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Trip: The Bugaboos - Pigeon Spire - W Ridge / South Howser Tower - Beckey-Chouinard / Bugaboo Spire - NE Ridge Trip Date: 08/02/2019 Trip Report: Aug 2-8, 2019 Our initial plan was to head down to The Bugaboos a week earlier, but according to a weather forecast, a storm was coming, so we decided to wait it out. Luckily, several days later we saw another window of good weather. I’ve heard some people plan a trip months ahead only to sit in a wet tent with snow all around . We used https://www.meteoblue.com/ for the weather forecast. Itinerary: Aug 2: Meet after work. Drive as far as we could. Spend a night at a campground along the way. Aug 3: Drive the rest of the way. Hike to the Applebee campground and setup tents. Aug 4: Leisure morning. Climb Pigeon Spire W ridge. Aug 5: Alpine start. Climb South Howser Tower. Aug 6: Rest day. Aug 7: Alpine start. Climb NE ridge of Bugaboo Spire. Aug 8: Hike down and drive home. We did not bring chicken wire. There will be plenty. I’m not sure if it helps – I saw porcupines walking behind it, or make sure it's solid and there are no holes between the wire and ground. TH to the Applebee campground – 2.5h. The campground has tap water and plenty of toilet paper. The place is swarming with rodents. Don’t leave any food in a tent or a backpack – there are metal boxes and hangers for it. Pigeon Spire - W Ridge The route is longer than I anticipated. I’d call it three-summit traverse (the last is the true). We simul-climbed on the way up. On the way down, we did two rappels from the summit and down-climbed the rest unroped. I was wearing mountaineering boots. Timeline: 9:25 – Start 10:25 – Top of Snowpatch col 11:20 – Base of the climb About 13:15 - Summit 14:30 – Back to the base Pigeon Spire on the right as seen from the summit of South Howser Tower: South Howser Tower – Beck-Chouinard route I did wear boots until Pigeon col, then switched to approach shoes. For the rest of the approach we had one pair of crampons and an ice axe for both of us. There was stream water after descending the col. We were lucky to have only three parties total on the mountain and we left the first at the base. We simul-climbed until the forth (5.10-) pitch. First few pitches after the bivy site seemed shorter, and watch for loose rock. For rappels, we used 60m and followed instructions from Steph Abegg supplemented by @JeffreyW’s comments. Here are my additional comments: #3 - stay on the ridge, at the end where will be a step down with a small ledge. When standing on the ledge bolt anchor is about climbers 1pm o’clock. Silly I were standing on the ledge, did not see bolts, swung left, and had to ascent a rope after. #6 – after finishing #5 use nearby bolts. Rappel (walk) left (climbers) along the ledge, i.e. what Jeff describes as “rappel parallel to the handline down the scrambley ledge”, until find next bolts: #last – the first person got lowered and extended rappel with a cordelette just in case. Timeline: 3:40? – Start 7:10 – Base of the climb 11:15 – Big ledge 18:10 – Short rappel 19:40 – Summit Shortly after pitch-dark – Finished rappels 1:20 – Back to the campground Not as big, huh: Standing on the summit: North and South Hoswer towers: Bugaboo Spire – NE Ridge Scrambling up Bugaboo-Crescent col was fine, but there was one insecure move, that made my back chill. I tried to link first two pitches with 60m, but end up short 3-5m. Make sure to well extend the third pitch, because of its nature. Left variations and 5.10 to gain South summit were great. Scrambling down Kain route was endless. There are multiple paths, generally marked with cairns, do not drop down too fast and keep traversing skiers right. I can see why parties descending in the dark often get in trouble on this route. Timeline: 5:00? – Start 5:50 – Base of Bugaboo-Crescent col 6:20 – Top of Bugaboo-Crescent col 7:00 – Base of the climb 11:00 – North summit 12:30 – South summit 15:40 – Top of Snowpatch col 17:00 – Back to the campground Traverse from N to S summit (looking forward): Traverse from N to S summit (looking backwards): Bonus 1. On the way home, we stopped by Kinsmen Beach at Windermere Lake to wash off all sweat and dust. It was delightful. 2. Below is my food plan. All food was portioned into zip-lock bags. What worked well: none left with no starving. Instant potatoes with tuna was the best meal. Egg noodles and cheese was the worst. Fri Dinner Grocery/Restaurant take out Sat Breakfast Buy a sandwich Lunch Buy a sandwich/etc Dinner Couscous 363 cal Turkey Jerky 105 cal Pita bread 140 cal Chocolate 150 cal Sun Breakfast Instant oat + powdered milk 300 cal + dried blueberries (oatmeal) Granola bar 130 cal Lunch Gummy bears 180 cal Pita bread 140 cal Trail mix 250 cal Snickers 250 cal Tailwind 400 cal Dinner Instant potatoes 392 cal Tuna 160 cal Pita bread 140 cal Garlic oil Mon Breakfast Oatmeal 300 cal Granola bar 130 cal Lunch Couscous 320 cal Salami 200 cal Pita bread 140 cal Trail mix 250 cal Dinner Egg Noodles 381 cal Cheese 170 cal Chocolate 150 cal Tue Breakfast Oatmeal 130 cal Granola bar 300 cal Lunch Gummy bears 180 cal Pita bread 140 cal Trail mix 250 cal Snickers 250 cal Dinner Mountain house? Wed Breakfast Oatmeal/Bars/leftovers 300 cal Granola bar 130 cal Lunch Stash some food at the car Gear Notes: A tent, two 8 oz fuels (we ended up using only one), jetboil, water filter. 8 singles, 6 doubles, 2x cordelette, BD cams .1-.3, doubles in .4-4”, 60m rope, grigri, set of BD nuts. Approach Notes: Some comments in TR

