OlympicMtnBoy

Nice job, looks like some fun times and a bit of luck with the weather!

I'm going to have to have Porter change my title to Marilyn Monroe now. I'm glad someone recognized my beautiful pearly whites.

Nice job, I've looked up at that line too. I've only done Wrist Twister and University Wall up there, but next time you need a partner let me know. I might fit the bill aside from the family and mortgage, and that I can't copperhead worth shit.

Trip: Mt. Stuart - West Ridge Date: 8/21/2010 Trip Report: Not a whole lot to add beta wise, but it was a great day out on Saturday! Brendan and I met up at 3:40 AM in Seattle and headed towards the Teanaway hitting the trail around 6:15 AM. We hiked in an took a little break to water up at Ingalls lake and then headed down the trail/ridge to the base of the route (3.5 hrs). Here despite our scoping on the hike in we traversed a little bit past the second gulley and headed up the next one. We soon realized our mistake but were able to angle up and hit the correct gulley a bit higher without any trouble. We knew we were back on route when we hit the preponderance of bivy sites. We really enjoyed the clean granite of the gulley and found the reasonable 4th class route on the right up to Long John Tower. We passed a party of four just before the "tunnel underfoot" and continued along with fun scrambling. The route to the notch was obvious except for where we got to BSing and got confused about which notch was which. We roped up just above the notch and simuled for about 70 meters around onto the north side and back to the south and to the sandy ledge. Brendan wanted to hog the lead to the summit but I made him give me the gear and I headed up what we figured was the 5.4 bit. As others have noted, there has been some fresh rockfall here and there is a fair bit of pretty unstable rock up there. It was unpleasant and I wouldn't recommend that route if you are not comfortable leading around large loose blocks. I managed to stem around it just fine and headed to the summit with Brendan in tow. (looking up from the sandy ledge as I enter the fresh scar area) Here we joined the party on top as it seemed most everyone was coming up at the same time from different directions (a couple parties on the North Ridge, coming up the Cascadian, and the party an hour or so behind us). It took us about 4 hours on the route which we were happy with for our first time on that side of the mountain. After a nice break we started down the Cascadian. I wasn't expecting much, but the Cascadian was long and unpleasant although I think we found the proper route down the right hand branch and were down at the trail 3 hours later after some sore knee resting breaks. We shared some snacks with the couple who had bivied on the North Ridge and still had to walk back to their car at the Colchuck TH, and then headed back uphill towards Long Pass. We made it back to the car around 7:30, just in time to hit the little BBQ place in Cle Elum. All in all, another great trip with on of my longest standing partners! Brendan made this awesome track on his Android with My Tracks as we went: Gear Notes: We took way too much, woulda been fine with a 30 meter rope and 5-6 pieces of gear. No axe or crampons needed anymore, didn't take em). Approach Notes: Get up early, drive, hike to the lake, follow the trail along the ridge, don't pass the correct gulley.

Fred likes that way too. I've wondered what that Crystal Creek bit is like nowadays.

Looks like fun! Which route did you take up Lexington from NEWS?

They're both a bit east of Renton (past the school).

Not bad for a single pitch TR. ;-) Nice job!

Nice, I need to get up there, have only done the ridge route!

Sweet! I kept looking up there and Matt kept telling me how it was all going to fall down on me. I knew somebody'd get on it sooner or later. :-)

We parked at the Mammoth Ski Area. The bus leaves from the "Adventure Center" or some such thing where the gondala leaves from. There was plenty of parking, except for near the adventure center which was marked off as no overnight parking. You have to get bus tickets inside, $7 gets you a round trip and the buses run every 20 minutes or so between 9 and 4 and a little less frequently other hours between 7 AM and 7:45 PM. No pass or anything needed to park your car. The bus was kind of a pain but manageable and nice to be able to do the hike out a different way (started at Agnew Meadows and came out at Red Meadows). There is overnight parking at the trail heads if you come in real early or late, but you still have to pay $7/person. Also remember to get your overnight permits, when Courtney went to get one in Lee Vining the Minaret Lake area was full but Shadow Lake was not and I thought that side was prettier anyways. Have a great time down there but don't forget the bug spray and headnet/bug shirt!

