Spiderman in Gothic Basin (June 29)

Last Sunday, Mountain Man went on a scramble with the Mountaineers, an outdoors group here in the Seattle area, to Gothic Basin, near Monte Cristo. He's currently in the scramble class, where he has learned ice axe and non-technical climbing skills. This class has seemingly taken forever and eats up our weekends, as they require you to attend lots of scrambles in order to graduate in October.

Unfortunately, his group this past Sunday went too slowly to make it to the peak, so they didn't get credit for the scramble. This isn't good, as he needs a snow scramble by October, but most of them are full and the snow is melting! The good news is that he still had a good time and apparently the cramp-ons paid for themselves, just in this one day! They climbed some pretty steep snowbanks and he was feeling a little uneasy sliding around in his boots, so he finally decided to pull out the cramp-ons since he lugged them all the way up there. The result: Mountain Man morphed into Spiderman and climbed the snow walls with ease and confidence.
Click on the photo to enjoy his Gothic Basin Photo gallery.

Happy hiking!