dryad

Bet that got your attention! But seriously folks, I'm looking to practice leading this weekend and to dirty up my shiny new gear on some easy (5.4-5.6-ish) trad routes. I'm thinking something along the lines of R&D or Saber. Doesn't have to be in 11-worth, those are just 2 obvious ones that popped into mind. Newbies like me of course are welcome, or if you're a better leader than me and can think of a route like Blueberry Hill with both harder and easy pitches, that would be great too. Either Sat or Sun (or both) work for me, but I have to be back in town on Monday for Bumbershoot.

Since this has turned into a discussion of the basic course, I'll chime in. - I got the feeling that many of the instructors hated my guts because I asked a million questions all the time, often of the "why do it that way and not this other way?" variety. - I see how it's good practice to learn to climb rock in mtn boots if you're going to get into winter stuff and mixed snow/rock/dirt routes. But in the summer on ordinary rock climbs it's just plain silly. In the basic class, you're supposed to wear boots all the time, but if you have a backbone, you can wear whatever you want. I've been taking rock shoes on my rock climbs, wore tennies and carried my boots on a glacier climb with a long trail approach, and nobody has said anything (most often I got looks of envy, actually). - My pack is almost always at least half the size of everyone else's. - My absolute biggest gripe is the policy that you have to summit a climb for it to count towards graduation. I have seen firsthand the kind of bad judgement this encourages. One of my climbs should never have left the trailhead because the weather forecast looked crappy, and we woke up on summit day to a blizzard and went home. Another climb shouldn't have left base camp, again because of crappy weather. Out of 6 people, 2 (including me) stayed behind and went back to sleep, but the other 4, 2 of whom were students desperate to get a glacier climb done, went on ahead. They did manage to summit eventually, but they suffered through rain, sleet and almost no visibility. It was an epic waiting to happen. Bottom line, and this goes for any class, is you should go into it knowing what you want to learn, never accept anything just because someone says so, and stay open to other sources of information (duh!). Sure I'm severely unimpressed with the basic class, but I did get out of it what I wanted to, which was a basic knowledge of glacier travel. So it wasn't a waste of time. There are plenty of cool mounties (many of them post on this board), but there are plenty of dogmatic dickheads too, and it seems like it's the dogmatic dickheads that are mainly the ones making policy.

The past couple of weekends I've been to South Early Winter Spire and Blueberry Hill in Darrington, and it made me wonder, what constitutes a crag? I presume most people consider SEWS an alpine climb. There is a summit to get to and there is a non-trivial approach. On the other hand, I presume most people consider Blueberry Hill/X-Dome a crag, but there is also a summit to get to and it also has a non-trivial approach, which is a little shorter time-wise, but a lot more treacherous than the approach for SEWS. So what characteristics qualify something to be called an alpine climb rather than a crag?

I can't resist a chance to chestbeat about my first trad lead on something not totally trivial. On Sunday I went to climb Blueberry Hill with brianb. We had great directions and found the granite sidewalk just fine. That thing should be renamed the "granite boulevard". It's huge! Must be quite a sight when it's all flowing with water. One correction to the beta I got: the first wash is more challenging than the second, just barely passable in a Honda Civic. Anyway, I led the first pitch and the last 2, and Brian handled the 3 harder ones in the middle. Pitches 3 (the one with the couple of bolts) and 4 (the one with the series of diagonal cracks) were the most fun. We then rapped off the right side of the Blueberry Terrace off a tree with about a million slings on it into the gully, then did another rap off a tree, and then down the the Westward Ho route the rest of the way with clean slabs and nice chain anchors. Piece of cake. Is this the way most people go down? Catbirdseat did something different. I have a question about the top 2 pitches. Where the hell was I??? On route, a little off route, nowhere near the route? I started from a belay at a big bush, climbed up a couple of blocks, then was faced with a blank slab to the left, a dirty corner with a little shrub in the middle of it in front of me, and more blank slab to the right. After a lot of indecisiveness, I went up the middle since I could get gear in, stepped over the little shrub, and up the corner towards a crack/flake system, and up towards a belay at the next large bush slightly to the left next to a big huge block with a wide gap under it. Then for the last pitch, I went straight up the slabs from where I was and it got progressively more dirty and with gear placements getting more and more sparse. After a 30-foot runout and my route finding method having degenerated into "spot the next crevice in the distance and run for it", I was getting a little worried. At least the climbing was easy. I was almost out of rope when I reached the woods of the blueberry terrace. I saw a larger, more vertical tree farther right. Does the route go over there? BTW, in case anyone's wondering what we did with the second rope, we decided to have the leader drag it. Worked out ok, but I definitely did feel the 2 ropes weighing me down while on lead. But we did discover an added benefit to this method... Brian forgot his chockpick, so we were passing mine back and forth, but more often than not, we'd forget to do the swap, and the leader would climb off with it. With the trailing rope, the leader could slide the chock pick down to the follower. Handy dandy.

