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AlpinistAndrew

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Posts posted by AlpinistAndrew

  1. Myself, Masternate32 and another friend took a trip to Banff this weekend. We left B'ham Friday afternoon and left Banff Monday afternoon. It was awesome. I had never seen the Rockies and it was amazing. Ice everywhere. We climbed Cascade the first day. It was a bit thin and wet towards the top, but a great climb. The next day we climbed most of Louise Falls, except for the final pitch, which was wet and chandiliered ,nobody that day that we saw climbed it or attempted to. We then went over to Cable Gullies and climbed a short and steep WI 2 and toproped a mixed climb. On Monday we went to Canmore Junkyards and did some easier stuff and toproped some more mixed stuff. It was a great trip. Lots of ice. The drive (10hours) was long, especially on the way back when we drove through a blizzard for several hundred kilometers. Also, props to Masternate 32 for driving. thumbs_up.gifrockband.gif

  2. Intrigued by the pictures of all that ice up at Baker, myself and some friends headed up there on Saturday. There was plenty of ice up there and it was pretty good quality too; the ice ate the tools whole, a little bit of dinner plating, but not much. We did a fun multi pitch route. WI2-3. We simulclimbed parts. The last pitch was a solid WI3. Lots of fun. thumbs_up.gif

  3. Myself and two others went to climb Hall Peak (the route mentioned in the new ice guide). Definitely not in condition. We went to the ice caves instead. It was my first time there. There was only one other group of ice climbers there and loads of gapers. We bouldered inside a bit, then climbed up above and found some good WI3 walls. Lots of ice collapsing inside of the caves. Good fun.

  4. I have searched the internet for hours on end attempting to find this book. No used book, rare book, or out of print book site has this book (West Coast Ice). I realize that it is out of print, but there must be a some copies floating around somewhere. I heard that there might be a 2nd ed. coming out, does anyone know when? Also, does anyone know of a library or something where I could make some copies. It has just become a personal mission of mine to find this very hard to find book. Thanks.

  5. So my climbing partner, masternate32, and myself decided to do a day climb of East Wilman. It is in volume two of select climbs, so we figured it must be worthwhile. The approach was nice, not too hard. But there was no snow in the gully up to the ridge. Would it had been snow filled, it would have made the experience nicer. But the rock around the spire and on the spire was very loose and crappy. We still enjoyed the climbing, but we were expecting way more i guess. The summit was neat and so was the last rappel. But descending the gully back to Glacier Basin was hell. Very strenuous and ridiculously loose rock. Rocks were constantly flying. We were lucky to get out of that thing. Nice area, but we were unimpressed with the quality of the rock and the climb. We did find what looked like a TCU (maybe the powercam, it was way in this crack, we tried getting it out, but it was stuck). We found another one near a rappel sling in the gully, this one also did not budge.

  6. I climbed the DC route on Monday-Tuesday. RMI has now moved the route, it does not go over that snow bridge. The route now traverses below the bergshrund a bit more and then crosses it to the left of the old route. It is very easy. Also, there are a two spots where RMI has set up pickets with a hand line.

  7. well thanks for the help guys. darn, wish we would have known. it just looked so damn exposed from there. it doesn't really matter i guess, we were way out of time anyway. now at least i know where to start the climb. thanks again.

  8. i am pretty sure we weren't at sharkfin col, cause apparently that requires some 5.8 moves and the col we got to was short and easy. i was looking at the route guide and pics, now i am thinking we were at the right place. for the very first pitch, is it rather exposed and do you start right at the top of the col, where you can see the southeast face. thanks for you help, i just wanna find out what we did wrong/right for another attempt. thanks.

  9. Well, fromt the glacier you go up the first gully and you get to the upper snowfield, below the peak. there is a col to the left and right of the tower. we went right and that didn't seem right. cause from the route description, it looks like you go on the face for a while. the main problem was just fiugring out where to get onto the rock, cause from the col we were at, where we could see the southeast face, it look ridiculously exposed. and just didn't seem right.