Trip: Clyde Minaret - SE Face (5.8, 12p) Date: 7/31/2010 Trip Report: Having my girlfriend living in Yosemite NP for the summer is great since I get to go visit, and not so great since she's away for several months at a time. I took a long weekend from work and went down to visit her last weekend. Last year we had a great time running up Mt. Conness so we planned for another nice alpine climb and this time settles on the SE Face of Clyde Minaret. Neither of us had been in the Minarets before and at 5.8 it seemed like a good moderate option, plus it's on of the lauded 50 classics so it must be good. We decided at the last minute to make it a three day trip to give us a whole day for the climb since we'd heard it was a long 12 pitches and read several TRs of folks getting benighted or returning in the dark. We packed up, got our mandatory bus ticket (no personal cars on the road between 7AM and 7PM) and ride to the trailhead for Shadow Lake. A late start (2:30) made for some pretty light passing all the beautiful lakes (Shadow, Ediz, Iceberg, etc). I found the area very similar to the Enchantments but with easier to get permits. (Clyde is the highest point with the last half of the SE face on the left skyline) We got in to camp at Cecile Lake just before 8:00 and passed a guided party of 5 (2+3) who were just returning from their early start on the route. They reported no ice axes were needed for the descent in the gully which was nice, we made a quick dinner and hit the sack. We got up early but still didn't hit the trail until after 7 and it was 8:00 by the time we neared the base. Just as I was thinking we had the route to ourselves (no one else bivied at the lake) we spotted a pair of climbers just a few minutes behind us coming up from Minaret Lake. Fortunately we found the original (5.6) traverse start and they headed for the direct (5.10a) start and never got withing two pitches of us. The first traversing pitch and the next few rightward trending pitches were fun and mellow until a route finding error sent me up a stiffer face past some scary balanced death flakes which I tried to keep from murderously sending down. I also lost a water bottle when it slipped from my pack as I bent to move a balanced rock (the cord lock on my pack had broken). The route follows a series of rightward trending ramps and flakes, but get too far over one way or the other and you get harder climbing. (note death flakes right of the rope on the face climbing bit) Another pitch or so brought us to the 5.8 traverse to get into the upper dihedral. I managed a long pitch and brought Courtney up. From here I continued up the dihedral past some fun old school 5.8 crack climbing (hard looking but with jugs a few moves up). I ran out of rope before the notch in the ridge we were aiming for and then had another minor route error trying to avoid a loose looking section, but we made it to the notch shortly and end of the difficult climbing. Although we had only done 7 pitches to here all but one of them was over 60 meters and it was starting to get well into the afternoon. Courtney had planned to lead some of the easier ridge pitches, but we instead chose to have me keep going do some simuling. I took some easier 4th class options on the right around the first gendarme and then we did one more pitch to the actual summit. It was after 5 by the time we hit the summit, but we took a little break anyways to rehydrate (with what remained after my dropped one) and fuel and enjoy the views. We packed the rope up for some exposed 4th class scrambling, but made it without too much difficulty to the Clyde-Ken col (follow the ridge NW, drop down as far as you can, then traverse right till you can drop into the next bowl). The gully was loose and nasty but we found the rap anchors eventually and made a short rappel to just above the large chock stone and then a long one (with my 67 m rope) that got us down past the overhang and a snow patch). A few more minutes of scrambling had us back to the base, but we still ended up putting the headlamps on for the last five minutes to camp. We didn't hear or see the party behind us, so perhaps they ended up bivying or came down the opposite side. I wouldn't want to have to do the upper part of the descent scramble in the dark. We thoroughly enjoyed dinner and some whiskey to rehydrate. The next morning we took it easy and then packed up heading out past Minaret Lake this time and catching the bus back to the Mammoth ski area parking lot. (The route starts at the upper left of the snowfield and traverse up and right hitting the large left facing dihedrals about half way up and then going to the obvious notch and up to the summit behind) It was really an awesome trip and I'm so glad we took three days to do it. The climb was definitely one of the most sustained moderates I've been on with absolutely no walking in between pitches, yet still with great belay ledges. The metamorphic rock took great gear and made for some nice positive edges in the harder bits. We did it in 9 pitches with some simuling, Croft gives it as 12 but each of those must be at least 40-50 meters. I'd highly recommend a visit to the area if you enjoy the Enchantments up here! More pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/matthiesen/SEFaceOfClydeMinaretWithCourtney# Gear Notes: Standard rack to #3 camalot (we had a 3.5 which wasn't needed) and lots of slings for long slightly wandering pitches. An ice axe was nice to/from the base but not needed above at this time of year. You could probably do entirely without if you wanted to by now. A 60 meter rope is fine but a 70 was nice, two ropes are not needed for the gully descent if you do a short rap first. Approach Notes: The Devil's Postpile area requires you to take a bus to the trailheads between 7AM and 7PM (when the busses run). If you hike out after the busses have stopped, you'll have a long road walk to your car (unless you drove it in real early). The bus does give you the option though of hiking in one way and out another as we did and it worked out well.

