swaterfall

I also suffer. I feel your pain.

I moved out here (the PNW) very recently and I've met a few people from this site. My first experience was that I got blown off, but it wasn't really the guys fault. After that everyone I've met from this site has been great, except when I had to look at ashw_justin's foot on Baker.

The slopes at the top of the JPG are pretty steep and you are directly above a large ice-fall. This is why we opted for the Russell galcier for descent. Nice TR Donn. Here's my pics. Chad at the bivy. Donn and Chadd checking out the 'schrund. Our tracks on the JPG. Donn and Chad on the KER. Me and the summit pinnacle Chadd on the descent.

I got my right big toe too cold this winter and now I can't fit into my tight rock shoes for more than 15 minutes without serious pain. It sucks.

I went to FF today and even though they didn't have what I was looking for the "long-hair" behind the counter drew me a map to SA and gave me their phone number. He was cool to me.

my bad. I thought you took 'em off.

Oh yeah, b-rock we saw your turns.

D00d, why did you take the sweet purple stickers off of your boots.

Nice climb and really nice pics. Looks like you guys had fun.

More photos in the gallery. Another sweet trip Donn. Where are we going next?

Has anyone seen this? Rob Zombie's directorial debut. I did and liked it... discuss.

The metal clip on the clipper is pretty weak (Al I think) I know people that have had their's bend and become useless.

...and when you're high you never-ever wanna come down...

I saw a guy puking 200ft below the summit of Rainier 2 weeks ago. It was super loud wretching and lasted like ten minutes. He was digging deep... must have been pulling stuff up from weeks before. If I were his buddies I would have taken him down, but the one dude just looked at him and said "are you done yet or what?" Real sensitive.

I heard that he's fat, bald and he's lost his voice. I feel really bad for him .

Wow, did you figure that out all by yourself? I was relating that story so that people would not place a screamer on a suspect screw placement and call it good.

