Z-Man

facebook doesn't list any contact info either.

Thought about getting in touch with Aaron but he no longer lists his contact info on ColdFear, anybody know how to reach him? I'm not up for WI6 and I don't kayak, so its unlikely that we'd be getting out together, but I'm betting he knows some other adventurous souls that might be a better fit. Good to hear from you Trogdor, as much as I love to thrutch is there anywhere else to meet up that doesn't involve really hard off-width climbing?

I'm living in Cody for the next several weeks and am looking for partners for stuff nearby. Still pretty warm over here so mostly rock for the time-being. Any partners or leads would be appreciated, send me a pm.

Trip: Chimney Rock - East Face Direct + icefall Date: 8/4/2011 Trip Report: Five or six years ago walked away under overcast skies after hiking into the EF of Chimney Rock with a marginal forecast. This time the view was much clearer. Despite the photos the crosscountry hiking is actually pretty straightforward and not real ugly thanks to gratuitous amounts of flagging and a fair amount of traffic. After spending the previous week climbing in California it felt like what the photos depict though. Bitchin bivy spot comes with a view, a roof over your head, and entertainment. It's a bit of a haul to take boots and steel crampons for two pitches of 60 degree ice, but it made the climb bigger, cooler, and more direct. Belaying while wedged in a shallow crevasse and sending tools down the rope saves on the weight of ice screws and extra axes, and you could climb most of it with one axe anyway. The face is covered in this stuff. My buddy left this here in 2007 and much to his chagrin it wound up in a "manky anchors" thread. There's worse in other spots on the face. We rapped off of it later. Some fun climbing, some not so fun climbing, and a soggy summit register awaits on top, good thing its an all-weather notebook. A couple sweet bivy spots right on the summit, move fast and skip the icefall and you should be able to make it up there in a day from the car. Then its time to rap and downclimb the route. Been thinking about a Chimney Rock ridge traverse since I was in there before, maybe continue it on to Lemah, anybody interested?

Chukar on the NE Ridge of Snowking

That's Nate back when I could almost keep up. The East Ridge of the South Chamber sounds like a more accurate description, basically the left skyline in the first photo, the ridge to climber's right of the South Chamber. I was using the nomenclature someone else clued me into. Nate actually wanted to give March Madness a go, but it was pretty warm for that kind of thing.

right skyline.

Yeah, I remember being impressed by the report Wayne. You may remember I asked you about it and you said you weren't sure where you went on the upper ridge. Since you don't have any pics from that stretch I'm still not sure what the ideal route is. The other report I've looked at from Pro Guiding Service doesn't have any photos from the part I'm interested in either. I'm assuming those ropelengths don't lend themselves to comfortable photography.

Maybe 6, with a few hundred feet of scrambling on either end. I didn't see a ton of potential for variations, but you could hook up with the NW Face by traversing to the West instead of going East.

That explains where that line of rap slingage was going. We thought about following it to see where it went, but decided we would be content to make it back to camp having survived the day.

Trip: Concord Tower - Tunnel Route Date: 7/30/2006 Trip Report: This thing is short and dirty, but the cave is pretty sweet. There's a pretty nice hand crack running the length of the roof, anybody ever able to use it so as to climb the route without using the floor?

Trip: Liberty Bell - North Face Date: 8/31/2007 Trip Report: This is a pleasant distraction at WA Pass if you've climbed a lot of the easy stuff there already. Easier approach than the West Facing climbs and fun, wandering climbing up a big face.

Trip: Mount Shuksan - Northwest Arete Date: 6/30/2011 Trip Report: This route is probably the most serious easy route I've ever done. Lots of looseness and climbing it late in the year made for tricky glacier work. In general the climbing left much to be desired. But some parts were pretty fun. Among other things the remains of the rescue and recovery following the 1991 fatality on the route keep you in a serious state of mind. Spectacular position, I think the NW Aryete looks quite a bit better though.

Trip: Reynolds Peak - NW Ridge Date: 6/14/2009 Trip Report: This route makes for a fun low-fifth climb in a drier part of the world not visited too often by those of us tied to Seattle. Highly recommended for early season when larger objectives might be too ambitious for the snow cover.

Trip: Inspiration Peak - South Face Date: 7/26/2007 Trip Report: A report from last year made it sound like they didn't much care for this route, but I think having dry rock makes a big difference. The steepness of this route with such reasonable climbing makes it amazing.

Trip: Bonanza Peak - NE Ridge Date: 6/23/2007 Trip Report: This is probably the most terrifying climb I can remember. It didn't help we were there pretty early in the year and much of the ridge still had rime sticking to it. We bailed somewhere around halfway. Spectacular spot, bring your choss balls for this one.

Trip: Illumination Rock - SW Ridge Date: 1/17/2008 Trip Report: This was a spectacular day when it was snowing in Portland, but well above freezing above the clouds. Climbing the disintegrating rime that Hood seems to be choked with is great practice that makes other less-than-secure climbing seem much nicer.

Trip: Southern Selkirk wanderings - Date: 9/20/2005 Trip Report: I went on a road trip through SE BC years ago and had a great time admiring the mix of loose and icy Canadian Rockies and wet Cascades that is the Selkirks. In between sampling the area hotsprings and hanging out with logging protesters we managed to climb Patience Mountain, a 9000' peak a little ways South of the Trans Canada near Rogers Pass. There's some impressive stuff back there. As far as I know there are no technical routes established on the peaks in the panorama, its only been hit by heli-skiers. The face opposite the camera, South-facing, on the left most peak, Hope, is some 2000' high, looks like good rock, and is unclimbed. Check out the back cover of the Southern Selkirks guide for another look.

It was the skewer that broke, not the axle sorry. The skewer is not in the position I found it in, I stuck it on the fork to show what an angle it got bent to. It came apart into several pieces, so I'm not sure what position things were in before the accident. But I don't think I've been riding around on a loose wheel for the last few weeks since the last time I had to take the wheel off to fit it in my trunk. I don't have a pic of the wheel hub. It sounds like there are several components that could have failed that I should have been paying more close attention to on a weekly basis.

The axle sheared, but I couldn't find all the pieces so the threads may have stripped also. What's the lifespan of a quick-release skewer?

you're right, its a reynolds 531 steel frame, shows how much i know about bikes. I bought it used a couple years ago so don't know its complete history, but I wasn't able to find anything wrong with it at the time, and haven't had any big crashes myself. I'm trying to imagine how the forks could get damaged enough to bend previously without my noticing...

Good to hear of the eventual positive outcome. I had an ortho consult in the er, he told me pretty much what you guys said, except for the clavicle resection, that's a new one to me. I am still dismayed by what happened to my bike though, haven't ever had any problems, and had no signs of impending failure. I couldn't tell if the axle or fork is what initially failed. What is the life span of what I thought to be a durable aluminum frame?

Great, big obvious edit photo button now, thanks. How about viewing larger sizes of photos? Largest I can see is 600x450 with no option for other sizes, including clicking on the photo.

Thanks for the reply Feck, but I cannot find an "edit photo" button in either IE or Firefox. Can you post a screenshot to show me what I'm missing? I've uploaded too many photos today so I'll put a screenshot up tomorrow.

I had a type III shoulder separation today. Anyone here ever dealt with rehabbing one of those? Also, my 20 year-old touring bike suffered catastrophic failure on smooth, even paved trail. Any ideas on how to avoid such unexpected and painful disasters in the future?