Alasdair

Here are pictures of the trip wayne is talking about. This is the Traverse from west to East. Over Easy Ridge and Perfect Pass. I have pictures of most of the route here. Keep in mind that the river crossing will be considerably more dificult this year that it was in these pictures from last year. Let me know if you need any more info. nwclimber.com

I never pulled all nighters in college like most of my freinds did. So when I finnaly did stay awake for an extended period of time it effected me quite significantly. I did a 30 hour push (with about an hour of rest at some point) a few years ago getting off of a mountain. Although I was strong physically I definatly had mental issues. Basically I had issues with the prossessing of sound. When partners would talk I would hear them but not be able to prossess the information until later. I would store up several sounds and then prossess them all at the same time. All the while I was fully aware that I was doing this but without the abitily to do anything about it. After getting back I read up a little on sleep deprivation and this experience seems to fit in exactly with what the papers said. Audio hallucination is one of the first things that happens. I dont remember any of the other symptoms. There was an artical in either Rock and Ice or Climbing a couple of years back on this topic that you should read. I dont recomend doing this unless you have no choice.

keep in mind that the travese from red sadle can be farily steep and very exposed to rock fall from above if you choose to climb to the summit after doing one of the south side routes. Here is a link to some pictures of the whitewater gacier route which also ends up at red saddle. There are several pictures of the snow slope and the traverse. http://www.nwclimber.com/climbing/trips/jefferson1998/jefferson1998.htm

Im with RBW. It is fucking cold up there. If you are doing the west but then take all the shit you can drag, everyone else does.

OK, I was browsing some sites on the web looking at rainier pictures when I came across this one. Is it just me or does any one else find this to be a fairly bad place to stop at take pictures? This is directly below the ice cliff on Kautz.

You get caught you can pretty much kiss all of the rights you have when getting arrested by a police officer goodbye. Keep in mind that the border patrol can pretty much do what ever the hell they want to you including take your car. I know of at least one person heading into canada who got caught and he basically is not allowed back into canada. I would guess the consiquenses far outweigh the benefits of not having to bum it from some punk kid.

Does anyone know if the road to Hannegan Pass trail head is accessable this time of year? If so, All the way to the trailhead? Any one been in to this area this time of year? What is it like? I am thnking about Ruth Mountain or Icy Peak.

I highly recomend easy ridge. On the way to mt challenger. I was in that area last summer andit is an amazing place to take pics. This page will give you an idea of the area. Easy ridge pics are mostly at the begining. I will label them a little later today. http://www.nwclimber.com/climbing/trips/challenger2001/challenger2001.htm

Luna?

It always mistifies me when I walk past roped groups on glaciers in the middle of summer where all of the crevases are open, and one of them has to say "where is your rope, You are on a Glacier you know" Alex, do you think it is really impossible to garantee safety by climbing something like the sitkum glacier without a rope in the summer? Are you a mountaineer? Or just a member of one of those groups that I pass everytime I ever get on a Glacier in the summer.

"Mountaineers who on almost every climb lead you along at the kind of pace that discourages you from stopping to relieve yourself, let alone stopping to actually take a picture" Are you kidding? In my experience they bairly move. If they moved any slower on glaciers they would acctually move away from the summit due to the speed of the glacier.

I always take a cammera with me on every trip. I use one of three cammeras the most common is my Minolta maxim SLR. Relativly cheap auto focus body with a good lens. The reason I use this is because if you are going to take good action shots your cammera will get beat up (because it will be hanging around your neck most of the time). I have a Nikon FN2M fully manual cammera also. I dont use this as much. I also use a point and shoot (again with a good quality lens).I definatly do not agree with the manual cammera in winter idea. You end up taking crappy out of focus shots. I took both the point and shoot and the minolta to Alaska and had great results with the Minolta. When you are in very cold condtions The veiw finder will fog up the instant you get your eye close to it making impossible to get good focus. Never keep your cammera in your jacket when it is cold. Keep it in a plastic bag in you pack or around your neck (keep the batteries in your pocket and take a lot with you). Simply put I would get an autofocus SLR and not belive that they dont work in the cold, they do. You can go to www.nwclimber.com and navigate to the Mt. Foraker page and see pictures shot with the Minolta (there are some point and shoot pics in there too). All of the earlier climbing pics are shot with a point and shoot. You see the obvious qulity difference between the two cammeras. As far a film... Fuji Velvia slide film is what I use. Very sharp and good color. Enlarges great. Print film enlargements suck. and always are grainy as hell. OK thats my 2 cents.

