Alpinfox

I don't like "awful-widths". They make me feel like a hippo tryin' to do ballet. That's why I "let" you lead the OW pitch on NW corner of NEWS. We both had sleeping bags, and I had a pad, but neither of us had bivy sacks. I think if we had sacks or a tent we probably would have spent another night at the lake and hiked out in the morning. I'm pretty impressed that folks have done that route in a day from the car. I think I COULD do it, especially now that I know the route, but I don't think I would ever WANT to do it that way.

While I have been pretty happy with mine, I think I'd probably get something else if I were buying a digi today. Pros: -Small/lightweight -Metal casing = tough -3X Optical zoom -Weather resistant -Great battery life -Pretty inexpensive now Cons: -Lens cover door switch gets gummed up (this happened to a friend's camera too, not just mine). -Lower image quality than competitors (Canon optics are better I think) -No audio recording -Only 16 seconds of video recording

Will, Great TR and pictures! It was fun climbing with you; I hope you get to move back to the PNW very soon and we can climb together again. Will preparing for the traverse on Outer Space: Will strolling along "Another Roadside Attraction": This is a really fun route! Bring a handful of TCUs. Cheers!

While I have never seen the rope become unclipped, I have seen the gate of one of the draws (rope side) get pressed against the rock or the other draw and come open. For this reason, I prefer locking biners (at least on the rope end) and I have a pair of locking draws I use for setting up TRs on bolt anchors. I usually only bring them along on sport climbing outings. I sometimes just use regular draws though. I used to do the magic X thing with a double-length sling, but prefer the redundancy of having two independent slings. I don't think it's necessary to worry about the equilization of two good bolts, especially in a top-roping situation. Knowing lots of different ways to set up anchors is good, especially on multipitch routes when you might have used your one and only cordelette (or whatever your prefered anchor setup is) in the previous anchor and need to use something else for your next anchor. Will, the overhand knots isolating each piece to prevent excessive extension of the anchor in the event of a failure of one piece of the anchor is a cool idea. I've never done that, but I think I will in the future, especially with those maybe-not-quite-bombproof gear anchors that one sometimes has to build in the alpine. Glad to see you are getting out on the rock EternalX! Cheers!

Brilliant! Anyone else have any ideas of what to do with one rock shoe? Grow weed in it? Use it as a snaffle house? Bronze it and hang it from my rearview mirror?

This is very sad news. I generally do not comment on these memorial threads, but in this case I had actually conversed with Frank (online) a few times. I spent some time this morning looking through his old posts and was struck by his eloquence and his friendly, helpful contributions to the board. Very sad. He will be missed. When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering; what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. ~Mary Oliver

To keep gravel and dirt out of your shoes. Plus, it's part of the uniform. Duh. While I appreciate the concept, I don't wear gaiters except in snow because they make my feet and lower legs sweat like Michael_Layton in a confessional and I'd rather my socks get a bit dirty than soaking wet.

So I really don't want this shoe. I hope it's owner reads this sometime soon! Does anyone know if the sign I put up at the SCW trailhead is still there? Does the gear store in Leavenworth have a bulletin board for this sort of thing?

We were pretty sure we were at the base of his route and all we saw was a ramp of granola and an uninspiring looking face. We never saw any bolts. Our motivation was further sapped by the heat and hordes of mosquitos at the base of the route. We hiked down and went swimming in Mazama instead of climbing that day. Another route that sucked was the N. Ridge of Baker. It didn't really suck, it was just a LOT shorter than I thought it was gonna be. One and a half pitches of ice and we were at the top. Guess I should have read the route description more carefully.

While I'm certainly glad that I wasn't leading it, I found the off-width to definitely NOT be the crux of the route. I don't like OWs and was pretty scared of a "100ft long 5-6inch 5.9 crack", but it wasn't that bad for me to second. Had I been leading, I would have french-freed it and I would have cried like a baby without the #5 cam. A "hex", what's that? We were probably off route at the time, but Nick led a really nice clean dihedral that ended at a roof. Pulling that roof was harder than 5.9 (at least mid-ten I'd say) and was the technical crux of the route for us. I have a terrible memory for climbs, but I think this dihedral started about ~120' above the OW? Nick would be able to give more detail. The real crux was the overall length of the route (2000'), route finding, the exposure of the fin, and keeping our heads together while watching the storm clouds build and roll in from the SW.

