[TR] Bugaboos - several 8/22/2006

[Gary_Yngve]

Trip: Bugaboos - several

 

Date: 8/22/2006

 

Trip Report:

(very late TR)

 

 

In late August, Justin Evans and I climbed four routes in as many days in the Bugaboos, world-class granite spires surrounded by glaciers. We enjoyed the easy approach, cush camping, fixed rappel stations, and stellar climbing. Party management and rockfall mitigation were important at B-S col and unstable moraines.

 

 

 

In late August, Justin Evans and I climbed four routes in as many days in the Bugaboos, world-class granite spires surrounded by glaciers. We enjoyed the easy approach, cush camping, fixed rappel stations, and stellar climbing. Party management and rockfall mitigation were important at B-S col and unstable moraines.

 

Day one was cloudy, so we chose McTech Arete on Crescent (6p 5.10a), one of the "crag" routes with an easy retreat. The route featured splitter cracks on white granite, including the crux fingercrack and twin handcracks. The true crux was when an impatient party on our tails built their anchor through our rope coils as I was leading the fingercrack. They insisted that my belayer untie to fix the problem...

 

 

The classic NE Ridge of Bugaboo (12p 5.8) started with a crux lieback half-pitch (especially when carrying boots/axe/pons) followed by varied moderate climbing to an exposed summit traverse. We shared the route with the thirteen people ahead and waited at every belay and rap, returning to camp after 10PM. Good news was the party directly in front of us were hot Canadian women. Bad news was we got a rope stuck on the descent as the last party, so we lost precious minutes of daylight having to lead back up to fix it and couldn't catch up to the gals. We now know better than to wake "late" at 4AM on the first bluebird day in a week!

 

 

 

 

The West Ridge of Pigeon (5.4) is the BEST CLIMB EVER! If you don't like it, you're not a climber. We scrambled all but the final pitch. Don't trust any shortroping teams to keep their ropes from clotheslining you, even when they offer to let you pass.

 

 

Surf's Up on Snowpatch (7p 5.9) started as a sea of rounded flakes. On the third pitch, we drifted left, a common mistake, and rappeled. (BETA: end of p3 is about 30m up and 10m right of the start) Humorously, an impatient party passed us offroute and rapped too. Higher, the route changed dramatically. A lieback led to one of the best handcracks I've ever climbed (nicknamed the "I have a hard-on" crack).

 

 

 

Shoutouts to Forrest Murphy, DanAlyward, Dylan Johnson, Colin Haley, and Ross Peritore, whom we bumped into up there.

 

The state of the B-S col then:

 

 

More pics available at:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gyngve/Bugaboos/

[gapertimmy]

Great pics gary, and nice TR.

[G-spotter]

but no pics of hot girls?

[Alasdair]

but no pics of hot girls?

 

Dru is faced with another dateless night and his harddrive full of porn just crashed. Help him out Gary.

[G-spotter]

I want to see Gary back up his claim

Good news was the party directly in front of us were hot Canadian women.

[wfinley]

Wow! Awesome photo of Snowpatch Spire. Just beautiful!

 

How many goats did you have to sacrifice for such clear weather?

 

[LandShark]

Do hot Canadian women taste good? I'll bet they do.

[plexus]

Can't wait for this summer. You ticked two of the three climbs I want to get on when we head up there.

[Weekend_Climberz]

I love the Bugs...and the drive really isn't that bad

[Gary_Yngve]

We got lucky with the weather. We hiked up in pouring rain and were shivering by the time we set up our tent. The day we hiked out, the clear skies were replaced by haze from the Pasayten, and then a storm blew in. So, yes, our four days of climbing were timed perfectly. Of course, we carried at least eight days worth of food and a bunch of ice gear we didn't use.

[olyclimber]

Nice Gary! sickie Great pictures. thanks for sharing, those are some uber classic shots.

[sambataro]

nice photos!!

 

I as well never posted my trip report to the bugs back in august. Had some great times on McTech Arete, Surfs Up, the Becky Chouinard, and others.

 

PHOTOS!!: http://isc.astro.cornell.edu/~don/pictures/v/friends/joe/joe_climbing/

[clintcummins]

Gary,

 

Nice trip report, but I found the overall thread a bit tricky to comment on.

I immediately recognized the two Canadian gals on the NE Ridge of Bugaboo.

One of them is one of my climbing partners, and I found your TR while

planning a return trip to the Bugaboos for this summer.

