JayB

Great day out with a perennially great partner. I think we first roped up together as a consequence of meeting on this website back sometime around 2002?! I feel like we need to have a separate "Off The Couch" thread commemorating the longest interval someone has gone without climbing while still vaguely identifying as a climber. Hopefully the span from 2017 to just a couple of weeks ago will be my personal record. I also feel like I could probably burn up all of the remaining climbing time/energy I've got left in me at Darrington. Whenever I've been out there, I almost always feel like it's been too long, no matter how recently I climbed there.

What a terrible shame.

If that's the case it'd be a hell of a capstone to put on another Golden Age of Cascades Mountaineering that this site helped kick off.

Descending from Colchuck Lake on a refrozen crust whilst hauling an overnight pack with climbing gear falls into that category. First time I ever used skins on the descent. Still think I'm in the "If you find yourself wanting snowshoes, the entire trip is a mistake..." camp most of the time, though.

I remember seeing all of the promo material for the new snowshoes back in the late 90's and thinking, "Hey! That looks sorta cool, those aren't the wood-and-catgut things I remember from my youth, and I don't have the money to throw down for an AT setup so, maybe things are different now so...*snowshoes* for winter ascents...yeah...and then getting 100 feet into the trip and thinking "Dear god, what have I done...." and waiting for several minutes whilst praying my partner would pipe up, admit that snowshoes and/or snowshoeing sucks, and come to terms the fact that we'd both been horribly swindled so that we could bail and start saving cash for AT gear.

Found the source of the Skinner quote. Alpinist #20, referencing a Skinner quote somewhere deep in the sedimentary layers of the Climbing back catalog... http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP20/features-squat-takeda "We drove off in a huff. A few days later I read a Todd Skinner quotation in an old issue of Climbing: Vedauwoo's offwidths "filter out the weak, the soft and the spineless." I'd been filtered."

Ha! Very kind offer. Your reputation proceeds you courtesy of @Bronco, so I'd need at least a year of living in a re-creation of an 80's-action-movie training-montage before I could hang, but at this point I'd gladly play the role of Randy-from-Christmas-Story@2:04 if I could tag along...

I was re-reading the post that I hashed out between the time I heard my daughters waking up, and out before they made it downstairs and started their breakfast insurrection (Pancakes! Pancakes!) and I realize that it's not entirely clear who was saying what about Vedauwoo. Todd Skinner was the one who loved the place, and it was the random guy hoping to emulate skinner that experienced the filtration. Anyhow - thanks for the great write-up and adding it to the pile of notable ascents recorded on this site. Aside from being a good read in its own site, it's one of many little nudges that lets me persist in the belief that it's worth hanging onto my gear so that I'll have it handy once the era of intensive parenting, remodeling, etc, etc has run its course.

Part of the reason why I think this climb is so impressive is that I got my ass handed to me attempting this route in the summer ~15+ years ago. We bivied at the lake, but even with a relatively early start once we got midway up the bowl it was clear that we'd just been going too slow, and would find ourselves in the unplanned-bivy/benighted zone if we went for the summit, so we threw in the towel. I felt a huge-but-partial sense of relief when we made the call to bail, but between getting off route, struggling to find decent pro, and the general vibe of the route I felt way sketchier than I had imagined, and despite what I considered a more than adequate seasoning on lots of routes, I felt like I was out of my depth for most of the climb. I remember someone talking about hearing Todd Skinner talking about how much he loved Vedauwoo because it filtered out the weak and timid, or something like that, heading there under the assumption that he'd be one of the select few who had what it took to hang there, only to get there, get his ass handed to him, and eventually slump over in his harness, hoist the white flag, and think to himself - "Okay. Fine. I just got filtered..." During descent I could see people sort of languidly swimming in Lake Serene while we were doing our raps amidst the tat and mank, sketch, and exposure and *really* wishing I could magically trade places with them and just GTF off of the mountain and having the same sort of defeated realization. "Okay. Fine. I just got filtered..." It was quite the humbling psychological beat-down, and every time I'm driving past Mt. Index I can sort of feel the mountain sensing my presence, peering down at me Eye-of-Sauron style and belting out a sort of silent, mocking, cosmic-guffaw in my direction and sneering while I hunch down over my steering wheel and try to hide under the visor...

Strong work. A one-day winter Ascent of Index is quite a feat!

We've seen the future, and it's a single publication called "Series of Aspirational Outdoor Lifestyle Product Ads With an Editorial Viewpoint." Seriously though, I think that declining circulations and ad revenue will force publishers to consolidate lots of titles under one roof and eliminate as many redundant admin-type jobs as possible. Don't think it'd ever rise to a level of consolidation that would constitute an actual monopoly (not sure anyone would notice or care if it did) but when all is said and done I think there'll probably be way fewer titles operating as part of a handful of conglomerates. I can't bring myself to crack open the cover of any magazine that has been integrated into the intersectional borg and published articles like "It's Time to Confront the Latent White Heteronormativity Embedded in the Titanium Spork" so the number of outdoor magazines that I have any interest in reading is rapidly declining to zero.

