ivan

opened today...anybody wanna go this afternoon or tomorrow? i got fukall to do both days.

that your buddy's shadow following you to tie in rock? i remember the rope coil...last time i saw it some fool had slung some of the coils w/ cord and rapped off it i suppose. looked like fun, a fine way to celebrate bastille day!

excellent trip report, muther-fucker! i've been wanting to do this one for awhile but now i just can't wait any longer...

stolen. big time. find and crucify.

2 weeks ago the gully was still going as i saw people downclimbing it. the trail still has the avalanche debris in it, but is very easy to cross now w/o getting misoriented. still a strenous hike up though, so doing the climb and descent on the same day makes a lot more sense, unless the weather is on the verge of crapping out.

um, bug, the words of advice are geniune and good, but wouldn't they be best pm'ed to the poor dude instead of making him look a tool to the whole world?

i love it when cascade climbers go afield! nice way to avoid responsibilty for a week.

shit, hannah, you'd have to climb that thing twice to feel like you'd had a normal climb.

chossy torment on upper left, solid forbidden on right, smarmy persian on lower right

good job...think me and my iranian amigo saw you and your girl at the beginning as we were coming down from boston. commented on being sans skiis. big fuk'n packs...you seem to have a good natural tolerance for poor weather!

i did part of this a couple of weeks ago...if you're familiar w/ the rock quality on forbidden i think you'll be very dissapointed w/ the torment area. i found the climb up the south ridge of torment (nelson's standard way up), the summit and the subsequent ridge section (at least the first 1/4 of the traverse) very loose and unenjoyable, despite being technicaly easy (i rate it as 5.suck, therefore). my partner had a near scrape w/ disaster when a massive block broke under him, requiring him to leap 5 feet back down to the ridge, injuring his hand so that he couldn't use it. w/ imminent zero visibility and rain already beginning to fall, we bailed from the last possible gully back down to the glacier at the foot of torment, doing 1 rap off a sling and 2 raps off rock fins. i have little interest in finishing the route...think i'd rather just climb on good rock as there's shitloads of it around in the area.

morning camp pic is sweet...kinda like a bunch of random drunken farmers tring to figure out what the hell is going on.

nice. plenty of walking. good tr. could use the expression "mother-fucker" a few times to spice it up though. critique over.

pictures! the lower north ridge route goes right up the center of the image. the sweet bivy site is right at the top of the moraine the 5.8/9 pitch...i got a little cranky towards the end. sometimes i take life too seriously... from the belay atop the first pitch of the gendarme...2 climbers came up from below (visible on the knife ridge) and did the standard wuss-out standard summit cheese downclimbing the sherpa at the end of the day...a long night of 'swacking mountaineer's creek lay before us

pictures! so there's jaberwocky tower on the left, well guarded by scree and slide alder the top out of the east ledges, just above the 5.6 chimney the terror of tehran, the fighting farsi, mr. aarash sofla on the summit w/ dragontail and colchuck back there dragontail from the rappel ledge...good view of all 3 (albeit dried out) triple couliors

ow, man! what am i to say to defend my lameness, canada-man? it's kinda hard to get out this week w/ 2 females w/ a far meaner streak than you tying me down. i'll remember this when you're suffering down here this coming semester...

some of you portlanders must not be working this week...

whoops...well i am a bit of a space case...i live in multiple dimensions simula-faq'hn-taneously

i agree w/ your comparision...cbr looks most fun and inviting, but since we didn't get to the lake till afternoon the day of our approach, we didn't feel we had enough time to climb it and be back down in time for a serious climb the next day. and yet we didn't want to just sit around the lake for the whole afternoon. in the end, i regreted this climb because it did throw us off doing the better one up that way. it would have been better to have either started the hike in much earlier or much later.

anyone been able to drive up this yet or is still a walking affair to get to cloudcap?

