ivan

i was certainly shit-hammered for that last slog to the top - the man on the sharp end was determined to do it all at top speed though, so as a result i felt kinda like the dog in "national lampon's vacation" - tied to the bumper of a car running at 30 mph!

fixed pictures. what the hell ever happened to the "preview" option when writing TRs?

Climb: Mt. Rainier-Ptarmigan Ridge Date of Climb: 5/28/2005 Trip Report: this weekend mtnhigh (ornery pete), oleg (the rascal of russia) and meself sojurned up the fantastic ice-clad slopes of ptarmigan ridge and descended the emmons serendipity favors the foolish - namely meself. i pm'ed a dozen people last week trying to find some sorta mischeif to get into over memorial day and got lucky - pete and oleg already had plans to climb rainier and were interested in a third. it seemed that liberty ridge would likely be a zoo, so we eschewed it in favor of the more mysterious ptarmigan. excellent call. the approach picture says it all. beats the muir snowfield all to hell. sat around white river campground for a few hours on friday waiting for pete n' oleg to show - made small-talk w/ an illinios boy who'd been stuck there for days, wanting to solo liberty ridge but not having the cajones to solo the carbon - he was waiting to find a team he could latch onto for the glacier crossing. setting up the car shuttle was a bitch, but ultimately very cool - that feeling of traversing such a cosmic sized titty was rather satisfying. 'course, the trade-off was getting only 2 hours of sleep at the mowich lake trailhead prior to the kickoff. we wanted to reach the bivi before the forecasted heat fried us, so we departed the trailhead round 230 am. spray park is fucking fantastic. very cool place - skiiers paradise, i must imagine. soothing glades and magnicent vistas of the austere, "fuck-you-go-away" face of the mountain. the approach up the ridge was made slightly easier by faint footprints left by an earlier party. one of the reasons this approach rocks lies in the continous soul-searching that's the inevitable response of staring strait into the mouth of the beast - the route is right there in your face the whole time - questions w/ no answers. we bivied right at 10k. watching a pair working their way up the mid portion of the route, looking like they weren't enjoying life much in the bright, bright heat of late morning. the going looked very slow and we could only surmise that they were going to bivi mid-route (the beckey guide mentioned a spot on the right variation) we reached the bivy by 1030 - it was already hot as hell. luckily there was enough exposed rock on the ridge to set up a camp off the snow. we had no tents and did a thoroughly mediocre job of fashioning shade with a tarp, so mostly we just sat around melting snow, bullshitting and attempting to nap while sweating profusely. i was feeling the altitude and had developed an annoying cough on the approach. we were all asleep by dark, though the sleep was poor - for some reason the ominious ice-cliffs become much more active in the dark, and frequent fear-of-god thunderslides combined w/ a paranoid conviction that the rock retaining wall i had fashioned was going to fail and send me hurtling down onto the mowich in my sleeping bag so as to make slumber uneasy at best. up and off at 3 am. we traversed across the glacier, mostly following the tracks laid down the day before - still the snow was very soft and slow going - we could only imagine the misery of having broken that trail in the daylight the day before - MADMEN! crossed the 'shrund and started trending back to the left. we did all this early part roped, but placing no pro as the angle is easy and the snow very secure. looking down the lower portion of the route traversing left across the spur towards the snow apron below the top rock cliff the money shot - ptarmigan ridge at dawn - like the quick flick of a snake-tongue, a lightening fast moment of fear as the thought of those clouds rising and choking the entire mountain, but the stayed low all day and the paranois was overwhelmed by the sense of commitment and pleasure of intruding in an alien land. just below the huge rock cliff that begins aroudn 11.5k and tops around 12.5k, we traversed sharp left, then strait up through 50 degree snow to the base of the cliff (here the routes splits and our mysterious friend's tracks headed off right) - we went flat left to an ice gully, leading up 50-60 degree ice/snow to the base of the upper ice-cliffs. turning the corner and heading up to the ice gully your friend and humble narrator following pete up the iciest portion of the route, just below the upper cliff looking down on the traverse under the ice cliff the illustrious ivan on a fun ice-bouldering move while approaching the weakness in the upper ice-cliff (actually involved some sweating and cursing while trying to retrieve my lower tool - "suxa!") aroudn 12k we reached a difficult point, requiring a biiig step over a crevasse to climb a much higher lip on the other side - oleg dispatched this one w/ style after excavating a foot of soft snow to get good sticks in the glacial ice. i shoulda led it - being 6'7" i motored right through w/ two good sticks and one big step. note the ridicilious radio antenna on my pack and the strong breeze (managed to do the whole ascent w/ a balaclava and jacket on - the heat of the previous day was gone, replaced by a strong wind that kept the body cool) from there the route becomes a monotonous soul-shattering grind up to the top of liberty cap - easy angle but soft snow, heavy pack, and altitude-induced neo-cro-magnoism (uhh, that is, i felt really stupid and tired) another money shot, very close to the topout on liberty cap (which, despite it's rather roundish name, is actually quite pointy - currently featuring a dramatic crevasse bifurcating its crown) - if pete looks grumpy and cantankerous here, that's no mistake - he and oleg spent the next hour playing tug of war w/ me as the middle-man in the rope (i'm everybody's suxa!) the descent was uneventful. we eschewed the true summit, sticking to the very well beaten trail from all the liberty-ridge-hop-heads, winding our way out across the emmons. as we descended the snow became abysmally deep. at one point it became icy and w/ crampons off i wussed a bit getting over a steep section above a thinly concealed crevasse - my burgeoning fear being that, with a large thunderhead forming to the west and frequent lightening flashes, i would fall into the crevasse and be electructed along w/ my compadres after zues had discovered our act of alpine defilement - benjamin franklin style. in the end the storm fizzle away off to the south. we entered gumby-dom and threw down on the front porch of city-hall we grubbed up, took care of certain gastro-intestinal necesseties, and headed off. the climb back up the top of the interglaicer was discouraging, and then it was one high-speed romantical burn down to the car. the lush greenery of the forrest summoned feelings of magic in me and my spirits soared - we had seen everything that day, the whole damn mountain, and emerged unscathed - i had unlimited energy and found myself fighting the urge to stop at every stream and wash my hair, gather flowers, and marvel at the recent memories )all in all, if you're still reading, a fucking fantastic voyage. a challenging route, but certainly not terribly difficult. an exotic bivy. mostly soft snow. good company. go get it. Gear Notes: 4 picketts, 4 screws, no rock pro (none needed); very light bivi gear - brought a down jacket but didn't use it. food: caffeine goo-shots rock! but how the fuck do i keep the inevitable goo dribbles from besmirching my pack/pockets ala john holmes style? Approach Notes: dirt, snow, rock