Matt, I wasn't trying to be snipey, I'm sorry if you interpreted that as my tone. I know you were asking a sincere question and I gave you a sincere answer: I really don't know how most people do Backbone Ridge. I don't think it gets climbed very often. I've looked around here on cc.com and only found a couple of trip reports, and from those it sounds like they went roughly the same way Nick and I did, at least on the lower section. Route finding on this route was quite a challenge and burned a lot of time. When you did it were you following CAG directions?

NF rib of Triumph was sucky? That wouldn't have been an FA anyway. That thing looks SCHWEEET! I will say that I thought NE ridge of Triumph was going to be a lot better climbing than it was. Oh well. Good views anyway. I tried to do a second ascent of one of Off_White's routes on Silver Star with BobbyPeru and it was sucky. My only FAs have been sport routes and one ice route...

Thanks Michael, Nick and I were looking over at CBR and discussing your adventures over there. Congrats on that! Matt, You know a lot better than I what the "standard" way to do Backbone is these days. I really didn't know much about the route and hadn't read much about it until Skyclimb sent me a PM and said he wanted to go do it. He and I pretty much just tried to follow the average of the Nelson and Kearney descriptions. Neither seemed perfect, but we made it to the top, so they did their job. BTW: If you were in one of the two groups of two climbing Serpentine Arete the same day we climbed Backbone (Wednesday 9/8/04), send me a PM. I've got some pictures of you guys and I'd like to know that you made it off OK since we didn't see any fresh descent footprints.

Thanks guys. That was very informative.

I managed to avoid death one more time despite violating Mountainear protocol. Why didn't you show up cephalopod? You back in WA yet? No extra peeps showed up. But AlpineDave, Micah, and I had a good time. Rainy Day Women is reeeeeel fun (on top rope).

OK, I'm heading out to X32 in about 30 minutes with a couple peeps. More is welcome. I think we are going to hit up "Goddess" and "Mambo Jambo" in the Brownstone/AWOL area and then go up to WWI wall area. More peeps is welcome, so just show up. I usually have an orange baseball cap attached to my noggin.

