mattp

On this hot summer weekend, I climbed North Twin with a bunch of sweaty old men. We opted to make a one-day trip into two so we could spend a night in the great outdoors, and this allowed for a relaxed pace. After a leisurely departure and a couple of stops on the road, we arrived at the gate on the Nooksack River at something like 2:00 p.m., and a guy in a work truck was perfectly pleasant about it as he passed through and re-locked the gate, but it was clear that he wasn't going to let us drive any further. The legendary "labyrinth" of logging roads between the gate and the peak was not all that confusing. Simply hike up the main road 2.5 miles (a 2.5 mile marker about a hundred yards before the proper turn-off is a pretty obvious clue as to how far you've gone), and then take the side road up toward what is shown on the maps as "Daily Prairie." Follow this road, taking all choices that appear to be heading you slightly up-hill but not sharply uphill, until you get pretty much directly below the peak. The correct turn-off is presently marked with a cairn and somebody has recently done some brushing on the first couple hundred yards of this spur road. Follow it to the end, and a trail heads up through the top of the clearcut and onto the West Ridge. I was surprised to find my friends resistant when I lead the way off the trail toward "Shangri La Meadows" at 4100 feet near the base of the climb. Apparently, these guys thought there was no reason to leave a perfectly good trail to crawl through the logging slash and camp at a meadow that was in reality a mosquito-infested swamp, but I regained at least some stature when I pulled three pounds of lamb out of my pack and we cooked a meal packed with iron to replace what was being donated to the local mosquito population. The West Ridge proved to be everything we hoped it would be: an easy ridge scramble with just enough exposure to know we were on something, and the views were stunning. One member of our party who has never been rock-climbing requested a belay for a short 50 foot section near the top, and soon enough Team Sweaty made it to the summit. During the descent, we ran into a younger climber who informed us that we were idiots to be down-climbing the route, because it would be (he said) so much easier to "slide on your butt 2,000 feet" than to do all that down-climbing. I don't know where he was going to find his 2,000 foot snow slide, as I had checked out the north-side descent and much of it was melted out to scree, and I noticed that he had two tools on his pack, a 50 cm ice axe and 50 cm ice hammer, neither of which were the right tool for his butt slide (in my opinion, short tools are slightly dangerous for glissading because it is way too easy to stick yourself with the spike when using them for a self arrest). I was tempted to offer my own free advice, but bit my lip and continued down. As is always the case on non-technical terrain, we found that scrambling down the ridge was much easier than expected and even the short "hard" places were easier to descend than they had been to climb up, and team sweaty made it down off the mountain with ease.

Have I failed to show everybody what an idiot I am?

You see, ChucK, that's the point. We get all to complacent when driving near trees or sidewals full of pedestrians. Why, just yesterday I .....

This particular thing DOES happen quite a bit, and the obvious preventative measure is to tie a knot in the end of the rope. But for just about every scenario, we could think of a preventive measure. The real point, in my opinion, is that we need to pay attention and be especially mindful where we may be most comfortable and hence likely to overlook possible dangers. Josh is right, of course, that this is spray. If he wants to carry on , he may. By doing so, he wouldn't be showing anybody anything except that he's an idiot, though.

You guys are pathetic. Arguing about who's the bigger idiot??? If you are bored and want to waste your time, at least try to think of something that somebody else might be interested in.

Why would you carry a three pound bivvy bag? Many small tents weigh less than four pounds!

I misused the word "guilty." That refers to criminal responsibility, not civil. The more correct term would be "at fault." I edited my post to replace "guilty." Where are the proofreaders when you need them?

It is also like an OSHA analysit to mis-use the word "mitigate." The word means "to make milder or less severe." A mitigating factor in this case would perhaps be the fact that he apparently landed on his feet rather than his head. The factor's Greg cited were contributory factors and could only be construted as "mitigating" facors if we were talking about how the belayer was "at fault." But Greg would never talk about that because he thinks our society is too litigeous and people should take responsibility for theirselves and that, if Josh had been hurt, it would not have been right to try to hold somebody else responsible. Right Greg?

I believe it happened because they were using a rope that had recently been shortened, and it wasn't long enough to lower him from the anchors. There were lots of people standing about, and I bet the belayer was somewhat distracted by this; they apparently assumed it was long enough and didn't notice when the end ran through the gris-gris. It was another accident like the one that caused the death of David Gunstone a month ago that reminds me of how complacent we all get when we are sport climbing and top-roping and we get used to the idea that the whole thing is pretty much set up already.

Lee- I have been using a tarp for years, and at all times of the year. The advantages of a tarp over a tent are actually INCREASED in bad weather or when snow camping. In these situations, there are no mosquito's to worry about, and you can set the tarp high or low or tip it one way or the other, depending on whether wind is blowing rain or snow underneath, whether you are doing a lot of cooking or whether there may be something to look at. The chief advantages are that you have much more room to hang out in for much less weigiht, you can lounge around in your sleeping bag while you cook, and you can see where you are instead of being walled off from the woods and mountains that you have come to enjoy. It takes a little more effort than just throwing up a tent, but I use a down bag with a normal shell (not goretex), and no bivvy bag, and not once in litterally hundreds of nights out under a tarp* have I gotten my bag seriously wet because I was using a tarp rather than a tent. In "weather like we are having now," I would leave even the tarp behind, but a tent might actually be better because of the mosquito control it offers. *As I posted above, you do have to camp at or below timberline, though. I DID get wet, though not dangerously so, on one occasion when trying to set a tarp on granite ledges above timberline in a snowstorm in the Sierra.

