Intermediate Alpine Climb - Goode Mountain/Northeast Buttress

Trip Report

Day 1: Bridge Creek TH to 5,500 ft Bivy Sites on Goode. 8 hrs. The trails were in great shape and it's a gentle downhill hike for most of the day. 

The scramble up to the bivy sites past the waterfalls is fun with bit of exposure on the slabs near the waterfall.  We found the alder tunnel so we essentially avoided all bushwacking. 

Day 2: Goode NE Butt climb and descend to 7,600 ft bivy sites. 15 hours. We scrambled straight up the slabs from the bivy sites to get onto the glacier. Getting on the glacier was easy, but this transition area felt exposed because it is clearly a zone of rock fall with huge potentially unstable  boulders sitting on the bare ice and rock slabs above and around you. Later in the day, we saw snow calving off the north face of Goode and sliding down across the glacier. Recommend being heads up here.

The glacier section is very short. If you climb high enough on the slabs, it's an almost flat traverse over to the buttress. Crossing the hard bare ice sections with our aluminum crampons was not very fun, but it's very short. We found a collapsed snow bridge at 6,800 feet to gain the rock buttress from the glacier from the standard left side approach.  

We started simul climbing right away and wore rock shoes. The first "pitch" to gain the buttress ridge is very loose and not very good for simul climbing. Once on the ridge we found solid 4th class scrambling for a while but then we got over to the left of the buttress a little and found some kind of terrible loose 4th and 5th class choss and grassy steps. I think we were off route here, but there was plenty of evidence of people going that way. Eventually we regained the ridge proper, found more solid rock and started to enjoy the climbing again. We did 2 proper 60m pitches below the black amphitheater.  From the amphitheater bivy ledges, we traversed over to the right and went back to simul climbing to the summit. We left our overnight packs at black tooth notch for the final climb to the summit. The summit is indeed flat and glorious we wished we had more time there.

Three traversing raps brought us from the summit back to black tooth notch, then a scramble to the top of the SW couloir, and then 3 more raps.  The gully below has some kitty litter and loose rock but not too steep.  It got dark on us in there. Near the bottom of the gully at 8,600 ft there is a trail heading to hard skiers left to a ridge. The trail came and went and was very loose talus and scree down to the bivy sites at 7,600 ft. There is still a small dying glacier under all the loose rocks that forms a small pond to get water from. A large packrat visited our camp just after we went to bed and kept us paranoid for a while. Mice also chewed some of stuff (headlamp strap and trekking pole handle) over night.

Day 3: Descending to Park Creek trail and back to Bridge Creek TH. 9.5 hrs. After the 7,600 ft bivy area, there is a few hundred more feet of loose talus to descend before you find steep braided trails through the cliffs and eventually through the old burn area to where you find an even better trail on the far skiiers left of the ridge. 

The remaining trails were again in fantastic condition. Tons of huckleberries along Park Creek. Ran into one large black bear along the trail. It was a very hot day for us getting out of there and the Bridge Creek trail has ALOT of sun exposure. There is an amazing swimming hole on Bridge Creek just below the road bridge. 

We also looked over at Storm King on our way out. We didn't have time to tag it too. I think going earlier in July when you can make the traverse over on snow would be ideal. Looks very loose over there also. Also a cool looking mountain!

Map