Climb: Dragontail-Backbone Ridge with Fin Date of Climb: 9/8/2004 Trip Report: Skyclimb and I made quick work of the hike up to Colchuck Lake on Tuesday afternoon. His 8-mile/4000' hikes to his job in MRNP have made the youngster lean and fit and pretty hard for an "old-timer" such as myself to keep up with. We arrived at the lake expecting to see a whole gang of cc.comers since it was Tuesday night and I had suggested Colchuck Lake as this week's pub club location. To our surprise, there was only one guy laying out in his sleeping bag surrounded by about a dozen MSR fuel bottles and he didn't seem amused when we yelled "HORSECOCK!" at him, so I guess he wasn't a cc.comer. Worst turnout for pub club ever! Since no one showed up for the , we decided to climb Backbone Ridge the next day to salvage something from this wasted trip to the lake. We hiked to the far end of the lake and nestled into a nice sandy spot between some RV size boulders. It seemed like a nice spot, and we ate dinner and enjoyed the evening light show on the north faces of Colchuck and Dragontail. We tried to scope out our route as best we could, but ended up saying, "we'll figure it out when we get up there". North Face of Dragontail: Our approximate route: We spent the night battling off an army of snaffles that seemed intent on running across our faces and sniffing our ears. Fortunately for me they seemed to like Skyclimb better, so I mostly got to laugh at all his spastic kicking and cursing. We woke up at 4am and decided it was too damn early, so we laid around and discussed cosmology and big bang theories until after 5am. Skyclimb then broke the stove, so there would be no warm breakfast for us. We left our bivy shortly after 6am and had some wonderful sunrise views on our approach up the talus field: The approach scrambles and traversing went quickly and easily, and before you could say, "Dude, you're leading the off-width" we were at the base of the "crux" of the route. Fortunately, a kind friend had loaned the "big green off-width machine" to me, so Skyclimb would not have to solo the wideness: *note the bloody hand from bludgening several snaffles to death during the previous night. Skyclimb was masterful on the offwidth. "The key is to bury your leg up to yer nutz and cam your thigh into the crack. It's like you're makin' sweet sweet love to the granite". Yeah, whatever dude: Random nice view of Colchuck and the glacier (name?): After the awful-width, some really nice face climbing took us to the crest of the ridge: A bit of simulclimbing later and we were at the base of The Fin at noon. Certainly not superfast, but we thought we were doing OK. "Man, only three or four pitches and we're off this mother!" This is where things started to get more difficult. Row after row of clouds were forming off to the southwest and blowing across the summit a little faster than I would have liked. Nothing too serious, but definitely something to keep an eye on. Skyclimb led out right on the prominent ledge system along the base of the fin: I then climbed a shallow finger crack to the top of a large block sticking out of the amazingly smooth slabiness of face of The Fin. This block is visible in the previous picture directly above Skyclimb's head. From there, Skyclimb led up an arching-to-the-left layback flake back to the lefthand side of The Fin. Skyclimb starting that pitch: I then climbed a finger crack around a roof/bulge and back onto the face of The Fin following a wildly exposed traversing crack. About 30m out, I stopped at the base of a clean wide crack that led back up to the crest of The Fin. Nick led up this (we took the "Big Green Machine" out of the pack for this) and gave out a blood-curdling scream of joy upon reaching a thank-god hold after running it out past some wideness that was even too wide for the #5. I thought a stowaway snaffle in his shorts had suddenly come to life and bitten him or something. Freaky. I joined him on the crest of The Fin and then led another airy foot traverse with no hands while placing gear at my ankles. This was the scariest "low 5th" climbing I have ever done. Finally I reached a notch in the crest of The Fin and stepped around the corner to a ledge system. WHEW! We then dropped down into the incredibly loose and shitty gully that makes up the top of the Triple Couliors route. I pulled a nice 50lb chunk of granite embedded in sand down onto my shin just for fun at this point. I'm glad my foot wasn't firmly planted or it probably would have broken my leg. As we reached the top of the gully, the rain started. Skyclimb pointed at the final scramble to the summit and said, "Dude?". With rain dripping off my helmet, I replied, "fuck that, let's get out of here". Skyclimb, ever the optomist and cowboy until the end said, "DUDE!". How could I argue? We sprinted to the summit and snapped a couple of pictures: The rain, cold wind, the lateness of the day (6pm) and our lack of any rain shells or bivy gear gave us a great deal of motivation to get the hell out of dodge, so we ran down the descent trail, quickly strapped on our crampons and traversed across the grey ice of the ??? glacier back to terra firma. Tennis shoes and aluminum crampons were not the ideal footwear for this section, but they worked. We descended Asgard pass, only getting off-route 7 or 8 times (stay skier's right!), picked up our stuff at Colchuck Lake, and arrived at the car after 18 hours on the go. "Just another day in the hillz" Gear Notes: single set nutz, cams to BD #2, two BD #3.5, and a "big green offwidth machine" aka BD #5, single 60m rope, crampons, no axes, no bivy sax or tent, no rain gear. Approach Notes: EZ

Yup. I have a 1L platy that is dedicated to red wine. Those fucks at Bumbershoot tried to take it from me, but I gave them "what for".

Cool! Can you really see Stuart from Icicle ridge?

I just got a rejection email today. Thanks for rubbing it in Dave. Michael, Those climbs look good, but I'm interested in something more local (easy day trip) for tomorrow. I've done a lot of driving recently. I've gotten a few PMs (amazing!), and to clarify: I'm interested in rolling out of Seattle around 11 or noon and climbing until 6 or 7. Anything from 5.8 to 5.11- would be fine with me. Cheers ya'll.

I think I'd like to do some craggin' tomorrow. Index or X32, your choice. I'm a little sore from my adventures of the last two days, so keepin' it mellow with some beginner-friendly climbs would be fine.

Mikey, Let me know if you wanna hit Index tomorrow. Holland/Arms? Where are you now anyway? Bham?

Did you file a police report? I know, you say, "WHY BOTHER"? But, I had a bunch of shit stolen from the Apron lot and the crooks kept the obviously valuable stuff (my girlfriend-at-the-time's credit cards, cash, etc) but threw the backpacks and climbing gear on the side of the road somewhere. Three days after getting back to Seattle, I got a call from the RCMP. "We found your stuff, give us your address and we'll pay for the postage to mail it to you"

Critters Buggin' was the place to be during the Pixies.