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	Now even climbers wander around in the mountains glued to their iPhones. Since we were doing the approach in the dark, Dan had loaded an estimated route line into his phone, and we were able to use a GPS signal to figure out where we were in relation to that line. But that didn't mean we were able to avoid the notorious brush of the White Salmon Valley approach. "Siri, how do I get out of this slide alder...?"
	Just as it was getting bright enough to turn off our headlights, we emerged from the timber and brush and reached the head of the White Salmon Valley. From here, we headed toward the 5,500 ft saddle to the left of the profile of the NF in the photo. The photo also shows a dirty avalanche track generated by snow and ice falling off the Hanging Glacier.
	Chad and Dan traversing left across the base of the North Face. Let the fun begin!
	Heading up the North Face. We were surprised to find the entire face lit in the morning sun (we had expected it to be in the shade due to its northern aspect), but since it was still early in the day the snow was firm, and the runnels made for great ascent lines. We progressed up unroped, and never did find ourselves in need of the rope.
	We skirted these opening cracks on the right side.
	Looking down the lower North Face. Softened by the rays of the early morning sun, the snow had become ideal for kick stepping.
	Dan on the North Face. The face is somewhat steep, 40-50°. But the snow was good enough to allow a comfortable unroped ascent. In a couple of more hours it would transition from ideal to dangerous, so we were glad for the early start and encouraged to move quickly. It took us just over two hours to ascend the face from its base to the North Shoulder.
	Here we are at the broad North Shoulder. The summit pyramid is enveloped in clouds. We wrapped around the summit pyramid on the left (east).
	A glimpse of the Crystal Glacier as we wrapped around the east side of the summit pyramid.
	Aesthetic terrain on the upper reaches of Shuksan.
	Heading towards the summit pyramid.
	Looking up the central ascent gully on the south side of the summit pyramid. This is part of the popular Sulphide Glacier route (I think we spotted 20-30 people on this route!) so there was a staircase of boot prints up the gully.
	On the summit: Steph, Chad, Dan. It took us 8 hours from the car.
	Billy and the edible summit register.
	Descending the upper Sulphide Glacier. Our plan was to wrap around and descend the White Salmon Glacier back into White Salmon Valley.
	Traversing across the head of the Upper Curtis Glacier.
	Descending Winnies Slide toward the head of the White Salmon Glacier. The popular Fisher Chimney's route continues to the left.
	Chad looking down the White Salmon Glacier, which was pretty much a plunge-stepping snow highway (being careful to scope for cracks of course). Chad and Dan were probably bemoaning the fact they had done this climb with a non-skier such as myself. We had brought snowshoes and used them on the White Salmon Valley deapproach a bit, but we could have easily done the approach/deapproach without them. Skis, though, could have taken our 14 hour rt time down to 10 hours.
	For the way back to the car, we decided to try heading up some snow ramps and traversing high on snowfields before making the final descent to the White Salmon Lodge. This ended up being a great way to avoid brush and we were back at the car in a couple of hours from the head of the White Salmon Valley. This is a great early season alternative to the valley schwack when there is enough snow on the slopes.
	Back at the car, just under 14 hours since we started! We were pretty tired by now, having all been awake for nearly 40 hours. The most dangerous part of the whole trip was definitely the drive home. You know it's been a great climb when the drivers are on 30-minute-drive-30-minute-nap rotations all the way home.

Found: iPhone, buried in the snow on the slopes below Chair 8. It was wet and would not turn on, but when I got home and dried it out, I charged it and it seems to work fine. It is password protected so I have no idea whose phone it is. The background photo on the welcome screen is a pair of birds. If anyone knows someone who lost an iPhone on Mt. Baker Ski Area somewhere on the slopes below Chair 8, email me!

An interesting question came to mind as I was trying out various passcodes to get into the phone to determine its owner. How long would it take me to crack the passcode, if I did nothing else but enter numbers into the iPhone until I had entered the correct one? There are 4 digits, each with 10 choices, so there are 10,000 possible passcodes (0000, 0001, ..., 9999). Assuming one passcode attempt per second, it takes 3 seconds to try 3 passcodes, before the phone is disabled for 5 minutes. So on average it takes 101 seconds to try 1 incorrect passcode.  So to try all 10,000 possible passcodes, it would take 1,010,000 seconds, or 11.7 days. This is a maximum bound on how long it wold take, since assuming I started at 0000 and just worked my way up (0000, 0001, 0002, ...), I would likely encounter the correct passcode sometime before getting to 9999 (for instance, there's a 40% probability I would encounter the correct passcode in 0000 to 3999, and so on). (After doing this analysis, I was ready to brew a pot of coffee and surround myself with 11.7 days worth of rations and get to number punching. But 10 minutes and 6 seconds into my passcode quest, the phone told me it was disabled for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes and 3 seconds later, and the phone is now claiming to be disabled for 30 minutes. So as I waited I did some calculations. Let's now assume a doubling wait time between every three unsuccessful attempts, and also that the phone is not set to erase all of its contents after a predetermined number of incorrect passcodes. It turns out that around the time of my 90th birthday, I will be punching in passcode 0071. I think I need more rations.)