Last call for takers. C'mon, you know you want to!

True, but my point was that one of the pair may not want to simulclimb AT ALL, in which case long pitches with the experienced one leading would be faster than short pitches. Maybe instead of naming the more experienced one "leader" and the less experienced one "second" , I should have called them "Mega Hardman" and "Gumby dork" for added clarity.

That's pretty damn slick! Don't have to rely on wedging a fattie knot in a rap ring or biner. How much would it damage the biner to have it knocking around and falling down when you pull the rope? Somebody must have a link to drop test results bookmarked.

I assumed the guy was referring to a 100m 9mm or similar rope, like 2 doubles put together, so there's no weight penalty over using doubles. One possible benefit I see in being able to do 100m pitches is if the leader and second have vastly different ability levels, so the second wouldn't feel comfortable simulclimbing and would prefer to pitch it out. If the odds of the leader falling are very small, it wouldn't be a big deal to use a single thin rope, and then the second will have the security of a toprope. But yes, communication would become a huge problem if the route is anything other than a straight line and it's not windy or anything. I bet it would be really hard to transmit rope tugs over such a long distance. Heck, it's hard enough over 50m if there's rope drag.

I came across this while having double ropes on the brain: http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Forest/7290/climb/tac/tac4.html In a nutshell, the guy is advocating the use of a 100m rope in the alpine so you can do 100m pitches over relatively easy terrain, then fold it in half and use double rope-style in sketchier sections. And you can do 50m rappels without worrying about a knot. Thoughts?

Yes, the best solution of all is to have more than 2 people (2 rope teams of 2, or even just a third person), but so far I have just 1 taker for Blueberry Hill. Anyone else want to go?

Have you ever gotten the dangling rope stuck in a crevice or whatever? That just sounds like a clusterf*ck waiting to happen.

Say you're a twosome climbing a route than requires double rope rappels so you need to bring a second rope. Sure, you can just carry it with you, but why not climb with it as you would with a double rope system? I've never climbed with double ropes so please enlighten me to pros and cons. I understand belaying with 2 ropes takes some getting used to. Would using 2 fat single ropes as doubles, rather than skinny real doubles, make that worse?

I don't know if I'm insulting the place by calling it sport climbing, but I had a great time at 3 O'clock Rock in Darrington. The routes we did (Til Broad Daylight and Under the Boardwalk) supposedly have gear placements here and there but we didn't use any - the bolts were enough. There are harder routes too. Tons of fun if you like slabby face climbing. Really pretty place with some alpine feel. Topo: http://www.seanet.com/~mattp/Darr/arch.htm

Yeah, that wanker is going on Friday. I can't join in cuz I have this funny little thing called a job.

I had so much fun in Darrington last time that I want to go back and tackle Blueberry Hill this weekend (Aug 16 or 17, either day is fine). I'm learning to place gear and would like to lead some of the easier pitches, but need a ropegun for the harder stuff (tops 5.8, I think).

