I spent the past 3 and a bit days climbing in the Tantalus Range based out of the Jim Haberl Hut. In general there’s still a lot to do despite the relative lack of snow and broken glaciers.

Serratus Mountain (climbed Aug 30th)
The North Face of Serratus is still a good objective with interesting glacier travel and a fun pitch of 5th class rock to get out of the moat half way up. The huge crevasse near the col at the top of the North Face can be easily skirted in the moat on the climbers right.

Mt Dione (climbed Aug 31st)
It is now mandatory to cross a couple of short sections of bare glacial ice on the Dione Glacier. The moat on the summit tower is ginormous, but it is possible to walk down a few meters into the Dione couloir and climb 4th class rock in the broad gully to get back on the ridge and follow the rappel anchors to the summit.

Mt Tantalus
The AMGA course/exam were up there in the past week and reported the moat crossing wasn’t too bad.

Alpha
The descent from the Alpha-Serratus Col back to the Serratus Glacier has further deteriorated in the past couple of weeks and didn’t look very appealing with more rockfall and icefall hazard. We decided to give it a miss and go climbing on The Chief instead.

All of the rock routes are dry and in great shape. There has been no snow lately and no verglas. However, if your chosen route has a moat that needs to be crossed to access it, you may not get across as they’re quite large. There have been good freezes the past couple of mornings, and the low snow amounts revealed lots of good options for practicing steep ice climbing in crevasses, as we found on Aug 29th.

Enjoy the great weather this week :)