sweatinoutliquor

I've heard that the nelson stuff is smoke. I'd suspect that the backcountry around the Wasatch is pretty decent, but maybe not as remote as you are looking for??

I thought the first one was the best! Dude laughs and is like... "...whippah". It does look like her body sorta folds on impact. Ouch!

Very enjoyable read guys, and good photos too. Dan, I agree, there is something very cool about making the trek back to the car from the west side after dark. Thanks!

not too bad... Although I heard that they were going to close it this week maybe? Still a little hard snow between the ruts up higher that could be rough on a vehicle without clearance. Probably make it though. No problem for my buddies tayota pickup.

-White Stripes -Prince Yeah, that should cover it.

NF route not in condition as of 10/27 (nothing more than verglas over the rock bands in the gullies). The short gullies leading up to the spur (left of the N. face routes) are in FAT condition.

Sorry to jack your thread Dcampbell, but hey Kletterhund, I sent ya a PM

Got one for my fitzroy. Never use it. The tent is kinda a jumbo 2 person rig, so most of the gear that needs to be inside fits inside. It pitches pretty nuclear proof though, almost hard to get the pole into it's little sleeve. The tent has 2 doors, so gear goes into one door (in vestibule), people go out the other. I really only bring it if it's gonna be raining/snowing a crapton and I have a ton of gear (usually not a very often combination for me). Probably the best use of it is for cooking when you want it to be out of the wind, but aren't intersted in the "awesomeness" of CO poisoning. Anyway, think about what circumstances you would really need it for... then imagine adding another pound or so to your already overstuffed backpack. Then imagine how much beer you could buy with $100. Then go buy one anyway.

And yet another PM (if Warrior bails, not trying to poach your bid man! )

Should be more beta than you need if you use the search function and select the North Cascades forum and/or try summitpost.org If that doesn't work let us know and we can help more. Welcome to cc.com, how's the weather in 'hampshah right now?

One other thing Jamin... First off, the mountains/climbs you would like to decend off of "however you please" may not want or need any more bolts if they already have an established descent line. Second, if you go plugging bolts in at random places you are going to confuse the F&$# out of other people who will try to figure out why there are bolts in such a weird place. Who knows, maybe they will follow your decent line thinking its the right way to go? Maybe that's safe, but I would guess it's not. Third, I don't care how you look at it, bolts, hangers, and bolt kits are heavy and expensive. All that stuff is probably going to set you back 200 bucks at least (hammer, hand drill, bit's, bolts, hangers). Wouldn't you rather buy some nice cams or screws with that money? How about a nice set of jumars? Fourth, please don't buy or place cheap assed bolts in the alpine. The cheap ones just don't seem to last in the harsh NW climate all that well. Fifth, have you ever placed a bolt with a hand drill? God it's a humbling experience... After 25 minutes of whacking that hammer you are seriously going to wonder if you are going to get off your alpine climb that night. It sounds like you are getting the point. I must admit that I have been in this situation before, and I rank it among the stupider things I have done to forge ahead (downward) rather than turn back and find the right way down. I now carry a single light ascender which can be used in conjuction with a reverso/ATC Guide to ascend. Better than prussiks IMO. Good luck out there, be safe!

That sucks about the weather... Lame! Otherwise I would say it still looked like a sick trip. Those photos are sweet! Next time better luck!

My goodness that looks like fun.

I didn't notice any snow at the ledge below the fin, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. Yes, there are lots of bivy options on the ridge before you reach the fin, and if you had a light enough bivy kit it would probably be fun to spend the night with such an impressive view. That being said, it is nice not to have to bring the extra gear... We climbed with just one pack between the two of us so the leader got to climb without much weight... Made it a lot more fun I think. Also, like Ivan said, you can get on and off the mountain without crampons and an ice axe. I'm glad we didn't have to mess around with the rappels and just walked down though. The snow was soft, and although I brought crampons, we didn't use them. I'm not sure if it will be soft enough for that this late in the season.

Personally I think rapping through webbing is lame unless it's an emergency. If you are going to leave something behind, why not make it something that others can use too? Pulling your rope through the webbing can damage it (the webbing) and then the next group through will potentially have to replace it, or worse, maybe they will rap off it too and either get hurt, or damage the webbing more. Just my $0.02, sorry it doesn't have much to do with the topic.

Too many to even pretend to pic one, but this is what came to mind first:

Cool... I think I may have waved to one of you.

Mammut serenity 8.9mm... It's awesome.

