When my two best climbing friends decided they weren’t ready to kick off the 2010 season just yet, I panicked. I had just left my job the Friday before and was ready to get outside.

After reading Jim Nelson’s description of the Southwest Couloir in Selected Climbs I was confident a solo would be reasonable for me and doable in a short day. From what I read the route is not very committing (grade I) so I knew I could bail at any point if I felt uncomfortable.

I hit up Ladro in Fremont just as they were opening at 6am. Then made the drive with no traffic, arriving with enough time to get booted up before starting hiking at 9am.

The approach, during this time of year, meanders through the woods directly south of the road on scattered boot and ski tracks. This seemed much faster to me than taking the Blue Lake trail since it’s such a direct route up to the avalanche glade.

By 11:30am I had hiked up through the glade, and was at the very base of the “climb” which is essentially where you enter the couloir and the snow begins to steepen markedly.

Sidenote: I have no idea why the couoir looks so steep at this vantage in some pictures such as this one (http://www.alpinedave.com/sews/sw_couloir/sews.htm), but it’s not in real life.

Anyway, after the first 30 ft. of steep it levels off below the branching point and then steepens again after entering the right side (the left side looked like a true rock climb, but I didn’t get close enough to see how protectable).

I passed three belay stations total. Two of them were at the same altitude, one of which was off to climber’s left quite a ways. The entire route up was completely covered in snow with one tiny (almost not worth mentioning) patch of “ice” which was really more like hard snow. The snow was also firm enough that previous boot tracks were holding my weight, but soft enough that I could easily kick deeper steps…basically perfect conditions. This made me realize that the route could vary in difficulty greatly based on snow conditions.

There is an obvious top-out notch on the snow (with the mushroom cornice directly in front of you), before the scramble up some rock to the top. Nelson describes the rock part as 50′, but it felt like far less; I imagine with less snow more rock would be exposed making this part slightly longer. In any case I was comfortable keeping my crampons on, but still took off my gloves and sheathed my axe.

I reached the Summit at 12:10pm after going slowly but taking no prolonged breaks. I shot some pics, watched all the skiers skinning up and skiing down (peak?), then started heading down at 12:30pm.

I chose not to use any of the rappels even though I had carried a rope and put on my harness before descending, however, I tend to be comfortable on steep snow with just an axe. I was at the base of the couloir at 1:15.

The hike down was kind of miserable because I kept inconsistently post-holing, at one point going literally balls deep. This got annoying especially seeing skiers wizzing by all the time. Despite this I was back at the car by 2pm with a smile on my face, and only a minor sunburn despite my not wearing any sunscreen.

In summary I did it car-to-car in 5 hours which I was surprised by because Nelson says 5-8 hours and I’m usually on the lengthier end of his estimations (if not way way over…see Dragontail…or Dreamer…or basically anything with Kate).

• Trailhead – 9am
• Base of climb – 11:30am
• Summit – 12:10pm
• Start descent – 12:30pm
• Base of climb – 1:15pm
• Trailhead – 2pm

More info

• Location: 48.51220°N / 120.6541°W
• Driving Directions (from 65th park and ride in Seattle):

• Closest Town (on the way): Diablo
• Loss of cell reception: Somewhere around Rockport (although there was a tiny pocket of reception somewhere in Marblemount)
• All My Photos: Picasa
• Reference:
  • http://www.summitpost.org/route/239664/southwest-couloir.html
  • http://www.alpinedave.com/sews/sw_couloir/sews.htm
  • http://homepage.mac.com/stephen.ramsey/climbing/triplog/200205-sews/
  • http://www.climbwashington.com/reports/sews041903.asp

All TRs: Climbing