Alpinfox

Beautiful picture Wayne+Beau!

Sweet. Nice work! I can hear a bunch of salivary glands at work right now.

Wow beautiful pics. Looks like fantastic weather.

5.12Dreamer and his partner AB (don't know if he has a cc.com name) and another party of two attempted the climb yesterday. They apparently were able to walk across Jolanda Lake about 0.75mi downstream of where we crossed. Probably safer than our crossing, but added some hiking time. 5.12Dreamer and AB made it almost as high up as we did, but they set a saner turnaround time and with the help of our V-thread trail were able to get back across the river just as it got dark.

Trip: Tumwater Canyon - Drury Falls Date: 12/11/2009 Trip Report: I've dreamed of climbing Drury Falls since I first read about it in Nelson's Selected Climbs book after first moving to WA state about 9 years ago. It seemed the epitome of badassedness and I didn't think I would ever be up to the challenge. Nelson: "Drury Falls is a route for competent ice climbers only" Sez me: "Am I one of those?" Martin/Krawarik: "Do not underestimate any part of the approach, climb, or descent" Nelson: "Beware of avalanche danger; the drainage is a giant funnel". Sez me: "Oh shit" So for years I've looked up at Drury while driving down Hwy 2 on my way to more modest objectives. I've gained a bit of ice climbing experience over the last few years, and have gained some confidence. So then I saw this picture: Sez me: "Well, at least there won't be any avy danger" (Big thanks to IceFrog for posting that picture!) So the plan was born. I started calling and emailing and got AlpineDave and Jeff H. on board for a one-day attempt. We left Seattle at 4am on Friday morning with a kayak, got to the pullout about 300m upstream of the Falls Creek drainage around 6:30am. The river crossing was very intimidating with class 1/2 rapids both upstream and downstream of our launching point as well as having a thick ice shelf on both sides of the river. Dave went across first trailing a rope tied to the stern. He landed on a small island just downstream from the launching point. It's not obvious in the pictures, but the water was moving at a pretty brisk clip. We used the trailing rope to pull the kayak back and then Jeff went across. This was Jeff's first time ever kayaking, so he has some huge balls. What a time and place for your intro to kayaking! We all got out to the island, and then repeated the one-at-a-time ferry operation to get to the other side about 60m downstream of our launching point. "OK, how are we gonna get back?" "Uh... We'll figure that out later. LET'S GO ICE CLIMBING!" In normal years, apparently the approach is filled in with snow and avy debris. Instead, we encountered lots and lots of WI1 and WI2 steps which we soloed. Some fun little stuff, but it was time consuming. Approach steps: We arrived at the base of the real ice around 10am. Dave led the first pitch (WI3): Jeff led the second pitch (WI3) and stopped just below the top: I led the very end of that pitch and moved the belay up easy ground to the base of the next real pitch. Dave led this one which, with a bit of simul-climbing by Jeff and me, took us to the base of the final headwall: I tried to lead the first pitch of the headwall, but chickened out and gave it to Dave. I've been doing a lot of couch potatoing and internet browsing, while Dave seems to spend his spare time swinging 50' kettlebels around, climbing Patagonian spires, and eating raw yeti meat. Clearly Dave was the better man for the job. Dave leading our last pitch (pitch one of three of the final headwall): We decided to turn around at the end of this pitch at about 3pm. We rapped off one V-thread at our highpoint and then were able to rap from trees to the climber's left of the route to the base of the real climbing. This is when it got dark. We decided it wasn't going to get any darker, so we might as well take our time, be safe, and rap all the little WI1/2 steps in the approach gully. I can't count how many little raps we did, but I'd guess maybe 8? Fortunately Dave is a world-class speedy V-threader, so this didn't take as long as one might think. Huge props to Dave for setting up every single V-thread on the descent. On weary legs and with waning energy we arrived back at the river. "OK, now for the crux!" I was extremely intimidated about this crossing. It was completely dark. We were tired. The stakes were high. Drowning? Hypothermia? Losing the boat and getting stranded on the other side of the river? Should we walk down to Jolanda Lake carrying all our gear and a kayak? Should we try to build a fire and shiver-bivy all night? Dave cowboyed up and gave it a go. We put an ice screw into the frozen river and used that as a directional to belay him across. Jeff and I watched Dave's headlamp bob across the river and hoped for the best. Some flailing and some scraping noises and then suddenly the headlamp rose up out of the river! Dave was across! Jeff went next. On his first attempt he got to the far shore, but was expecting Dave to help haul him out. Dave was expecting Jeff to get out by himself, so that attempt failed. I hauled Jeff back across using the belay rope keeping him from disappearing towards Leavenworth in the dark, icy water. After refining our plan for the second attempt, Jeff made it across flawlessly. I hauled the kayak back across, now with a rope tied to the bow, removed the ice screw anchor from my side, jumped in the boat and shot out into the river broadside to the current due to the way the rope was now pulling me. That initial entry provided an exhilarating few moments, but then I floated gently across being guided by Dave's belay on the far side. With three whoops for joy/relief after my successful crossing, we were back safe and sound at the truck around 10:30pm. What an adventure. Big thanks to Dave for leading the hard pitch and doing all the V-threads. Big props to Jeff for his coolness under pressure. Gear Notes: Kayak. Two half ropes for kayak work. Two different half ropes for climbing. Dave's super speedy V-thread skillz. Lots of V-thread cord. Approach Notes: River crossing is sketchy.

