The Tuning Fork

This climb is described in the Alpine Select guidebook by Kevin McLane ( mountainproject.com/book/10…). The pictures were helpful but we found some of the descriptions to be a little terse/vague.

From the bivy on the slabs, make your way to the base of the climb, crossing a snow patch. Find a corner system on the right side of the base (we started to the right of Rich So and partner Nick). The rock is good but down low as well as elsewhere, we found we had to clean out cracks for pro, using our nut tools. Most cracks were sealed with dirt and moss.

A few pitches trending upwards and leftward put us under a bulge. We chose to climb up and through a wider looking crack through this bulge section, finding that it didn't really climb or protect wide. Towards the top we exited to the left into more face climbing, trending to the dihedral feature McLane mentions (tallying up another few pitches here). For scale, the dihedral pitch is about one rope length, as is the traverse left under the "roof" - a lighter rock that is like an inverted scoop - to the right of the cave.  

At this point you're about 8 or 9 pitches in. From here, some face wandering (keep an eye out for a piton) for another 6ish pitches finally spits you on top, amongst large blocks. We felt we'd climbed up to about 5.10b in difficulty, despite the official grade. We found gear placements for anchors, but were glad to have a double rack for options, as well as for simuling.  Long slings for slinging rocks were useful too. Unlike Californian or Coloradan alpine, this route only gets climbed a couple of times a year, so it can be far less obvious where to go.

From the top, head towards Ratney, descending along the ridgeline into the col, and then summitting up through blocks just left of the first major snowpatch, and then head left until you can find blocks to scramble to the top (about an hour, summit to summit).  Again, no cairns or signs to mark the way here.

At the top of Ratney, skirt the snow, heading northeast towards the rib making up the north end of the basin containing lower Statlu lake. There may be a cairn to indicate where to find the first set of rap tat. Take extra tat to reinforce this, we found most of it to be quite weathered and old. "A few" raps turned into something like 5 or 6 60m raps for us to the flatter part of the ridgeline with snow.

Finally, we rapped down to the second southern-facing offshoot from the ridge, landing on a ledge with 2 snowpatches, and finally a final rappel from a tree put us down on the slabs (about 8 raps total). From here we crossed snow and wet slabs back to the bivy (an hour or so).

Find your way to the camping on the north end of Chehalis lake, making note of the landslide a few years ago on the western shore and taking the road that comes up and in from Harrison lake rather than the route described in Alpine Select. Past the Chehalis lake camping turnoff, keep going until you hit a huge water bar, and park on the shoulder. Hike along the road, crossing a creek on a really sketchy old rotten wood bridge, or rock hop. 

At some flagging/a cairn, turn left onto the trail to lower Statlu lake. It takes about 45min to get to the lake, just past the top of the waterfalls.  Nice campsites here. Then another hour or two to walk around the lake, stopping for a swim along the way if you have time - it's really lovely. Pass the turnoff at right to go to upper Statlu lake and the Viennese Clark traverse (large wooden sign on a tree at the fork). Stay left to continue on. 

Once you round the end of the beach the trails start diverging and disappearing. Thus begins the bushwhacking section. We veered due west towards the talus slopes on the far side of the creek until we picked up a faint trail, and followed that through mixed sections of talus and bushwhacking, heading north towards Bardean and Ratney, similar to the trail drawn on McLane's picture. 

Finally, a final bushwhack spat us into the runoff burm that is the toe of the feature you need to ascend to get to the bivy slabs/bench. This was probably another couple of hours past the end of the lake.  Follow this slash up towards a slot canyon with snow, deking up to the dirt shoulder at right, as the canyon narrows. More bushwhacking leads to the base of a face, which perhaps could be circumvented at left or right, but we roped up and climbed it in one short pitch, onto another bushy ledge.  From here, make your way past snow on slabs with water tri king everywhere until you get to the base of the climb, and bivy (a final couple hours, for a 6-9 hour approach from the car).