Fromage

Trip: Alpental - Alpental Falls Date: 12/3/2006 Trip Report: Strolled up to check out the falls on Sunday with my homie Jeremy and my fiancee. From below, Alpental Falls/Alpental I looked to be in shape. Owing to my excitement at the first ice climb of the season I gave it a go. The ice was hollow, poorly attached, and was forming thick ice lenses and onion skins over a layer of snow. Perfect conditions! About halfway up I placed a mediocre screw, moved up and left a ways, found a better screw, and took a closer look at the top of the first pitch. It was glassy, chandeliered, dripping with water, and small snow slides were starting to come down off to the left. The sun was out and warming the place up. I downclimbed, pondered gear retrieval, and decided I would just climb back up, clean gear, and downclimb again. In the short timespan this took, the quality of the ice went from worse to even worse. We tromped around in the snow for a while scouting the other routes in the neighborhood, but didn't feel motivated to try anything else. Went home and drank beers. Gear Notes: Total jing. Best left behind. Bring alpine crampons and tubular picks. Approach Notes: Snowshoes helpful for the last 40 feet.

Paclite sure is light, but it doesn't breathe worth a damn. If you are buying this jacket to leave in the bottom of your pack and only wear it while bailing, then it is fine, but if you actually want to wear it the rest of the time you will be frustrated with its performance. I have a Moonstone paclite jacket that I have been disappointed with. The first time I used it I thought it leaked I got so wet, but then I realized it was me making me wet. If you have a pro deal then get the Alpha LT or the Alpha Comp Hoody (best jacket in the universe), but if you really want something that will breathe and be waterproof you should wait until somebody makes a jacket from eVent that has a decent pattern (Integral Designs uses the fabric but their light eVent jacket fits like a garbage bag).

"A Night of Lies?" I get all the lies I need right here on cc.com but if there is ....

So, uh, is Feathered Friends in Madagascar? Those skis had better be pretty rad if I am going to travel all the way there to buy a few raffle tickets.

Tipping on a guided trip is not expected, but it is appreciated. A lot. I have guided on rivers and in the mountains for 9 years and seen a lot of different tipping practices. I have had large groups of Microsofties leave me with naught but a wave, and I have had a team of impoverished waitstaff from a restaurant heap cash upon me, buy me dinner, and drink me under the table. In the mountains the trips tend to cost a lot more as a participant, especially international climbs, which results in a group of clients that tend to be in higher income tax brackets. It takes about a minute for guides to pick up on this, and to some degree the prospect of tips influences how far a guide is willing to go for you. I think to be fair to both client and guide, the decision to tip and how much should be based on how the guides affect the quality of your trip. In my observation, some things that contribute to the quality of a client's experience include 1. Does the guide make a genuine effort to befriend you, learn about you, listen to you, and understand you? If your guide centers the conversation around him/herself and stories about how "this one time on Denali...," that is not the best way to take interest in clients. 2. Is the guide committed to your safety? The best tips I have ever received were on a trip where the guides decided to back off from a summit push because we determined the conditions were unsafe. This was a more valuable learning experience for the clients than if we had just gone for it. Client safety should be a paramount priority at all levels of guiding, but you never know. It can vary among companies and guides. 3. Is the guide committed to your personal success? Does the guide ask you what your personal goals are and work to help you achieve them? 4. Is the guide patient with all the clients? Will he or she stand around for 20 minutes in crappy weather working with you until you have mastered the ______ knot, adjusted your crampons, fixed your tent, etc? 5. Does the guide volunteer to do additional work if someone is struggling physically? This could be taking weight from someone's pack, setting up a tent, coiling ropes, whatever. 6. Does the guide make the trip fun for you and the other guides? This might be the most important thing to consider. If you had crystal clear weather, perfect snow conditions, and everyone summitted, but nobody smiled much, that trip might not be as enjoyable as the one with 60mph winds, a whiteout, cold temps, and all the other ingredients for misery, but where everyone laughed the whole time because the guide knew how to extract the fun out of even the most unpleasant situations. 7. Is the guide a good teacher? How much did you learn about the mountain, history, climbing skills, etc.? How much to tip is a totally subjective issue. If you feel that your guides have done a worthy job and deserve a tip, then it is entirely your discretion as to how much to give. Tip according to your willingness and ability. I have had trips where the clients all get together near the end of the trip away from the guides and discuss how much to tip, sort of reaching a consensus, and I have also had trips where people act of their own accord. It can be hard to put a value on the work of the guide staff, so use your best judgment. Here are some more guidelines (no pun intended) you may want to consider- 1. Tip all the guides the same amount unless you have a good reason not to. 2. If there is local or nontechnical help like porters, tip them as well. You may want to ask the front office about the best way to do this before you leave on your trip. 3. When you return home, take the time to write a letter to the owner or director of the guide company telling them what you think about your guides. This kind of feedback is valued by everyone, and if you have good things to say it can help secure future work for your guide. Have a great trip.

