Farrgo

007 I seriously hope you are kidding. If not I would suggest that you and your skilled partners write out their wills and say goodbye before you go. Altitude is a serious bitch. I have spent most of the last three weeks above 4000m with several days at 5 and 6 thousand meters in Peru. I am back at 3000m and have acclimatized to that height but if I try and run up some stairs I will be breathing very hard at the top. Going up to 6000 was a bitch, this was after two weeks acclimitizing. There is no chance I would go up to 8000 in just another seven days. There is no such thing as a walk in the park at 8000m.

I was up there a couple weeks ago. Can't imagine that crampons would help you, especially in this heat. I brought them, but didn't use them. An ice axe should suffice. Not sure of how Bill is telling you to approach. From the point on the trail where there is the sign for the Hannegan Camp, i took that trail and then went cross country for the base of the route. There is a faint, very faint trail at points through the heather. I found that it was very easy traveling this way. I met a guy on my way back down and he said folowing the trail instead of breaking off at the Hanegan camp was pretty miserable and descended via my route. I haven't personally gone the other way so I can't say. Although if you try one way and don't like it go back the other.

Ok, I just did Town Crier a few weeks ago. You are definately going to need something equivalent to a black/purple alien to get through the flared crack. Right off of the hanging belay there are a couple pretty good nut moves than there is this flaring pocket and a piton above that. My buddy tried to jam in a blue alien, it popped and he went sailing. I got on my top sub steps and still was about a foot short of reaching the pin. Eventually we taped two nut tools together and made a stick clip which still just barely reached. So either bring a small alien or stick clip, or go home i guess. Other than that the gear is all very standard. By the way has anybody ever free climbed town crier? There are some sections that look hard, but not too hard.

Luke, are you just going for the day because I got to work at 10 AM on Monday.

I agree, I know climbers who have a decent amount of experience and have fallen off that layback.

Liked to get in the alpine somewhere near Bellingham. Mabey Baker. Could leave tonight or just do a day trip tomorrow. Reply or email me at farrnr@hotmail.com

Just was up there yesterday. The road is indeed washed out. However, Thursday at midnight when we reached the trail for the approach to the Nesakwatch Spires a couple were coming down and they had made it past the washout. How they did it amazes me, I must have spent 20 minutes just looking at their tracks rocking over the massive washout. So if your bold (crazy) and have a jeep I would say rock it and you could most likely get past the washout, or just bring your bikes. Hats off to whoever we ran into the other night. PS the Enchainment of the spires and Rexford rocks.

I've heard that there is a road washed out for the slesse approach, which is near the nesakwatch spires approach. doest that affect the approach to the spires. thanks in advance.

i think that oyster dome, technically is in the state park??? but considering the approach, you could probably just drive to mt. erie and still get more climbing in.

I think that car-to-car on this route is very doable. assuming that you have an idea of where your going and can simul-climb basically all of the pitches other than the great gendarme. just leave really early and hit the glacier at first light.

I was thinking of heading up on one of those routes with a buddy thurs, fri, or saturday. what is your experience level like. looking at the weather report, it doesn't look all that great for this weekend. fri, or sat might be good though. i'm sure really gung ho to get one something out here, seeing that you flew out from ??? i'm getting on something alpine this weekend, i just need to be back sat night for a wall i'm doing on sunday. let me know if your interested in heading up to baker or something else. nate

So when y'all thread through the chains, do you mean that you just pass the rope through the chains i.e. if one link were to break your rope would not be connected to anything? Personally I have and will always thread through two of the chain links and then lower. I read a story somewhere of guys who just threaded through (over) the chains, a link broke and they fell into space.

I've seen plenty off and climbed on a bunch of boulders up in the alpine. Unless you have a specific area your going to which you know has some good bouldering, I wouldn't bother with your pad. Although, I've seen some pretty small pads that are about half the size of a normal crash pad which might be worth it if you don't mind the baggage. One area in particular that I though had some promise for bouldering was Glacier Basin? below East Wilman's Spire, above Monte Cristo.

I have to say that movie is the most f'ed up thing I've ever watched in my life. I still wake up in cold sweats...

Tex, I think that we only placed a single nut, so we could have easily gone with out them. There is bueacoup fixed gear in all of the tricky sections so you can just clip and go.