in time...i had a ghetto-cam i gotta develop first

Climb: Mt. Stuart-Complete North Ridge - Eastern Variation Date of Climb: 6/28/2004 Trip Report: the crown jewel of our 5 days spent in the range, for the iranian sensation (The Man, Mr. Aarash Yusefzadeh Nagh Sofla) this more than made up for lackluster experiences around lake colchuck. i'd climbed the abbreviated standard north ridge route 2 years earlier, but found the comparision sorta like comparing sounding mrs. elizabeth hurley w/ debauching current day elizabeth taylor. this one was quasi-epical in its ending, some 49 hours after we left the car. we got an early start (630 a.m.) from the stuart lake trailhead, but armed only w/ the beckey trail description for moutaineer's creek, found it slow going getting to the base of the climb. the "climber's trail" was largely theoritical for much of its course from the first switchback past the bog all the way to boulder-fields below the ice-cliff glacier. we found ourselves pulled far uphill for the traversing portion of the approach, boulder-hopping and following intermitent cairns. the description mentioned none of this, but it felt sanctioned w/ all the rock piles (sang-chin, i learned to be the farsi equivalent). i supposed a better, easier trail lay along the banks of the creek below, and figured we'd have an easier time getting back out the creek (if only i knew). stopped for water at the source of the creek and was physically molested by several thousand mosquitoes in the process. estimated blood loss at 2 ounces/minute while filling water bottles for the long climb ahead. planted a ski pole in the dregs of the sherpa glacier and proceeded up the fresh moraine to the eastern side of the north ridge. there is a very good bivy site roughed in here which would work well if your plan was to do the approach in the afternoon, bivy that evening off the wall, then shoot for the whole ridge in a day. as it was, we started climbing around 1 p.m. or so. the first day of climbing was a blast. after a bit of scrambling in boots to get on the ridge, the first pitch delivered excitement. 5.fun stuff into a 5.8 narrow slot. aarash w/ his little pack got uncomfortably stuck in the constriction and had to take off his pack and put it on a leash. we hauled the much larger pack up this pitch and i was unashamed in grabbing gear while seconding in order to maintain a serious pace. the highlight for me was leading the 5.8/9 crack, which got my undivided attention for awhile, imitating elvis above a nut i mananged to pull w/ my foot while climbing up the spicier portion of the crack. i breathed long and loud on the ledge above while hoisting up the petulant persian. the rest of the climbing this day was notable for its 5.fun nature...continously steep but always easy, i found it much more invigorating then the "classic" ground of the standard route, and largely free of "bullshitious" debris. towards the bivy notch though, night began to make its intentions known, and the route became a bit more dank and manky. we bypassed a good bivy site for 2 around 8 p.m. becauase i was certain the more luxorious accomdations of the Big Notch were just a pitch of so above. by 9 i was feeling a bit frantic, alarmed that in my optimism i might have missed this seemingly obvious place only to suffer us to a shitty, precarious bivy. but w/ the waning rays of the sun now setting behind the fang-hills of the west, i pulled over a rise to a large snow mound and discovered clear signs of the standard route's sleeping area, which appeared to be mostly covered in sloppy snow. so happy was i to have a place to sleep that night, that i didn't bother hoping over the eastern side of the supposed "crest" of the notch to discover multiple sites, side by side; instead, we slept a few feet lower, well spaced out. aarash's bivy was spartan in comparision to mine; i bedded down in a down jacket, my goretex thrown over my legs, thrust into my backpack and covered all w/ a bivy sack, rock'n out to mp3 tunes. aarash slept on the rope, in a bivy sack w/ just his clothes on, w/o complaint. oddly, i discovered a full 60 meter red rope abandoned at this spot, and used it for padding that night. the next morning we got an early departure after a minimalist breakfast. luckily, it was warm enough sleepign w/ a bottle of snow to yield a half liter of water for our morning meal. the climbing here was familiar. aarash started by skipping part of the ridge, going east of the notch, but then i took over the lead and we simul-climbed all the way to gendarme. the route here was as a i remembered; fun, flat, easy, solid. still, it took time and it wasn't until a good while later than we stopped for lunch at the base of the great gendarme. indecisive while approaching it, we agreed upon reaching this sinister tower that rapping away from it was a pussy's choice. being the better climber of the 2 of us, the Tiger of Tehran took us up the 2 5.9 pitches...i cheated savagely to wrest myself up the second w/ no qualms, shaken enough by the experience as to allow my psychological demons to make my next lead (the 5.5 beckey recommended exposed pitch up and left) less than convincing. after climbing up and over the gendarme, we noticed that time could be saved by staying relatively level and going right from the top of the second gendarme pitch instead of the way we did it (the nelson/potterfield book appears to differ w/ beckey for good reason here) the last bit to the summit was the most disagreeable bit of climbing along the whole ridge. the rock was heavily fractured up here, the ledges sandy and wet. of course we unroped for the last part above the gendarme, only to discover there were still a few feet of surprises to go. after a bit of a scare, when i almost loosed a landslide of stones ontop of aarash just a few feet behind me, we made it to the top. we ate our dinner there at 5 p.m. and enjoyed the lonely spot. there was no one around and we'd been entirely alone for going on 2 days, from the trailhead to there. a bit apprehensive about the descent, which i'd never done via the sherpa, we set off after 30 minutes or so. the top of this mountain just seems gigantic, and a seemingly never-ending stretch of downclimbing and scree traversing ultimately found us just before the peak of sherpa, looking down a long and not exactly inviting snow coulior. i put my crampons on and aarash jerry-rigged the front plates of his g-12s to his walmart-brand boots (this is, incidentally, the same man who climbed denali w/o down jacket or overboots). we proceeded backwards down the steep coulior to just above the 'schrund, which we noticed was very fuck'n deep indeed. we were able to traverse above it and cut back between two large cracks though...i wouldn't imagine this being possible any longer this season now. the rest was a high speed burn back to the tiny-vampire hell of the creek (i should mention here the bugs were bad the whole trip, including oddly enough the bivy notch, which was infested w/ mosquitoes). we entered the ominious wood as night descended though, around 930, and despite our best intentions by tikka light quickly lost the "official" way and began 'swacking in the darkness. at first we made good time, keeping the roaring torrent on our immediate right hand side we felt well oriented and the distance to the car rapidlly shrank. but then hell set in; the river slowed and began ponderously oxbowing, the bugs went fuck-crazy frolicking amidst the melee, wall after random wall of felled tree, sometimes 3 trunks high, barred the path, which took on that disheartening quality of sameness, every stump looked familiar, every fern previoulsy trampled and all progress was lost. aarash was mad to make it back to the car. i did the mental aritmetic: 1. i was very tired 2. i could give a fuck where i went to sleep, so long as i could go to sleep sometime soon 3. at the rate we were going, we'd arrive at the car around sunup, at which time we could just as easily make it there much faster if we just went to sleep now. aarash fought it, but as my non-compliant pace slackened w/ each frustated utterance of the fuck-word, he had to give in. we bivied on a large slab beside our soaked socks and boots. i slept angelically, my last thoughtless act to give aarash my mp3 player to salve his agrieved soul. i awoke in the early light at his insistence...he'd not slept, shivering after taking off his shirt, to cover his face from the incessant aerial attack of the mozzies. his face was a map of verdun, circa 1916, an embattled shell zone of a 1000 angry red craters...guess that boy just don't agree w/ 'squito spit. at least w/ the feeble sun we could make out the proper course, and off we went after eating the last of our meager rations. the coup de grace of the deproach was our attempt to ford the creek that tumbles down from stuart lake, above the bog where the mountaineer creek cuts off. penned in by the steep, overgrown wall above the bog, we went above the noisy tumult of the falls and tried crossing at a sort of log-jam lake. aarash went first, out on a rotten log anchored to the shore. half-way across, he faced a desperate, comical game of leaping from floating log to floating log. he tried and failed admirably, making it 2/3 of the way across the stream before going in up to his knees. my turn. yeah. fuk this kid i should just find another way. there is no other way close by. fuk. well here goes. i discover the rotten log has been snapped in half by the force of aarash leaping off it. i outweigh him by girth and gear a good 100 pounds at least. i hop to the first floater, sink 8 inches, make a half-assed leap to the next then plunge waist deep into the freezing water, boots instantly turned to buckets, my pack just an inch above the waters edge. too annoyed to make my complaints vocal, i discover i can't even pull mysself to the far shore, so hemmed in by the logs i am. groveling and cursing, my eloquence rediscovered, i finally make the blissful "land of trail", knowing i must be back at the car soon. we wring out our socks, and within 10 minutes have found the hikers trail. the last hour is a blur; goaded by hunger and swamp-foot, we each retreat into our little world, i listen to sleepy tunes on the mp3 player and put a mountain daisy in my chest strap, to make the whole retreat a bit more gentlemanly. my first encounter w/ people is a couple of ladies hiking up to colchuck; i meet them about 300 yards shy of the parking lot and am too surprised to say anything before they pass me by. sitting around the car is sweet bliss. feasting on car food, smoking forbidden substances, and gawking boyishly at the 3 fahq'n hot chicks who've just pulled up and begun packing for a ski trip down the colchuck glacier, i make a final amusing mistake. made sublimely stupid by the intersection of carcinogens and 48 hours of exhortation, overwhelmed by a tidal-wave of gloriously unfocused libidic impulse, i drive off leaving my foam pad on the ground. no worries down in l-worth at der waffle haus, till i recall my medicinal herbs are rolled up in the pad. up the road we race, the persian not comprehending my motives at all: the pad, gone; those 3 impish, aching and scantily-clad beauties, gone too; my humble herb-stock, lost. in despair, i begin to drive off, only to spot the ziplock bag just before my tire rolls over it. i yank the wheel to the side, the sun breaks through the thunderheads which have been pouring down, i go out to collect my fair-haired child and in that little place, in that little time, i know what it means To Be Complete. Gear Notes: a full rack brought, coulda cut the nuts down to only 6-7 though, and the cams to only 6-7 too. used cramps for the sherpa descent and was glad to have em. mp3 made the bivy's easy. Approach Notes: i still don't understand what the fuck was going on in mountaineer's creek