  10. Myself and a friend attempted Sharkfin Tower on Wednesday. Perfect weather. Only problem was we started a little late. We didn't leave the trailhead until 9.45. The "trail" up tp Boston Basin was not as bad as the guide books suggested. It was steep in places but other than that it was cake. We got onto the Quin Sabe Glacier, found the approach gully (no snow in it). We climbed this loose gully to the upper snowfield and then aimed for a col, the wrong col. We went right instead of heading toward the face. We ended up at a col that you could look way down to the Boston Gl. and see the Southeast Face of Sharkfin. We were a little confused on where to start the southeast ridge, do you just climb up the face from the snowfield where the rap slings are apparent? well, we ran out of time from that mistake and rapped the the gully back to the glacier. the rock route looked good though. nice area, I enjoyed it.

  11. I had a light backpack, light 3season bag, a tarp (that we shared), a polypro top and bottom, light gloves, wool cap, rainjacket and a pair of xtra socks. also a ion headlamp, chlorine water purifier drops, knife, and a few other odds and ends. no stove. our food consisted of some salami, string chees, top ramen, granola (brkfast), and some clif bars. we ate the ramen dry, it was actually pretty good.

  12. My friend and I did the wonderland trail recently (Saturdya-Tuesday) in Four days. We started at 9.30am on Saturday and finished about 4pm on Tuesday. Our packs weighed about 10-14 lbs. It was definitly not easy, we really had to push ourselves, we hiked from 7.30am to 12 midnight one day (we didt 30+miles that day) . It was really awesome, a few areas had bugs, though and there was no bridge over the south mowich river. we started and ended at Sunrise. the section from sunrise to nickel creek (day one) was probably the most spectacular. overall hard but fun thumbs_up.gifbigdrink.gif

  13. This Saturday, myself and two others did a one day trip of Shuksan, via the sulphide glacier. it was a LONG day. it took us a little less than 12 hours r.t. when we were about to enter the summit gully, 3 guys knocked loose some huge rocks and nearly killed one of my climbing partners. They ducked out of the way just in time, the rocks tumbled to the glacier below. They seemed rather unsympathetic and unapologetic for having nearly killed a person with rock fall inflicted by them. overall, good trip. thumbs_up.gif

  14. yeah, we saw the group of four. We also saw the guy and gal, they passed us at the last pitch of the climb. I thinked we talked to one of the guys in the group of four while we were working our way up the first pitch. when we reached the summit a group was just topping out from their climb of the south face.

  15. I climbed the West Ridge of Prusik Peak with a friend this past weekend. We hiked into Colchuck Lake on Friday afternoon and camped there on Friday night. On Saturday we trudged up to the top of Aasgard Pass and hiked over to Prusik Peak. We roped up and climbed the West Ridge. and then rapped (4 single rope rappels) down the back side to the snow. My friend led it, he led in boots unitl the slab pitch, then he put on rock shoes, I wore my boots the whole time. It was a really fun route, I really enjoyed it. We left our packs and ice axes at the base of the ridge. We then hiked back to aasgard pass and glissaded/plunge stepped back to colchuck lake. Fortunately the snow was nice and soft. In the morning when we ascened the snow was as hard as ice, crampons would have been very nice. We then hiked out and got to the cars at 11pm. What an awesom place. thumbs_up.gifgrin.gif

