Blake

John I'd be into PM bouldering or cragging, but if you have all day there's a good spot just off MP 39 you should check out.

I believe the phrase "goretex for your goretex" was used at one point to describe the ideal outfit for the last half of the route, and that was on a day where the air temp never rose above 20 degrees but the wall still became a waterfall. With a 70m rope we found very sheltered belays alcoves (although pouring with water) but some unavoidably exposed climbing.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/monroe/default.aspx?cam=9051 If we get a sunny-ish day, I think your chances are good. The main LTW gets good sun exposure in winter, with all the leaves gone. The climbs at The Country dry fast as well. If you can get access to a bouldering pad, I know that folks have been seeing good conditions at the nearby boulders in Goldbar.

A buddy and i went up to the Pencil/Drury zone today. It was hot and sunny. Drury looks fat, the pencil looks dicey. Both were cooking in the sun. We found a mellow canoe-across spot, about 100meters downstream from the big pullout on the river-side of the hwy, just upstream from an island. Neither of us have our canoe merit badges and it was casual. Snowshoes were pretty nice for the first ~800 vertical feet until able to walk on avi debris. The Pencil is not looking too good, it was baking in the sun with large "pencil shavings" coming down regularly and what appeared to be a horizontal fracture @ ~70' up, but you can easily check it out before getting on the climb because the drainage continues steeply up to the left. This fracture runs above a hollow area where big chunks fell out as the sun hit. The cirque atop this drainage was amazing, with big chandeliers and steep pillars hanging and crashing all around, but mostly off to our right. In a better year with less sun, there'd be a pretty-looking ~4 pitch routes of pillars and mixed steps up the center of the cirque. Here's the cirque above "the pencil" We followed the drainage to the upper left edge of the cirque/amphitheater, and climbed in the shade and stuff exploded off to the right. After one short step of grade 2 or 3, we did two long single-pitch routes, both ending at trees. The one on the left was about 65m, the one to the right about 45m and was a bit more mixed, with some pins coming in handy. (we climbed the thing in the right-center, but chickened out about continuing up and right. Then we did the thing on the left.) Those two pitches aren't really worth the shenanigans involved in getting up there, but if you are looking for a backup plan or something after the pencil, they were both good.

I think this Dragontail descent has you beat for style points.

Summary: Things not in are now even less in, but threatened by avalanche.

any more rappel excitement details worth sharing?

If you think you ever might want to climb longer routes or non-sport climbs, get wiregate draws so you can just buy some skinny slings and repurpose the same lightweight carabiners.

Hey Bryan, Your best bet to meet a bunch of climbery types in Leavenworth is to come to the Leavenworth Mountain Association Event on Wednesday the 14th at Ski Hill Lodge. Bring some good food to share and you'll have all the friends and climbing partners you can imagine.

What routes are you training for?

Darn volcanoes! Good for nothing as usual. Fernow is what I was thinking of, evidently it is named after some German-born guru of early forestry sciences who visited WA en route to Alaska. I guess it doesn't come close to meeting my first criteria.

Yeah, shoot. That't not nearly as historically interesting as the one I was betting on. Ok, what about the 2nd tallest?

What is the tallest peak in the Cascades named for someone who actually saw the Cascades? (though not necessarily the peak in question) I don't know for sure, but have a hunch. [Edited: Wikipedia ruined my initial hunch, maybe my guess is #2.]

My wife and i left a couple well-seamgripped thermarests near the LTW parking area a few days ago. I'd happily provide a 6-pack to anyone who may have snagged them. I also found a grigri and green petzl biner. Someone scratched SAM CLUB into the grigri. There can't be many with that moniker attached. Thanks.

I was just thinking out loud (or on screen) about why the very talented crushers from WWI, Index, local boulders, etc aren't active in the mtns. So many of these folks could climb circles around basically anyone I know who is into local alpine rock climbing, and the routes are so good, how could they not catch the eye of these climbers? I see Dru's example of the Squamish crew that takes their cragging skills into the mountains, as Sol pointed out, to be further evidence that the NW scene is unusual or disconnected. Squamish seems more like Colorado, less like WA. I guess it's a combination of reasons. Ross' list of our very few alpine features that hold hard freeclimbs seems like a pretty likely one.