sweet, that must have been you we saw heading up the right variation 'round noon on saturday - you might have noticed us coming up the lower ridge to the bivy early saturday morning. we went left at the major rock cliff where you went right. thanks for the tracks on the lower part.

oleg, mtnhigh and i climbed ptarmigan this weekend. the snow's actually still quite deep and soft up high. we'll do a TR later today. here's the good shit for now: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/show...user=6323&=

i ask this question seriously - how many of us "experienced climbers" wear/carry ANY cotton clothing on big mountains like rainier?

it'd be a good deal more pleasant if you just waited a few weeks and satisfied the climbing itch by doing a snow/ice route now; that said, if you got this week, expect wet and snow on rock - be prepared to have to aid some shit and get a super early start or be prepared to run away if you're taking too long.

cobra commander's evil! ...oh yeah, well, he is fucking cobra commander (and kudos on the original shiny shell face, btw; the cloth rag was totally lame)

i've had mine for 5 years and been digging it, but lately i've noticed it's picking up condensation behind the face. no disatrous results just yet, but it seems unhealthy. anyone else had this problem? any clue how good suunto is with repairs? there's nothing obviously wrong w/ the watch and the battery comparment seems well sealed. condensation just shows up after i've been sweating hard for a full day or if i submerge it.

don't try to outgeek me! i named my daughter eowyn and my cat zaphod.

pretend you're samwise take a ring carry a junkie friend up the last 200 feet of the mtn. sneer at any feds who try to bother you and refer to them as "lousy orcs" or "miserable nazgul"

not that i asked, but as far my wife's concerned, it does matter if i'm climbing alone w/ a girl...perhaps she's knows me too well?

always looking for more climbing fools for dry-tool'n night - i'm sure we'll be doing more rock this summer too http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/459219/Main/428491/#Post459219

shit, reminds me to take the business end off 'fore 2night! so anyone else showing up today for the dt madness? come discover the truly cool thing about dt'ing: it don't matter if it's raining or not, it's just as easy to stay stuck!

i read the article - it said his shit dissappeared at 11k, a long way from the se fork of the kahiltna and base camp. i assume he's just a yahoo, and there's no small # of them floating 'round there this time of year.

odd guy. i wonder why he didn't cache that shit back at base camp? or better yet, just leave it back in talkeetna?

seems like one of the biggest things keeping many people from doing so laudable a thing is the monster obstacle of funding 14 crazy expensive expeditions and maintaining any semblance of a family life.

Conclusion: the wife and i went merrily to the lbj federal building in d-town vancouver y-day. while i signed in w/ the clerk, jen went to find a bathroom to take a leak, nearly running over the 80 year old judge on the way back. by the time she returned, justice had already been served. the prosecutor, looking somewhat sheepish, found me in the back bench: "linthwaite?" "yeah" "do you HAVE a pass?" "yeah" - offering it "hmmm...this was purchased after the ticket, but i guess that's good enough. you can can go." how frustrating - i get everything i want, 'cept the chance to bitch about it! well, i guess i should just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the rest of the day off from school (managed to get all my grades done!) final cost to taxpayers: $300 for 2 substitute teachers now i have to wait a whole year for my annual pass to run out before i can hop on the merry-go-round again!

your recap of me tr got the facts strait, but has far too little obscenity goddammit! what the fuck is this data-dump shit? i spend one day in court on a nw forrest pass charge, get zero spray time, and return to find my quality shit is gone! ---EDIT ---- shit, oleg must be some kinda crazed stalker! he's keeping my t.r.'s in a secret file, and was kind enought to email me That Which Was Lost But Now Is Found Again. thanks to that wily, slavic import, the universe can now be more complete w/ my original words: Climb: Mt Stuart-Stuart Glacier Gang-Bang Date of Climb: 5/7/2005 Trip Report: a plan to climb dragontail madness morphed from a plan to climb the nw face of stuart to simply climbing stuart glacier coulior. nolse and i departed the parking lot after an hour of sleep saturday morning, intent on the nw face and a bivy at the top of the creek. we managed our way up mountie creek in the total dark and reached the upper basin shortly after sun-up to find at least 3 other parties already on the mountain, 2 heading around the north ridge for points unknown, and one heading up the ice cliff. we stashed our bivy gear under a big boulder, i chugged some tasty red bull, and off we went. found the nw face to be awful stiff looking - hopefully jon'll post a damn picture to beat the meager words, but generally the first bitch (er, pitch) looked mean and thin, w/ a damned difficult escape onto the snow patches, which we couldn't confirm from far off it they even connected together well enough to make it all go. at any rate, i had no business trying to lead the first pitch, so we decided to go w/ the "uber-classic moderate" stuart glacier coulior instead (conviently just a hundred yards away). two parties of two hard already reached the west ridge notch above, so no worries of death raining down the tight gully, we proceeded up it, unroped, to the ice bulge. there i felt bad mojo at soling through the steepish bit (having been denied life insurance lately makes me feel like i'm in this morbid bet w/ the Man), and so we roped up. jon fired through the fun part and then it was just a quick sprint to the notch. to be honest, this climb right now feels way to easy, kinda like you don't deserve to take credit for it - there's a veritable escalator of deep steps kicked into the excellent neve and great dagger placements the whole way, so you can pretty much relax the whole time. clouds were thickening and lowered, and we were in the fog once we hit the notch. the party of 2 below us (did i mention this fucker was crowded? 8 folks up it in a day) held off a good long while as we were raining death down up until the w ridge. there we hit the caffeine goo, re-roped, and dispatched the rock pitches, the second of which offered some enjoyable dry-tooling around an exposed corner. the last pitch i managed to fuck up by choosing an overly difficult route to the summit - placed a hex then got stuck for awhile, wasting strenght and time. jon finished it and i felt like a fuk'n pogue, but that got us on top in the Big White. tea n' crumpets on the summit and damn i felt sleepy; we headed off for the sherpa exit and managed to go right at a cairn where we shoulda gone left. didn't figure it out till the fog parted briefly and we'd descended a few hundred feet already. i felt a little demoralized, but was consoled with a sweet piece of booty-gear, a charlet moser 3rd tool someone dropped god knows how long ago. at the time i was convinced i'd find a body to go with it, as i was feeling a bit grim in me soul. wanna point out that from the summit on down the snow sucked a huge donkey dick - super soft and nearly continous ball-busting punch throughs. we made it the sherpa and waded down the slop w/o crampons. i was feeling exhausted by now (one of dez days i'm gonna descend stuart w/o feeling like some samoan's just beat the shit out of me), and was showing bad form of the way down...slipping, sliding, needing to stay face it - almost feel into the fuggin 'schrund at the base of the top steep part (bad scene too, it's getting quite roomy in there now!). jon was racing far ahead now and had already made the decision to just glissade everything...i belated decided to imitate him after one too many wimpers as a result of getting both feet inescapable stuck in punch throughs, mired like some exotic, iron-armed dooley-bug. by the bottom of the sherpa we were both thoroughly soaked - the last insult, the boulder field, was like some ww2 mine-field drama - walking like ninjas, trying to sense the hollow spots below the slop, failing at almost every step. we hit the bivy stash as the other folks were leaving, having packed up camp. niether of us relished the prospect of a cold, damp bivy, and w/ the weather forecasted to crap out, it didn't seem likely we'd be able to climb the next day as we'd thought of doing (course, as jon pointed out during our initial phone conversation "dude, isn't that mother's day? don't you have to be around?" - maybe this was for the best). we decide to just suck it up, through the bivy gear back in our packs, and hike out for the whole car-ta-car insanity/glory. i hate my morell boots. they've alwasy fucked w/ my feet no matter how much i try to break them in. on my guye peak climb a few months ago i thought they'd finally conformed to my feet. this was a huge mistake; by the time we'd reached the summit my heels were already sporting shot-glass sized open blisters. back at camp, putting my besogged boots back on just seemed like the wittiest insult god had yet devised for me. summoning some physical courage from my good friend doctor marley, i hobbled the whole way out. jon patiently waited till we made it out of mountie creek, which appears to have several inane detours in it now, then i cut him lose and didn't see him till the parking lot. total round trip time, 21 hours for me. great pain-based, thc-inspired hallucinations for the last hour or so, damn i wish i'd had my mp3! we sorted shit out, made our good-byes, and jon was off to find food at chevron. i crawled all 6'7" of my lopsided frame into a mitsubish mirage that's probably pretty cramped for a japanese midget and slept the most blissful 9 hours of my life i can freely recall. excellent route, great day, fond memories. it'll be in for a few weeks more i imagine. jon, how 'bout some pics so folks can skip all this verbosity?

The legal intern at the spokane us attorney's office, eastern district, had no idea what this was all about and didn't think they even had jurisdiction. maybe dog's in the west?

it was def closed 2 weekends ago at the very bottom, but the walk up the tj was only an hour or so.

hey chris, clean out yer pm's man!

i feel like i missed something here and just don't have the time to figure out what...what the fuck 'xactly are your boys talking 'bout?

alright, so the story continues... i took the advice to play nice, buy an annual pass, and communicate w/ The Man prior to my court date to try to settle the whole thing amicably. i wrote a letter last week to the physical address of the court, addressed to the only human being's name i could find on the summons (Mag. G Klewano - i assume is the magistrate?). there was no phone # or i would have tried that first. the summons did at least have the address of the court. anyway, y-day i recieved my nice letter back in the mail, stamped "not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward." i double checked the address and it was correct, so what the hell is going on? can i not send letters to the court? is there some secret address i should know about? i tried looking up the phone number on google and in the phone book and found nothing - am i not actually supposed to be able to communicate w/ anyone in the judicial system w/o making a physical appearance at the court house? i have a week now before the court date and i don't see what i can do other than just fucking show up now... what next?

so anyone coming out to the butte 2night or what? nolse?