Alasdair

There are SO many shitty stories about the mountaineers, that I tend to believe that they are in fact the problem not the people who are complaining about them. I have no problem with the students in the class, and never have. It is the attitude of the fuck wad class leaders which is the problem. I have twice ran in to groups of mounties on climbs and both times the leader was a total prick. Note these were Everett Mountaineers. It seems that there are way too many stories of dick head group leaders for it to all be in the imagination. Or maybe we are all just making these stories up.

What was the route like? How are conditions?

Never mind I spelled it wrong in my search. You can call me Dave. I will still take beta if anyone has anything to add though.

Anyone got good beta for NF Greybeard? I managed to find Laytons TR, but have not been able to find anything else. Colin, Forrest you two did this last year right?

Agreed Jason, Last winter some dumb fuck snow shoers decided to tell me off because I was soloing McClellan Butte. "Your on your own?" YES... "Dont you think that is dangerous?" NO... "Do you climb on your own alot?" Several times a year... "you really should not be out on your own" OK... "your the type of person we end up reading about on in the newspaper" Thanks for the vote of confidence. Have a nice day. This week I have had so many conversations with the people at work along the lines of "You dont climb on your own do you?" I now know that the correct answer to this quesiton is "No of course not. Why would I do that?" This answer saves a lot of bullshit conversation with people who I only talk to because I have to see them at work.

I ran in to a couple of climbers comming off the route last weekend and they said it was relativly strait forward. They climbed in crampons but "mostly because they wanted to". From SEWS it looked to have snow on ledges and the chimeny appeared to still have snow in it.

This could very possibly be worth heading up to the tooth bowl just to watch.

http://www.nwclimber.com/climbing/trips/hunter2002/hunterclimbinfo.htm

Ade and I climbed this route on Saturday. Route was in OK shape, but the ice was a little rotten in places. Fun route. Left car at about 3 am. Hiked to base of peak (via a somwhat roundabout way due to route finding error in the dark. Dumped snowshoes at base of route and then headed up just as the sun hit it. Simulclimbed to the first step, and then roped up. Ade led first step and then the crux in one 60m pitch. First step was crappy ice over a boulder "chockstone" in the gully. Only a couple of moves. All ice on this de-laminated as I put weight on to it, and there is now no longer ice on this part of the route. The crux open book had a fairly solid covering of ok ice with some rotton sections. Most of this crux could be climbed with very little ice in it by using the rock on the left side. I led the third pitch with one well protected small step. Simul climbed to summit, with mostly crappy protection. Desended by rapping strait off summit in to a coulior that meets the regular decent coulior about 100 ft down from the ridge. Downclimbed the rest of the way to cliffband and then made two rappels, one off of a really crappy dead tree anchor into the SW basin. Wallowed in snow for endless hours getting back to the snowshoes. Back at car about 4:00pm. Snowshoe postholing sucks ass. Went to David's cabin and met with the rest of the CC.com crew and drank beers.

Dont know about you, but I personally think that driving 113 mph anywhere on the hwy 2 is dangerous and completely reckless. That hwy is dangerous even without people driving 113 mph. Dont get me wrong I am not one to always go the speed limit, but there is a point at which your speed endangers everyone around you. Keep in mind the most dangerous part of climbing is getting the trail head.

Lummox, are you retarded?

There is no doubt in my mind that that was our bag of food. It had been sitting there since May. Well frozen I would guess.

Oh and ditto on what timmy said. These things do have some issues, although not serious ones. They are fairly reliable, but I do find myself with the occasional reboot. I am not sure whether I would wait or not, as the 2003 OS (not shipped yet) for the thing is a complete peice of shit right now. It should get better soon.

I have had several, and I hated them all. Basically you spend a lot of time setting it up to be usefull and then realize that they really are not that usefull. That is until I got my current device. It is a pocket PC phone edition. It is the only one I have ever actually used. It is pretty good. Best thing about it is you can get the 512 memory card and use it as an MP3 player. Surf the web, get mail while you are out and about. The data plans are really fucking expensive. Keep in mind that I dont have to pay for these things, and if I did I would not have one.

Thats funny because I lost a garbage bag full of exactly what you describe on Foraker in 2000.

There is a big metal shovel with wooden handle(the kind you use to shovel compact dirt). Stuffed in a big offwidth crack on Mt. Hunters West Ridge. I am being totally serious here. Although it is booty, I decided I did not need it.

24 hours with a 7 hour bivy. I will have to go again so I can beat your record.

Alasdair, do as you like. Equalizing two bolts using webbing is safer than threading the rope through two cold shuts. If there are chains, no problem, use the chains. If you thread two bolts without chain and one fails, you have extension and the remaining bolt could fail from the shock load. Don't criticize people for doing what they regard as the safer alternative. Shure what ever. I personally choose not to ever rap off of any webbing I can not follow in a complete loop and be sure every part of it is intact. Not to mention the fact that the mountie death triangle is usually the anchor set up of choice. As far as the type of anchors go they are the ones that look just like bolts only much bigger and rounded and infact designed to rap off.

I agree with you erik. If any of you have ever climbed the south side of Ingalls peak you will notice the Two big Metolius Rap bolts desingned to feed a rope through that have been threaded with so much fucking webbing that you cant even follow one piece to figure out if the anchore is safe to rap off. Every time I have ever got to this anchor and there is webbing on it I cut it all off, and take it home. One time much to the dislike of some mountie shit head who had just threaded a piece through and rapped off.

So I keep this story to myself for the last 24 hours until I made sure the cat was OK before I started spraying about it on the internet. Yesterday morning about 6 AM I had finally had enough of the cats outside my window howling at each other, so I got up and looked out my window to see one of the cats (My neighbors) in the middle of my back yard staring down some other cat. All I want to do is scare it away so that it shuts the fuck up. So I grab the closest throwable thing (a hockey puck that was sitting on my window sil) and chuck it out the window aiming between the two cats. Right as I throw the puck the neighbors cat see me at starts running like hell home. Problem was it ran directly into the path of the hockey puck, and it hit it square on the skull (I know it hit it on the skull because of the sound it made). The puck flew back up in the air about three feet after hitting the cat. I quickly ducked back behind my curtain thinking I had just killed the cat and went back to bed. Couple of hours later I got up can checked the back yard for the cat. Good it at least made it out of my yard. This morning I did here the distinctive sound of the bell the cat wares on its collar so I can say the can now likely only has 8 lives. I fucking hate that cat. I do what I can to get birds in my yard and that thing eats them. Initially I felt bad but now that I know it survived I am somewhat disapointed it is not dead.

Doubt it. I need to get some exercise... Fucking desk job. And the smoke in that place is choking.

Actually we called it the Howling Pisshole because the waitress kicked us out and we were tooo drunk to remember her telling us never to come back, and when we did she went balistic and "howled" at us.

Sounds good I found the thread and it has the info I need. One more question. Probably for MikeG. Is it possible to get ranger permission to climb solo on an open weekend between the dates of XXXX to XXXXX? Basically I want to go when I know the weather will be good not get permission for a certain weekend and then have to push my luck with weather because that is the weekend I am committed to.

Any one here climbed that route. I am looking for any beta you might have. I am thinking it would be a good solo. How dificult is it to get a permit to climb solo on Rainier?

Where you thinking of going? Im up for a hung over climbing weekend. Ade, what about you?