JoshK

Hey, I just placed my first order at MEC this week. When can I expect the gear to show up in Seattle? Their page says "6 to 12 days" for the generic shipping you have to pick for US delivery, but is it really this slow even to seattle? customs or something? -josh

Doh...meant "matt, you're right" Also, Dru, thanks for the beta. Glad to hear it's so easy, we're gonna go for it and just use tennis shoes ta'boot. :-)

Dru, you're right, and I definitely wouldn't rely solely on anything anybody posted on here. At times, however, info I have gotten on here has been helpful. In reality, our decision on the price was actually more than lack of beta, I probably just didnt' feel like typing it out (ironic, considering I am now. ) The one piece of beta I have got for the price (numerous times) is that good visibility is *really* important due to the inherent route finding on the icefall and the need to see far ahead. With the weather on Sunday looking possibly iffy I would rather (yes, this may sound crazy) get pummeled on an exposed traverse than somewhere part way up the price glacier.

I wrapped a couple of my bottles in that blue foam you can get for sleeping mats. It works great, was dirt cheap and is really light. The OR bottle things are nice but they seem like expensive overkill to me.

quote: There is a very easy cross country trip to the PCT from the middle Kendall Peak Lake that saves 4 miles or so and a couple thousand feet of gain. Ok, details, please....

Hehe...well said, Matt. Yup, I was pretty surprised at the lack of internet-beta available, due to it's presence in 50 crowded climbs. If we end up going for Price, I'll be sure to post pics. -josh

Everybody loves Shuksan, right? I think it's me they don't love.

C'moonnnnn...gimme some info.

Fred, could you elaborate on the "old PCT" parking lot? AlpineTom and myself also did Thompson 1-day this summer and we both agreed that we could have done without all that wandering the trail does for the first few miles. -josh

Anybody got any? Thinking of attempting it this weekend and can't find much recent about it. It'll obviously be very broken this time of the year, so I'm looking for anything more specific. thanks, -josh

I haven't done the route, but from what I've read and seen (from other ascents of Stuart) the Ice Cliff glacier certainly isn't a route that I would recommend for a not-so-technical climber. Also, late in the year it's supposed to be pretty much just an icefall.

Yeah, I'll second what Ivan said...the car-to-car made it a challenging day in terms of effort required, but the climb itself is not very difficult at all. I thought the final chimney was the most difficult by far, and from everybody's posts, it seems we did some sort of 5.8 variation chimney instead of an easier 5.5 or 5.6 one. In any event, I only saw the one chimney, so that made the decision easy. Also, I would definitely recommend *against* bringing 2 ropes. The north side rappel is actually quite blocky and we got the rope stuck once even with just a single. I think the knot would be a huge liability. If I did the WR Prusik again I would take a light 50m half rope. I'm pretty sure 50m would reach all the repells and for the 2 spots where Ivan and I belayed you could double the rope as they aren't long at all. That's just my opinion, so YMMV. -josh

hahahahah...great read. I need that in this otherwise boring day.

Let us not forget this. My weekend plans may be screwed cause my dumb ass stepped on the adze of an ice axe last night while packing for a trip. What a lame way to go down...

Hey guys and gals. I'm taking my dad on a trip up mount logan this saturday through monday for his birthday. We're going in through park creek pass via chelan ferry and stehekin. should be lots of fun. my question is for anybody that has done the route...what gear should I bring? From what I read in the nelson book and what I saw through my camera's telephoto lens from eldorado last week, the glacier looks very straightforward. The rock scrambling also looks quite easy. I am debating between no rope, a 30m 8.4mm rope and a 50m 9mm rope. Considering it's late season and everything is probably open, I'm considering having us just solo the route as that would get rid of not only the weight of the rope, but the harnesses as well. thanks, -josh

Yeah, I'd never put too much stock in this crap. Also, look on the bright side, a below average season here at least means we still haven plenty of snow. During a below average year in Colorado 3 years ago I skied on a whopping 6" of base (this was in JANUARY) and destroyed a set of skis.

