stevenkalinowsk

Hi All, I am leaving town soon and am offering some used gear to anyone who is willing to pick it up from my front porch in Seattle. The following is available first come first serve: 1 pair overboots Suitable for size 10 plastic boots Used on Denali trip 6 years old 1 pair "Russian"Style aiders Used once on El Cap (I didn't like them) 1 year old 60m static rope Used on one Zion wall 5 years old All of the stuff is in good enough condition that I would be comfortable using it, but I make no promises that it is safe or that you will think it is good gear. I'll be out of town all weekend, and will leave this stuff in a plastic crate on my front porch for whoever wants it. Please leave the crate. I suggest that if you pick up any of these things, that you leave a note on this board so that other people know that it has been claimed (I hope this doesn't lead to chaos). Or you can try calling me at home Friday evening. cheers, Steven Kalinowski 206 729-7498 3513 NE 77th Street Seattle

Scott, I showed up in Talkeetna a few years ago wanting to climb Denali but not having a partner. I had no problem joining a team of New Zealand climbers for most of the climb. After summitting, I joined another party for the glacier slog back down. There are enough climbers on the mountain that you could easily adopt this flexible strategy too. If you find that the other team that you are climbing with is too fast/slow/cautious/risky etc. finding another party to travel with would be straightforward. If my wife and I go up there, this is what we will do. By the way, I support your opinion that 2 people is a small party on Denali - especially on the Kahiltna. I was on a rope team of 3 when the middle person fell in. It was a stormy day and we were alone on the glacier. I was very glad that there was two on top to set up the crevasse rescue. Good luck! Steven

I just returned from climbing the Regular Route on Half Dome. I am a pretty mediocre climber - this was a big climb for me. I attribute much of our success to packing unusually light. We didn't take sleeping bags or ground pads - just sat through the two nights we spent on the wall. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't bad either - and it definately sped up our progress on the route. With a good (perfect?) weather forecast, this might be a reasonable strategy for the N. Ridge of Stuart or other long rock climbs. -Steven

Hi All, My wife is a fairly experienced climber, but has always left the leading to me. Now she is starting to lead. We are looking for an alpine climb to do on Saturday where she can do some/most/all of the leading. We were thinking of trying the Mount Thompson climb described in Select Climbs II. I was wondering if the protection was decent, and if route finding was straight-forward. Thanks. -Steven

Thanks for the advice. I ended up bringing crampons and using them on the way up, but not on the way down. In addition, we roped up for the upper part of the glacier on the way up. On the way down, we didn't. I might add that I found the single rap sling on the summit to be pretty skimpy. I usually carry some extra webbing - just in case - but didn't bring it because I figured this popular peak would have a big nest of nylon on top. It didn't.

Hi Everyone, I have a quick question for you... I am headed up to climb Sahale Peak from Sahale Arm this weekend, and am wondering whether to take crampons along or not (I don't have a lightweight pair that I can put on my 'hiking' boots). My wife and and I are moderately experienced climbers with fairly typical attitudes regarding safety. Thank you. Steven

Crossing the glacier was easy with crampons. We walked underneath the first half of the glacier we encountered and then scrambled up the rock rib dividing the glacier to access the second half of the glacier. Walking across it to the gully was no problem. - we didn't feel the need to rope up. I had crampons but no ice ax.

I climbed it last July and found it fairly straightforward, but significantly run out. We didn't have a hard time finding the right pass. We found the first pitch to be 5.6 with OK protection. The upper pitches were the most fun, but a little scary for me due to long (50'+) runouts. I'd recommend the climb though, and I would definately do it again. -Steven

My wife and I climbed Stuart's North Ridge on Saturday. We are not the strongest technical climbers and were a bit put off by Nelson & Potterfield's description of the route as needing a bivy by most climbers. Surprisingly, we found the route much easier than the description suggested (this was a unique experiece for us). I think much of our success can be attributed to our strategy of not carrying over the peak. We approached via Long's Pass and camped at the base of the Cascadian Couloir. We were hiking by 3am on Saturday and followed the trail to Stuart Pass, and then the climber's trail to the base of the West Ridge, before scrambing over to Goat Pass. We moved slowly and steadily (with a couple of breaks) and got to the start of the ridge in 4.5 hours. The North Ridge, itself, was spectacular, but relatively uneventful (although there was a substantial amount of ice on the gendarme bypass). The descent was long but benign. There probably are at least a dozen reasonable strategies for climbing this route - other climbers that we met bivied at the base of the route and were climbing in "approach" shoes - but we found that the approach that we used worked well. I'll probably do it the same when I return to climb the gendarme.

