mattp

I don't think you can ever expect non-climbers to "get it," if what you are hoping for is that they will understand why your idea of fun is hauling a pack through the jungle and up and down some dangerous mountain in the rain and snow or clinging to a cliff-face, just barely escaping a dangeroius fall. If you value your friendship with a non-climber, or even your relationship with a casual acquaintance at work, you can tell them about your weekend, but you'll have to be equally willing to try to understand why they find it so exciting to race motorcycles or collect stamps. And my bet is that most of us climbers just can't understand... In general, it seems to me that my adventures are much more interesting to me than they are to most others, and beyond a casual interest, I can't really expect much more from anybody -- they just want me to be able to function on Monday morning, or to be able to stay up with everybody else at the party on Saturday night after I got back from some huge climb. I gotta enjoy my climbing for my own self, celebrate the excitement of climbing with my friends who climb, and once in a while I can invite my non-climber's to look at my pictures or listen to a story because it gives me a sense that I am sharing myself with them. If I don't try this too much, they may find it interesting and sometimes I even think we can make some personal connection by sharing this kind of stuff -- but there is a good chance that they'll get just as bored as I do when listening to their constant tales of the latest stamp show that all sound the same.

The drywall saw sounds like a tool I should add to my aresenal.

It's not exactly Summer Sausage, but I gotta say, I had some awesome lamb and garlic sausages from A &J Meats this past weekend (A&J is the butcher that shares a store with the wine shop on top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle). On our hike up to the Enchantment Plateau, we stopped and cooked a couple at Colchuck Lake, and I was good to go for another couple hours. Those things rock!!!

The "separate room" that I mentioned was at the Wedgewood Ale House, a back room where they serve food and where people bring their families. I mentioned it because it might be a place where we could include folks under the age of 21. The "separate room" at the Broiler, the lounge, is cool. The one night I went in there it was fairly crowded, though ... But what about meeting downtown and walking over to the main post office with our IRS checks at 11:59???

That was the case when I got mine. But since then I've had a conversation with a certain ranger who said he hoped to make the process easier, so it could be different now.

Yeah, we had gone up there equipped for ski-mountaineering and ended up touring. Too bad we didn't have the old double cambered skis and lighter boots.

I've gotten solo climbing permits twice. I had no problem either time, but I couldn't just get one on the way up there but had to wait a week or two. I assumed that this is because they want there to be a "cooling off" period so that people don't head up there on a whim, and it really was no real problem for me either time. I know a couple people who have soloed that route. It is chosen because it involves no glacier travel, and for that reason I suppose it may not be a bad choice. It is a long route on a crumbly ridge, though, and I haven't heard many good things about it. Indeed, both guys I know who soloed it descended by a different route because they didn't want to go back down that way once they had climbed up it (one descended via the Kautz and the other via a very weird route down Gibralter Rock).

PubClub should be some place within a couple blocks of the downtown post office for those who need to mail their tax returns at 11:59.

Sat/Sun wasn't all that bad up high where the "snow" fell as some kind of graupel or something rather than rain. The winds were generally pretty moderate and there wasn't more than an inch (maybe two) accumulation. Not much for visibility, though.

Several years ago, just after the road to the trailhead opened, I did the standard traverse over Aasgard and down snow creek in about nine or ten hours, without really trying to hurry. There was a good solid trail all the way to Colchuck Lake, and the touring up top was good that day. Right now, it is not quite so easy going, though. I put a trip report in another thread.

I bet that less than one party in ten continues to the actual summit after climbing the Triple Couloirs, North Face, Backbone Ridge or any other route in that area.

Saturday and Sunday, my buddy John and I skied up over Aasgard Pass and then out via Prussik Pass and Toketie. Visibility was very poor almost the entire way, though we had some brief clearing as we crossed Prussik Pass, and even a spot of sun over near Edward Mesa. There was good snow up on the plateau, but below about 6,000 feet the snowpack was saturated and rotten isothermal. The boot-path from the trailhead to Colchuck Lake was a pain in the neck so we opted to skin up rather than walk. At Colchuck Lake, we stopped for a meal and a rest before proceeding across the lake, where it looked as if all other parties were keeping to the shore for some reason we couldn't understand. Perhaps they don't share our belief that a snow-covered frozen lake in the Cascades is pretty much always safe to walk on. The slopes up Aasgard started out with perfect skinning on just a bit of soft surface snow, but became icy enough and steep higher up that we had to take the skis off and, for short stretches, scratch our way upward (as others noted last week, crampons would have been helpful here). In failing light, we set a camp on the Enchantment Plateau, and it was at this moment calm enough that we didn't bother sealing the edges of the Megamid, a mistake we badly regretted as we were lashed in the face with snow for the next two hours but too comfy in our sleeping bags to go out and do anything about it. The snow conditions up on top were quite good, with enough fresh snow over a somewhat icy base to allow easy touring and turning. Nothing appeared ready to slide, and indeed the steep slope north of Prussik Pass stayed in place as we skied it one-at-a-time. The descent from Toketie Lake was brutal; in the fog we missed the route around the rib to get out of the Toketie drainage, and fought our way down Toketie Creek itself as rotten snow over steep, rocky slopes gave way to rotten snowpatches over brush and logs. A somewhat dicey log crossing at Snow Creek was a very welcome site indeed!

Josh - Like I said last week, I bet they don't want a bunch of self-rigihteous climbers thinking they can push it as far as possible and then getting stuck or tearing up the side of the road when they try to turn around. There was no real pullout anywhere near where the snow blocked the road and if they had put up a sign saying "Park here" at the last one, a half mile below, most of us would probably have ignored it. As much as I think the Leavenworth rangers suck, I can't criticize them for keeping that road gaited at least until some reasonable turn-around point melts out.

