W

Hey Ben! Yeah, think I'll do the chimney finish next time...the way I've gone both times is dirty and loose- not very hard mostly, except there is one boulder problem involving a rather hard pull and then mantling into a pile of very loose shit, with no way to protect the fall, which is back onto a ledge...not good. I'm in Yosemite now, Utah mid October to mid November, maybe see you in the desert if you come down!

Trip: Incredible Hulk - Positive Vibrations Date: 9/3/2012 Trip Report: I concluded a really fun six week summer road trip with this stellar route. I’d done it before in 2009 but it is worth doing again and again. Jed and I met up in Reno, I was driving from the Tetons where my wife and I had just had a blast climbing the Exum Ridge and Irene's Arete. Jed flew in from Chicago. We got our permit early the next morning and we made the hike in to the base in two hours from Twin Lakes. Hulkamania: We had enough time that we really could have done the Red Dihedral that afternoon but I figured we’d want to be feeling pretty fresh for the PV. Jed started us off the next morning at first light, climbing awkward cracks with a distinct 10a crux passing a small roof. I fired us up the next pitch, a short 10c tips splitter and some easy but runout face climbing that gains two bolts on a nice belay ledge. First pitch: Jed continued up the 5.8 corner above, then across the delicate traverse which ends with a somewhat spicy, but short, sideways 5.11a sequence to gain a handjam, then a jughaul to the belay, another pair of bolts. Beginning of pitch 3. The crux traverse is just above the roofs. Pitch 4 is 5.10c and is a great stemming and bridging corner, with two distinct bulges. Gear is anywhere you want it. I passed a set of bolts and continued up a thin and tenuous finger crack in a corner with a hard stem and crack switch right at the end, a long 50 meter pitch. Jed following p4: Jed took us up a fantastic pitch towards the prow of the Hulk’s west face. Multiple cracks lead to a single crack which begins wide and tapers to thin hands, a rather awkward and strenuous section that felt a little harder than the 10a rating would suggest, but soon gives way to an extended section of splitter hands. Pitch 5: I now tackled the crux pitch which begins in a smooth corner with intricate stemming and some pretty dicey gear; suspect tiny cams (incl. #000 and #00 C3’s), a mishmash of rp’s, and the need for long slings due to having to protect mainly in the crack on the left wall. Just after I got the gear arranged and started going for it, my foot skated and I whipped onto an HB brass nut and blew the redpoint. After a unnerving runout to the roof where you can finally get some good gear, I continued past burly underclings with crispy feet into a steep, sustained, and incredible crack that passes a bulge on thin hands. A little unnerved from the fall, I dogged it a bit through here until I got my mojo back, and then continued on up in better style as the crack becomes a stellar finger jamming extravaganza on an open wall with incredible exposure. Due to rope drag (and being a bit worked) I made a belay at a small stance just below the 5.11 crux. Up to here the pitch rates 5.10d although I thought overall it is much harder (due to being physical and sustained) than the next section of technical 5.11a fingers. Jed coming up p6: I led us past the 11a thin fingers and face sequence passing a wildly exposed overhang with a ton of air beneath the feet! I pressed the pitch another 15 meters higher and belayed below the next set of splitters. Jed leaving the belay to start following the 11a section. Exposure and beautiful rock! The next pitch begins with steep, strenuous fingers and thin hands, giving way to another incredible hand crack. The angle lets off but then the pitch gets harder, with a difficult face move to the next crack right, then cranking hard up a sustained off fingers jam crack that never seems to let up. At the end, make an improbable step down and left to gain a great belay ledge. 5.10d. Jed in Splitterville: It just stays awesome. The next pitch can go to the very top if you have a 70 meter rope and a lot of endurance and don’t mind spacing your pro, a lot. I took it only 40 meters before I wimped out and belayed; I was low on hand sized gear and our rope was a 60m. The corner starts easily enough but becomes sustained 5.10b hand and fist jamming up a very steep corner and past a roof. A short distance above the roof I made a belay in the crack system at a blockier area, about 10-15’ right of a solitary bolt on the prow that makes no sense. Jed took us to the ridge from here, moving to the right and climbing another phenomenal finger, thin hands, then hands, hands, hands crack!!! Last pitch on the wall: From here, if you don’t plan to rappel Venturi Effect (70 meter rope mandatory) continue along the ridge- not entirely trivial. Apparently you can stay right on the crest and go through a chimney between flakes, but both times I’ve now stayed down and left. This is not entirely straightforward and is rather dirty and loose. After a couple ropelengths of “mostly” 4th and low 5th you join the Red Dihedral for the final 5.8 crack and the classic wormhole exit onto a bench just below the top. Jed coming on through: Jed on the summit, psyched: This route is at least as good as the Rostrum, maybe better because it is up in the mountains, and it’s longer. The rock is flawless, if the pictures don’t already demonstrate. Go do this thing. If it’s super windy at the base, consider another route- the upper part of the route is extremely exposed as it is right on or near the prow. The next day we got a more civilized start and ran up the Red Dihedral, the third time I had done this classic. Not quite as quality as the PV, but this is sort of like saying, for example, Seasoned in the Sun in Squamish isn’t as good as Exasperator. Do them both. Now. Gear Notes: Set of stoppers including rp’s, long slings. Double rack of cams from tiny stuff (#000 or grey tcu) to #3 BD camalot, with triples from 0.3 BD to #2. Nothing bigger than a #3 needed. Could avoid some of the triples perhaps, but most pitches are quite long so you either would have to break them up more, or run it out a fair bit. 70 meter rope could be useful especially if wanting to rap Venturi Effect. I’ve heard that rope hangup can be an considerable issue if choosing that course. Approach Notes: Climbers trail seems to get better by the year. Supertopo beta is out of date, there’s now a good log crossing and no wading in swamps is needed. Trail begins climbing the slope well to the looker’s left of the canyon entrance, then eventually traverses into the canyon. 2-3 hours from Twin Lakes. Bikes are NOT ALLOWED any longer on the initial part of the trail.

