Gadow

I was up last Sunday, helping to retrieve gear from the two "old guys" that got rescued in the above TR. we went in along the Milk Creek avy debris, and it wasn't too bad. It's melting quickly, and provided decent footing. Once into the area at the base of the West Ridge route, my partners went up to retrieve cached gear from last weekend, and I ran up the SW ridge a ways. Fairly steep snow, but not a bad way to gain the ridge for an ascent to the top from there. It's sure beautiful up there! I did see three skiers drop in from the summit, and the lines to the N. of Milk Creek looked nice. No further evidence of slides since the fiasco of the prior week.

As one of the other parties that did the "free beer variation" on Friday, I wanted to weigh in here, too. My Partner and I starteed up Friday 4/9 at 3:30am, and saw the other party's registration in the lodge for Leuthold. We made pretty good time, and were in postion at the Reid just around first light. We followed the freeway across /around the berg, and up into the hourglass, where we noticed some fresh tracks amongst the river of snow and ice coming through the funnel. Near the crest (which we should have gone up and over to our right), a gully leading left, with a short stretch of rock in the center showed tracks, and we began up this way, but quickly backed off as it cliffed out into Yocum after a short distance. We downclimbed, and headed up to the next narrow gully on our right, but found it, too, leading to no-man's land up the ridge. Finally, we traversed (it WAS a little steeper than 45, BTW!), and regained the left side of the reid headwall and the Leuthold route. I was carrying my snowboard for a S. Side descent, and the downclimbing was unpleasant, to say the least. I suppose we ignored the route description at summitpost-http://www.summitpost.com/show/route_link.pl/route_id/516/object_id/3 but we did follow some tracks up there which seem to disappear after we regained the route. The attached picture shows my partner, just before heading off to the "Free Beer Variation". My question is, did the folks that ended up rescued off of Yocum Saturday follow OUR tracks up there, or did they start on yocum proper? I presume the exit gulley off of Yocum, and the dead end we turned around at are one and the same, no? I'm just thankful we didn't get suckered into the ridge like the rest of the mob, or at the bottom of the Reid! All in all, though - A great climb, a beautiful summit day, and a wonderful snowboard descent thru Old Chute, and the W. Crater Rim! Hope the Yocum folks are doing OK.

Just a heads up on this Backes slideshow thread - The Cascades Mountaineers will be hosting Scott's slide show and speaking engagement in Bend June 10th, 7:30 Summit High School. The Central Oregon mountain community has really rallied for this event Check out www.cascadesmountaineers.org for more info on the HUGE Raffle along with a Rockin' Scott Backes Slide Show in Bend!