Here is a web site for you guys. I have a ton of pics on here. I almost never update the site, and half the layout is stolen from other peoples sites. In otherwords enjoy it for what it is. www.nwclimber.com enjoy!

So due to the fact that I only have weekends to climb I have been thinking about picking up an old snowmobile to get me up some of thos snow covered roads to make more winter climbs accessable. I have a couple of questions however.1. If I buy one what are the chances of it getting stolen when I park it somewhere for a couple of days while I am climbing?2. What about rentals? where can I rent one? Is there anyone who rents shit machines so I dont have to pay premium $$? Anyone done this before?

Take a look at the Federal building downtown. Perfect hand cracks for 40+ stories. could easily be protected with some cams also. Enjoy the jail time on that one.

Does anyone who has climbed Hunter, or has first hand knowlege have any Beta. What I am looking for mainly is what time of year is likely to have the best conditions. The last time I was in this area, Hunter got no asents due to conditions, but several weeks later saw several successfull attempts. In otherwords does Hunter tend to be more climbable in early spring or closer to the summer. Alasdair

Oh good for you Bill looking after the little old lady. The only way this would be a good thing is if he got exclusive permission to climb on her property and spent most of his time over there. That way none of the rest of the people who climb at vantage would have to listen to his loud mouth boasting about what he has climbed there. Bill Robbins the Vantage Police?

I was there last month. The glacier is no problem. It will be quite icy. Plan on ice axe and crampons. The only hard thing about it is the approach (it sucks). Enjoy.

The Glacier may be a little broken but it certainly does not present a routefinding problem for anyone who has been on a Glacier before. Look at it before you get on it and plan a route through. Apart from a couple of switchbacks it should be very straitforward.

I just did the Serpentine a couple of weekends ago and I realy dont remember it being that dangerous in the rockfall category. Yes there is loose rock, but there are very few areas where knocking a loose block off the route will hit the person below. First of all most of the loose areas are at such low angle you would have to try to get them to fall further than a few feet, and even when they do they go to either side of the ridge. Did I miss something on this route, or am I so used to climbing crappy loose horror shows that I thought this thing was fairly safe?

You definately do not want to go via colchuck right now. It is pretty ugly looking, and mostly blue ice littered with rockfall.

I did the route two weeks ago. I did not take an ice axe or crampons. desending the snow sloap on the other side could be very serious without. It is not that steep but if you fall you may take a ride that has a very unplesant end. I recomend not taking crampons and walking along the ridge down to the SE for a while. There is a walk down with no snow there. It looks a lot further than it is. It should take you about an extra hour but is very enjoyable. Do not try to desend the snow without an axe.

Better Beer? What the hell are you talking about? I would rather drink urine than drink Molson. If you are comparing Molosn to bud. It all sucks. But our micros have definately got yours beat. Better weed maybe.

No. I was on the N. Ridge of Sherpa. I heard some big rock fall on Stuart and looked over to see a boulder at least as big as a car barreling down Cascadian toward two climbers. They ran like hell and the boulder missed them by what looked like a few feet from where I was. It was the closest I have come to seeing someone get taken out in the mountiains. The two climbers were about 500-800ft. below the summit on cascadian and it happend between 10:00 and 10:15.

Hey,Captain Was that you on the Cascadian about 10:30 on Sunday that almost got wiped out by the huge boulder?