Indeed, Jeffski, turning around in that chimney was the crux for me. I believe that just about anybody who hasn't done it before starts up facing the "wrong" direction. I wonder, though, if it truly turns out to be as much easier as we think if you start up it facing the "right" way.

Rudy is right, GregW soiled himself by chasing bolts in North Bend yesterday. After easily scampering up a 6-bolt pseudo masterpiece where every bolt was within a foot of a perfect crack, he moaned, "I feel so dirty, I just don't know....I think I suck." And those sport climbers! What a bunch of wimps. There was a crowd of at least 20 on Launch Ledge, and all of them were young and fit. There lay in seige, stringing ropes and draws up and down the cliff, bringing just about everything down to their level. It was disgusting to watch them pull down on those desecrated features that used to be a cliff, making 5.12 and 5.13 look easy. And when Josh fell forty feet to the ground, they were worried that he might have gotten hurt. Sheesh.

The tarp is a good option as long as you are going to spend the night at or below timberline. It's not so good above, though I have set them between boulders and stuff. Bring a headnet if you are tarp camping in the summer!

Dru said: it sure sucks when your leader has to stop 3m from the next anchor while you daisy into the anchor and then untie your knot you had been tied into the anchor with, so she can finish the pitch It sure must suck to have to worry about something that almost never happens.

If you are bent on camping at the lunch counter, you might find it easier to fill a water bottle if you bring a 3' length of rubber hose. Very often I find trickles of water that are not deep enough to dip a bottle or pot into, but easily feed a small hose. Consider that you will be drinking from an open sewer, though. I believe the Forest Service discourages camping at the Lunch Counter because of the lingering problem with turds and food scraps and etc. Once the snow is gone, the place is a mess and if it is at all windy, there is no relief from the onslaught and sitting around cooking can be rather unpleasant. There is nice camping down at timberline and the climb is an easy day trip from there (its an easy day trip from the car, for that matter).

Birds are the enemy!

There are nice bivvy spots on the top of Middle Sister, and a bit of a lava tube several hundred feet down the west slope.

MisterE said: And you need a pendulum to prove it.

Ahh, but I think you have it wrong, Mr. E. The mass of Index Town Wall creates a gravitational affect, drawing us to the wall. As you ascend Saggitarius next time you are there, think how much harder it would be without that tiny gravitational force pulling you toward the rock. (This, assuming that the force that is pulling you toward your death remained the same.) The additional gravitational pull created by the rock is our friend!

I'm with the light and cheap school on this question. I don't think there are very many times when the heavier or more expensive one is going to keep you drier, and the fancier ones with tent poles start to weigh nearly as much as a small tent. Cheaper and lighter yet is to skip it altogether. For more than one person, the weight savings as compared to a light weight tent are not all that substantial -- especially when you look at everything else in your pack. If the weather is good, you don't need the bivvy sack and I don't know many people who would take just the bivvy sack when headed out in questionnable weather anyway. Lots of people swear by 'em, but I have never used a bivvy sack in thirty years' climbing. If the weather is fair, I just take a sleeping bag and maybe a headnet and plan to put my feet in a garbage bag or in my pack and pull on a raincoat if it rains.

Actually, the lab was pretty cool when he let me in there for a tour about ten years ago. And, as a slight correction of Colin's post, I should say that he explained to me that it was the fact that it was surrounded by a big mass on ONE side that made the location appropriate as a testing ground for his theories. A pendulum is affected by the gravitational force excerted by Index town wall, as opposed to the flat open land between there and the valley -- it is actually drawn toward the wall. He also said that, after a rainstorm that fills up the puddles outside the cave door, he can measure some countervailing gravitational force in the other direction. Maybe the fifth force is what draws all of us there. The other "story" about the cave is that it was first created when they tested the drill system that was used to dig the "chunnel" between England and France. The story that it is Pope and Dwayner's secret bouldering hideout is absolutely false.

Nice job. It is one of the most beautiful alpine cirques around, and Nooksack Tower is good adventure!

They chopped the bolts? It's not like there's crack pro nearby. Somebody ought to go back up there with glue ins.

Red Square at U.W. There is a cool chimney between two of - what was it? - three? - some number of towers there. An old bolt is visible many feet up the thing.

Well, maybe the rappel from the slings easily visible below the Blueberry Terrace is no better than other options, then. But my questions is: WHY DOES EVERYBODY RAPPEL FROM THERE? This is like the tenth report in the last two months where they bailed from the Terrace. What's up? The top of the Dome is cool, and the rappels from there have the advantages of being very straight forward (notwithstanding a report to the contrary last year) and depositing you right back at the top of the Sidewalk. Do I scare everybody off by noting that there is some run out 5.8 up there or that the first couple raps from the summit are messy??? I'm questionning your manhood (and womanhood) here.