The following is a guest post from Chicks alumna Carolyn Riccardi, who has generously shared the trip report from her experience a couple weeks ago alpine climbing in the Northern Cascades.

But it’s much more than just a trip report, it’s an open and honest piece about climbing and its challenges, especially training the mind and the body. Her beautiful slide show immediately follows, but please don’t skip a word of this compelling piece.

“I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit.”

I can remember being the happiest  kid in all of Flatlands, Brooklyn after a heavy snow would fall in the winter. I would walk for hours and hours to find the biggest snow piles in the freshly plowed parking lots of the Kings Plaza shopping mall a few miles from my home. With the wind picking up off the water and light fading fast, I would throw myself, again and again, down the grey and black snow hills. And proclaim to all those within earshot that I was king of this snow pile. My gloves would been soaked with ice water, my cloth jacket weighted heavy from the wet snow and the leather on my pumas cracked from nights of thawing them out too close to the radiator.  The Kings Plaza parking lot or the empty land fills in Georgetown were about as far as I could get from home when I was 11 years old. They were as close to nature and the mountains as you might get in the southern tip of Brooklyn. I was trying to touch something out there. Something in the cold was comforting. Something in the cold made me alive.

I am not Rested. Relaxed. Or satisfied. I look in the mirror and I see compromise. I look back on my trip and I am gripped by every little mistake I made. Everytime I was too tired to contribute fully. The leads I passed up. The many times my head felt heavy with exhaustion. Too drained. Too tired. Too sore to think straight. Is this alpine climbing? Am I totally over my head? I note half measures in my training. Crossfit. Long hikes. Runs. Bikes. Where did I go wrong? How can I be so fit and not fit enough to keep it together? What I did and what I could have done but didn’t. What sounds good on paper, in books and in training journals. I look at my photographs and I see all the mistakes I made. A week later my body is still wreck.  My hair and skin feel dry. My shins are brushed, scratched with one nice size puncture wound that continues to pain me. Always a slow healer, the past week I am healing at a glacier’s pace. I want look at my photos and feel pleasure. I want to look at myself and just be pleased with myself. I want to be 100% proud at being an alpine badass. But I don’t.

Last week my friend Ryan Stefiuk (bigfootmountainguides.com) and I headed to the Northern Cascades to climb some classic alpine routes in Washington State. For me the Cascades seem to be a natural stepping stone into larger climbing objectives in the lower 48. While some friends practice aid for Yosemite and others head to sport climbing areas that are close to beaches and bikinis, I look for a great white and chilly reprieve from the sweltering humidity of New York State.

Mt. Shuksan
Ryan and I planned on two routes for our trip. The North face of Mt. Shuksan and the Mt. Torment to Forbidden Peak Traverse from the Boston Basin. On Shuksan we concluded the No. Face was getting too much sun and the snow far too soft so we opted instead to ascend the White Salmon Glacier to the top of Willey’s Slide. From here we would be in a good position to get an early start and make a summit push if we desired on our third day. The crux of the route ended up being the gnarly approach where a bulldozer and a machete was needed to battle the dreaded Cascades Slide Alder. the approach to the white salmon glacier is called a Bushwhack grade 4 or BW 4 by our friends in the Alpine Club of Canada.. A BW 4 is defined as “Pace less than one mile per hour. Leather gloves and heavy clothing required to avoid loss of blood. Much profanity and mental anguish. Thick stands of brush requiring circumnavigation are encountered.” Friends I lost some blood on this one. It was 4 grueling hours of punishment though we might have made it in 3 if we hadn’t gotten slightly lost).

While the first two days the temps were perfect on the evening of the second night at our small exposed bivy on Willey’s there was a shift. I woke up freezing around two am shaking from the wind and the cold. The formerly clear night was gone and it seemed like we were in a dense cloud with winds whipping down Hells Highway onto our camp. I was freezing. I technically had great gear. I had an excellent clothing system (MHW chockstone jacket, Patagonia capilene top and Nano puff pullover. Patagonia wool and Marmot Scree Pants) and sleeping gear (EMS 25 degree down bag, MHW bivy shell) for the 30 degree temps but i think after two full days on the move I was unable to generate enough heat to be warm during the rest of the night. I had to shake out repeatly to stave off the chills a few times before day light but was able to feel okay-ish in the morning. By the time we broke camp without breakfast or coffee we were in a full hail storm. The descent down Fisher Chimneys proved an ample white out navigation challenge as we tried to move as fast as possible in wet cold. Having never been in a white out before and wondering if my body wasn’t getting a little hypothermic I was starting to get a little nervous. Experience and a solid skill set is everything Cascades as Ryan taught me a thing or two about navigating us down the rest of the Fisher Chimneys as we made it back onto the Lake Anne trail. We soon made it to the town of Sedro-Woolley and filled our belly’s with pizza and beer.

