wbk

Bien fait petit frère. Qu'est-ce que c'est la signification de NTM?

James' hand post B-C and other bugaboo madness!

Yep - you bet it is! Good stories re: Huckabee and Robson for sure!

Never stop choss dogging but I'd love to see you both at Index more! I also got up some choss in the Rockies near Canmore while passing thru with my cousin and her bf Demitri!

Trip: Bugaboos - Various Date: 8/6/2011 Trip Report: Back from a killer first trip to the Bugs!! Had stable weather so we climbed until we couldn't anymore!! Day 1: surfs up (5.9) up on west side of snowpatch spire and the we ran over and solo'd pigeon spire (famous west ridge route - 5.4). Amazing day and a sweet intro to bugs rock and routefinding. Day 2: NE ridge of bugaboo spire. Good route but a tad oversold ihmo. Crazy exposure up high!! Descent went smoothly Day 3: Slept in and climbed sunshine crack in the afternoon. That offwidth on p2 is pretty intense and I got the 11- roof pitch which was super fun. Found the route to be pretty damn sustained but definitely one of the best long crack climbs I've ever done. Day 4/5: after sleeping in and much debate over weather we hiked to the base of the beckey chouinard and scpope out if it was too icy/snowy. we'd heard reports that it was still out of condition. after descending to the SW side of Howser and hiking up to the base we decided to just start climbing even though it was 3pm. We hit a bivy ledge above p10 and slept on the coolest bivy ledge looking up at the ridge's badass headwall! Woke at 4:30 to lightening! but it moved through quickly as we huddled and quivered under a jutting rock. We finished the ridge by midday and spent extra time climbing between ice patches on the summit ridge which was somewhat tricky and time consuming! The new rap route is pretty slick. In retrospect climbing with bivy gear and boots made us way more tired and took a little fun out of some of the 5.10 pitches but that bivy position was super memorable! We pretty much climbed most if not all of the variations that avoid the chimneys and tension traverse, etc. on the upper section. The glaciers were in great condition and the big snowpack allowed us to boot ski down from the snowpatch-bugaboo col day after day!! As a first trip, we were totally stoked and look forward to future trips!! Hats off to James, my partner from Peru whom I hadn't climbed with since 2006! Was great being up there with you! Stoked on Surf's Up Au cheval on Pigeon Spire NE Ridge Bugaboo Spire Start of NE Ridge Bugaboo Spire One of the many variations on NE Ridge that bypass the mid fifth chimneys Traversing summits on Bugaboo Spire Sunshine Crack systems can be made out if you look carefully Sunshine crack - p3 - lots of roofs on this climb Playing with camera features on Sunshine Crack Elated to send the 11- roof pitch on Sunshine! Dropping from Pigeon Howser col! Wrapping around seeing the S and SW faces of Minaret and S Howser SW blows your mind! Approaching the B-C! The headwall gleaming far above! Headwall magic! Nearing summit of S Howser Videos on B-C and at bivy More photos on Flickr: Gear Notes: Didn't take #4 on B-C and didn't miss it much really Approach Notes: 5.5 km, 950m to Applebee - approach is way more mellow than I had been led to believe, even with heavy packs

ps--its actually about 10' off the ground, bottom of Overexposure...

I left my toque (canadian for wool hat) at the base of the Liberty Bell raps (South face Lib Bell). It's brown and orange - Patagonia. If you happen to be there and see it, pls grab it for me and I'll score you a reward!! PM me pls! (Note - I'm leaving for a trip so I'll be off mail but will be back in the frontcountry in two weeks).