I am hoping to climb Stuart's North Ridge this weekend. Does anyone know how much (if any) snow has fallen up there? Thanks. -Steven

David, I climbed Forbidden's East Ridge last weekend and got a pretty clear (though somewhat distant) view of Buckner's North Face. Athough I can't say for sure, the face seemed to have several fissures on it without snow that would have to be crossed. The Boston Glacier was also quite broken up, but looked crossable. Good luck. -Steven

I don't think I mentioned it in my recent trip report, but the approach for the east ridge was easy. This was one of the reasons why we choose this route (we made the decision while looking at the approaches for the east and west ridges. We had crampons and an ice ax, and were happy to have them. The approach seems to be on a glacier. We roped up on the ascent, but not the descent - it looks like a pretty safe snow field. After following the snow slope to the ridge at its top, follow the faint climbers trail up left. Soon you will see the gendarme on the East Ridge where the route starts. Nelson and Pottersfield's book says to take a quick look down the gully on the other side so that you know which gully to ascend. We interpreted this as meaning that it would be easy to get confused and climb up the wrong gully. I doubt this could happen. Good luck.

Friday's weather report convinced my wife and I that this wasn't the best weekend for Stuart's North Ridge, so we decided on a "relaxing" climb and chose the East Ridge of Forbidden. It was a great and satisfing climb, but not quite as relaxing as we expected. On the plus side, the scenery and exposure were awesome. On the negative side, the descent was unpleasant. We expected to find a defined ledge system to traverse, but instead wandered around on the face - sometimes going up, sometimes going down. The traverse was never really that hard, but it was stressful - it often looked like it might get hard. The rock was pretty loose; there were few good opportunities for placing gear or establishing belays. The only pleasant aspect of the descent was that the gully leading back up to the East Ridge was unmistakable. It was the first real gully we encountered on the face. In addition, we could easily recognize features on the ridge above us that indicated we were approaching the gully. It is probably worth mentioning that this East ledges descent route would be very unpleasant to most climbers if it was wet - we found it completely dry. My wife and I are pretty much novice alpine climbers, and we may just have to get used to the quality of the rock on alpline climbs, but we were expecting more solid rock than we found. Not that it was bad, it just wasn't like Prussik. It was solid enough, though, for us to feel safe. The only real loose parts were on some of the traverses around the towers on the ridge. The technical crux of the route, a short pitch of 5.8 was solid. The lower part of that pitch was run out enough for me to wonder what I was getting myself into, but there were a couple of good placements (I used two small aliens) just before the short crux. We seemed to spend more time traversing than climbing on the ridge; the highlight of the climb was a couple sections of knife edged ridge. Neat stuff. Regarding the ideal rack for the climb. I am a pretty cautious climber, but if I was to repeat the climb I wouldn't bring more than a few cams, the small aliens listed above, and a set of nuts. I don't think I ever placed more than 4 pieces on any of the pitches - the climbing was either quite easy or the protection hard to find. It took us 10 hours round trip from our campsite near the high toilet in Boston Basin. Please excuse the rambling nature of this report. -Steven

Hi All, I am planning to climb Stuart's North Ridge and I am wondering how to deal with the gendarme pitches. Leading 5.9 with my pack on doesn't appeal to me, nor does carrying a haul line for just 2 pitches. Both pitches sound short. I was wondering if it would be possible to climb the pitch, pull up the slack, untie from my end, throw the loose end of the rope down to the second, and then haul on this line. Or is this inviting disaster (let's assume that there isn't too much wind)? Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you. -Steven

I climbed Dragontail Peak's Serpentine Ridge on Sunday. The climb is quite long (12+ pitches) but my partner and I found the hardest part was spending all of Saturday afternoon looking up at the intimidating wall. We got up at 4am, got onto the rock around 6, and summitted just after noon. We are only modestly experienced alpine rock climbers (this was the most complicated looking route that I have climbed), but had no problems following the route. The technical crux of the route is 5.8. The rock in this section is excellent. We found the protection to be very good. The upper half of the face is pretty loose, but I felt the views more than made up for the decreasing quality of the rock. We used Nelson and Potterfield's guidebook. It seemed pretty accurate. Picking out the route from our campsite by the lake wasn't that easy - a pair of binoculars would be useful. We descended the snow slopes of the back side of the mountain in running shoes holding sturdy tent stakes for self arrest. This worked fine, but it might have been much more difficult if warm sunny weather hadn't soften the snow. All in all, I found this to be a great climb. The rock doesn't compare to nearby Prussik Peak, and I probably wouldn't repeat the route unless a friend really wanted to do it, but I had fun and am glad I did it.