OlympicMtnBoy

Hehe, don't confuse that for being smug, that's pure bliss from a fresh baked and hand delivered cookie in the wilderness.

Trip: Mt. Stuart - Razorback Ridge - The Night the Fires Came Date: 9/8/2012 Trip Report: For whatever reason, this route has been on my radar for a while and I finally got a chance to go check it out with my friend James. I also wanted to try descending the West Ridge route so we opted to do a loop from the Ingalls side. I’d never gone over Goat Pass before and it took a bit longer than we expected but despite our late start from the TH and several breaks we were climbing before 4 which was our goal. We were glad to have crampons and ice axes to cross the Stuart Glacier and the broken ice bits at the bergschrund but basically had no difficulty getting onto the rock even though James “forgot” that his crampons were full step-in. Razorback isn’t terribly obvious as a ridge from the base but you can find it easily enough by traversing all the way across the glacier until you can see up the Stuart Glacier couloir (almost to the North Ridge gully), then start up the rock right of the couloir. We scrambled up 4th class ledges for a ways paralleling the couloir until it looked like we should rope up and then we made a rising traverse rightward towards the emerging crest of the ridge. The lichen thickened but the rock quality also improved as we left the bergschrund and ledges behind. I soon spotted the right facing tiered corner described in the Mountaineers Intermediate climbing guide and made my way up it awkwardly with my pack on. It felt 5.9 with the pack (probably 5.8) but there were good small/medium nuts low and soon I could place my #3. I climbed the last bit of corner and decided to stop on top and bring James up on a real belay. If you wanted to avoid this it looked like several fun variations were possible farther right or an easier path left. As I brought James up I watched a VW bus sized chunk of ice collapse on the other side of the couloir and hurtle down the glacier before slamming into a gaping crevasse. It was cool, especially since we weren’t on the glacier. We swapped gear and James headed up, sticking to the crest and picking the funnest line. He headed for a steeper hand crack that was pretty good except for the dirt clod foothold he blew out and the fact that it was a bit wider than it looked. The rock in here was just as stellar as the North Ridge but of course a tad dirtier with a loose block here and there due to lack of traffic. I took the lead again with a short 5.8 finger crack to some easier terrain and then the short “razorback” traverse. We had been watching a party come up near the north ridge gully, cross the gully, and head up the next gully to the right. Not sure what they were doing but there was a rather large rockfall down there and we paused for a minute ready to start rescue operations until we heard them shouting back and forth that they were both ok. I’d be interested to know if they were off route or trying to do the 1985 route or something? James took over again on licheny cracks to the ridge crest that we weren’t sure would continue but did and made for some more great moderate ridge travel. After a shorter than planned pitch he brought me up and we decided I would gun for a bivy site as we were loosing light and the storms were brewing. We must have passed the bivy described after pitch seven somewhere but I ended up just reaching the level of the West Ridge notch and traversing over to it. This was the crappiest rock of the route and I wished we had more light to follow the last bit of ridge to near the West Horn as it looked fun. Instead we used the last light to find a bivy below the notch on the south side and a ~15 lb chunk of ice that was all that remained of the snow at the top of the Stuart Glacier couloir. It was full of dirt and who know what, but it made for a much more pleasant evening with plenty to drink. The weather I checked in the morning before leaving had said a 20% chance of thunderstorms before 11pm and then nothing. We watched that evening as storms swirled all around us but only had a drop or two of rain during the climb. I snuggled into my Epic shelled half bag and my belay jacket in the surprisingly warm night. About a half hour after we lay down the sky lit up. The thunder shook the mountain beneath us and the lightening was almost enough the read by. Soon the rain came. We each huddled in our survivable but less than pleasant shelter systems. As the rain grew harder I pulled my wind jacket over my head to keep the rain off my face. As this became a saturated wad of tissue paper I struggled to keep it from sagging onto my mouth, trying in vain to get the brim of my belay jacket hood to prop it up. The temperature dropped. The wind came up. The lightening continued, lighting the fires that still burn today. I no longer had to worry about my jacket in my face as the wind kept blowing it off. The rain would stop for ten minutes only to resume again as hail and push me back into my fragile fabric shell. I tried to sleep on my side for more hood coverage but this only led to tossing and turning. James was silent in his own struggle with his mylar emergency bivy sack and I silently hoped my foam pad would provide some insulation were he struck by lightning in it. We hoped the people bivied on the summit had had the sense to move and that we were far enough down from the ridge to not be struck. The beating continued until the sky grew light but there was no sleep to be found. With the rain still passing on and off (after more than 8 hours of storming) James suggested we bag our plans to summit and start heading down. I suggested I stay in my little half bag/jacket cocoon longer and just try to will the clouds to move on. Fortunately my will is strong and in another hour the sky was a beautiful blue and the wind had nearly dried the mountain. We packed up in the frigid but beautiful morning (hail still on the ground)and decided to tag the summit after all leaving most of our gear at the notch and simuling to the top. We hung out for a bit enjoying the view and rewarming in the sun before making one rappel and soloing back to our bivy site. Despite a little bit of off route scrambling we managed a fairly quick descent of the west ridge with endless downclimbing, one short handline, and one rappel below Long John Tower. It may not have been much faster than scree skiing the Cascadian, but it was a heck of a lot more fun. My girlfriend met us at Ingalls Lake with cookies and the rest of the hike out was pleasant. The pictures we took before and after cannot even remotely capture that epic night and it won’t be one soon forgotten. The mountain howled and growled but then kindly let these travelers pass by once more. More pics here: https://picasaweb.google.com/104708573545176184583/RazorbackRidgeWithJames# Gear Notes: Standard alpine rack to #3 camalot. Crampons and ice axe were only used for about 20 minutes but they were neccesary. Approach Notes: Approach as for the Stuart Glacier Couloir, start up the rock right of the couloir and then head up and right to the emerging crest.

