Selected Climbs in the Cascades: Alpine Routes, Sport Climbs, & Crag Climbs - Softcover

Nelson, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898865611 ISBN 13: 9780898865615

Publisher: Mountaineers Books, 2000

Synopsis

* Features 100 climbing routes, including top favorite sport and crag climbing areas

* Illustrated throughout with black and white photographs, several with route overlays

* Highlights fun, quality climbs for all skill levels in the Cascades
For years, climbers have consulted Selected Climbs in the Cascades for the region's finest, most enjoyable, most aesthetic climbs. This follow-up volume, with all-new routes, details a similar mix of walk-ups, snow climbs, scrambles, wilderness alpine routes, hard rock climbs, ice climbs, and strenuous mixed climbs, with one major addition: sport and crag climbs. There are routes here for climbers of all skill levels, making this an ideal guide for everyone from beginners looking for the easiest routes up the gentler Cascade peaks to advanced rock climbers looking for a fresh, new challenge.
Like the first volume, Volume II includes detailed approach and route descriptions, permit requirements, topo maps, and photos for each climb, plus information on first ascents, equipment, areas of caution, and special considerations for climbing in the Cascades.

About this title

Review:

When the authors of the first volume of Selected Climbs in the Cascades were choosing ascents to include in Vol. II, their criteria was simple: that the routes be fun and aesthetically outstanding. Nearly every climb in the book offers amazing views of snowfields, glacier-carved valleys, or craggy peaks shrouded in mist. And although there are technical climbs involving aids, grade V alpine ascents, and waterfall climbs rated WI5, these are balanced by easier routes that require nothing more than bouldering skills. This is not a collection of the most radical, derring-do challenges in the Cascades but rather climbs that are simply a blast.

Vol. II differs from Vol. I in that it includes not just alpine routes but sport climbs and crag climbs--great for folks who want to take their rock-gym skills outside. The book also rates the approach to each climb from the car, whether it be a 10-minute walk or a grueling, two-day hike to a frozen waterfall. It's a practical consideration, as some of the approaches are more physically demanding than the actual route. Climbs covered begin in the southern Cascades, dominated by volcanoes Hood, Adams, and Rainier, and move northward to Snoqualmie Pass, with its easily accessible sport climbs and occasionally tough alpine routes. The guide finally moves into the North Cascades. Here, the mountains lose their volcanic character and take on the glacial-carved ruggedness of spots like Forbidden Peak and Mount Fury. More than 500 glaciers dot the area, and serious alpinists will find plenty in this section to occupy them.

Anyone who climbs in the Pacific Northwest should find Vol. II useful, whether they prefer rock or ice. It's a good entry-level guide, though it's not a how-to-climb manual; get your climbing fundamentals down, then pick up a copy. --Demian McLean

About the Author:

JIM NELSON, a native Northwesterner, is a professional mountain guide, climber, and mountain-shop owner. He has spent more than thirty years climbing year-round in the Cascades, the past nineteen of those teaching, guiding, and advising on equipment. Nelson has guided clients of all abilities up diverse routes in virtually every corner of the range during all seasons. He has established more than a dozen first ascents in the Cascades. Nelson's experience climbing in the Cascades amounts to decades of exhaustive research for Selected Climbs in the Cascades, Volumes 1 & 2. He is uniquely qualified to assess and evaluate the relative merits of the thousands of routes in the range. He is also a photographer whose mountain images have graced catalog covers and appeared in books and magazines. Nelson has climbed in the Sierra Nevada; the Coast, Purcell, Selkirk, and Rocky Mountain Ranges of British Columbia; the Karakoram; and Alaska, where he made the second ascent of Infinite Spur on Mount Foraker.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mountaineers Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0898865611
• ISBN 13: 9780898865615
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Potterfield Peter