Yeah, I just found out about them a couple days ago. Haven't heard much about them either. Seems worthwhile to try both on. Thanks for the input!

Thanks kevino, Did the Astroman's allow your toes to lay completely flat? Or do they "point" your big toe slightly. I like the TC's except that I have flat, wide feet and my arches tend to cramp in them. Was hoping these Astroman's might "point" my big toe slightly much the way my beloved Anasazi VCS do but provide a more comfy all day fit than the latter. Thanks for the reply--

Has anyone field tested these yet? Comments on fit and comfort for their advertised function- all day trad? Thanx-

Nice effort, guys. Beautiful route! Colin and I made the same mistake climbing too high into Armageddon, super easy to do that as the terrain vacuum is in full effect. However, for future parties who repeat this error, know that there's a loose quartz dyke that diagonals up and left from the base of the Armageddon corner that does lead to the Watchtower corner, arriving about one pitch below the start of the corner. It is steep and a little heady, probably 5.9+R, the R because the pro was spaced and the rock was loose. But the climbing wasn't too hard, fortunately. Definitely second the rec of triples on finger sizes for the corner, that thing goes on forever. I wish the bolted rappel-in approach from the South Howser area had been established (or perhaps, we hadn't heard of it as it was new about when we did the route). We approached from a bivi at the North Howser col- not recommended!! Choss, and steep, hard snow, barely got by w/o crampons and axes. Thanks for the report.

That's ok, once while on a trip to Squamish sans roller I had a flare up in my IT band, after hiking down the Chief trail in pain, I used a steel propane gas stove canister to roll it out. It hurt like hell! though and I'm not sure I recommend it, though it did do the trick...