Old La Sportiva Kaukulators a half size bigger than my normal rock shoes. I love the high top for the occaisional offwidth and it helps keep gravel and stuff out of the shoe on the easy sections. You pay a small weight penalty for the extra material (probably also true for the latest high tops), but it's on your feet when you are climbing and I never notice, trim your approach shoe weight instead cause those are in the pack. My shoe of choice for 5.9 and under long alpine.

Cool, looks like you and Dave had a good adventure!

I still see 5.12 crag climbers get shut down by a 5.9 offwidth in the alpine once in a while too . . . not exactly the same skill set.

Cool, that looks like one to add to this list.

That's how I rock it, aliens and TCUs. Although the new BD cams look cool (the ones that haven't been released yet). Master cams seem ok if you aren't already used to aliens. After you have a set of each then you can worry about offsets.

Nice, looks like fun and not too smoky!

Kind of thread drift since Layton was asking about fixed ropes . . . but, when I'm cleaning an aid traverse I use a gri-gri on the bottom because instead of doing funky shit like decribed above to get the load off the lower ascender to release it or unclip, you just use the gri-gri lever to lower yourself out, shift your weight to the upper ascender, clean the piece and suck the slack back in. Fast and you stay attached to the gri-gri and dont have any violent swinging. Rarely need to re-aid unless it's a really long reach or a lip or something. I find ascending a free hanging or near vertical rope is faster with a frog type system and less work. If it's low enough angle to balance on your feet in your aiders without weighting your tie in point then the yosemite system with two aiders and two ascenders can be less tiring/faster. Really low angle is like Monty said, more of a batman/self belay setup than really ascending. If you are on a fixed rope and don't have to lower out off pieces to clean than I think the new Petzl Micro Trax or old Mini Trax would work great in a frog type system on the bottom.

I think I have an extra 0 TCU I'd trade, but I'm in Louisiana and my rack is in WA. It'd have to wait a couple weeks till I get back.

Doesn't the SOS message go to trigger a rescue and the "OK" message sends a message to friends in your contact list (but not the rescuers)? One doesn't cancel the other although I think you can cancel the SOS message by holding down the button or something. Hopefully that's what you meant. Glad you all made it down safe and it looks like you learned a whole lot. :-)

Cool, way to finish it up! That's been on my tick list for a while but I haven't managed to get up to try it yet.