On the summit of SEWS the second time, I had an ORGASMIC POWERBAR EXPERIENCE. It made me think of the "orgasmic beer experience" thread a while back. Maybe I was just really hungry or delirious from climbing all day, but biting into the dense chocolatey proteinaceous goodness of a chocolate brownie flavor ProteinPlus PowerBar was the most supremely satisfying sensation imaginable at that moment. And the last few mouthfuls of water I had left in my bottle to wash it down with were the sweetest ambrosia on earth. Strange the simple pleasures in life. Other observations from this climb: - The yellow alien is a mighty useful creature. I think it was used on every pitch, or just about. - Those big shady belay ledges with big convenient anchor trees were really nice. - Damn, WA Pass sure is pretty!

Thanks. To further clarify, I'm looking for shoes that would work for trail hiking and rock scrambling type activities. I most likely wouldn't use them on snow, so don't need something waterproof or good for step-kicking. I love the light weight and breathability of trail runners, but I want something with ankle support, as I've been repeatedly twisting my ankle lately.

Anyone have these? Opinions? Are there any other similar lightweight high-top trail runner approach type shoes out there?

I'd like to nominate the corner crack on Hammerhead Rock in Leavenworth (5.6) for the list of routes that are good for doing one's first trad lead. It's short, it's easy, it can be toproped if you want that security blanket, and it happily swallows up any and all gear that you can toss at it. You can place something every 2 feet if you wanted to. Heck, there's even a rock horn you can sling. Other suggestions?

Just want to give a to the salesguy who helped me out with pack shopping the other day. I tried on a few, none of them fit right, and he said, "None of these packs fit you, don't buy any of them, come back some other time". Real integrity there to not try to sell me something that wasn't really right.

Ok, here's a little trip report... Met rr666 at 6am in Lynnwood. Got to the trailhead around 7:45. After a slight navigation error and what we affectionately called the "alpine variation" to the approach with some scrambling and bushwacking, we were at the base of the South Buttress at 8:30am. We started on "Til Broad Daylight" with rr666 leading. We did 2 full pitches until just before the long traverse and decided to rap down because we had just 1 rope and it didn't look like there were enough anchors to do single rope rappels down the Tidbits route. And in the words of rr, "Traverses suck anyway". Then I lead up "Under the Boardwalk" (1 full pitch), and it really was as easy at MattP said. Love those knobbies. We were pretty much done by noon. Overall, a super-fun pretty mellow outing on some great rock in a beautiful setting. I'll definitely be back. Thanks MattP and GregW for all the beta, and rr666 for the great company and rope gunning! Tips: 1. If you're heading to the Arch area on 3 O'clock rock, look to your left shortly after you enter the clearing on the main trail. There's a pretty decent rocky side trail that goes straight there. We walked right by this and got to the North Buttress then made our way back south along the base of the wall. Not a big deal, but nice to avoid it if you could. 2. Get there early! Boy were we grateful we did. By the time I was halfway up "Boardwalk", the rock was getting so hot that you couldn't hold on to anything for more than a second or your hand would start burning. Good thing it was super-easy friction climbing that only required fingertips for balance. As we were packing up to leave around noon, another party showed up looking to do the same routes we did. 3. Don't miss the great ice cream at the Shell gas station just outside Darrington on the corner of that road that leads to Whitehorse Mtn.

Dude, anything purple is MINE! You should know these things by now.

Just get some cheap expendable thrift store rain pants that you won't feel bad about trashing.

I've never been to either and would like to go one day this weekend. Anyone want to check them out with me? Beta would be appreciated too. What are some nice moderate routes?

Here's a silly trivial question. I'm planning on going up Glacier Peak (Sitkum Glacier) this weekend and since it has a sizeable trail approach I was planning on wearing tennies and then switching to boots later on. What would be a good place to do the switch and cache the tennies on the way up? At Kennedy Hot Springs? Farther up? Is there a place farther up that's obvious enough that I won't walk right by my stash on the way down? Thank you!