Climb: Dragontail-Serpentine Arete Date of Climb: 6/27/2004 Trip Report: fahqloads of folks climb this one so my take on the route must stem from others. ultimately i thought this one uninspiring and mostly disinteresting, only a few enjoyable pitches down low followed by a long damn way of brutish climbing amongst granitic debris. still, no mean way to spend a saturday. camped at colchuck lake after hiking in and climbing jaberwocky tower the day before. got an offish start at 8 a.m., slogged up the moraine immediately behind camp. me in running shoes was happy to have a mad boot-clad iranian (mister Aarash Yusefzadeh Nagh Sofla) at the fore-front to kick big steps on the steep snow tongue leading above the moraine to the recess between backbone and serpentine ridges. an exciting hop over the thin moat and into easy scrambling up and right, over ground both wet and strewn w/ mangled rock. the only pitch of distinction was the the 5.8 thang to the right of the "pillar," which serves as the focal point of beckey's description, but which i thought rather un-pillar-like in appearance. we were unsure enough that we were about to climb something entirely different on the left side of the pillar before i explored further around the corner. beckey shows 4 seperate pitches in his topo here but the wacky persian did it as one lead, requiring me to break down the anchor and climb the first 5 feet of the finger crack w/ an annoyingly heavy pack (as i carried both our axes and boots). the crack was not-continious and the route a bit rambling. given the pack and the fact that i finally emerged into the warm sun w/ my gore-tex on after chilling for a while in the shadowed cold, i was more than a bit flushed after finishing the long pitch, feeling rather as if i hadn't properly enjoyed it. the fun parts were over unfortunately though and the route from there was just a monotonous grind up uninspiring ground. the party working on backbone ridge opposite us appeared to be having far more adventure on the fin. we topped out sometime before 4 p.m. the last note of interest was the actual summit, were the axis of ambiguity had a chance encounter w/ wayne wallace and colin, who we'd watched dispatch backbone. they had left the fuk'n stuart lake trailhead the same time we'd left camp and nearly beat us to the summit! at any rate, amidst bullshiting over wardrobe malfunction (i did the whole trip w/ just one pantleg for my convertible pants, and colin appeared to have most of his simple long underwear outfit in tatters) an amusing event transpired. in theory, aarash and i were to meet up w/ josh the next day to head off to terra incognita; but in conversation w/ our random co-summiters we became amused to discover that wayne had essentially the same plan w/ the same person for essentially the same dates. feeling something like a jilted prom date, i did what all such teenagers do, smoked a bowl and talked some shit. mountaineers, some of Bog's own... the trip down asgard was unpleasnetly wet in the deep snow w/ running shoes...aarash nearly killed himself on the scree portion when he slipped and fell in such a way that his axe was trapped between two rocks and his voice box violently struck by the shaft. i adjusted my rate and volume of voice-fire to compensate that evening Gear Notes: brought a full rack, but probably coulda reduced it to 6-7 cams, a handful of larger nuts, and 8 2-4 foot runners Approach Notes: frightful lack of fine female flesh along the way