Sweet, I've been wondering what's up there for a while, might have to go check out some of those older routes one of these years.

I'm not sure there really are any good plain cell phones, they just aren't designed to be particularly powerful transmitters. Seeing bars means your phone can receive the signal from a powerful tower somewhere in the distance and doesn't have anything to do with if the tower can see your puny phone when you try to call. Probably a few situations where your low power call might be low priority, but I don't think a new phone will make much difference. Try reading reviews on reception but they vary a ton for most models (i.e. one review says it's great and the next says it's crappy). If you see someone calling out there then ask what phone they have, I haven't found a huge difference. Texting does seem to work better than voice calls but still not reliable. It used to be that simple flip phones had better reception than smart phones due to less internal interference but I don't think that's universally true anymore. I managed to get my voicemail and send texts from the summit of Mt. Stuart last weekend on my LG enV? (Verizon).

Cool, that looks like fun! Gonna have to get up there.

Matt, didn't we climb that together? It wasn't by headlamp, it was by roasting sun lamp. ;-p I think you just don't like chimneys. Hehehe . . .

Sweet, gotta love that 10a sting in the tail to a nice 5.9 route. ;-) I like your approach as well avoiding both trails.

Yeah, I think we found the correct spot to cross the gulley and avoided your scary mantle so at least I had good gear and rock on my off route pitch. I'm not ready to burn the description but I probably won't be heading back there any time soon either. And did you really use the #5 camalot "often"???

Hehe, I'd call it a "select adventure". There was a lot of loose rock and mediocre climbing for a few ok pitches. It's a cool looking chunck of rock from a ways away and a nice long technical bit, but the fractured rock and dirt kinda take away a bit. Maybe if it had some regular traffic but it doesn't seem like that's gonna happen.