The way the market is going for print media I think it's only a matter of time before all outdoor publications coalesce into a single publishing syndicate.

Thanks! Bikes possible on the spur road, or is it too overgrown/log-choked to make that feasible?

Aha. Thanks for investing all of the time and effort to upgrade those bolts - long runouts and rusty/mank make for a poor combination. Incidentally - how long is the hike now? It's been ages since I've been in there, but it used to be you'd drive up the main road, take the right onto the decommissioned spur road until you couldn't drive any further, and then it was about 45 minutes from there.

Thanks for putting in the work out there. Still have one or two of the rusty old 1/4" Leeper numbers off of the route just left of Online ("The Fly?" or was it "American Pie"?) from when I helped some folks replace the original bolts on those routes ~15+ years ago. I seem to remember most of the bolts on Online being modern 3/8" expansion bolts back then, except at the anchors where there was usually a remnant Leeper in addition to a modern bolt. This was probably back in '02 or '03, so it's possible they rusted out if they weren't stainless. Also possible that my recollection is off. The crux pitch on Online always produced the desired/dreaded slab climbing zen state, and I'm glad I had the chance to experience the route 2-3 times in it's original state, although I'm also sure I'll also enjoy the route in its current incarnation as well if I make it back there. I'm assuming the bolts were added to the crux pitch. Anywhere else? As an aside, I can remember that way back in the oughts in a bygone era when long, tedious arguments about retro-bolting were the coin of the realm on message boards, I'd often chide the purists by saying something to the effect of "An extra bolt only changes the character of the route if you clip it. If you're such a hardass, skip the bolt that you object to." That was more of a taunt than a serious argument, but it's sort of cosmically ironic that if there is an extra-bolt on the crux pitch I'll face the prospect of being haunted by my own taunts from yesteryear....

Yeah. You'll have to do way better than that to rile up the locals. Wearing a t-shirt with "Soy is Murder!" in large block letter on the back while you're cranking out your laps ought to do the trick....

Something about the times we're living in gives me reason to believe that anyone reporting your transgressions at the tower will not be able to persuade a dispatcher to send a LEO to enforce the ban. It'd actually be kind of interesting to see how many misdemeanor or higher offenses you'd have to commit simultaneously while cranking out laps to meet that threshold these days....

Ditto!

That was us, back in 2003. It was the most memorable climb of my life, by far, but I'm not sure that it's in the same league as the routes on the list above. Part of the reason for that is that - based on pictures I've seen - it goes from a mixed route that with a flow that rarely (I think) touches down in the late fall/early winter, to a pretty non-descript looking steepish snow slope by the time that spring rolls around.

I also seem to remember a route that Necromonicon/Choada_Boy and two others (Dberdinka and genepires?) put up in the vicinity of Sloan back in the winter of 04/05? Very aesthetic, narrow mixed couloir. Anyone recall that one? Edit - looks like it's up there. Route on Whitechuck.

When I scanned the list and tried to recall anything that might not have made the list, the Haley-Burdick route on Summit Chief came to mind. The first hit on Google was the NWMJ (link below) which would be a great place to skim through for other forgotten climbs. I haven't kept up with the AAJ for at least a decade, so I know my perception is heavily biased by losing track of what's been going on, but I'll always remember the aughts as a "Golden Age" of mountaineering in the PNW. This site provided an incredible venue where people could hook up with new partners and intel for new routes that seemed to drive a significant uptick in new route activity. Or maybe it just made what had always been going on more visible and accessible. Whatever the case - it was a glorious time and the new routes that were born in that era deserve to be remembered, and - at least some deserve - to be repeated. I was just looking up at Mt. Index the other day while kayaking down the Skykomish and was telling someone that I was only aware of one route up the face (EDM) and didn't think it had been repeated. I totally forgot about Ade's route, and there are probably others as well. Anyhow - great thread. Kudos to the OP for sifting through the archives. http://www.alpenglow.org/nwmj/04/041_Shorts.html

Makes me wonder if this is something that could be addressed with legislation at the State level. I can't imagine anyone believing that your average Sheriff's deputy has any business doing front-line wilderness rescue work. I also can't imagine that the response from the public will be favorable when and if there's a need for a rescue in the mountains and someone has to explain to the family and the public why the search and rescue resources that used to be available no longer are.

Hey Ethan: Thanks for reaching out. I'd suggest posting at washingtonflyfishing.com as well.

Wonder if the climber in question was Walt Shipley? Sadly prophetic if that was the case.

IIRC there was a bit of a lull in usage not that long ago - maybe in the wake of the prolonged hangover from the tech bust? If that actually happened, I'd chalk it up to a minor halt in the in-migration of the young, single, childless types that make up a disproportionate share of the climbing demographic. On the flip side, I'd be willing to bet that the massive, sustained hiring binge at Amazon, etc over the past decade-plus has made an outsized contribution to the crowds I keep hearing about. Strangely, I haven't noticed much of an uptick in the numbers of people kayaking. Seems like numbers are holding steady at best.