Nice work boys! Looked like conditions are as good as they get on that route. When my partner I attempted it 20 years ago we had a disagreement on the route. I said we needed to follow the left traversing kitty litter and verglass covered sloping ramp/ledge to the OBVIOUS dihedral/gulley system. He disagreed and insisted that we needed continue up the broad couloir. He is more stubborn that I am so up the couloir we went and discovered fun ice and mixed climbing. After we pulled the final obstacle I told him that was definitely not NY Gulley. He said 'I know, but there was no f'ing way I was going to cross that ramp'. The route we climbed has been since described variously as NJ Turnpike (our name) and LA Express.

I've been tr soloing with a mini traxion since they came out in in the early 2000's. They caught on pretty quickly in Yosemite where I was living at the time. Since then I'm sure I've put in a couple hundred days with them. Pretty much every hard route I've established I used mini traxs to work out the moves. Most of these routes were at my limit and even above so falling on them is something I'm very acquainted with. I can think of one pitch in particular that took at least 50 attempts before i could do it. I probably fell over 500 times on that pitch alone. In all those years and falls I've only once done damage to my rope. And that one time was one of the few times I've used a dynamic rope. I'm not sure exactly what type of rope it was but more than likely a Sterling Nano or a Beal Joker (around 9.2mm). I remember I wasn't that excited about using that rope but I needed a 70m to get down and it was the only one I had. After numerous falls in the same spot I'd done some minor damage to the sheath. This probably wouldn't of happened with a fatter rope but I don't really use any fatter dynamic ropes. Since most of the routes I mini-traxion on are fairly big ( grade IV or longer) and take weeks and sometimes years to complete its pretty important that I use static ropes to fix everything. Dynamic ropes just don't hold up to the abuse of jumaring, rappelling and mini-traxioning. I've never once wished I was on a pitch and had a dynamic rope. The last major route I did I purchased 1800ft of Sterling Safety Pro 10mm low elongation rope. This has 3.2% stretch and feels pretty good to fall on. I'd stay away from the polyester blends as the elongation can be as low as 1%. I've used one of these ropes and they aren't that much fun to fall on though they are great for jumaring. The best ropes I've found aren't too stiff and aren't too limp. Either one will cause the rope to not slide smoothly. Blake posted a photo of mine in his blog post showing my setup. I still use this setup with one minor change. I drilled a small hole in the top mini-traxion that fits a little key ring. I then use a piece of elastic (old headlamp band) with a barrel toggle to adjust it. I put the elastic over my shoulder just like a shoulder length. This holds the mini-traxion up nice tight and helps with the feeding.

Darin that was awesome. :-) I only ever used a dynamic rope for years, because they were all I owned. They work fine, but have several downsides. I switched to static at the suggestion of many others who climb 27 grades harder than me as well, and who have done more solo TR climbing. The standard for the most dialed in solo TR folks I've met is 2 traxions, and one static rope. No other BS. I've now fallen a few times, and it hasn't been a big deal because my setup keeps the rope moving through my devices, so no more than 12"-14" of slack builds up. Get a few feet of some stretchy Theraband (~$5 at Fred Meyer) and run a loop of it over your neck/shoulder, then clip it to your device to hold it up high and your slack problems will be gone. The benefits of static are: cheaper ropes, longer-lasting ropes, less fall distance. The downside, as you mentioned, is that there is minimal stretch in the system and more impact when you slip off, which is worth considering, especially when close to the anchor. Considering that people do belayed/normal TRing all the time on static ropes, both in the gym AND outside, these solo TR slips on static ropes don't seem unreasonable to me. But don't use a static rope if your ascender setup lags behind you and allows for slack, especially as you near the anchor. If you're using two strands for redundancy and dealing with some labor-intensive devices like a GriGri or clipping in to multiple pre-tied backup loops from strand #2, you'll soon reach a point where all this extra hassle/time/weight/self-sandbaggery defeats the point of the TR solo setup in the first place.