Schism: The Mt. Torment to Forbidden Peak Traverse
“The poetry, That comes from the squaring off between, And the circling is worth it, Finding beauty in the dissonance”

As I describe the very exposed 50 degree snow/ice traverse, the crux of the route, to my friends Jason and Courtney over a lazy brunch in New Paltz, Court meets my eyes and she asks me if I cried during the climb. It’s the first time anyone has asked and I feel a sense of comfort in her question. “Oh yeah,” I say “a bunch of times.” She says she would have done the same. Kathy Cosley and Mark Houston describe steep snow climbing as “a common Achilles heel” among alpinists and I would agree. Though I have a passion for ice and snow most I spend most of my time playing in both in the winters of the north east. Climbing on the exposed crux of the TFT was a humbling education.

The TFT almost didn’t happen as we arrived at the Marblemount Ranger Station only to find out there were no permits for the Boston Basin. Both Ryan and I had been to the BB on previous trips and there was something comforting in heading back into familiar terrain in the second leg of our trip. Now with no permit available we opted for the Torment Basin a considerable steeper and more challenging approach with little water available for the first 3,000 feet. My stomach did a little backflip as I filled out the paperwork and half read the approach description in the guide book.

The approach was all uphill, steep, soft dirt in a densely wooded forrest with no water until you make it to the Basin. We made good time but it was hard work. Every step was earned. We made our camp in the late afternoon and I felt good as we made dinner and absorbed the stunning views of Mt. Johannesburg and Eldorado Peak. We got to bed as early as you can when its bright day light until 10pm, knowing we would be getting a 3am alpine start the next day. Day two proved to be the crux as we made fast time to the summit of Mt. Torment only to have a hard time finding the notch to the small glacier on the north side of the ridge. The route finding challenges are definitely on the first half of the Traverse with easier exposed 4th class climbing over loose rock done after the snow/ice section of the route. After completing the aforementioned snow and ice crux on the traverse we made a welcome bivy and celebrated my 42nd birthday with a snickers bar. 14 hours of being on the go I was crushed. The next morning we finished up the ridge and opted to descend one of the snow gullies and out the Boston Basin.

Our days had been long 9-14 hours and while we did make stops to rest, refuel and eat for my body it was never enough. I think our caloric intact was pretty good though breakfast was the hardest meal as you’re struggling to consume calories while getting ready to break camp. Hydration was a different story. I imagine I was only averaging 3 to 3.5 liters of water per day. This during a 9 plus hour climbing day. Woefully short of what Mark Twight recommends in Extreme Alpinism. Hydration and nutrition were a real challenge for me in the mountains. At the end of the day you need to refuel but your body is so exhausted and your past hunger. The climbs also spoke to my inexperience of travel fast in 4th class terrain climbing with a pack and mountain boots. The instability of the terrain caused me to be extra cautious while climbing. My toes felt destroyed and my knees pained me. It was like doing 10,000 squats in a day. Snow climbing is a whole world unto itself with marginal at best protection and self arrest being far more difficult on steep slushy ice with serious consequences. The newness of all these experiences were wicked heady during most of my trip. It turns out I was more of an alpine noob than I had imagined and I felt a heavy weight of this self awareness as we headed out to our rental car.

Digging Through Old Muscle
I am in the best shape of my life. I crush crossfit WOD’s and my June deadlift PR was 313. Despite a minor tendon injury with my right ring finger that happened in early spring I am climbing well. I am confident and strong. My lead head is improving and I’ve got the heart and passion on an army of spartan women warriors. I thought I had this. I thought it was going to be a comfortable win. I was over confident. I got destroyed. Now mind you it’s important to love yourself, take care of yourself and not wallow would of’s and could of’s. I am a young alpinista. It’s going to take time to learn and train my body and mind. that’s the point. But to become better I have to really look in the mirror, assess my performance and work hard to become a better climber. Become a better me. And that what this is about. My cardio endurance on this trip was off. Way off. I gassed and gassed again on this trip in exactly the ways Mark Twight and Gym Jones have pointed out can happen if you rely on the high intensity workouts of crossfit. I didn’t train sports specific nearly enough to met the tasks at hand. I hiked and climbed but didn’t put in the long days off training to mirror the long days I would do in the Cascades.

Reaching out for whatever may come
“I wanna feel the change consume me, Feel the outside turning in. I wanna feel the metamorphosis and Cleansing I’ve endured within”

I am drawn to the ice and snow, a place that others move away. When I climb ice and snow I am trying to touch something. A perfect state of trust in myself and my abilities. I am trying to transform. To connect with the snow and ice and unforgiving terrain. And in the process re-embrace myself and what makes me strong. I guess it’s not alpine climbing until you shed a few tears behind your glacier glasses. It’s perfect cause no one can see. During the climb tears felt like submission. My struggles were crystal clear indications that I didn’t belong on these routes. I couldn’t keep up. I was lagging. I was afraid. Now I realize that all those moments were the heart of the climb not top outs and summits. I was wrong. The tears are self knowledge. They apart of who I am. It’s not simply that I pushed through the tears and become this alpine amazon its that I own my tears. I own my fears. I own my short coming and failings as I own my hard work and my climbing skills. My heart and my passion. It’s all me.

Check out a slideshow I did of our trip (above). And don’t forget to hit up Ryan at http://bigfootmountainguides.com/.

To learn more about Carolyn see her bio. here, and follow her blog here.