Climb: Buckner-NF Route - Sahale-Sahale Arm -Forbidden-West Ridge Date of Climb: 6/28 - 30/2004 Trip Report: My buddy Jerry called me last week and asked if I was interested in the North Face of Mt. Buckner. Since I'm new to the area I'd never heard of it but was immediately interested after looking at the Nelson Guide. We planned a trip for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday because the guide says that it can be a "strenuous 2-3" day trip. After some delays meeting up in Burlington, finding a place to stash a car, getting the permit in Marblemount and last minute food shopping we got to the start of the approach at a little after 12. Our plan was this: Day 1 (half day) cruise up to Boston Basin and set up camp. Day 2 move over the Sahale/Boston col and onto the Boston glacier and camp under the NF route so that we could get on it when the snow was still hard enough to climb. Day 3 climb Buckner and head out to the car. The road is closed at mile 20 and the trail head is at mile 22.5. When we reached the trail head we realized that we'd overestimated the approach. We hiked faster than I thought we would and were sitting on the Quien Sabe glacier at a little after 4. We thought that the snow would be too soft to cross the glacier, but once we got going we realized that it wasn't too bad so we just kept going up. We moved fairly quickly to the top of the glacier only encountering difficulty when a chunk off of a bridge collapsed as I crossed the huge 'schrund on the Quien Sabe. We rested at the col between Sahale and Boston peaks and took a look at Buckner for the first time. What a sweet mountain. Rising up out of the Boston glacier its sides drop steeply in all visible directions. We now realized that we would be on the route a full day ahead of our schedule. We scrambled on 3rd class rock to access the Boston glacier and after Jerry popped in a hole up to his waist we decided that we'd gone far enough and found a nice bivy spot about half way across the glacier next to the ridge between Boston peak and Mt Buckner. We brewed up made dinner and crashed out at around 10pm. At 4am we crawled out of our bivy sacks and started the stove. We both took and little too long getting ready and we were off at 5:30. The route finding was slightly problematic across the glacier as we didn't want to give up too much elevation. This took us into a broken-up area that we probably should have avoided by going lower. It cost us some time back tracking. At 6:30 we had crossed the lowest of three 'schrunds and were on the climbing route. We had discussed doing the NF couloir route, but decided against it due to the time of day and the fact that there were two large 'schrunds guarding access to the couloir. We could see some old tracks that went up and left across three huge runnels left from lord only knows what falling off of the top of the peak. These runnels were up to 4 feet deep and very icy. They were interesting to cross. We proceeded with a running belay, following the tracks and placing one picket per rope length on our 30m rope. The snow was just a touch on the soft side on the bottom of the route, but we made excellent progress, only stopping to swing leads. We encountered about 20 meters of unconsolidated, sugary snow about 2/3rds of the way up the route but that soon changed. The top 100 meters was probably some of the most enjoyable climbing I've done. Very firm, steep snow and the scenery was awesome. We topped out at 9:00 on the dot and spent about 30mins looking around and reading the summit log entries and wondering how both of us had managed to forget our cameras. In our jubilation for smiting 24 hours ahead of schedule we talked about how we were gong to relax in camp that afternoon and how nice it would be... hubris. We descended the south west side of Buckner and thankfully the snow had not softened too much. Once we dropped to about 7000ft we began side-hilling right to contour around horseshoe basin. The guide here is particularly accurate and we had little trouble locating the 'short gully' at 6400ft which led us to class 3 and 4 scrambling to gain Sahale Arm. From here we had a long (felt endless) trudge up the Sahale glacier topped off by a butt-puckering scramble up the 3rd? class loose-as-shit rock with full packs and ski poles sticking out getting snagged on everything to gain Sahale Peak, our second summit of the day. We were on top a little after three. A full six hours after summiting Buckner. It took us much longer to traverse Horseshoe basin and gain Sahale Arm than I thought it would. We pussed it and rapped off the summit of Sahale and then blasted down the Quien Sabe. We had both been out of water for a while so we stopped and guzzled multiple liters out of a snow melt flow near the bottom of the glacier. After coming off the glacier we spent about an hour looking for the high camp in Boston Basin. We finally found it and spent a nice evening chasing marmots away from our smelly gear. Up to this point we had only vaguely discussed the fact that we might have a full extra day to spend in Boston Basin. Jerry had a cat-sitter for another day still and I basically have no life so we decided to give the West Ridge of Forbidden a go. We hadn't brought much rock gear. No shoes other than our boots and we had one pink, one red, one brown and two blue tri-cams and a super light 30 meter rope. We figured that we would climb the couloir and gain the ridge and if we got sketched out we would just bail. We were up at 5:30 and moving at 6:30. The snow had not hardened up at all that night which made us even more happy that we had done Buckner the previous day. Soft snow on that route could be really dangerous. Without all of our bivy and ice gear we moved pretty fast. At least it felt better to move without all of that weight on my back. We were well up into the couloir by 7:30 and could see one party on the ridge proper, but no one else. The couloir is already pretty melted out and there is a large hole developing about a third of the way up. The snow will not be there much longer. We ditched our crampons and axes on a ledge below the notch and climbed a 4th class chimney to the notch. We proceeded with a running belay along the ridge, slinging horns and placing the tri-cams where possible. The route was almost completely snow free. We pitched out the crux step and continued with running belays to the summit. We encountered the other party on the west summit as they were descending. They were a party of three from Seattle who had bivied at the notch the night before. They were the only ones at the notch that night, lucky dogs. We sat on our third summit in approximately 24 hours and were treated to a grand view of Buckner, Eldorado, Goode, Shuksan, Baker, Glacier, Johannesburg... it's just spectacular up there. We descended via down climbing and very short (15m) raps. We soon caught up to the other party who had gotten one of their ropes caught on a flake. We helped them free it and they offered to let us rap down the couloir with them. Very cool! We were not too excited about down climbing the slushy mank and gratefully accepted their offer. Those guys were super nice. Back to camp and of course the marmots won in the end. They chewed the face out of my bivy sack and put a hole in my sleeping bag. Damn rodents! They had even pulled one of Jerry's poles all of the way into their burrow so they could gnaw on the cork grips at their leisure. Back at the car a few hours of trudging later and we cracked the ice cold beers that we had stashed in the river three days before to cap off a really great three days in the North Cascades. -S Gear Notes: 30m 8mm rope 4 pickets - used 'em 4 ice screw - didn't use 'em 5 tri-camps - used 'em shoulda had anti-marmot camp guadring robot Approach Notes: Huge 'schrund on Quien Sabe glacier is almost fully open. West Ridge coulior on Forbidden is melting fast.

How does not re-opening a washed out road constitute a "lock-em out" strategy?

Hey IG, I've never met you but I've seen pics of your doggies. Glad to hear that everyone is OK. Sorry about your stuff.

In my extremely limited experience in MRNP I liked the WSR exactly the way it is. Except I wish it was more of a trail than a road.

FWIW My buddy took a 25-30 footer onto me this past winter . A screw that he had just placed poped out without activating the screamer while the one ~15 feet below him held. It did not have a screamer, just a single length sling.

I used the clippers when I got my Quarks. Ditch 'em and get some real leashes.

After I came back from Hawaii with $0.00 when I was 18 my Dad told me this. "Never go anywhere you can't hitch-hike out of."

Sweeeeeeeeeeet.