Don_Serl

i think NOLS mostly goes down-valley from Fosters to Twist Lk (road), then follows the old trail to the long-abandonned hippy homestead on the flats near Twist Creek where Sage Birchwater and his family used to live (until the tail end of the '80s?). this trail was in need of clearing 10 years ago, but not too bad. from the homestead, they continue down Mosley Creek, then branch up Scimitar. there are still traces of the old cattle trail up Twist Ck that (I believe) the Fosters built way back in the mid-70s - I reckon it was a trapping trail earlier than that, cuz we came across remnants of trap lines when we walked out that way in '79. highland grazing didn't pan out up there, cuz the valley's infested with grizzlies. it would take a lot of guys with a lot of chainsaws a lot of days to cut thru all the deadfall now - the earlier beetle infestation around 1980 created a lot of windthrow a decade later, and of course the last few years have been much worse. still, a trail up Twist Creek would open up the finest alpine country in the Coast Mtns: Nirvana Pass, Zeus/Thor, Bifrost Pass, the Waddington Range itself. with helicopter transport getting pretty expensive, it'd be nice to rejuvenate the practise of flying in and walking out. it's a great adventure, brings the size of the wilderness into scale, and saves money (altho not time and effort). good luck!

hockey pads are aid!

hey, thanks for the update jo-jo - i had missed that. this is EXACTLY the kind of climbing that ought to be done on Logan these days. not that success will come easy, and there'll be plenty of failures too, but the routes are there to be done - it just takes vision, boldness, fitness, skill, daring, etc, etc - and luck! and back to my original post: who's gonna tackle the SE face of the main summit? Joe Bajan had a plan 30 years ago... I remember staring at photos and piecing together a line that looked survivable, provided you could get onto the face and up a couple thousand feet without getting smoked by an avalanche on the approach... Elzinga thought about it... I think Barry did the same... I'm sure lots of others that weren't in my 'circle' had similar ideas... point is, Logan hasn't seen the kind of intense focus that Denali has, so there are challenges remaining that are unimaginable elsewhere. and with the level of skill and speed that modern young guys climb with, these things are do-able. I really look forward to seeing your Alpinist profile - that might be exactly the stimulus that's needed for an outburst of amazing climbs. p.s. jo-jo i don't know about you, but i reckon Logan is a considerably more serious undertaking than Denali. worse rock, poorer weather, much more remote, nobody else around, no chance of rescue... if you get fzcked there, you're TRULY fzcked! yah zoran, made me pretty humble. i was happy enough to walk away and go climb the east ridge. (which, btw, is absolutely outSTANDing!) cheers,

great photos, jake - thanks for posting 'em. hummingbird: left; warbler: centre. so when's somebody gonna get their stones together and climb the direct face right of the hummingbird, or that face right of the warbler? people were looking at things like that 20-30 years ago, and while they are both very dangerous projects, considering what's being done at lightning speed recently on denali (not to mention the himalaya), surely it's possible to flash up stuff like these routes quickly enough to make them worth of consideration?

and right next door is the N face of Edge Pk. with the fabled East Peak on the left. as Culbert put it back in '74, "The E. Pk. is a bitch." still true. VERY few ascents, by ANY route. (Drew you know the history better than I do, so chime in...) there is a 1962 Jack Bryan - Byron Olsen somewhere on the main face: "start... directly under what appears to be the summit", "left of two open corners", "follow line of weakness right for 200 ft", "climb onto slabs and head for corner between wall and buttress to right", "behind gendarme", "angle rigth through rotten rock gully to come out on right of apparent summit". I'm unaware of a repeat. as for the east peak, it's possible to downclimb and rappel from the main summit into the notch, then climb back out. either leave a rope to jug back out, or rap south to get down. there are 2 routes on the north flank: N Face: 1968; Dick Culbert, Dave Harris (not the same guy who was editor of the CAJ in the '80s), Brian Moorhead (again), and John Rance. I think their route lies in the shady ground in its lower half, then (from about the height of the light coloured triangular slab halfway up on the right) "ascent on either side of a major gully here is possible". NE corner: 1971; Brian Moorhead (!), Dick Dorling, M. Humphreys, J. Spencer. Reach the triangular slab. "Climb several leads up center of slab, which has moves to 5.6 [sic] with knife-blad protection. Above this is 3-4 leads (A2) up corner, followed by a difficult free traverse left from a tree nitch to just below summit ridge." I have a vague memory of a repeat ascent of one of these routes, but it might just have been an attempt... Drew? reportedly good gabbro, so likely fun to be had, for those willing to get off the beaten path.

btw, here's a photo i was able to lift from the web: ( at http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/9883783.jpg ) the only big corner i see is right of the summit, but there's no ridge right of that... i wonder where the route goes? but i bet you can climb about anywhere on that face!