Climb: Jaberwocky Tower-East Face Date of Climb: 6/26/2004 Trip Report: a fun warm up for an outing into the stuart range that culminated w/ the climbing of serp arete on dragontail and the complete north ridge (east variation)on stuart the iranian sensation and i made our way up to colchuck lake after supplicating the appropriate federal officials in fake-town (and reversing course back to seattle 30 minutes after leaving upon recollecting that both of us had left our climbing harnesses drying in josh's garage)...the intention was to climb colchuck balanced, dragontail, and colchuck all in one trip, then make it back to l-worth 2 days later and do somethign w/ the might joshk...all this shit was to get fucked up...this is life by design from the end of the lake, the approach was an unpleasant mix of traversing on scree to intense hand-to-hand combat w/ slide alder. emerging victorious, though somewhat wounded, from the thickets we forged steepily uphill toward colchuck balanced, going up the second left gully to reach the tower about half-way uphill from the lake to the balanced rock. we reached the notch between tower and slope around 5 pm and quickly dispatched the climbing, a long pitch, traversing an easy ledge then climbing a big chimney to the summit. rated at 5.fun, the climb is still a long way to go for minimal pay-off; at any rate, it beat sitting round camp for a few hours just waiting for the morning, though it did dissuade us from returning and going further uphill to do colchuck balanced. the route doesn't look to get much traffic, as the usual nest of slings were thin and ratty. the summit was a terrific place to hoot and holler at the locals thronged round the jeweled lake. by dark we were back down to camp, watered and fed for serpentine arete the next day Gear Notes: small climbing rack Approach Notes: traversing scree slog, slide-alder bar fight, steepish rubble rising

dem birds get a job yet?