Good point. Way too many folks around here think that working toward peace is for pussies.

Single malt....

A 5" spackle knife is a handy tool -- you can broadly scrape away walls of lichen and you can carve the edges of a crack and pop out plugs of dirt. But you gotta have something stiff and strong, like the pick of an alpine hammer, to really go at a dirt and brush choked crack.

Actually Fairweather, I bet that if by "you lefties" you mean those who have debated the merits of the war, or who have argued for gun control, or whatever, I bet few of us are very familiar with this guy and very few of us would agree with his game plan.

Right you are, Drew, that most parties will leave their tent at high camp if they are planning on returning that way so they may in fact have less with them on the summit than they would if they were carring everything over. However, when planning a traverse of the mountain, and particularly when this involves hiking a quarter of the way around the mountain before you even start the climb, the great temptation is to bring as little as possible. I bet that those who plan to downclimb their ascent route on Mount Rainier, on average, bring more camping and storm gear than those who plan a traverse. I bet, too, that they are more likely to find their way back to their high camp when bad weather overtakes them then the carry-over parties are likely to find their way down a completely different route. As to altitude illness, I agree with Attitude that it is a big deal. And with regard this issue, too, I think the carry-over parties are in greater danger because they spend much more time high on the mountain. When I climbed Liberty Ridge with a day pack (which did, by the way, include emergency bivvy gear), I was up and back down to Thumb Rock before any other party that day even made it up to Liberty Cap. And I am no athelete. Mike is right to point out that I haven't exactly acknowedged some of the obvious dangers in downclimbing the Liberty Ridge or Ptarmigan Ridge -- many people are not as adept as climbing back down as they are in climbing up in the first place, and these descents involve having to run the gauntlet of the rockfall-prone lower slopes twice rather than only once (and, Brian, my friends who have climbed the Ptarmigan Ridge have been unanimous in telling me they were much more scared on the first part of the climb, right out of camp, than they were on the exit gullies or anything else high on the climb). Again, I am not saying nobody should try to complete a carry-over. But their game plan should not rely upon this, and they should carry adequate gear to withstand a storm. Based on the accident history over the years, many people underestimate Liberty Ridge in particular.

No, Catbird, I don't think he's kidding. Even on Ptarmigan Ridge, one of the more technical routes on the mountain, there is not that much truly technical climbing. You have to traverse some steep slopes that can be icy, and there may be as much as a half-pitch of rock, I think, but it is not the technical crux that is the real challenge on that route -- at least not for someone who has what I would consider the appropriate skill. Mike is right, of course, that I am speaking agains the great weight of popular opinion and standard wisdom as I continue to advocate at least considering downclimbing routes such as Liberty Ridge and Ptarmigan Ridge. Mike obviously knows more about Mount Rainier than I do, and I don't wish to challenge his authority on the matter, but I seriously think it is a big mistake to climb Liberty Ridge or Ptarmigan Ridge with the assumption that you are going to carry over -- it causes people to head up there without an adequate tent or even complete bivouac gear and I believe this approach leads people to forge on ahead in the face of bad weather, altitude sickness or unexpected slow progress, or to discard the possibility of a retreat even after someone in their party has gotten injured. I think some of the accident reports that Mike posted the other day support this belief. I have never said that downclimbing these routes is the only way to go, and I am not seeking to discourage someone from going up there with the hope of completing a carry-over, but I have consistently argued that someone who does not think they could downclimb Liberty Ridge or Ptarmigan Ridge should probably not start up them in the first place.

What is your point here? Our own government spokesmen tell us that the war is not over yet, that bitter fighting continues, that they don't know where Saddam is, that he may retreat to his home town where we haven't been anywhere near, and that there may yet be some tough battles ahead. I'd say the NYT headline is more descriptive of the actual situation -- it is too early to celebrate the final outcome of this war yet. Is that your point??

Don't automatically assume it has to be a carry over. It certainly can be done that way, but in fact almost everybody I know that climbed Ptarmigan Ridge downclimbed the route.

I agree with what you wrote, Thinker, but if you have the tarp, you don't need the bivy bag. A headnet maybe, but why carry the extra bivy bag?

For what it's worth, I have had a North Face West Wind for 20 years and it is a little too old to take up Mount Rainier because I don't trust the fabric, but I can honestly say that it is all around the best mountain tent I've ever had and the Hilleberg Nallo 2 is very similar, though perhaps the West Wind's three hoops over the body of the tent rather than two may have made it a little stronger. In high winds, the Westwind performed as well as the free standing 4-season domes that weighed nearly twice as much; in snow it performed nearly as well; and in a casual camping situation I would use long strings front and rear and a single anchor six feet away (or further) from each end was sufficient for both corners at either end because the hoop kept them spread sufficiently. I never once had serious trouble getting it properly anchored - there were aways rocks, trees, bushes, stuff sacks full of snow, ice axes, skis, or whatever I needed anywhere that I ever set it up. I wouldn't buy a single wall tent unless I was planning to use it for winter climbing or expeditions - but not for summer camping in Washington.

Both "stories" may be correct. I heard that somebody told another somebody and then I think they posted it here on cc.com that it was 5.hard but if you yarded on bolts at the cruxes it would go at 5.10.

It is possible that they don't want some climbers to drive as far as they can and then leave their cars parked in the roadbed or tear up the shoulder when they get stuck or can't travel any further.