I did stuff like that with my Dad a long time ago. I remember hiking up past some old ski lifts in Idaho once for a similarly awesome summit bivy. Thanks for the reminder!

Not even google cache can save us. First post? Maybe it never happened?

Nice, I've always wanted to do that little loop!

I found the exact same thing on Mt. Deception last summer, so I removed it as garbage. Still in one of my gear bins I think... (oh damn was that really my first post here? I guess my 6yrs of lurking are up!) I recall there being a gully down off the right (west) side of the ridge before our roped pitch on Adelaide that looked like you could drop a couple hundred feet and come back up to the saddle between Clark and Adelaide and scramble up. It would probably be faster than traversing all the way around the other way. There was also a barely readable note in the Walkinshaw summit register of someone following "goat trails" from Adelaide to Walkinshaw. Should be doable without a rope if you don't mind some extra up and down.

I slept pretty well actually, Terry might say something different though since his thermarest deflated and he had to sleep on the tiny pad from his tiny pack. Location and views more than made up for the lack of level smooth surfaces!

Most of those sharp edges are pretty easily dealt with with a hammer. Sometimes a chisel may be necessary to really knock them down. You shouldn't need to leave any ugly bits of tape. ;-) Thanks for the reminder to leave no trace and pack out what you pack in (or up).

Way cool, maybe I'll get up there one of these days now that that's a little better worked out again!

Super job guys! Too bad we missed crossing paths! You guys got on some of the super classics, it's taken me three trips down there to tick most of those. I'm not going to let Matt have any more rest days on our trips since I know he can climb for a week straight now! Curt, it sounds like they did the full Matthes Crest as described in the Supertopo guide, but not the entire ridge. I believe the full ridge goes at like 5.8R or something but doesn't require any rappels to get off. I don't think many folks go all the way since the pro gets kinda crappy after the north summit.

Yeah, it looks like someone on ebay has been cutting pins out of u-shaped titanium channel and selling them for less than $10. No idea how they actually perform though. The USHBA ones are super nice and shiny. If anyone is headed to Moscow, Russia I'll give you directions on how to find the various mountain shops. They were like $3 for the less shiny knife blades and stuff and $10 for the Ural Alp/Ushba shiny cool lookin ones, but that was a few years ago. At $30 I'd better have a real good and hard project for em to justify the cost, I still don't take the few I own out very often since I seem to end up fixing them for rap anchors and stuff sometimes.

