also went ice crag'n on the elliot on saturday...also found wierd old shit (a section of old hemp rope, 3 braids, about halfway through the lower icefall)

mountain looks sweet w/ all that new snow up high

Got rained off of Triumph on Sat; drove back to PDX and continued south to Mt. Thielsen (across the street from diamond lake/mt bailey on the way to crater lake). Climbed the McLaughlin Memorial route/North Face (or at least where the guide book says it should be) car to car Sunday with Illini…

Nice to have all that new snow on Hood in August! Crazy as it sounds the Eliot Headwall almost looked "in" yesterday. Seemed like more snow and ice plastered on it than when we did the NF last fall. The NF gullies looked a little thinner though for sure.

Rock climbing Sunday - the Fire Escape in the Sky. Great day. Summer is almost over.

Went surf kayaking at Moon Stone beach, Trinidad, Ca. Also a bouldering area it seems...

Moonstone is a bit south of Trinidad. I heard that there was a 30+ pitch traverse of the Tinidad head.

Watch the tides!

On Friday my buddy Seth and I climbed Castle Rock. The Fault, then Catapult (fun!). After lunch I led the first pitch of Midway, then he led Midway Direct to the top. This was my first time on Castle Rock and yes, I'll be back.

Dox

There is a bit of a rip there... at Moon Stone, you can't do the traverse anymore apparently... the powers that be have made it off limits

Dox, thats a great link-up! I think Fault/Catapult/Bone/SFaceJelloTower/Midway has as much quality climbing as Outer Space.

Attempt to climb in Darrington on Saturday. Get totally soaked from the brush on the approach. Built furniture the rest of the day. Sick on Sunday, watched the olympic Marathon. The guy from Brasil was going to get beat anyway, still sad though.

Soaked up the rays at the awesome bivy spot at 8500' on lower Ptarmigan Ridge (Rainier). [It'd be the PERFECT awesome bivy spot if there was running water close by.] Watched the lenticular form above the summit, engulf the upper 2000', slowly dissapate, then reform. Pretty cool... from a distance!

For anyone thinkin' about heading up for some turns, looks like there's new snow above about 8500' on the Russell. Pretty smooth on the left side, pretty cracked up on the right below 8500'. Looks good above that. I'm not an ice climber, but the Flett on the north side of Observation doesn't look quite ripe yet. The patch further to the west does look ripe for the pickin' though. Just about all the snow on the other side of Knapsack Pass is gone, and conditions up there are more like late September, not late August.

-kurt

h2c!

Drove from Palm Springs, CA to Seattle, WA in 19.5 hours with a Carl's Jr. re-fuel and several coffees. Luckily, I was able to catch up on my conspiracy theories by listening to about 6 hours of the Art Bell Show on AM radio. The best part was surprising my girlfriend, who wasn't expecting me for about 14 more hours.

Ivan threw me into a crevasse

Ok, not exactly...1st he b*tched at some poor ol' lass who was complaining about his early morning ramblings outside of her tent...hard to believe anyone is still asleep at 7 a.m. in a public camp ground lol

Worked our way to the lower part of the Elliot and 'tooled' around there for a bit...working our way through various ice formations 'til we got shut down and had to escape to an adjacent snow slope.
Then we found a 20' deep crevasse to practice rescue techniques. Placed ice pro, rigged a z-pulley, rap'd down into the very narrow crevasse and jumarred out

Good times...Thanks "E"

Me and the crew pulled into Winthrop on Friday for the weekend-long wedding celebration of a good friend.

Spent the weekend causing a ruckus with the Winthrop locals, playin' cards, running around in the swamp, and moongazing ... all with plenty of Fosters fat cans in hand.

Winthrop Winnie says "Howdy cc.com Pardners."

Met Fleblebleb and headed to Lworth for a couple of days of granite-
Saturday - did Bale-Cramer and Regular Route on Careno - 4 stars all - However, we made the poor decision to walk off rather than rap, so had a joyous bushwack down between laps of the rock, which required serious rehydration and a nap.
Sunday - checked out Clem's Holler/Special Spot- Did several pitches at CH until the shoes started to melt and the tips were trashed - will definitely return when it cools off.

Set out to climb the W face of Sloan. Left Seattle @ 5am with my buddy. Got on the trail just before 8am. Bushwhacked our way through the overgrown forest. Emerged at the river absolutely drenched. Slogged up the river boulders for another 1000 feet only to be met by masses of talus, scree, mud and silt. Fell on my ass, cursed our choice of climb and continued scrambling up.

I made the call at 11am that I didn't think we had enough time to ascend the face and be back to the cars before dark (no way I wanted to descend the approach in the dark - no question that I'm a pussy these days). So, we thought we'd head around to the South face and try to hook up with the Corkscrew route. Scrambled around there and my partner finally cajoled me into doing it (I was convinced we didn't have enough time - by now it was 12pm). Got my harness on only to have my buddy exclaim that he'd left his rack in the car (no complaints from me). So, we hung out for a while, took in the views, ate some Oberto beef jerky (a fine American food that I'll miss should I ever move back to Europe) and before descending down a slippery heathery slope - more falling on my ass, more contorting my ankles, more scratches and bruises.

Back down the riverbed we went not 100% sure where the forest trail began again. We found it though and marched through the dense undergrowth (now dry) and got back to the car at 4.30pm. All in all a good day on account of the views and the workout.

In retrospect it was a timely reminder that I hate late season climbing and feel a lot more at home on snow than talus and scree.

Ancient sandstone slab adventures:

First H2C. Definitely won't be the last. Probably won't be the last to pay my entry fee though, so I won't have to run the first leg. Ran it with my buddy and when he took off his shoes at Govt. Camp his socks were red (they started white).