As others have said, nice photos - you know what you are doing.

 

But the followup comments seeking photos of the "hot Canadian women" made me

a little unsure if I should respond. Although I suppose you didn't help the

cause by using that phrase in the first place? Knowing the predominantly male

audience, what did you expect? :-) It looked a bit like you wanted to talk more

with them, but got torpedoed by your stuck rope. But with the somewhat

unsavory followups, porn references, etc., it looks like your chances of getting

a reponse from either of the gals is about nil. I can only think "With friends like

that... who needs enemies?" :-) I know the commenters were mostly joking, but they weren't

exactly helping, either. Perhaps they were bored with the TR, since it covers

the classic routes which many of us have seen a few times before (notwithstanding

the unexpected cool roadtrip photos). One could even think of their comments as casting

suspicion on your ability to judge the hotness of the gals (attractiveness, climbing ability or

speed, I'm not sure?), or possibly whether they were Canadian, or even whether

they were women? :-) OK, I doubt photos would settle whether they were

Canadian....

 

So, my dilemma - do I come to Gary's defense, maybe post some photos showing he

told the truth, and maybe give him a lead on talking more with these mystery women?

If I post photos, with this crowd, isn't it sure to lead to a hotornot.com type

discussion? (I don't think my partner would enjoy that). Gary may even have such

photos himself, but have enough restraint to not post them for this crowd....

 

So I tried to come up with a compromise. First I found a photo on the web

showing that Gary wasn't making it all up. Here we see two gals in marshmallow

mode, staying warm while waiting 3 hours for their turn, plus one of the Canadian gals

talking to a guy in an orange shell. As I was saying the other day, isn't it amazing what

you can find on the web? (Searching on "August 25" "Bugaboo Spire" in this case).

 

http://www.sightly.net/peter/trips/bugaboos2006/20060825-074058.html

 

And for those intent on hotornot.com mode, in the interest of "equal time",

how about a photo of Justin on lead, taken by one of the gals:

 

 

Let the voting begin! Hunkadelic, or Nerdalicious?

How about: Just a guy out having fun on a classic?

 

It doesn't always have to be guys ogling the girls, even in these days of the "Women of Climbing"

and "Stone Nudes" calendars.

I happily remember one of the coolest exchanges from the heyday of rec.climbing -

when Sue was swooning over the cover photo of Jeff Schoen on Ankles Away.

 

 

Then the topic drifted slightly to "boxers or briefs" and Jeff responded with one of the

coolest responses of all time, listing his undergarment assortment!

 

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.climbing/browse_thread/thread/759d08d945bd0d7b/b2c3ffdc493759b4?lnk=gst&q=%22Jeff+Schoen%22&rnum=1&hl=en#b2c3ffdc493759b4

 

It doesn't have to be the girls ogling the guys, either.

No doubt if the climb was not crowded, the climbing harder, or the weather closing in,

there wouldn't be much thought about whether the gals were hot; the climbing

would be back in focus like it should be (and like it was in all but about two words of Gary's TR).

[Gary_Yngve]

Hey Clint,

 

Thanks for your reply. Regarding the whole matter, their company really brightened up our day. They were taking the delays in stride, as opposed to getting aggro, such as the group of three* in front of the two gals. We ended up "onsighting" the descent down from the lower half of the S Ridge and B-S col in the dark, in which case it would have been much nicer to have caught up with them.. more daylight, less hunt-for-rap-stations games. I suppose I could have written it as "friendly Canadians" or "friendly Canadian women," but whatev... I was trying to perk up the story. Besides, I have a hot woman of my own.

 

*One leader, two followers, one of whom was hangdogging up 5.8, vigorously using chalk, and taking his rockshoes off after every pitch. The leader passed a party of two on the first pitch, leaving them waiting while he belayed up the two followers. The three delayed everyone else for the rest of the day. The leader had no business cutting in front of the party of two already climbing the first pitch.

[clintcummins]

Cool, Gary. Thanks for the additional details. I was wondering about that team of three passing the other folks; pretty bogus.... I like that concept of "onsighting" in the dark! Sounds pretty scary, but obviously you have to goods to cruise it anyway. Sorry about the somewhat negative tone of my comment; it was not your report but the other comments that I was thinking about. And their comments were not really *that* bad. Keep up the good work, man!

