Jens

Spiked flat tops with mullets, addidas trainers, and Salewa gear were always the dead giveaways for the German climbers. Wild Country has been good to all of us for many years.

I was blown away by the amount I saw on a scouting trip about 15 years ago in a particularly cold winter.

amen to that.

All the Euros that I've run into lately are using 80's. I remember when we used to tease them back in the day at Smith for bringing 60's across the pond. Hyalite is a pile of s*#@ compared to some of your other options.

Amen. On any given weekend in a year in Seattle you could be sport climbing, ice climbing, in the climbing gym, skiing, or alpine. The Gunks are a pile of crap. I've climbed their with locals. If the Trapps were in Yos, it would not have any routes on it. Tvash, Fossil has one long aid route To have good sport climbing, you must have small micro features and overhanging walls. Fossil has these.

This has been a grim season so far for Cascade waterfall ice that isn't an epic slog from the car.

Good post, It is perhaps that many of us love to ice climb. As for winter rock... Fossil Rock is my vote for the best. It is near sea level, many cliffs stay dry in the rain, and it doesn't seep like the world wall or all other i-90 crags. If you get up early the drive from Seattle isn't bad.

61F at Smith Rock recently.

Cool poster.

I've always thought all the Abiel Peak ice was kind of a joke.

Good fun! You'll find rainier in winter can get you ready for anything this planet can dish out if the conditions are nasty.

My pet peeve is people selling stuff from a 1,000 miles away. Use eBay if you live more than two hours from our namesake range.

Lillooet.....4:40 from front door to swinging tools. Shorter than drury falls or strobach.

Beautiful pictures!

A couple of the routes on the rap wall should have their anchors lowered a little bit. They were opened as October routes but 90 % of their traffic now is post Halloween with often deep snowpacks (although still pure dry tools and not really mixed climbs.) Lillooet is FAT right now and was 4:45 total time from Seattle front door to touching ice and gotta love that Limestone for ultimate mixed climbing!

I want one of those!

Awesome! Nice job guys! I have walked under those gullies so many times and thought that their would be some classic routes. This kind off season stuff and terrain is the future of the cascades. Summertime "everything goes" pretty much all the time and many find traverses and enchainments boring.

heh...off topic...but don't forget that some of those british guys have been doing the same thing to "us" lately... Pete Whittaker Flashes Belly Full Of Bad Berries uh.. I know of at least three posters on this site that could send that route.

Sell out or not, he is an amazing climber. He pretty much reduced some of the United Kingdom's top tier rock climbing to Junior Varsity status in his first visit (although one could argue that UK rock climbing in general has been J.V. status since about 92' save an odd route or two every five years or so)

Dem' were as stiff as boards.

Not bashing the site, but it has never really been geared to real climbers, despite being able to occasionally yield a tidbit of good approach beta for an established trail.

The anchors on a few of those routes should be moved lower. Once the snow falls they are unusable and s a result, the standard practice for all during the winter has been just to go off the last bolt. The FA's were done in October as pure dry tools.

Can we get some bolts replaced at Fossil Rock? It has some of the first sport routes in Washington State and is an amazing winter rainy day workout area.

I think I saw it right at dark below the Karate Wall. We figured it was someone doing a walkoff so we left it.

Lots of activity north of I-90 at 38, almost enough to lure the hardmen away from the beloved World Walls.