I'm holding off on buying these until after they are recalled.

Best jacket in the universe. I have had mine for two years and I hardly ever take Gore Tex into the mountains anymore. This jacket is the closest thing to the Holy Grail I have found yet. Great breathability, great fit, great function. It is worth every penny.

I have spent many golden hours using satellite phones in remote alpine settings as a NOLS instructor and mountain guide. I have had both positive and negative experiences with them. My views are shaped by my experience in the institutional settings of guiding, not personal climbs, so keep that in mind. With NOLS I find the sat phone to be enormously helpful, in fact I would call it an indispensable piece of equipment. I typically go into the field (Wind Rivers, WY) with a sat phone that has about an hour of prepaid time on it. Some courses we'll burn up the whole hour, other courses it never comes out of the case. When you have a student whose abdominal pains are difficult to diagnose or you need a quick evac or need to consult base about a behavioral issue, the sat phone totally saves the day. Without a sat phone, I feel I would have made a couple decisions about my courses that, in retrospect, would have been poor. Having the phone gave me the ability to consult a medical authority or initiate a backcountry evacuation almost instantly. On a personal trip, having the ability to summon help almost anywhere is a big advantage if you need it. Guiding, however, has been a different experience. Most of the places I guide in the Cascades are close enough to the road that someone can go for help pretty quickly, and cell coverage, although spotty, is useful enough to just bring along a cell phone. On a trip this spring I had a client bring a sat phone into the mountains with him- unbeknownst to everyone until it started ringing. He made no effort to limit his use of the phone, and it got out of hand. I'd be trying to teach crampon technique and this guy was off on the side making real estate deals on the phone. Pretty annoying. Then he'd complain about how expensive airtime was after closing a multi-million dollar deal. As for my personal trips, I think the only kind of situation where I would consider a sat phone is if I was going somewhere like the Pickets for 10 days. The weight and the cost of a phone make me think twice about taking it. You can rent phones now, so that would be more cost effective if you shared it among a group. All the same, you have to have a lot of other skills and tools with you to make a sat phone useful, like the ability to know where you are. "Help, I fell down a ravine in the Terror Creek Basin" is not as useful to a rescuer as being able to say "I am at Y degrees latitude and X degrees longitude." It's even better to have all the phone numbers with you that you would want to call so you can talk directly with the ranger station or sheriff's office or your buddy instead of relying on a 911 operator to spread the word. As an inexpensive safety alternative to a sat phone, I make sure to tell a trusted climbing partner (who is staying in town) the details of my trips. I will email a friend with my route description, intended climbing objectives, intended campsites, dates of my trip, what gear I'm taking (tent color, food, fuel) and predetermined Freak Out Time, after which he or she calls the cavalry if I haven't made contact. I keep my WFR certification current and climb with people who I trust to stay cool and make good decisions if I am hurt. I don't think a sat phone is a crutch in the wilderness, but it depends on who is using it. An experienced climber calling for help after getting clobbered by rockfall is one thing, a gumby hiker who takes the wrong turn and didn't bring enough fuel for his stove, that is another.

I had a pair of G-14s for a while and got rid of them because they caused some problems I hadn't anticipated. For waterfall climbing I found they vibrated too much (wire toe bail/Crampomatic), the secondary points didn't engage the ice as well as other pairs I have used, and my partner had a near accident caused by his G-14s when we were on an alpine route. The curly-cue toe bail snagged a sling on a piece of pro he was leading past on a M6 section, and he was totally trapped hanging from his tools and trying to kick his foot free from the sling. He managed to wriggle out of it before I could escape the belay to get up to him, but it was pretty hairy. For waterfall ice I have yet to find a crampon better than the Charlet/Petzl M10. That crampon has more adjustability than anything else on the market, and while it is not the lightest, it climbs really well and connects very securely to Koflachs, Scarpas, and Sportivas. Horizontal frame crampons tend to be lighter, but vertical rails are stiffer. I disagree with Don's point about needing anti-botts. If the snow is balling up on your crampons, that is a big flashing neon sign from the mountain telling you it's time to take your points off. Crampons are hazardous in those snow conditions, and I have seen more than one accident caused by this situation. If you are looking for one pair of points to do everything, the Charlet Sarkens are light, climb ice pretty darn well, and work great on alpine routes. Plus they are priced reasonably.

