The Brothers/South Couloir

The destination for this trip was changed due to the weather forecast. The N Peak of the Brothers requires good route-finding. The chances of having good visibility were low. We moved the trip to Mt Washington in the southern Olympics, which is also a basic alpine climb. It can be done easily in one day.

Started from the 3300' trailhead and followed the climbers path to the lower basin. Crossed the creek and headed up the broad gully toward the west. Stay left following the gully but stay on the right side. Contour left around any rock outcroppings situated on the right side of the gully. The upper basin is at about 5200'. Visibility was low. We trended left, directly up snow slopes to the ridge crest which put us far off route. Turned around when we determined we were at the southern end of the Washington-Ellinor traverse with extensive technical scrambling left to do.

The correct route would have been to trend right/west from the upper basin on a rightward traverse. Ascend to a head wall and make a steep traverse up and to the right to find the upper snow field that leads directly to the summit block on easy terrain. The summit block by way of route 1a should be directly ahead.