Sad news. Link to Mt. Hood weather telemetry edit: thanks to mods for combining all the mt. hood threads into one.

Beautiful paintings of some very familiar places. [img:left]http://www.seanmccabestudio.com/images/SM1010M4.jpg[/img] [img:right]http://lh5.ggpht.com/_jzDZg8txguQ/SLcvlcZ8hkI/AAAAAAAAAFE/go2bIllg9Ro/s576/Bugaboo2008%20001.jpg[/img]

Thanks for all the contributions folks. Piston's pic with the larches is pretty sweet, but Dennyt's picture had the clearest view of the west ridge, so it looks like that is the one Fred is going to go with. DennyT, I sent you a PM. Please email me with your contact info.

Fred Beckey is looking for a high resolution and good quality picture of Stuart from Ingalls Lake/Peak. Late afternoon or evening light will probably be best. He wants to use the picture in a book, so you would get a photo credit. Post your best shots here and I will point him to this thread. If you would prefer to email them, you can send them to me and I will forward them to Fred. alpinfox at yahoo dot com

FREE SKI/SNOWBOARD WAX AT REI 10/19-11/15

6:02am on 10/23? 6.02 X 10^23 OMG!

I'm disappointed that all the grassroots/community effort that went into this poster is now going to be funneled into a for-proft NPS concessionaire rather than the bro-deal/Index fundraiser this was originally shaping up to be. Bro-deal printing: Lower out-of-pocket cost for people that want the poster, some substantial chunk of $$ goes to good cause (saving Index), community warm fuzzy feelings. Jo-blow printing in Ohio: Expensive poster, no money for Index, all the people who contributed suggestions/labels/etc in this thread get a slap in the face. Steph, I hope you will decide to not go the concessionaire route. I understand it would be more convenient one-stop-shopping for you, but it would kinda ruin the spirit of the thing. I am willing to help with the project if it will help keep it a community project.

Super awesome Olyclimber! You're my hero!

In Burdo's "North Cascades Rock" book (1996 spiral bound) he has a picture labeled on p.89 that seems to identify your "Whitehorse Rock" as "Black Horse Point". Page 90 of the same book shows a topo of two Doorish/Cudcowicz routes on the East Face of BHP called "Archer" (4p, 5.8) and "Pampas Drifter" (8p, 5.8). I'm a little confused about the locations of these routes relative to yours, but if you can get a hold of a copy of Burdo's NCR book, it would be worth a look. If you are in North Seattle, you are welcome to come take a look at mine. The crude map in Red Fred 2nd edition p.292 does show a "White Horse Rock" in the approximate proper location.

Wow

Great video! Dropkick Murphys muzak is great accompaniment.

he hehe he hehehe

purty

Great trip report on a seldom-climbed route! Would have been a little better without all the liberal-earth-hugging-global-warming propaganda BS. Everybody knows God made the earth just the way it is and its not going to change.

Kaleetan is easily ascended/descended ropeless. The Tooth can be descended ropeless via the North ridge, but requires some very exposed 4th class down-climbing (100% fatal if you fall). The one and only time I descended from Chair, I used a rope for (I think) two raps. I don't know if there is a good ropeless option.

AHA! Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense. Not sure why I didn't think of that. Good to know it isn't due to laziness/carelessness on the part of the routesetters. Would some teflon tape or some other solution help prevent rotation?

There are several horizontal hangers on Heaven's Gate and Golden Road at Index. I've seen quite a few horizontal hangers at X38 too. What is up with that? It seems that a horizontally oriented hanger allows the quickdraw to flip back and forth making a backclipped-rope-becoming-unclipped-after-fall scenario possible. Probably also increases the likelihood of a quickdraw spinning around, getting gate caught on bolt head, and unclipping itself from the hanger. I'm going to start carrying a wrench with me to re-orient these things, but was wondering if any of the route developers or other folks had any insight or comments on this issue.

So did Jim chase him down and beat his ass with a 9.2oz titanium ice axe or what?

Gator must be faster than you.

Hi, Unfortunately Fred is already down there.