klenke

Hear hear! That bugs me too.

Whatever, Pax. Here is a topo for the East Face Direct (as Sergio & I did it). Others may do it differently. Pink refers to standard belayed pitches; green to running belays. Last water encountered on route was at the small snow blocks at the base of the diagonal ramp.

That was Mother Nature saying, "I love you Gary Yngve. Won't you be mine?"

It's a vicious catch-22 cycle: the Forest Disservice needs bigger and bigger rigs to drive the roads that are becoming more and more in disrepair due to lack of funding for road improvements. Rather than fix the roads, it's cheaper to buy bigger vehicles with more clearance and more power. However, in turn, these bigger vehicles degrade the road faster. I predict in a few years forestry officials will be driving tanks.

According to the weatherman last night, the overall smoke haze in the Puget Sound and the Cascades this week is coming from a fire burning in British Columbia somewhere NE of Vancouver. The airflow is southward. We may have a mild marine push in the next few days that will help things. A low pressure east of the Cascades will draw air from the high pressure out over the Pacific, thus the marine push.

ChucK: I will probably make a Chimney Rock page on summitpost in the near future. Until that time, NO PHOTOS FOR YOU! AJScott: Here is a map of the approach to the East Face Direct. Map is big so may render slowly for those with lame internet connections. Beckey's East Face Route which goes up the wide gully to the left of the face looked pretty unenjoyable (steep hard snow in couloir) making the EFD the better choice. Follow the black dashed line to the face as there was much snow block sloughing going on while we were there in the red dashed area (Rod_Xuereb's Route). If we had decided to go that we'd have been clobbered as an avy occured at the time we would have been underneath it. There is a spot to bivy on the summit (room for two people in a rockwalled up area). It's actually on the next crag summit to the south. I don't think it would be a problem to get to it. It's only about 50 feet from the true summit. Come to think of it, though, there were plenty of slabby flat spots on the true summit block. Also, when you get up there, look for a small register canister under some rocks. There will be another piece of paper tucked under a rock. This piece of paper was soaking wet so I left it out to dry. Please put it back in the register. Actually, a better idea would be to take along a new smallish book to act as a new register. There is no book in there now, just one piece of paper with Sergio's and my name on it 7/27/04 and, interestingly, the Vetter Bros. on 7/27/03. Maybe you could simply transcribe these two entries to the new register.

Sergio & I climbed the EFD yesterday. The moat at the base of the rock is still good-to-go. We belayed the first pitch off the snow (probably the crux for the day; mid-fifth), simul-climbed up to the first grassy ledge and subsquently up the left-trending ramp. Running belayed the Class 4/low-5 section between ramp and Key Ledge, belayed the obvious chimney above the ledge, running belayed right to the two parallel chimneys, then belayed the left chimney for the first half, finishing up the climb on the face to the chimney's right to attain the summit. 6 hours up from camp at the big bivy boulder in the basin (c. 4,600 ft). Forest fire smoke was all around us. No distant views whatsoever. On the descent (with a 60m rope), we rappeled 8 times to get back to snow (took 2 hours or so). Some downclimbing was undertaken in between rappels. There were quite a few rap stations on the route. Some of these seemed pointless...but did provide some nice new sling booty. About 4 hours from summit to camp then another 3.5 hours back to the trailhead. The climb can be done in day from the Pete Lake Trailhead but that would be quite grueling. We did it in two days (really 1.5 days) but could see how three days (or 2.5 days) would be much more agreeable given the time. All in all a good route and mountain. Similar to NE Ridge of Triumph, South Buttress of Cutthroat, and NE Buttress of Goode.

Here is a picture from Primus showing that traverse photomat is talking about. The traverse is the slope right of the numeral 10 but left of the rock wall (the wall of the E. Ridge of Austera). It won't be snow at this time of year. Probably either talus or heather or some combination of both. III = Klawatti Glacier; IV = N. Klawatti Glacier If you'll be coming from the upper Inspiration Glacier near Eldorado, you'll have more difficulty getting over the col between Klawatti and Austera than around the lower E. Ridge of Austera. In winter-spring, the col is easy to get over due to snow ramps. I've read (e.g., Nelson's Select Climbs and Beckey's CAG) that the rocks at the col might require a short rock pitch then short rappel. I don't know the difficulty of the climbing. It looked like it would be about 40 feet high max in summer. The col is on the right side in the photo:

I saw one yesterday. It said: "Save the Ales." I agreed wholeheartedly.

Gyselinck: which Gyselinck are you? I know several of you yahoos: Glenn, Will, Craig, Cindy. You must be Craig since Craig's dad is Will and Craig's uncle is Glenn. I used to work with Will, Glenn, & Cindy when with Primex in 1999.

Any snow whales on the ridge itself? Thanks.