Maybe I'm off base in this impression, but it seems like the folks pushing the standards at the NW crags /bouldering areas (heck, really just anyone climbing the harder 25% of routes) seldom go into the mountains, and most folks who like alpine climbing seem to scoff at "projecting" a route at a crag, let alone going bouldering. My non-scientific impression is that in other places, the folks putting up hard routes in Eldo or repeating the testpiece climbs along the area's crags are the same ones doing new routes in the Black Canyon, pulling down hard on the Hulk or the Diamond, etc. Is our alpine climbing just not inspiring enough to attract the really strong local climbers ro leave Little Si, the LTW, Equinox, China Bend, Smith, etc? Is the jump from 5.12s at Newhalem to 5.12s just up at the road @ WA Pass a bigger change in required skills than (say) going from hard routes Boulder's cragging scene to hard routes in RMNP? It's just a thought that struck me after seeing multiple folks working on 5.12-5.13 routes at Index yesterday, but not seeing many of those folks in the mountains.

I thought this was a memorable route in a stunning location - definitely not the type of climbing typically found in the mountains. It wasn't one of those climbs where you keep doubting your ability to make it happen or wondering "is this a go?" Probably all the moves harder then 5.10 or 11- could be easily aided, and it seems like rapping from almost anywhere on the route would be pretty easy. Those factors definitely make it possible to focus on the climbing, position, and exposure more than the fact that you're on a big steep north face. That being said, I didn't free the route and felt that probably just 3 of the ~13 pitches were really classic on their own.

In town there is bouldering and sport climbing - you wont ever use your rack. There's not much around there to qualify for "mountaineering" as I usually hear that term applied. Generally there are alpine rock routes anywhere from 10 pitches to nearly 2000 meters, where being able to climb steep cracks very fast (especially when wet and you're freezing cold) is pretty helpful. There are also amazing alpine ice and water ice features, especially in the Torre Valley, but these are fully two-tool real climbs, not walk ups. It helps to be fast and efficient, as the breaks in the storms are seldom long-lived. A 20deg sleeping bag and your warmest layer being something like the DAS (or feathered equivalent) is a good setup. If you're aiming for rock routes, consider bringing good tennis shoes and aluminum crampons as well. Size your rock shoes to wear over socks. Most climbers will fly to BA and then Calafate, there are several busses a day from Calafate to El Chalten. I've also flown to Bariloche and climbed there in early season, then ridden the bus for 30hrs down south (Ruta Cuarenta) to reach El Chalten. If you're in town for more than a few weeks, try to negotiation a long-term rental or camping price, as things are pretty expensive in town now. There is no longer a national park campground, and many places charge more than $10/day for the ability to camp in a windy, flooded field, and share the use of a kitchen and bathroom.

nice john! that topo was actually made by my friend Scott Bennett, though Mikey's bolting of the low-traverse to begin p5 was the key to making TRL go as a free climb.

I'll throw my 2 cents behind sol's main point -figure out what your dream routes are for the next year or two, and train for those. If you want to send Fitz Roy, climb the Nose in a Day, boulder v10, or handle 24-hours of steep snow and mixed climbing, those will each require very different skills. They may all be "climbing" but at the extremes they are essentially fully different sports. A dedicated boulderer who did crossfit or jim jones or that stuff would be like someone who exclusively competed in freethrow contests, and trained for it by playing on a basketball team. There will be some overlap, but this is my rough view of the "continuum" of climbing - with less overlap of skills and training among goals farther apart. There's a reason that the people who excel at one of these activities seldom excel at others. Boulder your first Vwhatever - Send a hard sport route - Redpoint a steep short trad route - Complete a multipitch freeclimb - climb new ice grades - bigwall freeclimbing - "alpine light" freeclimbing (Bugs, WA Pass, etc) - Alpine climbing (mostly free, mostly rock) - Alpine ice and mixed climbing at high standard of difficulty - Alpine and snow speed-slogging - slow/aid/frozen alpine sufferfest climbing - lower elevation bigwall aid climbing - sitting on couch drinking beer.

nice work Kurt, good to know that hardware replacement up there isn't "forbidden".

