2017/07/08 - Goode NE Buttress

Goode had never been on my radar until Alex and I started discussing something to climb with our friend Ben while he was in town. We managed to commit before it really sunk in how big of a effort we were committing to, but we were in. After reading up on the route and hearing about our friends' experiences on the peak, we decided to give a little bit of extra time and try to do it in 3.5 days. This turned out to be a great choice. Day 1 (Thu 7/6/17) We left Seattle around 1:30pm after spending the day getting ready for the trip. This gave us plenty of time to pick up a permit at the ranger station in Marblemount, drive to the Bridge Creek Trailhead and put a few miles under our belt. Our strategy was to take a bite out of the approach so that we could have a little extra gas in the tank for big days going for the summit and the long slog back out. We hiked into one of the PCT camps about 5.5 miles and called it a night. Day 2 (Fri 7/7/17) After a casual start, we hiked the remaining few miles to the north fork turnoff. At Grizzly Creek we followed some earlier beta and located a log crossing a few hundred feet upstream. The crossing was pretty secure, but it involved some sketchy side-hilling on the drainage opposite the creek to get back down to the trail. After Grizzly Creek the trail degrades seriously in quality. We were second guessing ourselves for about a mile, wading through significant amounts of brush. Eventually the brush and trees open up into the valley proper. You'll be able to clearly see the North Fork and a well defined climbers trail leading down to it with a carn marking the turnoff. You'll also have a great view of the route up the NE Buttress. This is a great place to familiarize yourself with the bushwhacking, talus, slab and snow scrambling to go before you reach camp. The North Fork was easily crossable with 3 big trunks bridging the creek a few hundred feet downstream of the climbers trail. We didn't do a great job of avoiding getting sucked into slide alder. Scouting up a route on talus and snow would be a lot better. There is a good (mostly) class 3 scramble route up slabs in between the waterfalls, just to the right of the biggest of the four. The ascent from trail to camp took us about 3 hours. We arrived at the 5400' camp just below the glacier early enough that we could go scout out the glacier approach for the next day. Ben managed to pick a good route through the seracs that allowed us to get up to the toe of the buttress with only a little bit of hard ice. After verifying that we could get to the buttress we returned back to 5400' and got to sleep early. Day 3 (Sat 7/8/17) We left the bivy at 5:15 and started up toward the buttress. Our route through the seracs had a small ice step so we placed one screw to since we were carrying full packs. This route likely won't last more than another week at most as the snow ramps are melting off the seracs fast. Crossing the bergshrund was the crux in my opinion. I wound up crossing on a small bridge that involved a few feet of sliding au cheval down. Looking back the ice was undercut a lot more than I'm comfortable with. There was another bridge 20' higher up that looks a bit more solid. I'm not sure how much longer either of these bridges will be passable. We climbed the buttress efficiently, simuling the entire route in blocks as a team of three. We brought 12 singles, 3 doubles, a single set of cams from 0.4-3, a set of tricams and a set of nuts. In retrospect, bringing a few more small cams and slings might have helped us simul in bigger blocks. The tricams got used a lot. We got to the summit at about 4:15 pm (11 hours from camp). After a brief snack we started down at 4:45. Navigating the rightward trending rappels of the summit back towards the notch wasn't straightforward. It was definitely useful to spot the rappel stations on the way up. The third rappel from the summit drops you on a fairly large ledge that leads over to Black Tooth Notch. A carn marked the end of the traverse though it's fairly clear that there's really only one class 3/4 option. We protected the traverse with a running belay as it's pretty exposed. The rappels down the SE couloir are mostly straightfoward. For the second rappel go straight down the face rather than following the loose gulley to your left. This will get you right to the last rappel and avoid a lot of rockfall potential. After this rappel we had a lot of exposed downclimbing to the snow after which we were down to the 7400' bivy at 9:15 pm. We considered descending further to minimize our work for the next day, but decided we'd be more efficient with rest. Day 4 (Sun 7/9/17) Leave bivy 5:15 Arrive trail 7:15 Breakfast Start hiking 8:00 Trailhead 16:15