Alex_Mineev

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...

MSFT got new patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r=1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=6754472.WKU.&OS=PN/6754472&RS=PN/6754472 Methods and apparatus for distributing power and data to devices coupled to the human body are described. The human body is used as a conductive medium, e.g., a bus, over which power and/or data is distributed. Power is distributed by coupling a power source to the human body via a first set of electrodes. One or more devise to be powered, e.g., peripheral devices, are also coupled to the human body via additional sets of electrodes. The devices may be, e.g., a speaker, display, watch, keyboard, etc. A pulsed DC signal or AC signal may be used as the power source. By using multiple power supply signals of differing frequencies, different devices can be selectively powered. Digital data and/or other information signals, e.g., audio signals, can be modulated on the power signal using frequency and/or amplitude modulation techniques

http://www.4humor.com/fv/pictures/funnycats.wmv

http://asksnoop.com/shizzolator.php?url=http://www.cascadeclimbers.com (sorry if it was posted here before)

Use snowbanks at Paradise parking lot. 37 seconds approach time. Zero exposure. You end up spending 100% of time working on your skills. If you do it early in the morning it may even be quite dry.

Does anybody know the spot where the recent LR accident happened? Could you please circle the area on one of my pictures? Mike?

August: You'll have to be really really good on ice. You'll have to be really really lucky to avoid falling rocks.

Climb: Mt Rainier-Liberty Ridge - Reconnaissance trip Date of Climb: 5/31/2004 Trip Report: One of the lessons I learned during climbing is that you never 'see' what you climb. You just don't see the mountain itself. I was also quite frustrated by the lack of pictures of Liberty Ridge. So I hiked to 9k up the Curtis Ridge with my camera and here we go: Liberty Ridge, Ipsut creek approach Liberty Ridge, Ipsut creek approach Liberty Ridge Liberty Ridge 6am Sunrise on Curtis ridge 7k Curtis Ridge 7200 Liberty Ridge Liberty Ridge, Willis Wall Liberty Ridge Liberty Ridge Willis Wall / Liberty Ridge View from Curtis Ridge 8500 Willis Wall / Travers of Angels Upper Liberty Ridge Liberty Ridge Winthrop Glacier / Camp Shurman Lower Winthrop Glacier from lower Curtis Ridge Upper Winthrop from Curtis

IMO it depends on how much glacier/ice vs rock climbing you gonna do. I have a standard 10.5 50m rope and last time I used it was a year ago when I climbed Baker with my wife. Since that time I prefer when my partners bring their thin ropes. If I was buying rope today I'd get a thin one because usually there is always one or two thick ropes to choose from and not always a thin rope.

The function is tangent based, not sure about the exact formula. Time delta increases like 1:1 with increase of altitude in the beginning but when time delta closes to 6 hours altitute grows infinitely.

Kudos for the link!!

From The Seattle Times artcile on LR accident: "Richards wasn't pulled over the ridge because the rope was tied to a harness in a way that absorbed much of Cooley's weight." How is that?

Good job How long you think this route will be in shape? Yeah, I remember glacier ice on Kautz cliff was not of a very high quality as well. Every first couple hits did not stick at all. How much time did it take you to approach the camp site at 6k?