I took a look at Dru's post of a couple weeks ago but am wondering if anybody knows whether the route is dry enough to be climbed "easily." Also I've heard that at times the pocket glacier can be nearly impossible to cross? Thanks.

Climb: Half Dome-Regular Northwest Face Date of Climb: 6/13/2004 Trip Report: After spying an article on climbing Half Dome in a day from an old climbing magazine, Erica and myself decided to give it a go the week before she started work with the concessionaire in the valley. This would the first big wall either of us had done and really the first multi-pitch route with aid climbing. We started aiding about a month ago and had done some long routes together in Squamish simply to get our transitions dialed and make sure we had the stamina for the climb. The Regular Route doesn’t have that much aid climbing on it, I think there are five or six pitches total where we used our aiders. Both of us are confident on 5.9 trad which is the highest grade required by the route so we figured that as long as the aiding and pendulums didn’t slow us down that much we had a decent shot at finishing in one very, very long day. Day 1 We spent most of the morning in Curry Village organizing for the trip and storing all of our extra food in the bear boxes. We started hiking around mid-day on the John Muir Trail toward the route. This was our first trip to the Valley and we were both shocked at the 1000+ people we saw on the trail. We got into camp in the early evening and found two parties lined up for the route the following morning. One party was a guy named Todd Johnson? and his partner who were going to do a Half Dome-El Capitan linkup. They decided that they were going to leave at 5h30 and another party from Colorado was planning to leave right after them. We had wanted to start climbing 4h30 but new we would have to be just at a belay station by 5h30 so that we didn’t screw up their bid on the link-up. So we decided if we got an early enough start we would be the first party out and if not we would follow the group from Colorado. Also, we set up a line on the first pitch to save us a good chunk of an hour the following day. Day 2 We woke up at 4h and it was still pitch black, we knew that didn’t want to climb in the pitch dark, besides that fact that we were still tired. So we decided to start up after the group from Colorado. The group from Colorado took a solid half an hour to get ready to jug at the base. Furthermore the slower of the two guys was short-dicking the rope when he jugged which meant it took him nearly as long to follow as it did his partner to lead a pitch. Finally, just before 7h we started up the ropes. It was much later than we had wanted it to be and should have reevaluated our plans for doing the climb in the day right then and there. However, our inexperience on bigwalls kept us believing that we could just dance up the thing. I lead the first six pitches, which comprises free climbing mostly 5.8-5.9 terrain with a small section of French-freeing where it is hard 5.10. Erica took the pitches leading from the top of 6 all the way to the beginning of the chimneys. We made decent time on these pitches especially since a couple of them have large sections of 4th class traversing. The final pitch before the chimneys, you have the choice of climbing either a 5.9 squeeze or a think 5.11 dihedral. Most people choose the dihedral, as did we. This was the first true aid pitch and it became quickly apparent that we needed more practice on aid. It took Erica nearly two hours to lead this pitch. By now it was late afternoon and we knew that we couldn’t finish in a day unless we climbed the remaining pitches to the bivouac ledge in just a few hours. To make matters worse a man-eating flake snagged our rope as we were doing our changeover and it took quite a while to free it. The chimney section on this route is amazing and went fairly quickly considering that you can link some pitches together. The protection is sparse, especially toward the top when you move out into this 5.7 airy chimney. On many pitches we had to wait 10 or 15 minutes for the party in front of us to go before we could start a pitch and by the time we reached the double crack below the bivouac ledge we were climbing in headlamps. This was suppose to be Erica’s pitch but we were both worked and I was already on the sharp end so I took it. I started up the wrong crack initially which caused me to traverse and back clean so that Erica could follow it easily. In the process of doing so I unknowing caused a big loop of slack in the rope so when I went to rest on the rope I had a healthy fall 1500 feet up in the pitch black. Finally we reached the bivouac ledge around 11h, built the mother of all anchors and tied off just 12 slopping inches from a long, long way down. We of course hadn’t brought much for warmth just a 100-weight fleece each and I only had sandals for the hike off so I shoved my feet into the backpack and shivered until morning. Worse than that we had only brought one gallon of water for the climb and already were suffering from dehydration. Day 3 Finally the sun came up; neither of us had gotten more than an hour or so of sleep. The party from Colorado started up somewhere before 7h and we followed directly after them. We were just six pitches from the top. Three of these pitches were straightforward aid climbing while the other three were free climbing pitches. Erica took the first three. We hopped to finish by noon at the latest. But she had quite a bit of trouble with the aiding and took five hours to lead three pitches. By now we were completely out of water and just fried and could hear all of the tourons up on the visor taking pictures. But we were just a few pitches from the top so that gave us the juice to keep going. The Thank God Ledge pitch went smoothly and is definitely one of my most memorable pitches ever. After this there was a large pendulum where we had to swing out to a small crack, put a cam-hook in it and then aid off of it to a bolt ladder. Finally in the early afternoon we reached the top, pretty well wasted. The hike back down to our tent was only a couple miles, which was actually fairly difficult considering we had only had two quarts of water in the past two days. When we got down to camp we pounded a ton of water, ate our reward, a fresh mango and fell asleep at about 6h. Day 4 All we had to do today was hike out, but the past few days had drained us so much that we felt like throwing up almost the whole way out. I think we may have been low on salt because no matter how much water we drank, it wouldn’t refresh us. Right about lunchtime we reached Curry Village, promptly dropped our packs and ordered a huge pizza and pitcher of lemonade. Thoughts We shouldn’t had gone for a one day ascent on our first big-wall ever, that is a pretty hard feat to pull off by any means. Also since we were unsure of a one-day ascent we should have taken more water and a sleeping bag. Although as Chouinard says, if you bring bivy gear then you will bivy. All in all it was a great climb and we gained more experience in a few days than we would have in a year of cragging and short routes. To do it in a day you need to be able to free climb quickly, which wasn’t a problem, but more importantly aid quickly and do the pendulums quickly. These last two were definite issues for us that more than the late start and slow party ahead cost us the day ascent. Gear Notes: Cams 2 x (.33-3), nuts, aiders, camhook, lots of rapid runners, 1 pair of jumars. Approach Notes: Approached via the longer though safer John Muir trail, it is cake though there are a few pesky bears along it.