I was Dave's (skisports) partner on eldorado. Too bad about the N ridge not being FA. It's what I expected, however, as I would be surprised if anything that obvious hadn't been climbed in this area. I am prety surprised it isn't in any published book. It's actually an enjoyable route.

hey, ivan, whats up. It's funny you posted because I thought of posting and asking if "that guy who was trying the E ridge forbidden was on this board" but I figured it's a big area and what are the chances? Sorry that the weather burned you guys. About half way up the arm when it started dumping snow I was saying to myself "damn, I feel sorry for those guys on forbidden" \ Hopefully you guys at least got some of the peakaboo views of the nearby peaks also. I'll send you an email (or feel free to do the same) and we'll hook up for a climb or at least get a beer and talk about a climb.

Yes, I'll admit that it was one weekend where I'm quite glad I wasn't a.) solo, b.) bivying, c.) on a mega climb. I'm still hopeful for an indian summer. The weather-guessers say it's supposed to be prety nice next week.

Hey guys, thanks for all the info. I wised up and came up with a revised plan. :-) My dad's birthday is in 2 weekends and as a present I'm taking him up Logan to (hopefully) summit on his birthday. I got us reservations going in to stehikin on the early fairy ,going up park creek pass, climbing, then going out thunder creek for a nice one way tour. I'll save bucker for another time and do an interesting route on it rather than a brush/scree/choss slog.

Headed up to end of cascade river road last night with a friend. Plan was to do sharkin tower and sahale, and get him back somewhat early tonight. The plan went down hill when the thunder+lightning+heavy rain started hard shortly after we got to the parking lot. We slept in the back of my station wagon and figured we would take a look at our options in the morning. 6am rolls around and from what little bit of j-berg we can see, it's clear that snow fell fairly low down last night. Hmm...don't really want to go rock climb. New plan...just hike up sahale from the arm and check things out and shoot some pictures. We leave trailhead at 7am. At 4800 feet we encounter the first little bit of fresh snow from the night before. Make it to cascade pass at 8am. The pass has scattered bits of snow here and there. We take off up the sahale arm trail around 8:15. Snow on plants starts to get thicker and thicker. By around 5800 trail is covered. By just over 6k, trail is covered in 1" to 2" in places and occasionally hard to find during that long flat area. We get to sahale glacier camp at around 10am and sit around talking to some backpackers who were there last night and witnessed the thunder+lightning. We still can't see much, but head up the sahale glacier at around 10:30. There is probably around 4"+ of new snow on the glacier. At around 12:00 I turn around about 20 or 30 from the summit with my friend about 10 feet behind me. Unfortunately the summit rocks were all icy and snow covered and a slip would have really sucked. Part of our lightweight plan included no rope, pro, etc. so there wasn't much we could do at that point. Oh well... We got back to the car around 4 with some great pics taken during the few clearing moments. The fresh snow made for awesome views. I wish we could have made the last few fet, but I was pretty happy with the effort considering all the snow and the fact that I was in tennis shoes.

Good to hear everything turned out OK, Mike. That's got to be seriously freaky. The ironic thing is when I was at Rainer a month or so ago, I was registering for the Kautz route and talking to you about the weather. "Chance of thunderstorms" was in the forecast and if I remember correctly you were saying it's pretty interesting to see them on the mountain and a bit scary. I think you finished up by saying "thankfully I've never been hit" or something along those lines.

Nope, not the NF of bucker, just the "regular" (SW?) route. It's definitely a ton of hiking. For some odd reason, however, I feel like doing a ton of hiking...

Also, has anybody tried heading down bucker on it's NE ridge (or anywhere on that east side) and cross countrying to park creek pass or thunder creek? It looks like it might be too steep to do realistically but it sure could save a ton of time.

Thanks for the info guys. It's looking like the fremont would indeed be a better option. My totally random and non-solid plan at this point is to start at the cascade pass trailhead with a friend very early saturday and climb bucker. He'd head back to cascade pass (has plans on sunday) and I'd continue as far down the trail towards park creek pass as I could. I'd then climb logan sunday and head out towards rainy pass on the thunder creek trail to a waiting car. Seems like a really long weekend, but doable...