A.A.C., Cascade Section

Publication Year: 1959.

A.A.C., Cascade Section. Outstandingly good weather during the summer of 1958 brought feverish activity to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Mount Fury’s west peak, the last unclimbed peak in the Picket range (see article in this Journal), was topped. A.A.C. climbers placed new routes on the North Face of Mount Baker, the East Ridge of Inspiration Peak, and the Northeast Face of Mount Shuksan. The long, hot summer put the glaciers into full retreat. On the South Cascade glacier of Sentinel Peak, for example, the ice dropped twenty-four feet to reveal a small forest which had been buried for a thousand years.

A prime Section activity has been a revision of Beckey’s Climber’s Guide to the Cascade and Olympic Mountains of Washington, for the first time in ten years. This revision, undertaken first by Ralph Johnson, is now under the able guidance of George Sainsbury. Fifteen A.A.C. members have spent countless hours reorganizing the text to include all new ascents, road changes, and trail information. The Council has given Dee Molenaar its approval to proceed with illustrations.

Several meetings were held during the year, the most notable being the annual banquet in Seattle, November 18, when Nick Clinch and Pete Schoening presented colored slides of their successful Hidden Peak expedition. At an informal meeting December 30 Maynard Miller showed pictures of climbing in Skye and England, and of his Arctic flights last summer.

Warren B. Spickard, Chairman