Trip: Dragontail Peak - Backbone Ridge Date: 7/29/2007 Trip Report: Jason (sparverous) and I hit up backbone ridge on Sunday with perfect weather and conditions. Nothing too out of the ordinary to report other than the route is sick and you should do it. Jason led the offwidth and didn't really have any trouble with it. If you haven't been paying attention, your shiny new #5 C4 cam isn't big enough to get you all the way up to the top (thanks to the previous TR's that indicated so) and although we were bummed to be dragging the 6 all the way, it was probably worth it for this one pitch. I followed with the pack and struggled a lot more than Jason did (he was taking stemming breaks and stuff) but in the end not having to haul the pack was nice. Right after this we thought we were sorta kinda off route (we got alarmingly close to Gary and Ania's roof) but it turned out that if you climb past it on the left you are probably fine and don't get stuck with more OW. I don't really remeber what was above that... Maybe one more pitch than easy simulclimbing to the base of the fin (one long lead). Another psudo simul lead up the ledge at the base of the fin and the good stuff starts. We were armed with every fin route description that we could find, and still we had no idea which cracks were which. We followed something that looked clean and indeed it was spectacular. The next pitch was this sweet traversing double crack (one for you hands, one for your feet... how convinent). Then one more also spectacular pitch and we were at the crest! As Jason reeled me in I was rejoicing at the thought of "easy rock to the summit". Or at least so I thought... When I arrived at the belay, what I saw was not easy rock. It was the top of triple couloirs, and no, it didn't look easy, it looked sketchy as S___! I begrudgingly took the lead and downclimbing into the mouth of this beast. Things were going poorly, and I was trying to figure out if it was even worth tying in because the rock was so loose. Just when I thought all hope was gone and I was going to be in the heart of this mess, I took another longing look back towards the crest of the fin and noticed a gully of vertical garbage that possibly led back to the fin crest beyond the gendarme that was previously blocking progress. I thought "What the heck, it can be worse than down here" and started up. After mining my way upward for about 30 feet things started to take on a more solid feeling and within another minute or so I was again stradling the ridge crest. I couldn't see where the route went from here, but my little pirch was solid so I set up a belay and reeled Jason in. From that spot, Jason traversed right around a corner, and then followed a ledge that was indeed the beginning of "easy rock to the summit". Thank god... I really didn't want to end the day in TC! Thanks for the fun trip Jason. The offwidth: The fin: Back on the good stuff (they call it the fin for a reason!): Looking back down the chossy gully: Summit view: Looking Back: Gear Notes: TCU 00-2 (didn't use 00 or 0) BD C4 .4-3 +#5 and #6 (doubles .5-2) A small selection on nuts I thought the rack was pretty perfect. If you are pretty comfortable with OW climbing and don't mind running it out 10 feet or so in one of the harder spots you could probably leave the #5 at home... Approach Notes: Brought crampons and axe, didn't really need them for getting on or off the mountain cause the snow was soft enough.

Nice work with that!

You probably made the right decision, at least in my mind... I have two friends who almost got wiped out by rockfall from that same place on seperate occasions. One ended up playing dodgeball with a bunch of microwaves that had bracketed him, the other on a different trip felt that the conditions weren't good for traversing below the gully and was right cause 15 minutes after heading down a huge rockslide cut loose that literally obliterated where he would have been, and even filled up both bergschrunds with debris. I didn't see either of these happen, but on my trips up there smaller stuff coming down inspired some turbo traversing too.

Quote: Jan 1998, p. 18, Coombs, Doug, "Hood: Commitment on the NE Face" In late spring, 1997, the author skied the southerly of two couloirs on the NE face of Mt Hood. These couloirs are just north of the Cooper Spur route. The northerly chute was descended on snowboard five years earlier by Steve Koch. The author climbed to the summit from Timberline and kept in touch with a friend on the Cloud Cap side by radio. After a few hundred feet of turns at the top of the couloir, he encountered a sun crust and exchanged his ski poles for an ice axe. He sidestepped narrow ramps to pass two rock bands, then switched back to ski poles to ski the central portion of the couloir to a final rock step with 40-foot ice gully. Here he placed a rappel anchor to inspect the gully. Concluding that he could straight-run the gully, he climbed back up and pulled the anchor. While sidestepping back down with ice axe in hand, his skis scaped through to ice. He let go of his ice axe, schussed the ice gully, and made a high speed turn lower to stop. He switched to crampons to climb up and retrieve his ice axe, then completed the descent on skis, which required a ten-foot jump over the bergshrund. He called the route a "ski descent not a ski run."

Amazing photos! My favorite is the one of the knife edge crest! Awesome!