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sweatinoutliquor

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Posts posted by sweatinoutliquor

  1. I'm not going to explain the details, but I just wanted to say that once again I've been blown away by the folks who work at Berg's... The quality of service is incredible. Not only do they REALLY know their stuff, but they go out of their way to be friendly and genuinely helpful. They take pride in their work and want to make absolutely sure that you are happy with what they've done for you. I know there are other good ski shops out there, but this one has my business for as long as I'm living in Oregon.

     

    :tup:

     

    PS. No I don't work for them or have any affiliation with them other than as a customer.

  2. I watched a gal who was tele-skiing arrest with a whippet after taking a fall on a pretty icy slope on shasta once. It was pretty steep, and although the runout was probably okay, she may have picked up speed quickly or at least slid for a while. Like dan says, they are only "okay" for self arrest, and you have to practice with 'em to figure out how to hold them best and transition into a good arrest position. I'm always worried that I'm going to wipe out and impale myself with it, but that's one of the benefits of the condor... When the conditions are sketch I'm usually going slow and have the pointy part out, when it gets nice again it's easy to snap closed.

  3. Grivel Condor :tup:

     

    Grivel leaving the states :tdown:

     

    5259

     

    Nice thing is that you only have to have it out when you really need it, then it snaps closed real easy.

     

    (sorry I couldn't post a pic here, oh well)

  4. I went there last november with our dog, and I guess that I wouldn't recommend it if you could leave it. We did take her into some of the less popular spots, but there were signs on most (or all) of the trails saying no dogs. Lot's of NPS folks patroling with nothing better to do too. Even in the campground we got hassled twice for having our dog off leash (she's really well behaved and doesn't even wander off), once even when we took off her leash for 5 minutes while she was eating. In general, I hate being somewhere and always having that feeling like you are doing something wrong and are either going to get ticketed or piss someone off.

     

    Was interesting to see my dog freak out when the coyotes started calling not far from where we were camping.

  5. No permit needed. I got a good look at it this weekend and it's still got a lot of snow on it. Any approach will require floatation (at least this weekend). I can't confirm, but I've heard that you can't drive all the way to the whitewater trailhead, so tack a couple of miles onto your approach probably, depending on which route you had in mind.

  6. I think the problem with rockfall on the JPG is that in order to skirt around some of the glacier's upper crevasses you generally tend to go to climbers left, which exposes you to the rockfall from the molar tooth gully. The glacier/snowfield is usually pretty littered with rocks, so it's easy to see where the danger zone is. Perhaps my buddy will chip in with his story, but from what I recollect he mentioned traversing below the gully a little later than he would like and just got one of those bad feelings about "where he was at" and decided to start heading down quick. I believe he said that 15 minutes later a major rockslide kicked off literally filling up one or two of the crevasses with debris and obliterating his tracks.

     

    120611.jpg

     

    The gully I'm talking about is a little left of the molar tooth (middle pinnacle in picture).

     

     

    As for decending the russel glacier, if you decide to go that way, here's a little tip. In the picture below, you can make out the rock band that forms the knife edge ridge. Start down the milk creek gully but sorta aim for the base (kinda not shown in the lower left of the pic) of the rock formation that makes the knife edge ridge. Once there continue to traverse on the contour back to the north and you will pop out on top of the russel glacier route.

     

    61387.JPG

     

    Bill I appreciated your comment about being process oriented instead of goal oriented. That's an elegant way to describe something i've fumbled around explaining before. :tup:

  7. I know more than one individual that's almost been toasted by rockfall coming from the gully next to the molar tooth. Just use your judgement, be careful, and get passed the bergschrund by a reasonable hour.

     

    Yes the JPG is on the north side. I reccomend decending the russel glacier if you choose that route.

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