Jack Johnson is the greatest musical luminary of the past 400 years. Never before in the annals of human history has a surfer dude with an acoustic guitar written songs of such profound meaning, of such compositional complexity, of such powerful cultural import. Jack Johnson is a musical zeitgiest- the likes of which we have not seen since Ben Harper- yet so much more than "music for the sensitive guy." All of Jack Johnson's songs are pure, original, and so clearly distinct from one another that it is hard to believe he wrote them all. Who has done a better job of extracting deep meaning from mundane routine of daily life? Who can make a more astute observation about the subtleties of the hardworking blue collar surfer tribulations? And truly, who can lay down such unparalleled rockin' guitar riffs? Page? Hendrix? Slash? Van Halen? Waste my time not with these mere triflers. Rank amateurs in comparison to the sheer greatness of Jack Johnson. All bow down to Jack.

It seems a little strange that you think the FF staff are not great for fitting boots, yet you bought a $500+ pair of high end mountaineering treads there. It sounds like they had something you wanted in a size you wanted, and you liked them enough to lay down a lot of money. Sounds like good service to me. It also seems strange that you want a lighter and softer boot than your Vasque, but when Marmot recommended one of the best boots on the market that matches your description, you rejected it. You don't say why you didn't like them. I don't know if that means your expectations are too high or if your mindset is about as flexible as your Vasques. If you take a defeatist mentality into boot buying you will be defeeted. Be open to suggestions, a lot of folks at the better shops (FF, Marmot) know their shit because they get out and use the gear they sell. If you go into the process convinced you won't find a good pair of boots, then you are probably won't. Since you seem to have no substantive complaints about your Nuptses, maybe you should go back to FF. They carry stuff you won't find elsewhere.

That's some good tongue-in-cheek humor there. Anyway, about your tent. I have one, bought it after being indoctrinated into the school of thought that maintains - all your gear should be tough and durable - you are more of a man for carrying such gear - waiting out a storm in a big tent is high alpine drama. After owning said tent for many years and using it once on Rainier, it now lies dormant in my gear closet. Once I bought a 4.5 pound single wall tent I lost all desire to use my Trango. Thanks for the reminder, I think I'll sell it. If you can carry the Trango, or afford to pay someone else to carry it, the tent is great. Roomy, strong, and it has a window. This sounds like a cool feature, but picture this scenario: Climber 1: hey dude, is it still raining? Climber 2: I don't know, dude. Look out the window. Peanut gallery: hey dumbasses, if you're in a tent you don't need to look out the window to know if it's still raining. If I want a tent that has at least the space and strength the Trango, I think I will upgrade to a Hilleberg Nallo 3 GT. For 6 pounds I can have a 3-person tent with a vestibule that has its own zip code and still save 4 pounds over my Trango. But for $230 you have a sturdy, big, durable, green tent. I think you paid a little more than what it was worth in my opinion, but if the thing has never been used then at least you know there are no lurking problems. You might find yourself relegating it to car camping after a couple fatiguing trips and start saving for a Hilleberg or single wall, but maybe you'll take it to Denali and it will totally kick ass. Be sure to seal the seams.

P-C Vasak. Lighter and better.

I take a one-pound, 25-degree bag on Rainier in the winter, and have never been cold on the three winter climbs I have done. Saving the weight with the bag lets me bring more fuel and food. Since you have a down jacket with you anyway on a winter Rainier climb, it makes sense to incorporate it into your sleeping system for greater efficiency. I use the Feathered Friends Volant jacket inside the Vireo on top of a Thermarest ProLite 3/ short yellow foam pad combo inside a single wall tent and have been plenty toasty. Eating a good dinner, being hydrated, and snuggling up to a couple hot water bottles makes a big difference, too. I used to use a -10 bag in the winter in the Cascades but it was too warm and too heavy. I like the Vireo system a lot, plus it is cheap enough to justify owning it in addition to another sleeping bag. With the amount of time I have spent in mine, it has definitely been a good investment. I know people who take 0-degree bags to Denali and Aconcagua. While it is unusual, it is not unheard of. For your trip a bag of that warmth should suffice, but you could be carrying excessive weight if you use it in the Cascades. Lots of mountains in South America are in low latitudes and have milder conditions, so you may be able to use a reasonably light bag on your trip.

