mattp

Exactly. Its not that bad but the lack of pro can be an issue. I don't know about trying to get a good "stick" with approach shoes, though.

Admittedly, it is not all THAT bad, but the thing that bothers people about the steep grass and heather on climbs like J'Berg is that one has the definite sense that there is no safe anchor in the event of a slip. And they are right. If you are roped up on this terrain, "the leader must not fall" (to quote the old standard rule long forgotten) and they better find a good belay anchor before they bring their buddies up. It is probably about equivalent to climbing grade III ice that is rotten and won't take screws.

I believe it has always been thought that the Gunks were stiff compared to western ratings and I bet an average 5.10 Gunks climber would figure out how to climb 5.10 at Index faster than an average 5.10 Index climber would be likely to master 5.10 at the Gunks. Even so, one's level of mastery does have something to do with the style of climbing they are used to and I have heard of Gunks climbers coming out west and finding granite to be surprisingly difficult or, for a local example, I've known a solid 5.12 North Bend climber to shoot sparks on a 5.8 slab at Leaveworth. Jim cites "High E" as a 5.6 that will make most of us pause and think; I agree. It would probably be rated 5.8 at Leavenworth and you gotta run it out a little bit on the crux. It is a fantastic climb for its grade!

I'm starting to get the impression that the "off route" variation that I did many years ago may be just as good as that being currently recommended in "Select Climbs." I believe I used the same approach ramp/gullies heading up toward the crest of the ridge at the bottom, and then I took a gully system that was left of the main crest for something like a thousand feet. It had some extreme heather climbing leading up to two or three ropelengths of rock climbing that eased off to a scramble that gained the buttress crest just below the snow arete. I didn't have to do any rappel, and I may have done less screwing around than what Robert describes though it was over 20 years ago and my memory of it is dim.

Pretty much everything will be suncupped (more so on south facing slopes), but I've skied the SW Chutes on Adams in August and it was fun (there were lots of rocks to dodge and you had to pay attention). I've found good skiing in August on the Fryingpan Glacier at Mount Rainier.

You may be right. I haven't spent much time at Squamish.

It all depends on what you are looking for. For 5.8 to 5.10 6-10 pitch climbs, I think Darrington is better than either Leavenworth or Index unless you're up for DavisHolland/LovinArms or Iconoclast/Hyperspace. Because there is no current guidebook, the approaches involve some funkness, and it is generally low angle climbing, Darrington doesn't have the crowds, either. It is beautiful, but doesn't have the high mountain ambience of Washington Pass and it is not a world-class climbing destination like Squamish.

rock ice - How do you get to Spade Lake by a route that is more fun or shorter than the hike to Peggy's Pond?

Now, there's a good reason for a bivvy bag. For some reason, I have had mice try to crawl into the sack with me on several occasions. The bivvy bag will put a stop to this (though a tent is better).

In my view, the South Buttress of Cutthroat is NOT worth doing. All things considered, and when compared to other routes in the area, it is a relatively dirty and unaesthetic climb. The Pass is great, though! If your friend "loses her head" due to exposure, you may not want to try the Direct East Buttress of the S. Spire, but it IS a fantastic climb that will probably prove exciting enough to please your 5.12 friend and yet it is not really all that hard. Look at the NW Face routes on the N. Spire for slightly shorter and simpler climbs that are also very nice. While you can seek out the shade, Index and Leavenworth both get pretty warm in hot weather. However, the Davis Holland/Lovin Arms goes at 5.10 if you take the easier variation on pitch 5, and I think it is the best 5.10 in the State. It is steep and exposed, and it involved a lot of crack climbing with almost no bolts, so it may prove a bit much for a climber who is borderline competent at that grade, but it's way cool.

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).