tks drew, i realized that was improbable shortly after posting and was gonna withdraw that part of my remark, but had posted at work and was only able to get back on now at home. i'm sure (per Fairley) that "other routes and variations may have been done".

one of the guys involved was Brian Moorhead - he's still active (in fact, part of the Squamish Access Society), and lives in Furry Creek. a web search gives this phone number - I'm sure he'd love to talk about the 'old days' and a (possibly unrepeated) climb. try: (604)896-1940 good luck. p.s. their "5.4" is likely current 5.8, or harder if you aren't good at route-finding, moss, lichen, etc... fine looking piece of rock...

how far south?

at the risk of thread-drift, when did these events occur, drew? up by Salal Ck? cheers,

built by Don MacPherson, who is also one of the small number of guys originally responsible for the Grouse Grind. google is your friend: http://www.trailpeak.com/trail-Indian-Arm-loop-near-Vancouver-BC-816 http://www.clubtread.com/routes/Route.aspx?Route=477 etc... cheers,

is the guy above sporting the jeans, external frame, and belaying across what appears to be a ski area? it IS frikkin hilarious isn't it! not quite what 'the label on the box' would have you expect - I think it's called "individualism"!

yah, we kinda get lost in the 'necessary' gear propaganda, don't we. go back a ways, and when the Squamish Hard Core (Hugh Burton, Steve Sutton, Greg Shannon, and Gordie Smaill) did the 2nd alpine style ascent of the Cassin in 1977, Gordie wore jeans for the entire frikkin climb! I don't think they were so broke that he couldn't afford pile pants or whatever, it was just an attitude thing! they were just bigger and badder than ANY climb... (not that ignorance and arrogance won't also get you killed, of course, but they DID survive, there and elsewhere - 2nd ascent of the NA for Gordie, for instance.) bits of the story are available online (lotsa laughs): link keep on doing what you're doing, Marc - you're doin FINE! cheers,

so, is that a nice deep fracture line i see across the base of the final snow slope, at about 80% height?

nice work. lovely peak. superb area. good to see the adventurous spirit take people off the beaten path! cheers,

welcome to the wet coast! i've got an ice climbing buddy who reckons that the local (SWBC) ice climbing web-info site ought to be called 'disappointment.com' rather than westcoastice.com - not so far off... and another (very good) ice climbing friend who says that the most important piece of equipment that a coastal ice climber can possess is a plane ticket to calgary. hold in there - winter's not over yet! cheers,

mid-day Thurs current temp Lillooet 8C. temp at Cayoosh Pass (Duffey Lk Rd summit) 1C. (so Rambles well above freezing, for sure) Coquihalla weather cams all rain, not snow (freezing level 1100m-1200m, which also lets Box Canyon out). in two words: faaaahhh - ked! pray for cold! the two week trend shows slowly declining temps, but the average in Lillooet won't drop to roughly 0C till a week from now... cheers,

Only Sargeant Pepper... Air Care felt intense on the first day. But after SP it felt easy, you see all things are relative like that both pretty tricky, i'd reckon... with very suspect gear at the cruxes... Sergeant Pepper: Air Care: both good solid, careful leads from 'the kid'... cheers,

as Matt says, most of the climbs are 400m or more higher than Lillooet, so shld be 2C to 5C colder. forecast is 4C-5C, so i'd expect the Duffey and Bridge River canyon to be right around freezing - shld be OK. but bring every pair of gloves you own... Marble Canyon is always colder, both becuz of altitude and becuz it's out of the coastal influnece that creeps up the Fraser Canyon to Lillooet. the Clinton forecast gives a better idea of what to expect: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/city/pages/bc-91_metric_e.html another excellent source of temp info is drivebc: http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/weather/ navigate to either the south coast or south interior region maps, then click a triangle to get current weather - also highway cams... there is info at cayoosh summit (duffey lk road) and carpenter lake (bridge), etc. as for which routes are in, etc, just follow: http://www.westcoastice.com/ maybe see you there. cheers,

I follow F1 as well as climbing, and this little news article relates directly to this thread: Former F1 driver Ukyo Katayama is lucky to be alive after a mountain climbing expedition he was involved in went terribly wrong. The ex-Tyrell driver and two companions set off on Thursday to climb Japan's 3776-metre Mount Fuji as part of their preparations for a journey to the South Pole. Having pitched tents at roughly 2750 meters, the trio got into distress with Katayama calling rescue services for help, claiming that his companion's tents had blown away. The 46-year-old was rescued early on Friday afternoon at around 2200 meters well [sic] trying to descend alone. Kyodo news agency has reported that the former driver told police that his climbing companions had "drawn their last breath" after their tents blew away. On Saturday a recovery mission was launched and the bodies of two men, believed to be that of those accompanying Katayama, were found on the mountain. The police investigation into the incident continues. Nasty! Goes to show, eh, doesn't matter much the height or technical difficulty (or lack thereof) of the mountain - when the weather goes bad (especially in the winter) anyone can get into very deep trouble.

