Leaderboard

Trip: Broken Top - Oh to be young and dumb - Crater Trip Date: 02/16/1985 Trip Report: For fun I thought I would post a trip report that happened 35 years ago. A friend recently sent me scanned versions of his slides so I thought I would post them up with the story. We were both in college at OSU, me finishing my undergrad, and Andy finishing his masters. My girlfriend had an invite to spend the weekend skiing at Mt. Bachelor so we decided to go along and climb Broken Top as neither of us had been on it before. So that Friday night we left Corn Valley for Bend, she dumped us off at the end of the road that evening and we skied in a ways and camped. The next morning we skied in into the Broken Top crater. Andy and I discussed various ways to gain the rim. We finally decided on a route up but not one that I was to my liking as I wanted to take a less direct but I felt safer route. But I deferred to Andy as he was more experienced than me. At this point I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story. Mt Bachelor in the background. Hmm, 30" crown and well we are still on top. I think walking down is the preferred option. Hmm, nice debris field and damn near wall to wall. WTF were we thinking??? The dot in the middle of the debris field is me putting my skis back on. Epilogue: As our ski tracks are visible, we had nearly gained the ridge when we set off the avalanche. We were both on the same cut when the ground went out from under us and we dropped a couple of feet to the bed surface. Both of us just stood there and watched as the avalanche ripped down the crater. Had either of us been caught we would have been dead. Not withstanding the fact that back then few people had transceivers or could we afford them as students. I saw Andy a few years ago when he gave me these images. He admitted that his decision making that day was not the best. Oh to be young and dumb. Gear Notes: A functioning brain Approach Notes: Go long from Mt. Bachelor

I've had major slides happen in the Crook Cirque/Crater of BT as well. That thing is a solar oven and slides easy once the sun is out. Going up that E ridge to the summit would have been interesting, I've come in a little L of where you guys were. It is surprisingly decent rock, but legitimate climbing in that vicinity.

And lucky! Can't forget that part. Without it, I wouldn't be typing this. Thanks for the great blast from the past, post some more stories please!!

I hope that this wasn't your actual takeaway from my post. Please don't build strawmen. I was pointing out the fact that we cannot say with certainty how safe any particular ascent was or is. Risk is difficult to quantify from a computer chair. We can only guess. I did acknowledge that you had climbed the route, so your opinion holds some weight. I was certainly not making any comments on how a route should be climbed. It is clear that with all else held equal, solo climbing is inherently more risky. That being said, the gear on Yocum is bad and falls while alpine climbing commonly result in fatal outcomes. So the moral question is: Should we not also publicly criticize people for climbing the Yocum in the first place? My answer is probably not. But each person has their own reaction to things like this, so I respect your perspective. Let's rope up someday and put whatever assumptions we have of each other to rest that way.

I'm often asked "what happened to Helmy?" or about the whereabouts of Helmy, Fred Beckey's brother. I was able to spend time with Helmy on two lengthy visits to Munich: the first in 2014 and then in 2018. This is a link to his obituary, on the Mountaineers website: https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/remembering-helmy-beckey . . . . . . . . . . . *Note: The climb of Index's North Peak was originally made by Lionel Chute & "company" in the late 1920s - exact year and partner's names unknown. It was later climbed by Otto Trott and Eric Larson in 1941. It's likely that Trott & Larson actually made the first "complete" summit, but that the specifics were not entirely documented, as could have Chute. It was proposed in later years by Harry Majors that Fred & Helmy made the first "complete" ascent of the North Peak, as the write-up by Fred in the 1946 AAJ made mention of continuing to the true summit; Chute's homemade-metal match summit register was found at the "false" summit. Fred never made the FA claim himself.

I know Ilse - Helmy's first wife. She's a wonderful woman and lives in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. I've spoken with her a few times over the years about Fred and Helmy and as Puma describes above, its all positive stuff.

I climbed that when I was in high school (about 40 years ago). I took a 30' fall (unroped, thank god) and landed in a soft, deep pile of snow. I was unfazed, but my partners were sure freaked out.

Re: the Beckey Family Hi JasonG, In 1966, prior to his move to Munich, Helmy married a young woman who had come from Austria to care for his and Fred's mother. That marriage ended in divorce about seven years later. In interviews with his former wife, she has positive memories and affirmative things to say about Helmy, Fred, and their mother. They had no children; neither Fred nor Helmy had any offspring. They (Helmy, Fred and their mother , whose name was Marta Maria) remained a tight-knit family over their lifetimes. Helmy spent the last dozen years or so in the company of a woman (a former opera singer) who died shortly after he did. Regards, - Megan Bond