Goode Mountain

Goode Mountain (9,200 ft) – Highest Mountain in North Cascades National Park

Me at camp at the base of the southwest couloir route

Southwest Couloir (low 5th class)

Eric and Katie

August 25, 2017

We had just climbed Storm King the previous day and were camped at an amazing high camp just below the cliffs of the southwest side of Goode Mountain. We got up around 6am and were moving by 7am up the scree slopes.

After skirting some snow on the right, we scrambled up talus and loose scree until the terrain got steep enough to ditch the hiking poles. We soon found a narrow ledge with a cairn leading into the southwest gully, and followed this to the base of some steep white rocks in the gully. In retrospect, we had traversed too low, but this route appeared to work.

I led up a short low-5th class pitch, and then we gained the main gully in the correct area, where the terrain is class 3/4. On the Storm King climb one of our skinny double ropes had gotten cut by a rock on rappel, so now I could only lead 35-m pitches on both ropes.

Katie climbing up the top of the northeast buttress, a few pitches from the summit

We hoped we could still move quickly enough with these short pitches to reach the summit reasonably fast.

We packed up the rope in the gully and scrambled up until the terrain got steep at the base of a large chimney. Following the standard route description, we roped up at an old piton anchor and I led up a short white rock slab and right across a sloping ledge. From here, after picking up a booty cam in a crack, we climbed up two more short easy pitches to Black Tooth Notch.

There was amazing exposure to the north to glaciers below at the base of the popular northeast buttress route. From a big slung boulder at the notch I led across a wide sandy ledge, then climbed up and traversed a slab when the ledge ended. Our rope was short enough that we had to simulclimb about 20ft to reach a good belay at the northeast buttress.

From here I led three more short pitches, following the line of rappel anchors up and right, until we reached the summit at 2pm, right on or slightly ahead of schedule. Two more climbers were on the summit, having just finished climbing the northeast buttress.

Katie on the summit

We enjoyed the view as we waited for them to rappel, and read many clever “Goode” puns in the summit register. My favorite was “Make America Goode Again”.

After the other climbers were clear we started rappelling back down. The roped got slightly stuck on the second rappel, but with some rope flicks I managed to free them. I recommend anyone else extending the rap rings out on this rappel to avoid their ropes getting snagged.

We were pretty efficient at 20 minutes per rappel, and soon got back to the ledge and climbed back to Black Tooth Notch. I backed up some of the rappel anchors with the severed end of the old climbing rope, and we rapped three more times to gain the easier terrain in the southwest gully. From here we downclimbed back to camp, arriving just before sunset.

Over the next few days we hiked back to Stehekin to rest up for our next trip, an attempt on Dark Peak.