Trip Report
Post Holing Adventures on Mount Shuksan/Sulphide Glacier
Overnight post hole fest from 4500ft till 15 feet below the summit. Horrible boot packing, great corn, one mans trash is another mans treasure?
Ramses Young
- Sat, May 24, 2025 — Sun, May 25, 2025
- Mount Shuksan/Sulphide Glacier
- Backpacking & Climbing
- Successful
-
- Road rough but passable
-
Trail was snow free until close to 4000ft, from there it gets more and more filled till around 5000ft where it is constant. The cliff band has shed most of its largest cornices with lots of evidence of wet loose and cornice activity.
Wet loose activity near cliff bands around 5600ft - 6000ft
Glacier was straight forward with minimal crevasse activity except for three small cracks just above low camp near 6450 ft, one of the members punched into a small crevasse snow bridge (maybe it was a moat?).
Crevasses above low camp near 6500ft
The rest of the trail was much of the same with lots of post holing snow that will hopefully improve with time as there is more thawing and freezing of the recent large snowfall.
The summit pyramid had very loose wet snow and only the last 15 feet of the pyramid contained any rime ice. The bad snow made the ascent straight forward without the need of crampons. Crampons were used for the down climb until out of the pyramid. Unroped on Glacier back to car.
Last part of summit pyramid
Red is route the team took on a running belay, blue is rest of route from members who made summit, yellow is the way down stopping at the rappel anchor station. The path from the red to blue is where it gets significantly steeper and the last 15 feet are the steepest section before getting on top of the summit block.
Got to trailhead around 7:15 and got boots on ground around 8:00am after some reorganization of gear. The first two miles was a breeze going through the beautiful forest with several small creek crossings. 
Classic Cascade Green
After a while, all good trails must come to and end and we eventually found ourselves getting into snow covered alpine. There's a pass around 5400ft where mountains really start to open up. From here you have a great view of the pickets and the Baker River valleys.
After some time passing under cliffs and roping up for practice, we found ourselves passing through low camp. Low camp is around 6400ft and high camp is at 7500 ft. This is where the post holing started to get bad. We made it to low camp at 3:00pm, the first 4000ft of vert had taken us 8 hours, not my best work, but the snow was slow. From there we made our way to high camp at 7500ft, at 7:00. It took us 4 hours to ascend 1000 ft. The post holing made every step feel as though it took 3-4 steps of energy if not more. Countless waist deep post holes. Our team was beat. After probing our camp site for crevasses we made camp and boiled water to recoup a small amount of what we had spent just to get to camp.
An early wake up was in order since we wanted to avoid the post holing again. We woke up at 3:00 and after a slow start, got onto our rope team and left camp around 4:30. The snow was no better. The night before had temps in the low 30's but not freezing. The 1000ft of vert to the summit pyramid base was still better, taking a "measly" 1.5 hours to get to the base. At least the alpenglow on the mountains was phenomenal.
From here we made a running belay up the face. First curving to the right then back to the left. Eventually we ran out of pickets around 8900 ft. Reconveining as a group, two of our members decided to not pursue the summit and were belayed down to a rappel anchor that was spotted while ascending. The other three made a quick attempt. After 15 minutes we had made the summit. The wind was howling and you could actively see the clouds forming because of the fast winds over the summit. It was sureal. By this time it had taken us about 3 hours to summit. At least the view was great. Eventually we made it back to our two other members who were staying at a rappel anchor station with several slings wrapped around a rock horn. From here we descended and eventually made it back to camp. Boiling some water for the return to the car, it was about 1:00pm by the time camp was all packed up. The 5000ft of descent took about 6 hours even though we did the entire route back unroped and glissaded as much as we could. Not many good opportunities, skis/snowboard would have been perfect. All in all, an incredible journey, and my first Bulger. A good way to start and hopefully I never see post holes ever again :-)