6) People who post 10 times as much as I do. Makes them 10 times the loser I am. Ah-ha!

4) Dru

My defecation imprecation story (good for the final pun): So three of us are climbing the Upper Exum Route on the Grand. We're somewhere about halfway up crowded onto a belay platform. One of us was sitting sideways to the wall (wall on his left), I am sitting behind him in the same direction within arm's reach, and the third among us...well, when I look, he's on my right facing out from the wall, out into the nothingness of air. He's within arm's reach (I could put my hand on his shoulder if I wanted to). Between us are coils of flaked rope, my rope. His pants are down. I get a nice view of butt-crack...and, unfortunately, initially look over at him at the wrong time to witness brownies in the making. He was damn near dropping coils on my coils! "You're shitting on my rope!" I screamed. "I'm not shitting on your rope," he retorted. "Pretty damn close!" I said. "Not even." His feces were laying within four inches. If that aint close, I don't know what is. What a shitty climbing partner! Last time I climbed with him.

That Harry Pi is one tall chinaman...

Hey Stoney, you should work for the U.N. You seem to have all the answers. You show those U.N. ne'er-do-rights what for! One thing's for sure, no matter what BushCo. does regarding Sudan and the Darfur, it'll be the wrong thing as far as the lib dems are concerned. Political wrangling will again ensue while more ethnic cleansing goes on in Africa. And so it goes and so it goes. Consensus goes a long way, but political consensus these days is as rare as rain in the Atacama.

Michael: I don't know where "my" route goes as I have not been up Davis. Was that the intent of your question? I don't know exactly where on that face the route goes other than what Beckey says ("NW side of the N Face").

Stefan: the hunter's trail (sheepherder's trail) is the yellow line (more or less) in Hoffman's map (his TR might also help): If you intend to go up that way from White River Trail then you'll want to know that finding the sheepherder's trail will be extremely difficult. There is no sign for it and it does not end at the WRT. Because of the barren underforest at the junction location, discerning trail (tread) from normal dirt is darn near impossible. We came down from Luahna this way, having gone up the Y Basin Route mentioned on this page also visible in the map above as the basin SSE of Clark's summit. Hoffman's yellow line in the upper basin is about right. If coming down from above, you want to descend right (east) of his yellow line as much as possible to avoid brush that trends west into the creek valley. BW5! You come down to the Thunder Creek crossing where the creek courses through a flat area (c. 3,700 ft). The crossing was flagged. On the other side, turn left and follow above the creek for maybe a hundred yards keeping a keen eye out for a forming trail. Once you find it, it's actually quite good all the way down to the WRT. The trail (climber's path) "ended" about where a bunch of windfall got in the way about 100 feet from the WRT. When we reached the WRT I turned around to ascertain the terrain for purposes of later identification. There was nothing really to go on other than A) the ground was open and flat in the area and B) there was a large sawed 3-ft diameter log (gap removed to allow WRT to continue through) crossing the trail about where we came upon it. If you felt like risking getting caught, you could definitely bike the trail all the way to the 6.5-mile point where the trail goes up Thunder Creek. This is because last year trail crews brushed out the trail from the Boulder Creek junction to the next forested area just before Thunder Creek. We were able to bike about 5 miles to the creek running out of the Y Basin (basin where creek has tributaries forming a Y).

A TR for an obscure peak (though many a WA Pass climber has seen it). My kind of TR...and peak.

In that photo of tracks in the snow, they are obviously goat tracks. You can see the dual hoof marks. Nice photo-TR though.

This is the best I can do (from Sept. 1998): The North(east) Face is the steepest face in the state when considering the drop over 1 horizontal mile (a 5,381-ft drop). It is the 5th-steepest face over 1/10th of a horizontal mile (1,830-ft drop). According to Beckey's description, the North Face Route goes up the sunny side in this photo. He says, "Grade III, 5.6, 14 hours r.t."

Estivate: Thanks for the clue. I think that is it. I also just realized (looked up) the meaning of your avatar. Sucks to be you if that's your summers. Here is a pic from the web of the rattlesnake plantain (I guess plantains and orchids are related): Source (Mt. Rainier National Park, no less)

The map on page one of this pdf file is pretty cool. Here's another map (location of the fire is just north of Cashmere Mountain):

We should tax calories. 1 cent per 100 calories consumed. Just think, with each candy bar purchased, 2-3 cents can go toward helping pay some fat person's medical costs.

Shovel? No way! Crampons? Probably not. There is a steep 100+ ft descent off of the north side of Bumblebee Pass that could be snow but it is certainly glissadable (good run out in case you can't stop). Ice axe: Probably a good idea (see above comment). I highly doubt the lakes are still frozen. Note that you can do Thomson (note that this is the correct spelling) car-to-car in a day from the Commonwealth Creek approach to the Kendall Catwalk.