Trip: Utah Desert - Towers, Mesas, and Splitters Date: 10/1/2011 Trip Report: Hi all, This past fall I spent a month in the Utah desert and had some fabulous adventures with my wife and some great friends. I uploaded an HD video which captures the essence of the trip. Highest quality viewing is in HD full screen but I believe to view the HD version you need to watch it on the vimeo website proper- click the play button then the HD button on the lower right and follow the link that pops up to the site. Enjoy! [video:vimeo]35559048

Alright if you want to see the movie, beta alert, don't read any further. but the plot sucks and you just saw the best part so here goes: Falling climber is (in real life) German sport climber Stefan Glowacz. Plot is VERY loosely based on Bonatti vs. Maestri. Basically, at the beginning Glowacz's character is a hot shot "sports climber" (blasphemy in 1990) climbing Cerro Torre and gets lanched off the mountain,partner dies, he returns claiming he summitted. The older guy and his crusty old alpinist friends who have been living in bitter anger at the base of the Torre for years trying to climb it (it's unclimbed...) don't believe him, so sport climber guy vows to solo it to prove him wrong. Starts up in a storm (while his agent, played by Donald Sutherland waits at basecamp). Crusty old alpinist decides to solo the other side in a race to the top. You see what happens in the clip, then. For some reason sporto is self belaying through the worst part of the shroom and for some reason dies from falling and hitting nothing but air. crusty old alpinist laughs maniacally cause now he knows he has it in the bag. But earlier in the movie, everyone had met this fucking totally wacked out guy in the woods missing some fingers and who claimed to have climbed the Torre solo and lost his fingers (he called the mtn. "Finger Snatcher!". Says he dedicated his climb to Mae West. Everyone thinks he's a crackpot. Well guess what...

Can anyone else confirm this? I'm tempted to shoot a email to my former school "acquaintance" ( who spends his winters climbing in patagonia) and ask him if the famous "compressor" on the route was chopped as well... Again...I cannot recall who I heard this from but my vague recollection was it came from fairly reputable sources to the extent that I took it at face value. But you know how at 4 degrees of separation facts get watered down. I will see if I can dig up a little more on this. I know someone in Seattle who was there in that season and might know more. The crew for that film was up there for the whole season and they kind of trashed the place. There are still shards of wood all over the Torre Glacier below Niponino high camp from crates and such that the film crew left behind. At 5:05 you can see some of the crew running around on the summit plateau: [video:youtube]RlkXj4iAGUY

I've more than once heard a story while in El Chalten that the film crew from the 1991 movie, Scream of Stone, which had delivered a large box of equipment on the summit of the Torre, had taken it upon themselves to remove and bring down the Compressor in the helicopter to El Chalten. When they did, the locals were irate and insisted that it be returned because it was historical, and it was returned on a subsequent mission. I cannot confirm the truth of this but I seem to recall the story being widespread. There were also supposedly complaints later that the summit mushroom was extremely difficult and unclimbable for the next two or three years and the dugout for the box was to blame. Just thought I'd add some more material for everyone to speculate about.

If you're over 30, you bet you do. But even if you're not, don't wait til then or til you're developing chronic injuries to get in the habit. Do it now.

This video is good: [video:youtube]RoHBDim_fzk You can get one online for cheap. I have a much shorter one than the one in the video but the longer ones are nice for rolling out your back, also. Yes indeed, downhill hiking, running, walking even, especially if carrying a big pack, can irritate the hell out of your kneecaps- imagine the femur jamming repeatedly under your kneecap and irritating the articular cartilage under the patella. Here's a primer on Chondromalacia as it is called: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001488/ I haven't had this issue in years but when I have I find that ice massage directly on the patella helps calm it down, along with IBU. If you are doing a lot of training hikes with big packs, one thing that helps that I used to do is carry gallon jugs of water uphill, but then dump them out on top (like on Mt. Si for example) and then descend with almost no weight. But for Muir obviously that doesn't work. In that case, at a minimum I'd do a lot of stretching before during and after, and try to modify your downhill stepping techniques- smaller, lighter, quicker steps, and avoiding big lunging plodding steps.