Trip: Mt. Hardy - The Disappearing Floor (5.10c) Date: 8/12/2012 Trip Report: Matt S. and I had met up via a mutual friend on a canyoneering trip to Zion earlier this year and we figured our climbing styles might match up pretty well. After several months of near misses to plan a trip to climb something, I just started throwing out of random ideas when we finally had a few days to work with. “How about Mt. Hardy?” I asked over voicemail, browsing the Selected Climbs book in my lap. Matt called back a day later, “I couldn’t find much info, sounds like it doesn’t get climbed much for a supposed classic?”. Sounded like the perfect adventure so off we went. We thought it wise to bivy at the pass as suggested in the Nelson description, and because bivies are fun. Not wanting to hike up the hillside in the heat of the day we met up in Monroe and then made a stop in Newhalem for a few fine pitches of granite sport climbing as a warm up. After playing on bolts we headed farther up the road and parked on the side of the highway, hiking uphill into the forest a little after 5 PM. Matt kindly let me lead to clear the copies spider webs out of his way and we trudged up, and up some more. Pretty much the only relevant route description if you’ve parked at the right place is “walk up hill”. We made the pass after a couple of sweaty hours to the pass but then decided to camp on a bench a couple of hundred feet down (south side) where it looked a bit more pleasant and there was still a good snow patch for water. The mosquitoes were still out but tolerable and died off after sun set. We woke reasonably early and started out over the pass again and down the other side. After the annoying narrow gulley of the stream and dropping down nearly to the river we cut over and had minimal brush to bash before we got to scree and finally views of the route. We crossed a short snow field and scrambled up the gulley where we roped up and I led off on a simul block until we found the appropriate place to cross the gulley again to the buttress. Along the way we passed one tree with a bail sling and one bail anchor with two nuts. There wasn’t an obvious chock stone where we crossed but it was roughly three pitches up the rib and there were several small trees and an easy ledge leading right into the rubble filled gully and the easiest looking route up the other side. From here Matt led up a short bit of 5.8 which seemed to match the guidebook description and then right and up into a V groove. Here we made our first route finding error missing the exit left from the groove and deciding it looked easy enough to find our own way. I led farther up the groove to the top and around the corner and set off up some dirty mossy cracks and flakes but with reasonable rock. What I thought was easier ground above turned into steep licheny slab with a totally filled in crack. I struggled for a bit to dig out things on lead until I finally took a fall and resorted to a couple moves of aid where the crack pinched down (a 2 lobe blue alien and a purple tcu) and then I managed to reach the easy big ledges above. We had bypassed pitch 5 and part of pitch 6 but found the route again with the traverse left on pitch 7 and the ugly loose chimney/gulley. The climbing up here was easy but the rock was so shattered that pro was mostly mental, nearly every hold was a block clearly only held in by gravity. Matt got the “improbable” pitch that goes off the left side of the top of the gulley (not really a notch as described). The right hand side had a piece fixed part way up but the option we took was easy and led across the shallow dihedral to a finger crack and up to a sandy ledge. Fighting rope drag Matt combined this with the traverse on pitch 9 to put me directly under the steep flakey corner. The hanging flakes in the corner looked scary but were all pretty solid except for a few obvious loose bits that weren’t hard to avoid. I enjoyed the interesting moves and good pro and then combined this with the offwidth pitch that I felt was more like classic 5.9 although Matt disagreed. These two pitches were probably the best part of the route IMHO, and probably the most solid rock. Matt trundled an annoying block on the unprotected traverse on his way up and then tackled the crux 5.10c finger crack. Maybe it was 5.10c with some cleaning several years ago but the whole thing was filled with moss and mud again so he groveled and finally resorted to aid as I shouted encouragement (and aid tips) from below. I followed mostly free but still grabbed a couple of nuts after pulling off a loose horn before finally getting up onto the ridge. Feeling crunched for time now I set off on a simul block up the easier ridge finding lots of loose rock and sparse pro but easy climbing including one stellar sidewalk bit with huge exposure on both sides and ran out of useful gear a pitch below the top. Matt took the final bit with one move of 5.8 and had us up. We had wasted quite a bit of time on the aid pitches and with routefinding so we enjoyed sunset from the summit, made a quick note in the summit register (placed in 2009 with all the recorded ascents via the 4th class backside), and blasted for camp. I made it back to camp just in time to avoid turning on my headlamp (crucial since my headlamp was still with my bivy gear), and Matt came along a few minutes later with his headlamp lit. We shared the homebrew I had stashed in the snow, had some dinner snacks, and set off for what we knew would be an unpleasant bushwhack down in the dark. It was astounding how easy it was to get off course on the way down in the dark. What had seemed like an easy straight up approach actually had some slight contours to stay on the subtle ridge crest and now in the dark the fall line would suck us constantly into the younger trees on either side of the clearer crest. My GPS kept us roughly on track to the two points I took on the way up and we ended up back at the truck two and a half hours later (yes, longer than the hike up). There was much celebrating with the donning of flip flops, and we began the drive back home. More pics here: https://picasaweb.google.com/104708573545176184583/MtHardyWithMattS Gear Notes: Double rack from blue alien size to #2 camalot plus a #3, #4 and a #5 (%$^#*'ing #5 that we didn't really need but were suckered into taking by the previous TR). Approach Notes: Park off the highway and start hiking up hill.

Cool, looks like another fun one Matt! That the only pic you got?

If you are "in your car", you are clearly not "in line", unless you are at a drive thru. If I waited in line for an hour thinking I was first, and someone wakes up and crawls out of their van, they are in line behind me somewhere. If I pull up and walk to the door and they come out immediately and claim their space I'd probably give it to them. If you want to sleep in line, put your pad and bag by the door, not in your car. Try the camp 4 line in Yosemite some time. ;-)

Not mine and it's in Wenatchee but it's $10: http://wenatchee.craigslist.org/spo/3249474016.html

Nice couple of climbs, kind of a cool link up there. Any sign of the film can summit register we put on Sweat a couple years ago?

Looks like fun even if you were "off route" for some of it. There's something nice about having your bivy gear with you, while it may slow you down it also frees you up for scenic bivies! How was Prusik?