Alex_Mineev

Well, the pair of Ice9k I got weighted 7+ pounds. Impressive boots. I was ready to forgive this extra pound+. If not the problem with the right inner boot - I’d keep them... I ordered Asolo AFS 8000 from www.zappos.com The shop has free shipping, free return shipping and they have a bunch of climbing boots.

I ordered and tried Alpinistas - too narrow in the toes area, other than that - just perfect... Returned and ordered ice 9k from mgear. So far fedex says the package weights 10 lb. I wonder how much of it are the boots...

Thanks Michael, I am going to give Alpinista a try - I can always return them to REI if something goes wrong. In few places they say Alpinista runs large and recommend ordering one size smaller - how true is it?

Thanks! I found couple one-year-old threads with some opinions. Would be really useful to know what people think now. I was pretty happy with my current boots in the beginning but then changed my mind after a couple difficult climbs... link 1 link 2

Hmmm... Sounds like it does not have to be fun to be fun. May I should just get Freney...

Can not find any decent reviews on them...

Does anybody have any experience with Vasque Ice 9000? Can't find any decent reviews on the web... Do they worth the money? I plan them for winter climbs above 10k in Cascades and warm season climbing on Aconcagua and Alaska.

Selling two pairs. Size men's 11 and 9.5 $80 each. One pair (9.5) is too small for me; I used once on NR Baker couple weeks ago. Another pair (11) is a bit too big for me; I used it on ID, Kautz and Gib Ledges routes this year and it worked perfectly. However when I tried it on NR Baker (first attempt) I wished it fit a little bit tighter (I usually wear size 10)... Got both on sale for $160 each year ago. Both pairs are in very good condition. Both waxed. Proved to be very warm in winter and absolutely water proof. Here is the official description: Waterproof full-grain, rough-out leather upper with Thinsulate delivers exceptional support, warmth and custom comfort in all but the most frigid conditions. A beechwood lasting board inside the midsole ensures rock solid support and insulation for mountaineering, climbing and scrambling. Accepts step-in crampons.

We were constantly traversing left and up until we got to the spot with soft snow and with a 45-55 degree slope toping on the crest of the ice cliff. There were multiple opportunities to climb over the small overhangs, but I did not feel safe enough to attempt climbing over any of them + I knew there would be soft snow above the overhang and tools would not stick, so climbing over it would be very scatchy + we had backpacks which would make dancing on them a bit clumsy + we already had at least 2 hours of climbing thru icefalls on the approach to the cliff... (I am severely hammered at work these days. We'll get together as soon as I checkin my piece of code)

Dammit, Alex, I TOLD you not to post that photo! How come that when I look at the picture I see the mountain, but when tomtom looks at it he sees the polypro?.. Anyway, what is it kinda secret code? Polypro makes one look like a montee?

The spot is flat and protected by another couple hundred feet of almost flat terrain crossed by 10-15ft wide crevasses... We spent there only 4-5 hours in the coldest time of the day. I think risk was acceptable.

North Ridge Baker, east side NR Ridge Baker Sun reflecting of the ocean. View from our bivy site Tom, NR Baker Me at the bivy site, NR Baker Views from our bivy, NR Baker © Tom The ice cliff. Me going up. © Tom Me at the second belay © Tom Shuksan from NR Baker route © Tom 100 feet below summit © Tom Me on the summit, NR Baker Baker crater © Tom

Wow, nice pics! Good job

Actually I do not have any pictures from the technical part. I was t00 scared and concentrated on immediate climbing needs... One thing I remember clearly is the thought "why the hell I am a climber and not a chess player?!!" I believe the route is in perfect condition for fun outing. Out of the two options to gain the ridge, west face looked like easy climbing but it was under bare loose rock - quite unpleasant. East side, as Tom mentioned, reminds Khumbu icefall. Quite climbable with tons of options, all under/between huge dripping seracs. Oh, yeah, we had to climb in and out of a big crevasse on the hike towards the ridge. The ice cliff (aka two pitches of 60-70 degree ice and snow): I would say that earlier in the season it may be two pitches. We somehow had to make 3 belay stations making it 4 pitches before we could start simul-climbing on top of the cliff. The first and the third belays were on awful rotten ice. I believe one could use pickets in this kind of ice. Titanium ice screw: worked just fine! I bought it “just in case” the day before the climb. Albeit all these talks about how lame these screws are I liked it. Yes, it had some additional friction in dark water ice, but in normal crappy glacier ice it worked fine.

see attached image An hour and a half of hiking from Paradise up the Nisqually gl. This wall starts as 60 degree slowly turning to 100 degree overhang on the top third.

Thanks! I submitted forms for solo permit about two months ago and finally got it... Looks like too late. We'll see.

Is there any snow left on it or it's bare choss this time of year?

http://www.pentaxusa.com/products/cameras/camera_overview.cfm?productid=18047

Big hood. Bulletproof fabric. A bit bulky and a bit short on my taste. MSRP about $500! Two types, yellow and blue. Look for blue ones.

