Mount Shuksan and the Sulphide Glacier

Justin and I - with help from AAI guide Parker Kempf - crossed the Sulphide Glacier and summited 9,130' Mount Shuksan in the North Cascades (Washington State)!

We picked up Parker from Bellingham, drove the crazy rutted Forest Road 1152 and were at the 2500' trailhead by 10:30am.

The approach was nice and easy, an old road, and the weather was t-shirt friendly.

Treeline was something around 4600'.

We got to our camp site by 5pm and did some self-arrest and crevasse rescue training.

Early to bed on a warm evening, hard to fall asleep at 7pm!

Midnight getup for a 1am start. We hiked up and into the snow, then crossed the ridge and found the path up onto Sulphide Glacier. Dodging crevasses by headlamp isn't easy, we were happy we had a guide. I wish I had a picture of the 3’ step over a scary deep crevasse. Started getting light around 4:30am.

We were off the glacier and onto the 600' summit rock pyramid by 5:30am. Beautiful sunrise!

The pyramid is a high-consequence class 4 scramble. Some guidebooks call it class 3.

Parker led the multi-pitch simul climb to the summit, lots of exposure, whoo! Hard to tell we're 300' up here.

Beautiful views!

We got to the top. Beautiful weather. Steep drop into the valley on one side.

Glacier view on the other side.

Three long rappels down followed by the glacier traverse back to low camp. Dodging crevasses along the way.

12hrs round trip from the park boundary. Camp tear down and the nice short hike back to the car took 2hrs.

Wonderful hike, beautiful summit, fantastic weather, 10/10 would climb again.