Trip: Tyler to Walkinshaw to Needles to Martin Traverse - a whole lotta ridge Date: 7/23/2010 Trip Report: The Needles range in the Olympic have always held a certain appeal to me, probably not least because they contain a variety of rock climbing routes and are visible as some prominent spikes through the binoculars from my parents house. In 2004 I set out along the ridge from Mt. Baldy solo to check them out. Unfortunately snow and an engulfing cloud layer cut that trip short at the top of Mt. Walkinshaw and I retreated to the Royal Basin trail and home. The idea sat idle for a few years as I explored other areas until it popped back into my head this spring. After trading some messages with Bremerton John who had been in the area a few years earlier a trip plan was hatched. Terry had similar thoughts and called John up and was thus added to the party, and then so was his friend Tyler (who would be making his alpine climbing and Olympics rock debut). The four of us gathered at the trailhead on Thursday night for some gear sorting and an early start. We decided to do as much of the ridge as possible, starting with Tyler Peak and heading roughly south-west along the crest traversing the Needles and perhaps ending with Mt. Deception if time allowed. We packed light for climbing with packs on, but brought a classic Olympics rack including a few pins to be able to catch the little spires and pinnacles along the way. Around 6:40 AM we walked about 200 feet of level road to the end of the parking area then caught the Tyler Peak climbers trail roughly straight up the hill for the next few thousand feet, soon breaking from the trees and finding our own path up broken slopes to peak #1 (and Johns 50th Olympic summit). The views and the weather were simply amazing and we lost little time traversing to Baldy with only a short dip from the ridge to refill our water bottles at a small creek. Here we ran into a single day hiker, our only company on the ridge, who forged ahead with us to the North Peak of Graywolf Ridge. Dropping down again, and then back up on the ridge and up a snow slope, we made it to the south peak of Graywolf. The hot day and hard work of talus slogging made us stop to melt snow and refill water again. Now mid afternoon but with time looking good we heading down again on the ridge and up to Mt. Walkinshaw where the nature of the ridge become craggy and much more exciting. Some snow moat stemming took the place of the slabby ledge traverse I had done before low on the north side, but this led to the same weakness up and left and then easy slabs and scrambling to the summit. To my joy I discovered my 2004 summit register entry was still there in the log anchored to the summit with a piton. In 2008 a new notebook was added with 5 parties shown since then (one earlier this year). This was our goal for the day, but we hoped we might be able to continue on the Adelaide. Some route finding down and left (S) of the summit, a quick traverse over to the next gully, and a fun foot ledge got us to the easier ridge crest on the way to Adelaide. Here we took a wrong turn attempting the north side of the ridge and had to backtrack before descending steep snow and ledges to the south and finally making it to the unnamed summit between Adelaide and Walkinshaw around 8PM. We dug out some relatively flat bivy spots, melted snow for water, and crashed for the night (at least until Terry woke us trying to kill a rat with his ice axe). The next morning we slept in a bit and then started the super fun steep ridge scramble towards Adelaide. Not knowing of any routes on this side of the peak and not wanting to drop down and traverse, we broke out the rope for one section of exposed scrambling and then belayed a fun 5.4 steep crack on the NE face of the peak from the ridge. This got us into a gully and a short walk to the summit with a register but no pencil. Now a bit behind schedule we dropped onto the snow in Belvedere Basin (and Tyler’s first ever glissade) and traversed towards Mt. Clark aiming for the 5.0 route on the NE side. Spotting a gully/chimney leading up from a snow ramp we decided to again check out unknown territory and found a reasonable 3rd class route all the way up to the summit block (this route went from the upper left side of the snow ramp and may not be as easy with lower snow levels). We scrambled up the gash on the east face of the summit block but chose to rappel back down. Sadly the summit register there is broken and the Ziploc that was placed in the unsealed tub had been shredded by rodents. Not wanting to corkscrew down the standard route we descended a steep gully and made on 60 meter rap through overhanging chock stones and then scrambled down to the snow and the Clark-Johnson Col. Here we entered territory John had covered before so