The Brothers/South Couloir

Our party of 2 arrived at the TH at 1700, got to camp at the fork around 2000. The washout areas above Lena lake to the climbers camp isn't too bad. The most difficult part we found was route finding towards the end of the trail. We overshot camp by a hundred yards and bush whacked back to the creek, and eventually found the creek fork and camped there. If you find your self near the end of the trail scrambling over a bumpy slab, you've gone too far.

We left camp at 0430 and the climbers trail above camp is very faint. Do some scouting the night before and keep a look out for engineers tape on a few trees. The blowdown/burned area wasn't bad to navigate on the way up, and we found snow at 3800'. Do yourself a serious favor and add more engineers tape to the trail on your way up through the blow down area, we could have definitely used it on the way down. It's pretty manageable if you can stay on the path.  We generally stayed climbers right on the accent from snow, and the route is pretty obvious. You make one detour climbers right up to the ridge line and back over around 5,000'. The snow field up through the hourglass is pretty steep, 35-45%; bring an axe and be familiar with arresting. We arrived at the summit notch between the south false summit and the true south summit around 0830. We met another group shortly thereafter and they joined us on the false south summit. We and the other group did not attempt the true south summit scramble because we didn't bring a rope or harnesses. It looks like an aggressive 5th class scramble that you'll probably want to rappel off back down to the notch.

We spent an hour hanging out and catching the view. During the decent, we saw a few glissade chutes, but the run out into boulders looked terrible and we plunged stepped most of the way. You'll greatly appreciate your added engineers tape through the burned area if you installed it on the way up. After some log jumping, we found our way back down to the climbers trail within the trees. Got to camp around 1200. We jumped into Lena lake on the way down to cool off, and it's cold as hell, even in 75F days. Very refreshing after the heat. Arrived at the cars around 1600 and grabbed a few beers in Hoodsport on the way home. 

Great trip report with visuals that we used from Brian Starlin on 5/27/2017: https://www.mountaineers.org/explore/trip-reports/basic-alpine-climb-the-brothers-south-couloir

Gear:
- Helmet
- Ice Axe & Crampons (although the snow is probably gone by now, and the crampons weren't really necessary for us)
- Rope/Harness if you want to go for the summit scramble
- Towel for the lake & brass balls
- NW Forrest Pass or pay a the TH