Are you suggesting that a DAS Parka is appropriate for Everest and other Himalayan peaks? Have fun shivering up there. If you want a belay parka you should consider a lighter and more durable one like FF Volant or Frontpoint. My Volant works great as a jacket in the Cascades from summer bivies in Boston Basin to winter climbs on Rainier.

Feathered Friends Vireo (one pound) with Feathered Friends Helios Jacket (15 oz) = sub two pounds for a 25-degree sleep system and warm down jacket combo. I sleep on a chopped down Ridge Rest and my pack. My tent weighs zero pounds since I sleep in the hut when I'm on that side of the mountain. Link to Feathered Friends Vireo

On a 2-man, 2-day ascent of Rainier on the Muir side my pack weighs 27 pounds when I leave the parking lot. That includes 4 pounds of pack and 4.5 pounds of water (which obviously decreases as the day goes on), which leaves me with about 19 pounds of gear. If I have trained well and am in reasonable shape, I will be carrying 5 pounds less fat on my body than I have now. This takes us back to the classic Gram Counter's Fallacy: instead of spending hours deliberating on what kind of new gear to buy, you could be spending hours running stairs, thereby making yourself stronger, lighter, and richer by not spending $200 on a new pack that saves you one pound. That $200 could buy your park entry fee, your climbing permit, gas for the drive, beer afterwards, and you would STILL have more than $100 left over. I'm not saying you are fat, just highlighting the point that the gear doesn't get you up the hill. But there are other reasons for buying a pack than saving weight. Comfort is nice, and it's okay to look cool. Remember, If you're looking good you're feeling good If you're feeling good, you're climbing good If you're climbing good, you're looking good

If you have that much time to make a leisurely ascent, why take the most heavily traveled route on the mountain? There are numerous other routes of comparable technical difficulty that would be more pleasant and safer on account of fewer people. You are planning to go at the peak of the season. If you want to share your route and camps with big crowds, by all means do so, but there is so much more to the mountain than the superhighway that runs through Muir. With the amount of time you have you could easily do a relaxed ascent of the Tahoma Glacier, for example, where you will maybe see a couple other parties. Even the Emmons will be less crowded than the DC, although probably not by much. Take a look at Mike Gauthier's guidebook and you will find a plethora of choices that will give you an excellent Rainier experience without the cluster of the DC. Otherwise, to address your conditions question, I think the mountain will still be in great shape in July provided that the summer doesn't heat up quickly. I was up at Muir yesterday scouting some lines and was amazed by how much snow there is this winter. More is forecast to fall, too, so the summer climbing season will be a long one if things don't melt out too quickly.

I attempted the Fuhrer Finger last winter. Several hundred feet above the Finger couloir my partner and I were hit by icefall. We thought we were far enough to the side of the Nisqually that we would be out of the fall line of tumbling seracs, but apparently we were wrong. We walked away after being bombarded with television-sized ice chunks, but a party below us got hammered in the couloir. I believe there are some graphic photos on this site of the effects the icefall had on that group. If I were to do this route again I would head left immediately after exiting the couloir and pick my line upwards by linking the cover of rock bands. It was a low snow year last winter, so conditions will certainly vary this season. There is an excellent camp site above the Wilson glacier at about 9,400 feet on a shoulder near a giant boulder. Have fun!

Barry, I also grew up in Michigan (UM class of '98) and found it hard to learn to climb in that area. I ended up going to France to learn alpine climbing since the Michigan Alps didn't quite have the flavor I was looking for. I agree with the other posts that suggest you would have a more enjoyable alpine experience by spending your time venturing into the North Cascades. And that's not just because I also guide for Alpine Ascents. Given the choice between climbing Rainier and going into the N Cascades I would choose the latter because of the wilderness, the beauty, the quality of routes, and the variety of terrain. Rainier is a lot of fun and I have climbed it a few times, but the type of experience you will have up there in June is very different from the type of experience you will have in a more secluded part of the range. If reaching the summit is an important objective for you, then signing up for a trip with RMI might be the way to go. If, however, you spend your time and money on a six-day mountaineering course you will learn some valuable skills that will put you well on your way to becoming self-sufficient in the mountains. You would then be much better prepared to climb Rainier as part of a small, private group, or even a small guided group. As for training recommendations, for Rainier in particular and Cascade approaches in general, having legs and lungs that can work hard will take you far. I run stairs and ride my bike a lot. Head down to Michigan Stadium or Dennison Hall and start doing laps. Alternate running sessions with carrying a pack and hiking the stairs. Or take your mountain bike to Pinckney, Brighton, or Yankee Springs. The Circle of Pain is a decent, 1-hour in-town ride. Feel free to send a personal messages if you have any other questions. Cheers.