A buddy and I did this the other day, and had a good time. Thanks for the history info and good topo Mark! You can't get lost once you realize that this route just follows the first crack/corner system left of the buttress crest. Our abbreviated but adequate beta: 1. Climb the DEB to the belay below the first bolt ladder. 2. Walk left on the big ledge and then follow a left-trending system over a crumbly block, past two trees, and into a small cave/nook w/3 pitons (5.9 35m) 3. Climb the excellent crack (starts as a LFC) - crux is low at a fixed wire - belay 20' above a piton and roof on the left, where a nice foot ledge extends left. 45m 5.11+ 4. Up the same crack, an excellent 5.10 pitch. You might be able to stretch it out 60m or 70 to the summit ridge, or belay where it switches from 5.10 to 5.8 at the first ledge, with a tree. A really fun and sustained crack roughly 5.10b.

Trip: Colchuck Balanced Rock - Accendo Lunae Date: 9/5/2012 Soapbox Alert Climbers are basically the only user group to visit the cirque at CBR. Any garbage is ours. Any tape, piles of wood, campfires, and human waste is ours. Any rangers that visit the area go to police us. Lets keep this place pristine and set a great leave-no-trace precedent. I'd love to go up there is 20 years and have it look like it did 20 years ago. -------------- Earlier this summer I was up at Colchuck Balanced Rock for the day to try and climb a route we hoped would incorporate the best and hardest climbing on Let it Burn with some new pitches and the crux of the West Face. Scott Bennett, Graham Zimmerman and I began via the 5.7 and clean 5.10 pitches on the West Face, then followed Let it Burn for 3 pitches (which are each really amazing, thanks again Max and Jens for the work on that route!) Scott following Let it Burn's crux pitch From here we started up our new pitch #1. From the belay between Let it Burn's two 5.11+ pitches, we moved right and into a thin splitter. My friend Scott began to free climb, but neon lichen and a bit of grainy rock shut him down. We tagged him up a spare tennis shoe to use for scraping, scrubbing, and cleaning up the pitch, and he aided up to a ledge. He worked out a few sequences on TR and then pulled his gear and pulled the rope. Scott came very close to sending on his first go, but slipped out of a thin hand jam near the top. (Scott, lichen my tennis shoe) The three of us were sharing a single liter of water on the route, which gets about 3x as much sun as anything else up there, yet Scott donated his water ration to me as I strapped on shoes for a lead go. Using the gear beta he'd worked out, but putting together my short-guy sequence on the go, I flashed the pitch, but it was a fight until the end. Even though this pitch wasn't long, it felt harder than the crux of Let it Burn and much harder than anything on the West Face, so I think 5.12- is about right, but it might clean up a bit and be easier. Although I could have kept leading, I didn't have much of the gear I'd need to continue and the next stretch of stone had the leader moving right over a sharp, clean flake, not where I wanted my 8.4mm ropes running. I belayed up Scott and Graham and got the rest of the gear. New pitch #2 began with some really creative and memorable flare climbing on immaculate white stone, with a good crack for wires and thin cams. After a rest in an alcove, I got some great gear above my head in the roof, and did the double-handjam pull-up to turn the lip. I'd been hoping that the crack continued above the roof, and was really happy to find good thin hands jams for quite a ways. The roof is a rope-eating feature, but a blue alien sized cam can be slotted into a horizontal once you've pulled the crux, to direct the rope out of the pinch. I mantled up after the corner, and then face climbed slightly right to the belay which folks normally reach climbing straight left from under the roof on the West Face. From here we joined the crux pitch of the West Face, and finished up the chimneys. By the time we did the "5.8" chimneys, it was fully dark, but it actually got brighter as we simulclimbed to the summit, as the moon was nearly full and very welcome for our summit and descent. I joked about calling our variant "Let it Face West" but in honor of the moonlight and in homage to the route "Let it Burn" we decided to name it "Accendo Lunae" which is latin for burning, or ascending moon. Naming a 2-pitch variation to two existing routes is perhaps a little silly, but at least it should make route discussion and differentiation a little easier. With steep splitter climbing, excellent protection, good belay ledges, and sustained pitches at the 5.10+ to 5.12- grade, "Accendo" is probably my new favorite rock climb in the area. Gear Notes: Double set of cams to #2, with one #3 and one #4. Standard set of wires. 60m rope is fine.

According to Curt Haire, a fount of local climbing history for the central cascades, this was repeated by Bob Plumb and Dave Stutzman in the late 1970s. I've got Curt's email or you can PM him on here as "Haireball".