More pics Evening view from 5700 camp 100ft of somewhat 'real' climbing Entering house of Gods Sahale summit AaronB asking me "where is the rope?" We used two 10ft prussiks to rappel down... AaronB and Chris on the col below Sahale summit Mt Johannesburg View from 5700 camp Lower Boston Basin from 5700 camp

aha, we plan to get back on the next weekend after 4th j and make the normal NR, no 'experiments'

Climb: Mt Baker-NR (direct?) attempt Date of Climb: 6/28/2004 Trip Report: NR Baker was planned to replace LR trip which proved this year to be closer to grade IV then III. The idea was to try my first grade III on something interesting yet having low obj danger... Met with AaronB at my place at 9am Sunday morning. Started hiking towards Heliothrope ridge at 12.30. As usually I missed fork to the climbers trail, so we hiked to the edge of the Coleman glacier, then hiked few hundred feet along the glacier to the place where you can actually step on it just above the camp site. Somebody told us about an accident on NR and predicted we'd be bothered a lot by copters and rescue activity... Glacier was in good enough state to let easy travel to the ridge. We were slowly moving deciding where to camp when saw the copter. It was making huge cirles around the mountain, hanging above us from time to time. One of this moments when they hung above I remember telling Aaron that guys in the copter probably thinking that we are the victims, so we should smile to make them think we are not their clients. Finally copter found people it was looking for and flew away. We camped on a flat spot at 6800 within less than a mile from the ridge. Enjoyed a very nice evening with light breeze floating down the mountain and a beautiful sunset. Woke up at 1am to see full moon, falling stars and warm lights of B'ham. Breakfast, tea and preparations took standard hour and a half. I forgot my flashlight at home, so Aaron led on glacier this morning. At 4am we reached base of the west face of NR. Took out second tool and prepared pickets. Climbed the face to the crest in one hour using running belay. Snow was perfect! 40 to 50 degree styrofoam that securely accepted pickets. Had some rest staring at the blue cliffs above and trying to figure possible weaknesses and preparing ice screws... At this point I learned that the day is going to be a fasting one for me - I left all my bars in the tent So we shared Aaron's Snickers bar and began climbing towards the ice cliff. So far so good. Styrofoam converted to water ice and rock. Air temperature dropped. I could feel cold and fresh breath of the blue monster. We decided to climb thru the two deep vertical cracks just above a rock outcrop. They were about 45 feet high and lower part was 60-80 degree and quite protected allowing few steps to rest and put pro. The crux was at the top part which was 10 feet of vertical to slightly overhang ice. I believed I could do it after some homework on Nisqually: The monster had different opinion. It turn out that ice inside the cracks and on the overhang surfaces was so hard and brittle that I could not securely stick my tools no matter what. It just kept popping out plates of blue glass after every hit. Light hit, hard hit - did not matter, amount of force only affected size of the plates... So I was able to only climb 20 feet up the first crack and 30 feet up second one... Well, I thought, time to bail had come. I communicated my concerns to Aaron. Aaron did not want to go down too early so he convinced me to get out of my second crack onto the open face to the right and try again. I put my third screw on the face and climb over the lip. As soon as I reached overhang part I got the same problem with ice. I just could not hook. That's it. Down I climbed slowly, removing all screws... Aaron decided to try right traverse just under the cliff towards another weakness. Belayed, he made only 60 feet horizontally to the right on the steep slope. Tried climbing up, got the same problems as I and finally we decided to bail from this side of the ridge and check our options on the other side. 8.45am. We downclimbed around the outcrop a hundred feet of mixed ice 45 degree slope and started very long and strenuous running-belay traverse to the left, toward the prominent nose. Frankly, this traverse killed my feet. When we got to the nose Aaron seemed to be fine, but I was seriously thinking about bailing the whole thing. My feet were hurting so much that each step felt like putting it on the red-hot frying pan. It was not fatigue, just pain. I thought I could no longer provide safe climbing because of this painful attention sink... So after a minute of thinking I asked Aaron if he wanted to come here next time with me... and we bailed... Then we had some fun climbing down towards the middle of the ridge were it becomes less steep. At first we encountered wide shrund that was not visible till we came close. Another traverse fixed this problem to gently push as into another one. Just below the shrund we found a ladder of perfectly kicked steps. What a relief for my feet! Aha. Few hundred feet below these perfect deep steps ended as abruptly as they started! We guessed steps were kicked by rescue team dropped from the copter... and picked up by the copter... Fck! We wondered around to find way down. One way was up - nooo, not again. East direction was blocked by huge crevasse (we could actually see the normal NR route trail going down on the other side of the crevasse). West side was snow ice and rock 45 degree slope ending where we started the climb this morning. One problem was time and rock fall. We saw few rock funnels. The solution was to climb these spots as quickly as possible. Another problem was my feet I had to rest them every other minute. Since the slope was not very steep we did not use belay and basically managed to run down pretty safely. The rest was trivial. Hiked to the tent, consumed all four bars I left earlier in a fraction of a minute, packed and run down to the car...