Seldon, I was skeptical of the WB-400 fabric myself until I bought a Beyond Fleece Cold Fusion jacket. It stretches really well and has good water resistance. I have worn it as an outer layer on Rainier in winter and found the jacket was windproof as far as I could tell. Plus it fits better than anything else I have tried on. And at $180, it was cheaper than anything else on the market that was comparable in warmth. Breathability is fine, better, in fact, than my Arcteryx Windstopper softshell. Beyond Fleece also makes clothing out of several other Schoeller fabrics as well, so check them out. US made = Custom fit = Cheap = Customer service =

Pertex products are not obsolete. Some companies, like Marmot, purchased enough of the remaining fabric inventory to continue manufacturing their products with it for a while. The guy I talked to at Marmot said they had about a year's worth of fabric and were looking for substitutes in the meantime. Regardless of the fate of Pertex, there are so many different textile mills producing quality fabrics that this will not spell the end of lightweight nylon. Now for the confusing part: an Asian textile company named Mitsui has purchased the name Quantum to brand their own type of fabric which will be a little different from the original English Pertex Quantum. This new Quantum has not found its way into commercially available products yet as far as I know. The demise of Pertex is going to bring an interesting shift in materials sourcing in the gear industry. Marmot and TNF were two of the companies more heavily dependent on Pertex fabrics, and it will be interesting to see where they go to find replacements. Feathered Friends has found a new lightweight nylon and is already using it in their products. The folks at their factory think it is a denser and more stable fabric than Pertex Quantum and say it is practically the same weight. Rather than asking "are Pertex products obsolete?" you should examine the quality of the manufacturing of the companies who are using the material. The quality of the materials are only one part of the overall quality picture. Three different companies using the same fabric may produce items of distinctly different qualities because of their designs and how they are put together.

Pertex is the name of an English textile company, not a specific fabric. This company went out of business in 2005. Your comment is vague and inaccurate, since some of the fabrics that Pertex made, namely Endurance, had very good water resistance (PU coated nylon). If you were referring to Quantum, that fabric's water resistance was not great, but since you didn't specify, it makes it hard for others to know what you meant. It's like saying "All Chevrolets are slow," which is obviously untrue if your Chevy happens to be a Corvette. And were you talking about Gore cheesecloth or Martha Stewart cheesecloth?

The head weights are attached with an allen bolt to the pick just forward of the head. They are pretty low profile, nothing like the Quasar/Pulsar headweights. The setup seems to be fairly stout. For drytooling if I was concerned about the weights getting in the way I would remove them. The setup I want to experiment with next is to only attach one headweight per tool and see how that affects the swing.

I had the opportunity to use a pair of the new Charlet Nomics for three days in Lillooet last weekend. Climbed at Marble, Synchronicity, and Rambles. While I liked these tools, I didn't love them as much as I thought I would. Being a longtime devout fundamentalist orthodox member of the Charlet Cult, I had pretty high expectations. The best thing by far about these tools is the grip. It is the most comfortable and natural feeling grip of any leashless tool I have ever tried. The adjustability of it is great, and once you get your size dialled in your hand fits into it like lego. The swing threw me off a bit. I expected the lively snap of the Ergo but found the weight was not as evenly distributed, probably due to the head weights. It felt like it took more power to get going, but connected well with the ice. The tool felt really stiff and damp, and I didn't feel like it gave me as good feedback on placement quality as Ergos. The angle of the grip, being slightly more vertical, made me alter my swing. The pick was great, stuck really well and didn't fracture the ice much, even on the chandeliered 60m penultimate pitch of Synchronicity. Charlet continues to get it right with their picks. I didn't get to use these tools on rock. Hopefully soon. Bottom line is the grips on these kick ass, but the tool as an entire package does not feel as good as Ergos on ice. I think a better setup would be Nomic grips at the Ergo angle on Ergo shafts. Given the progression of Charlet leashless tools thus far, it wouldn't surprise me if the ErgoNomic came out next year with this configuration. I still take my Quarks over any other tool, though.