For the lateral pain, which sounds like a tight IT band, try using the foam roller. You'll have to do it regularly, it will hurt like hell at first, but persevere- I had crippling pain from IT issues and this fixed it, but I still have to do routine maintenance. I don't know if a brace would do much, stability isn't usually the issue with IT problems. The other pain sounds like some sort of tendonitis, patella pain on descent is often common irritation of the underside of the patella from the femur impacting it repeatedly. Try ice massage and Ibuprofen, and also minimize downhill running if possible. In this case one of those neoprene knee sleeves might help also.

The cruel joke was the guidebook's description: "...Splitter hands to a fingers crux".

I just did battle with one of these last week, Mike- "Electronic Battleship" in Long Canyon. 25-30' of tipped out #4 BD- incredibly awkward and painful. On the ground we had this same discussion using another nearby crack for practice. We pretty came to the same conclusion as counterfeitfake, hand stacks w/palm against the best edge for a quasi-gaston/tieback move sequence while bumping your hands up- but like all have said, can't move far each time, it's micro movements. At one point I found that one thing that worked great was pulling on the cam.

Hi All- I have created a new photo website to share and sell my photography: Mark Westman Images Lots of galleries with photos of climbing in Alaska, Patagonia, and many more locations, as well as rock climbing, ice climbing, landscape imagery, and random travels. Enjoy, and thanks for looking. Mark

I love it! Psyched for you guys, congratulations. I was wondering how long it would be before someone went all the way in and did that thing properly. I'm guessing the difficulties were similar to our line, but no doubt the line you did was the better and more aesthetic, shooting as it does straight to the summit. I see from the video that the objective hazards on the approach haven't changed much. That same serac fired like that while we were on the attempt of that line, and also while we were "reconnoitering" it the day before- yes we went through that danger zone twice! Well actually four times, two up, two down. After that, we decided we'd tempted fate twice too much and settled on the left hand line. Your experience was also similar to ours as we were stormed in high on the route as well. We couldn't see a damn thing from the top. But we had no bivi gear with us and it was beginning of April and cold as hell so we couldn't sit it out, we ran down and made it back to our camp which was right at the foot of the descent couloir. 13 hrs r/t. Anyway, proud effort, guys! Bravo. Here's a photo of Joe's from our attempt on your line, just before the first slough avy and our subsequent bail:

That descent description sounds almost exactly like what I recall. Forrest Murphy and I climbed The Andromeda Strain in 2001. We topped out in the dark, and having heard stories about the descent, opted to spend the rest of the night sitting on our packs on top of the route in snow flurries, 15 mph winds, and 20 degree (F) temps with no bivi gear rather than try the descent in the dark. Next morning, the descent went quickly and without a hitch but also left no doubt that our decision to do the suffer bivi was the right one. I don't really recall thinking the rap anchors were that gross, however, at that point I think we just wanted to get the hell off the mountain! Thanks for the report!

Also- the descent route we used is the left most couloir system in the photo, starting down from the extreme upper left margin of the photo. Getting from the summit ridge to there, you descend towards Silverthrone Col (northwards) but then branch west onto the spur ridge, you'll downclimb/walk down some low angled ice and eventually this couloir/face will open below you. I'll be curious to hear as to how much this area has melted out over the past 14 years.

