somewhere we both want to climb.

Hey Tommy!

I'm out of Port Hadlock area and am looking for a partner to do alpinism out here too. I'm about halfway in to my training program (TFTNA). I climb rock up to 5.10+ but would like to get into ice and mixed climbing this season. I have a good amount of trad, ice and glacier gear. Maybe we can meet up for a climb at the Elwha or a day hike?

Phone number is (225) nine 5 three- five three 0 1

Omar