  16. Myself and two others went up to do the Sulphide Glacier on Shuksan last weekend (Friday-Saturday). We were going to do it light, just food, water, climbing gear, and a bit of clothing. We started hiking between 7 and 8 PM on Friday night. We hiked pretty quickly and we were soon working our way up the ridge as it got dark. We lost the trail though, but we followed faint boot tracks in the snow patches. We finaly reached the ridge crest and we could see the pass. We made it to the pass about midnight. Perfectly clear out. We stopped for a rest and began heading towards the glacier. We roped up at glaciers edge and began the trudge. We saw a big rocky pyramid very soon and we thought that this must be the summit pyramid, we looked for the gully and sort of found one. We ascended, only to find it ending at a moat, so we bypassed the moat and went up a very steep exposed snow slope in which we set up a running belay with pickets. The snow was between 70-80 degrees, way steeper than what the summit pyramid gully was supposed to be, we eventually reached a dead end and at this time there was a bit of light out (it had been very dark despite the clear skies. We could see the true summit pyramid a couple miles off. We rappeled down/downclimbed to the main glacier. We could have continued to the true summit, but we were a long ways off and we had just wasted a good 3+ hours and a lot of our energy. We should have known better, that the summit wasn't that close, i should have checked my GPS too (stupid, stupid, stupid). Oh well, it was still an awesome day. Great views absolutley stunning. The glacier was in great shape. We made it back to the cars at about 7am on Saturday, a 12 hour push. Also on the way down, we lost the trail and we had to bushwack. I was dead tired when i got to the car, it was exhausting, but carrying a light pack made me feel really good and allowed me to go fast, however making mistakes is not an option.

  17. Did anyone here take part in the Ski to Sea 2003 relay race up in Whatcom County? Teams from all over the state and even from other states came up to join in on this fun relay race. Cross country skiing, downhill skiing, running, road biking, canoeing, mtn. biking and kayaking. I was team captain of team 467: The Plundering Pirates, i did the canoeing leg. We had a great team. We came in at 247 out of over 400+ teams and we had never done the race before. It was an awesome time, quite a challenge. Lots of festivities in Fairhaven too, the whole city seemed to be out, they even had a navy ship docked there too. What a fun race and a spectacular team. thumbs_up.gifgrin.gifbigdrink.gif

  18. Myself and two friends decided we were going to try the Sulphide Glacier route on Shuksan. We left Friday evening and drove to the trailhead, but it was snowing pretty hard and the weather didn't look too good at all. So we drove over to washington pass instead, camped there friday night. The next morning we got up and climbed the Southwest Couloir on SEWS. It was fun. It snowed most of the time, with a bit of clearing. It was bloody cold though. The snow was rather firm too, which made for good climbing. Overall, it was a good time, I still wanna get up shuksan, but at least we climbed. thumbs_up.gif

  19. I'm in a United States History class right now too, and we just finished up learning about the Puritans. They suck. They did some good stuff, but I sure wouldn't want to live under Puritan law, too strict.

  20. I realize that I messed up and that I missed a field trip and failed to contact them immediatly. It was an honest mistake and like I said I apologized to them and I even tried to make things right. I contacted the person in charge of the Rock II field trip for the Everett Mounties and he was very nice and said I could come along on their field trip. I told the person with the B'ham branch this and he didn't like it one bit, made him even more pissed off. So no matter what I did or said, he did n't like it. So the thing that pisses me off is that he is too much of a hard ass bastard to accept my apology and get on with life. Hell, I don't care that they kicked me out, its just their damn bitchy attitude. madgo_ron.gif

  21. Don't judge my personality by the way I write, I am mad, that's all. "You were told this", yes I was aware of all the rules and such, and I abided by them, all I did was make an honest mistake of not calling the proper person at the proper time, I forgot. I apologized numerous times and tried to make amends, but they would have nothing of it. So I say fuck them if they can't accept a sincere apology. No, I don't have a petulant attitude, I'm actaully a real nice guy, unless you piss me off.

  22. I fuckin hate the mountaineers. the_finger.gif They are truly bastards. moon.gif They just kicked me out of their basic climbing class (B'ham branch). I missed one field trip, due to extenuating circumstances and I apoligized like no other. So, I just wanted to express my dislike of this group of assholes, I didn't like'm anyway. Anyone else hate these bastards. thumbs_down.gif

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