i would but i got finals today and then its off to yos' for a week!!

Ya I think that the standard route would have been fine. Snow wasn't so bad that it would be torture to boot up the thing, but definately not ideal for a steep climb. The headwall looked pretty prime to me, although I haven't been on it before. From the glacier we could see a couple straight forward lines just to the left of the roman nose.

Climb: Mt. Baker-Coleman Headwall Attempt Date of Climb: 6/9/2004 Trip Report: My buddy John and I rocked out of B'ham at 1 am this morning intent on doing the Coleman Headwall. We saw quite a few flashes of lightning on our way up to the trailhead but figured we were already awake so we might as well go. We reached the glacier at first light, roped up and headed toward the left of the Roman Nose. Right off the bat we noticed that there were many slots ready to open. The snow hadn't frozen up very much at all. My buddy John plunged through several crevasses up to his chest. I plunged through only once. The weather looked pretty iffy and about halfway across the glacier it started to rain pretty hard for about five minutes. We debated about if we should continue or not for about five minutes when a massive avalanche ripped down just to the left of the headwall. This was followed by another big slide toward the black buttes and several claps of thunder from some very ominous clouds. After this we decided today wasn't the day for the headwall. Gear Notes: None - Brought 4 pickets, 4 screws, 2 tools, standard glacier gear Approach Notes: Trail is half/half snow covered. First major stream crossing is tricky. If you are paying attention you can cut to the right long before you reach the standard climbers trail and save some time.

Looking for somebody to share the cost of gas with me and a friend who are going to yosemite. we plan on leaving the morning of 6/11 and getting there hopefully sometime late that night. We plan on staying about 1 1/2 weeks.

You could try calling Bellingham Mountain Rescue Council 676-6681

Man, after just a few days or so of climbing at J-tree my hands were shot. He must have only had bloody stumps.

What about princely ambitions (10a??). it's pretty slabby with flake moves along the bottom but up toward the top there some crack. also the second pitch has got some good crack climbing on it. what is that 11a on the right crack parallel to princely ambitions pitch 2?. Oh ya, second pitch of city park is pretty killer too.

You should check out all the climbs in the shady hollow area, Allen Henshaw pre-memorial route 5.6 is fun, the slab on the left, finger licking good 10b? is also fun. If your gonna do zig zag, do the spring board variation 5.7. On the last pitch walk out on the dead snag do one commiting move off the tree and clip a crappy old piton, very fun.