Yeah that rack sounds good. I can't imagine anything in the lower section requiring rock pro. More than likely there should be some new snow by late August, the face starts at about 7,500'. The summit ridge is easy, and I would imagine has a beautiful view. Unfortunately we got engulfed in a whiteout right after we topped out the face and finished the last section to the summit in very low visibility. We weren't even sure where the summit was until we passed it and began descending the south ridge and could see the dropoff into the Ruth Glacier. Hard to say whether it would be easier to descend the way we did or back down the route. Our way was about 3,500' feet of 35-50 degree terrain. The route itself is longer than that, and steeper, and if the dirt section is a PITA going up it might be better to go our way. Hopefully it will be cold enough to prevent rockfall, also- keep that potential issue in mind. It was very cold while we were in there and everything was cemented together but if warm it would be another story. You got the right attitude- adventure! Here's a shot as we skied away for Kantishna, the day after climbing the route. The route we climbed is the thin looking (it's not that narrow, actually) couloir immediately left of the first serac gully. The initial attempt took a narrow runnel right of the right most serac gully, and which heads more or less directly to the summit. As I mentioned icefall threatens the approach to this line from the seracs on the face, but also from the icefall to the right. But the line itself is totally safe from icefall, if you can get there!

You'd be fine with either ice tools or one tool and an axe, but I'd probably bring two tools. In the early spring there were some sections of that 60 degree calf pumping stuff higher up on the route, regular tools will be easier on that terrain. The descent involved a lot of face-in downclimbing, which might be a lot icier late summer. Do you know of any repeat ascents of the west face? I haven't heard of any but also I would imagine no one has been on it since we did it, since that sort of adventure routing with long approaches went out of vogue a long time ago.

Hey there, The only crevasse problems we had were in the final, side glacier leading up to the foot of the west face. The main Traleika Glacier is a cruise, especially if you stay near the medial moraine. Virtually no crevasse hazard, so little in fact that we took the rope off for the way down. Getting from McGonagall Pass across the Muldrow, to get on the Traleika, is probably going to be the biggest hassle. It seems to be easier if you head up the Muldrow towards Mount Tatum, then cross the glacier, head back down until you can work your way out into the center of the Traleika. Bear in mind, this was what we did in 1997, but I don't think it changes much. The final side glacier to the base of the route had a lot of spooky crevasses and Joe took a serious fall into one of them (while second on the rope) as we headed to the route. However, this was also at the end of March, and I'm going to imagine that in late August there will be little to no snow cover on that glacier. I had a good look at the face from the top of Denali this past June, and the entire bottom third of the couloir was completely melted out. It's not very steep in there, but not sure what you might find- probably a lot of choss and dirt, but should be climbable. The descent gully we used might be a bit more interesting, also. As far as I know, this route has never been repeated. If you feel like risking the icefall danger- which when we were in there was substantial- the "direct" couloir way to the right and which shoots straight to the summit would be a worthy objective, better line than the one we climbed. We tried it on our first attempt but got stormed off; we watched as ice avalanches from both sides ran across our approach tracks. It ripped again after we descended, and again the next day. So when we tried again, we decided to stay in the far left couloir instead. Good luck. It is a REALLY scenic area, very remote, and a loooong walk! Mark

Standard route on Cathedral Peak, Hobbit Book, and NW Books on Lembert Dome all fit your criteria and are great routes.

Shane, I have gone through the NE fork twice in late June (~20th both times). Once in 2000, another in 2007. It has stayed pretty consistent through the years: get way to the left as you enter the canyon and stay there for a fair distance, although there are still plenty of crevasses there is a good trough on the side of the glacier that avoids the worst of the icefalls further right. Mid valley, you can move more into the center. The biggest problem is usually the last icefall just below the start of the Rib. Both times I more or less went at it straight up the middle at first, then for the final part, worked up and through crevasses and aiming far to the right,near the glacier's right edge,maybe even climbing the slope rising off the right side of the glacier a bit, allowing you to skirt above the last bit of the icefall. Unfortunately, this puts you unavoidably into the path of serac fall from a menacing and active serac (I think it's the one in the background of Brad's 5th picture above). But you can get out of the way in about 20 minutes, and cut back hard across the glacier to the start of the Rib. The left side of the icefall is pretty much impassable all the time so the serac exposure is unavoidable. June will be fine, just go at night, starting from 7,800' around 12 AM. It took us 5 hours +/- both times to reach the foot of the Cassin and SW face. Good luck, -Mark