 

Think you might head back there this summer? We are thinking of hitting it August 4-12 or so. Hopefully the B-S col (haha, I like the sound of that) will not be so bad this summer, but it seems I can't go any earlier, so we'll roll the dice, I guess.

[Steph_Abegg]

Hey,

 

So, as one of the 2 "hot Canadian girls" I thought I could add to the discussion. No offence taken, Gary, by your comment. I just found it a bit amusing that almost half of the follow up comments weren't even about climbing, when the Bugaboos is one of the most spectacular places to climb! This place is a climbing paradise for an alpine climber. Last summer was my first time there, and I will certainly be going back, with my sights on South Howser and Snowpatch, weather permitting....

 

Coming from a North Cascades background, I was not used to the crowds of the Bugaboos. Even though we woke up at 3am, there were still several parties lined up at the base of the NE ridge by the time we got there, before 7am! Even though we had to wait 3 hours to get on the route, we were blessed with great weather and great company. I remember chatting with you (Gary) about our favorite North Cascades climbs - hope you managed to climb a few more during the dry spell following the week in the Bugaboos.

 

Happy Climbing!

 

[Dechristo]

I guess it's nice when a group of folks can agree on what's PC, but I'm getting mixed messages.

 

You start out judging as negative the comment "hot Canadian women" and qualify responding posts as "somewhat unsavory followups". Then, before the end of your post, you're talking differently with "Hunkadelic", "It doesn't always have to be guys ogling the girls", "Sue was swooning over the cover photo of Jeff Schoen", and finally 'the topic drifted slightly to "boxers or briefs" and Jeff responded with one of the

coolest responses of all time, listing his undergarment assortment!'.

 

Is it a matter of acceptable and unacceptable language?

 

Or, did you lighten-up as the writing of your post transpired from a stringent PC ethic to the relaxed tone with which you finished?

 

Or, are you as confused about what is acceptable thought as your post conveys?

 

 

[Gary_Yngve]

I'd love to go back to the Bugs, if not this summer then the following summer. I'm defending my thesis sometime this summer, so that's taking first priority, and I don't have a date scheduled yet. I'm shooting for July, but we'll see what happens.

 

btw - I've found your topos for Index, Liberty Crack, etc., really helpful over the years!

 

[TeleRoss]

You should have waited a day longer to climb the route. We climbed it the next day and didn't see anyone else until the summit.

I definitely will be in the Bugs again this summer, probably more than once...hopefully.

Cheers.

Ross

[clintcummins]

Dechristo,

 

You certainly raise a valid point - I'd have to judge my post "unsavory" as well. My point (probably lost in my rambling rant) was supposed to be:

 

Women are routinely judged by their appearance, instead of by what they do.

 

So my examples and language of judging guys by their appearance were meant to show a different perspective on it.

 

This thread was a pretty mild example of this, and probably it wasn't fair for me to be so negative about it. I figure a lot of the comments were just joking and not meant seriously; that's normal for a web forum. So probably I mistargeted my rant a bit, but it was something that I wanted to express, and maybe it is of some interest.

[clintcummins]

Gary,

 

Cool - good luck with the defense. July could be good for the Bugaboos, if the col conditions are similar to 2006.

 

I'm glad you liked the various topos. Index Town Wall is special to me, since I did some of my first hard climbs there back in the mid-70s in high school. So it was really fun to assemble the topos/guide, with all the good info really supplied by Darryl Cramer and a few others. Liberty Crack was fun, too - my high school math teacher had tried it back in the day. And I thought I could improve a bit on the existing topos. :-)

[layton]

I don't know how hot or not you all are, but I'd give this thread a 9.9 on the "incredibly annoying" or not scale. Thank you for improving my skimming ability.

[skykilo]

I'd like to join Mike in asking you all to STFU. sickie

 

Cool pictures though, Gary.

[jmace]

Never met a women that didnt like to be described as hot...

 

So, as one of the 2 "hot Canadian girls" No offence taken, Gary, by your comment.

 

 

[clintcummins]

Never met a women that didnt like to be described as hot...

 

Yeah, no doubt true about 95% of the time. It's definitely better than being called ugly.

 

But it might not be appreciated, depending on the context. Here's my context: I'm old, married with kids, and have almost as many wrinkles as Fred Beckey. Plus I'm from the women's lib and PC ("politically correct") generation. That probably explains a lot about my comment, I guess. So I can't say "hot", but it's probably friendly for most of you, most of the time.