Trip Report
Mount Cruiser/Southwest Corner
A successful climb on August 27-28th with two rope leads and three Basic students.
Rob Busack
- Thu, Sep 1, 2016 — Sun, Aug 28, 2016
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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The approach trail is very pleasant and well-maintained, a nice reprieve from more rugged climber's trails on other approaches. Ascending to Needle Pass has quite a bit of loose rock as you get higher in the talus field, but it's very manageable. A snowfield about 200 ft long from top to bottom still fills the majority of gully wall to wall, but moats are forming quickly and may offer an easy bypass. Climber's left of the snow is class 2 or 3 rock which can be scrambled to avoid the snow entirely. We brought ice axes, but never used them since we scrambled the rock instead of the snow.
Here is a photo showing the snowfield below Needle Pass as of August 28th. Although the snow is icy & firm, it may be bypassed entirely at this time, so no need for ice axe or crampons. Scramble class 2/class 3 rock left of the snowfield to get up around it. If it hasn't softened by the time you return, one double-rope (60m long) rappel from Needle Pass will deposit you below the snow.
We used this other trip report as an excellent source of beta, which helped with routefinding: http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8018186
Here's my photo & route-overlay for what we did as the climbing route:
