ivan

tuesday or thursday, preferably thursday

good session this week, though the landing zone below the climbs is turning into a freak'n mosh-pit...need to get some of the smiff-type organizers to fix it up. w/ crampons that new way uphill just left of the climbs was nice n' easy...almost FELT alpine for a second how late the rest of you stay?

now that is fuking funny!

fuk! just saw this this morning; glad you're okay man!

i be there

the road is plowed to 8 mile campground, but from there you have to hoof it. the snow was deep and soft from the beginning of the road, and the dirt road itself protected by a large berm of plowed snow. 'bilers can go all the way up to the trailhead which makes me really wanna buy one.

Climb: Colchuck Lake- Date of Climb: 1/15/2005 Trip Report: 2 friends of mine, including the Iranian-Sensation, the Terror of Tehran, got tickets to fly in from Virginia this past Friday. originally the forecast was for good weather for 4 days, so i was gonna do a mt. hood tour-de-force of the classics, but then the weather went all...well, fukit, you saw what it did. anyways, decided friday morning when they arrived that dragontail or colchuck looked to be the best of the worst, so we made the pilgrimage to leavenworth. came the closest i've yet been to death in my climbing days just south of seattle; missed the sign for the i90 turnoff until the last second, did a 4 lane merge to the right; at the last second a concrete divider appeared seperating the exit lane from the rest of the interstate - i pulled the helm hard to starboard and missed 70 mph grim death with 3 pairs of ice-tools from the truck bed flying through my cranium by a fraction of a foot. headed up the stuart lake road aroudn 2 pm. incredibly cold, sugary snow with no trail quickly made itself apparant. hateful work once at the trailhead. very slow time w/ big packs. only made it past the second bridge and the start of the climb up to the lake when it began obvious it was time to stop (niether of the va boys had led headlamps and the batteries for their incandescents were lasting only an hour - very slow progress anyway and the hill looked extremely demoralizing). camped by stuart creek in 5 degree temps. discovered water had found its way into one of the 2 fuel bottles and choked everythign w/ slush, the other was being bitchy and unpleasant to touch = cold dinner. water bottle in my sleeping bag leaked over night and for the rest of the trip the bottom of my down bag was one nasty mass of clumped together, frozen feathers. the walk up to colchuck next morning sucked! still very cold, very light, sugar snow that made the steep sections loose and agonizing, especially w/ a pack. made only 300 ft/hour progress. began snowing by the time we reached the lake, which was frozen solid. at this point, w/ the weather, next day forecast and a deep paranoia as to the avi conditions in the couliors with new snow on top of shit, decided to focus on climbing the ice floes on the east side of the lake instead. walked across the totally frozen lake and made camp on the ice by the shore close to jaberwocky tower. used an axe to hack through 6 inches of ice to get water as fuel was limited now. lots of nice ice by the lake. a good wide, topropable practice area below and to the right of jaberwocky - about 50 feet high - served to introduce them that had never swung an icetool before the basics. spied a fantastic flow that leads up the left side of jaberwocky, 2-3 pitches, then turns to mixed trees, slabs and could be taken the rest of the way to the summit. bunch of other random shit all over the place, none worth an entire pilgramge up that baatan trail, but fun if you happen to be there and have the time. snowed strait through from saturday afternoon to sunday afternoon with an increasing wind. climbed more practice ice and made the long walk back down to the car and gustav's. ran into justinrr who was heading solo up to the lake in the dark, but not another soul in the area the whole week. don't know how long our trail will last but christ we fucking earned it. feel like an asshole doign all that work then not getting to climb anythign real. still, it was the right call. while the avi conditions at asgard didn't look bad (actually not very much coverage at the moment, w/ lots of terrain poking through), the weather sucked balls and the couliors were waterfalls of sugar snow. guess i'll be returning once again. finally, i left my watch in the tent and apparently it fell out when it was being put into aarash's pack. if anybody finds it before the summer comes and it drops forever into the bottom of lake colchuck let me know and i got a case of beer for you. Gear Notes: don't bring contaminated fuel Approach Notes: snow, snow, shit snow

if you're there thursday pete then so is me...perhaps you'll be more motivated than these other boys to drink some beers afterwards

just got back from climbing monday night and gotta make nice w/ the ladies for 2 consecutive evenings...anyone wanna move it to thursday?

word to the muthafuk'n mother-ship - yet another cool evening in bum-land; though it started w/ rain and the prospects seemed dreary, me, NOLSe and 3 other souls flailed, scratched, scraped and screamed our way aroudn the butte for almost 4 hours. much fun by all - i emerged less worse the wear compared to last week and anticipate another session 7 days from now. didn't get a chance to climb the church - next week?

i'll be there in my stealthy mitsubishi mirage bouldering around in plastics on the wall by the road from 330 till whenever someone shows i was thinking climbing the roof of that igloo-like bible college w/ cramps would be both doable and extremely cool

damn...longest invite i ever saw! i enjoyed last weeks session, though it put a crimp in my dry-tooling in the shower crampons work great in preventing a fall down the butte when belaying at the bottom. we should put in a fixed line to make getting out at night easier

i agree on flying your pre-packed food on in...one of the highlights of my trip was packing the food the weekend 'fore i left. the excess packaging alone filled two trash bags. a truly awesome site to see it all laid out and ready to go. i even managed to not have to pay any more to fly it all by stretchign the carry-on policy. as a side note, if you fly out of pdx, you can watch 'em go through all your shit right there in the x-ray booth. i saw a truly monsterous 300 pound tsa chick salivate over a bag of 30 candy bars see pulled out to inspect

and mike oughta know!

looked at climbing i-rock on tuesday but upon arriving on the scene decided it looked a might bit thin...maybe the route just right of the big central depression would go? looked like a definite walk in the men's room. fuk i wish i wasn't in virginia right now!

[quote [Note (p5): Oh, and no doubt Jim Opdyke would have me remind you shit, jim went nuts this summer when he heard young warriors had even made it into the portland rock guide...and i think saying he's suspicious of the internet is kinda like saying the palestinians aren't certain if they can trust sharon.

all the bolts were there as of 2 weeks ago. the w face variation, going left after the first pitch, is indeed the best way to go.

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/041215_msh_update.html has the most most recent story i've read about it; lots of cool pointy-head info

a month ago it was already in fine shape for climbing, but very icy...lots of new snow should be settling in over the next few days so i'd imagine it'd be a bit softer now. warm weather this weekend though...take a helmet and be ready to be shit upon by yocum's.

that poor new glacier is getting crushed!

wow, christmas just brings out the best in everyone doesn't it?

jesus god! think i'll bookmark this one and look at it again whenever i feel severely depressed and need some cheering up...life can definitely get worse!

Climb: Mt. Hood-Reid Headwall Date of Climb: 11/21/2004 Trip Report: so everyone wanted to climb saturday but not sunday...which once again to my wife's delight left me heading up hood sans partner i was bummed not to have gotten in on the n face gang bang, and simply couldn't settle for yet another trudge up the s side. having no 4x4 to brave the n side road, i figured i'd climb the reid as a substitute left t-line at 3, and was at illumination at 6. saw a score of shooting stars over the gap as i was approaching. hung out for a bit to wait for the sky to lighten up and at 7 was moving up the reid headwall. i'd done this once before w/ mtnhigh and shred and wanted to do a different variation. i aimed strait up the center of the face, passing a solidly covered 'schrund, and climbed an icy gully, staying as much as possible out of the line of fire of the small ice chunks falling from above. at this point i realized i'd actually repeated part of the route i'd climbed before, and decided to make it more sporty by going right and climbing through mixed ground. the conditions were fantastic. alpine ice about 2 inches thick covering everything made the trudge up the fun parts enjoyable, rocks well frozen together so not too much crapping raining down. before too long i found myself looking down, looking back at what i was climbing (rock w/ crusty snow and varying strengths of alpine ice, big rime feathers, etc) and feeling rather "in the moment." the sun was beginning to shine on the tops of the wall, and i made out a gap between the jagged towers of the ridge. i figured i'd emerge on the w crater rim from there and could follow it to the summit ridge. the most technical and soul-satisfying bits of the reid climbing occured for the last 300 feet. i was camming a tool into place and then using the same hand to grab a rock edge, other axe scrapping through powdery snow in a crack, left foot on a crumbly rime feather, right spikes on a protrusion of volcanic crap. good stuff. very zen shit. the last placement vaulted me into the sun and i felt wonderfully warm and alive. i figured the summit was pretty much in the bag and set off up the ridge, but was forced right by the big icy towers that make up part of the reid headwall. as i moved onto the west face of the crater rim the snow got sloppy and my cramps weren't sticking to anything, jsut balling up and getting heavy. i stopped to take them off, but discovered just a few feet later that there was very hard ice under the slop, causing me to skate all over the place. annoyed, i stopped just under the big tower to put the crampons back on. i should have just done it right and chopped a platform into the slope so i could sit. instead, i put my axe and tool in, then clipped myself to them. i was getting pissed w/ matching my boot to the 'pons, slipping around in the process, but insisted on making it work. next thing i knew i was flying downhill, headfirst, left crampon in hand. i quickly turned and ludricously tried using the crampon i was holding to slow me down. it was ripped away and then i went over a much steeper section and caught a bit of air. my mind was very clear. i saw the axe and tool bouncing all over the place, leashed to my daisy chain, and calmy snatched the axe. i put the pick in, but the undulating surface made me lose contact again for a second and the slide continued. i began to feel a little scared. i knew the fumarole was not too much further downhill and would involve another big drop. luckily, as i forced all of my weight and strength into the axe, i slowed and then stopped. i felt a wee bit shagrined, since i had emerged from this rather public display of stupidness covered in snow but otherwise w/o a scratch. i still had my pack and my axes, but the crampoons were at least 200 feet uphill. i could see my slide marks, including where i'd lost touch w/ the ground, and saw that it was very steep. no one who witnessed my master display of alpine skill seemed interested in helping me get my missing crampons, so i had to go after them old-school style, chopping steps (which made me wish i had brought my ice-adze instead of ice-hammer) returned to the scene of the crime feeling pretty demoralized. chopped a platform in and put my crampons on and wrestled w/ my own little demons. decided to just finish up the climb and worked my way around the tower and up onto the ridge again...this last bit is spectacular. views of the elliot headwall and down the north face, the knife edged bits just before the summit, ice mushrooms everywhere. had the summit all to myself for 10 minutes, where i finished the last of my water. the trip down the s side was uneventful. there's a cruxy bit of the pearly gates that would skull-fuck a newbie i bet. a second tool was a definite plus. schrund's still wide open but very tame. all in all, a great day in the hills, but a little sobering. very glad i fell where i did. lesson learned. now only to hope my wife never reads this... Gear Notes: if you weren't soloing it, the reid would take a bunch of screws and picketts Approach Notes: excellent. the backside of illumination gap is treacherously icy at the moment.

"They realized it was getting dark and decided they did not want to make the descent down." well at least they weren't so scared they forgot that down is the typical path of descent...

i emerged from the reid headwall (which was icy as all hell) onto the warm, sunny upper part of the w crater. i stayed on the ridge, workign my way just below the big rime crusted towere, to about 400 feet below the summit where the snow was wet n' sloppy to about 8 inches, below which was solid ice. the whole w facing slope appeared to be the same and could only be reclimbed sans crampons by laboriously cutting in steps. i saw several folks carrying their skiis downhill y-day. indeed the walk of shame.