he guided us to the standard route up toward Sweat Spire and Gasp Pinnacle and the easy 5th class route to the notch right between them. There were three named spires here (Sweat, Gasp, and the Devil’s Fang) and we wanted to tag them all before moving on. We were not a bit behind schedule from the earlier rope work and route finding so decided to bivy here and get a few spire climbs in before dark. I made quick work of the “4th class” route up Gasp Pinnacle and brought everyone else up then we slung a horn and backed it up with a pin to get down. Next I led up John’s 5.6 crack on Sweat Spire and set up a TR for the rest since it was less than 30 meters. Everyone chipped in on melting snow and leveling bivy sites when not climbing and it was soon dark and time for dinner. The rats visited again as well. We had planned to make it to near Martin Peak the day before but still had several summits to go so we arose just after dawn and John did the short pitch up Devil’s Fang for breakfast (the only summit he hadn’t done before in the area) and then we packed up and hiked to the Johnson summit block. We quickly roped up the steep chimney (well I soloed and belayed) and then tackled the complex looking ridge towards the Incisor. Amazingly we found a decent route almost entirely near the ridge crest with very little extra descent necessary. We hit the north side of the Incisor and I contemplated climbing a cool looking crack between the Incisor and a large block until I realized it would end about 2/3 up on a blank face and we traversed around to the standard route. John elected to take a nap having been here before and I should have taken this as a sign but instead racked up and set out up the pillowy face. Protection was sparse through the middle although the climbing was easy enough. I hit the summit ridge and brought Tyler and Terry up, then we rapped back down to the packs. This was my least favorite of the pitches, but it’s a cool summit nonetheless. From here the going was fairly easy to the summit of Martin Peak via a ramp and snow traverse on the south side under the summit and back. Martin Peak made our 13th summit of the trip but now mid afternoon with a long descent and hike back to the car still looming we realized we might not make it up Deception and home before dark. Having had such an amazing trip so far we opted for the slightly more relaxed option and chose to leave that one for another day. Hey, it’s not officially part of the Needles anyways. ;-) Some scree skiing and ugly gullys from below Martin Peak led to the snow and some great glissades almost down to the upper tarn in Royal Basin. We cruised on out the rest of the way pausing only briefly to dunk our heads in the creek and snack and then slog up the Lower Maynard Burn Trail and back out to the car around 7:30. A great trip through some awesome terrain with better than usual weather an even mostly fun rock! What more could you ask! I had a great time finally climbing something with John, Terry was great, and Tyler lost his Olympics alpine virginity (I think he’ll be back though)! Thanks guys! Gear Notes: Standard Olympics rack (nuts, cams to #2 and a few pins), ice axes. Approach Notes: Head off the spur road to the right just before the Dungeness trailhead, from the end of that (parking) there is a trail that goes straight up hill to Tyler Peak, or follow the old road (closed) toward Baldy Peak and the Maynard Burn Trail.

Love the pic, hehe.

Having had multiple partners lose crampons that were "well strapped" to their packs, mine go inside if possible. Otherwise make sure a strap runs THROUGH the crampon frame so you don't lose it even if it works loose. I made my own plastic crampon box out of a couple of 1/2 gallon milk jugs and a plastic sheet cutting board (cut the jugs in half, use both bottoms, cutting board piece for the middle joint, duct tape plus a strap to hold it together. It's lighter than the commercial ones and has held up for 5 or six years (the milk jugs are breaking down now though). Kind of hokey looking but worked great for my M-10s. The G-12s may have less volume. You could also find a scrap of neoprene or thin sleeping pad and make a crampon taco with it.

The high top is essential for me for alpine. I always manage to scrape up my ankles in the usual offwidth pitch otherwise. I also like a higher top because it keeps the gravel out better on those ridge climbs that always have a short walking bit somewhere along the way. I love my old blue Kaukulators but a little bit more modern shape like the TC Pro would be nice. I hear the 5.10 Grandstones are alright too and way cheaper, but I haven't tried either one. Leather vs. synthetic doesn't matter much although I like leather. I don't know how you could do anything other than laces for lots of crack climbing.