one more comment, if I may: it's not pleasant to contemplate the various disasters that have befallen others in the mountains, but i truly believe it is necessary, if one wishes to avoid a similar fate. which brings me one of the few maxims that I've used to direct actions in my life: from Synge, in 'The Arran Islands', quoting an old fisherman: "A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drownded [sic], for he will be going out on a day when he shouldn't. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again." I put conscious effort into staying afraid of the mountains... Over and out

not so. I know my initial posting was rather long, but if you read it thru you'd have noted that there have been 135 deaths on Mount Washington (over the past hundred and fifty or so years) while there have been 323 deaths on Mt Rainier (in just over the past 100 years). cheers,

Jake, when you participate in a potentially fatal activity, unless you can look the 'cheerful' facts in the eye, absorb them, understand them, accept them, and make them part of your ongoing judgement set, you're just playing Russian roulette. i had personal experiences 25 to 30 years ago that opened my eyes to the extent to which i was 'climbing blind', and i changed the way i thought about, and participated in, my climbing activities. i'm still alive in large part due to luck and good fortune, but an active engagement with risk assessment deserves some credit too. any and all conversations that pass information around amongst the climbing community can contribute to keeping people alive. and the 'uncomfortable' subjects are often the ones most useful to talk about... you're right, people die on mountains, the mountains don't kill them in the way people kill people. my use of the phrasing 'killer' mountains is a combination of anthropomorphism, poetic licence (again), and sensationalism. mea culpa. on the other hand, mountain DO present objective hazards: bad weather, rock-fall, avalanches, serac collapses, altitude illnesses, etc. the mountains can indeed 'kill', in an absolutely impersonal but very active way. it's tempting to personify these attributes in an attempt to understand them. this is an error in intellectual rigour, and dangerous: i reckon the danger comes from following a logic path that runs something like "these activities have some 'live-ness'; therefore they are susceptible to reason; therefore i have some degree of control (or at least a better chance of accurate analysis) than if they were fully inanimate." that, of course, is flatly not true. but it IS possible to improve your ability to analyze mountain hazards, and to therefore increase your chances of survival. exposure to information about risk factors is important in this process, so again, I'd defend discussion of uncomfortable aspects of our sport. fact is, I reckon it's crucial. if the act of personifying the outcome is labelling as 'killer' mountains Himalayan peaks where your chances of death are about 1 per 20 successful ascents, perhaps the impact is worth the illogic. the big peaks are superbly attractive, but they're also hideously dangerous. if you're headed off to climb in places such as these and you haven't thought thru and come to terms with the possibility of your death (and prepared for the consequences and impacts on those around you), you're not 'living right'. apologies for the thread drift... cheers,

David, a bit of searching turns up the data that 135 people have died on Mount Washington in the past century-and-a-half. http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/surviving.php that's less than one per year. and about a quarter million (!) people reach the summit each year! the death rate is literally about one in a million! (actually, more like two-in-a-million, but I'll claim poetic licence...) Mount Rainier attracts about 10,000 attempts each year, about half of which are successful. and there are on average about 3 deaths per year. the fatality ratio is therefore about 1 in 2000. and the total of deaths on Rainier I've seen quoted as 323, more than twice the all-time total for Mount Washington. http://www.seattlepi.com/ghostsofrainier/rain.shtml there were 50 deaths in the 1977-1997 period alone. worldwide, the king of the killers is clearly Mont Blanc. 50-100 people lose their lives on Mont Blanc each year. 30 died in one MONTH in summer 2007, about the average death toll from climbing accidents in all of the USA for one YEAR! given that about 20,000 people climb M Blanc per year, the fatality ratio is around 1:200 to 1:400, maybe ten times as high as Rainier, and at least 1000 times as high as Mt Washington. the Himalayan giants have high kill ratios (in terms of fatalities as a proportion of successful ascents and/or as a proportion of attempts - which is what matters to you and me when we're trying to assess our personal risk of getting killed in a particular enterprise), but there are too few people on their flanks in a year to make them outright leaders in the mordancy sweepstakes. you're right; your Dad is wrong. ain't google great... cheers, p.s. just over 100 people have died on Denali. the death rate (vs number of attempts) is about 1%, over a hundred year period.

good work guys, sounds like a spot that ought to be popular with those looking for a moderate day out, at least when the south end of the canyon is 'in'... a bit of a ski, but not outrageous. cheers,