Tyler and Matt - the photos as promised

Trip: Joffre Range - Matier NW Spur Date: 6/26/2011 Trip Report: This trip has been a bit of long time coming for my wife - she's been working her butt off in the corporate world and has been looking forward to a little time off to finally get in the mountains this season. We were looking to go someplace new and since we were planning on Squamish, we thought somewhere up there would be cool. The Joffre range sounded promising so off we went with a decent but not ideal weather window. We hiked into Joffre lakes on June 25th and climbed Matier early on the 26th with hopes of also tagging Joffre. The temps skyrocketed after we descended Matier so we bailed on the slush slog up the SE Face of Joffre. The Upper Matier glacier is a cool spot but with all the snow this year (there is a ton up there), it would have been great to have just started from Keith’s hut. Nonetheless, a ripping adventure! Route Notes: Booting up the left side under the lower icefall is relatively safe right now if temps are low enough and you move fast. It froze overnight for us (just barely) so we donned crampons above the lake and moved quickly up to the upper glacier. We had hard neve crust with some soft snow under in many spots of the NW Spur route of Matier. We had two tools as we were planning to do the straight up North Face route which looks fun! With two tools we were able to move up pretty quickly. We placed pickets higher on the face and stayed well clear of the summit cornices. We ran into Tyler (Canadian) and Matt (Kiwi) on the upper face… Matt had no crampons so Tyler was kicking monster buckets for him! Solid work and we felt privileged with crampons and double tools! Lindsey stoked on the approach… it’s short but the abundantly rocky and rooty trails is a bit of pain with heavy packs. (Left to right) Joffre NW ridge (foreshortened - can't see summit), Matier icefall, Slalkok (Rex's Pillar) and the Stonecrop Glacier Always time for junk shows in the alpine Looking out from the Matier icefall (south and west) Move up your body Views on the upper glacier Interesting cloud layers Joffre Matier Making progress on the route High on the route - Tyler and Matt behind Lindsey Lindsey on the summit. We were soked in but at least it kept the snow hard and made cramponing fast! Me dorking out at the summit Descending Eating them shits Gear Notes: We took a glacier rope, two pickets, three ice screws and a few cams (didn't use screws nor cams) as we didn't climb the North Face route. Approach Notes: Joffre Lakes Trail

Nice work Steve. Look forward to getting out there with you one of these days! I ended up clipping bolts at E32! Ha!

nice job Braden and Trevor. Jer and I were just ahead of you on the ice cliff and wondered where you went when we descended and looked down the ice cliff. This TR explains it! Solid job on the Girth! Definitely an intimidating route. Fine work!

way to get after it! thinking of heading up that way myself in the relative near future. what do you use for weather forecasts?

Been wondering about the descent option to burgundy col... can you elaborate a bit on this? Is it pretty straightforward? No raps, how's the exposure, downclimbing? Thanks!

very cool Scott!! True adventure there for sure!

Trip: Mt Stuart - Ice Cliff Glacier Date: 6/17/2011 Trip Report: Jerbear and I enjoyed a long sleep of 1 1/2 hours at the Stuart Lake trailhead before taking off at 1:30am for the Ice Cliff. Felt a bit early but we wanted to avoid any unnecessary postholing and this stacked the odds in our favor for less of that. Route is still in really great condition and snow didn't really mush up until we were on our way down from the false summit. The route is a ton of fun and goes way quicker than we expected (at least this time of year with this snowpack!). Great job out there Jer and thanks for all the humor, energy drinks and taking the ice ball to the arm... that might have it me otherwise! Jer and looming ice cliff the mighty complete north ridge Topping out of the couloir Girth Pillar Summit ridge Let's gets us a summitpose Back in the meadows Gear Notes: We placed one deadman and two screws Approach Notes: Bascially snowfree 1st switchback

bump

Good job Jason and Tim! Cool perspective of the log crossing. Can't believe you're hauling that SLR all over like that!! Good on ya!

Trip: Little Tahoma - Date: 6/9/2011 Trip Report: Tim (therunningdog) and I climbed Little T this past Thursday. Forecast wasn’t great, but sounded good enough. Turned out to be better than expected. Snow all the way to road at White River, no difficulties getting over streams and we made good time getting up to Summerland and then on to Meany Crest. Most of our time is spent in the North Cascades so it was a wee bit of rude awakening to be reminded of how far and foreshortened everything is way above treeline and without the perspective of other relative peaks nearby. Rainier and Little T for that matter seem so close. Yet skinning the Frying Pan seems to go on forever as did the skin up to the summit block of Little T. Conditions weren’t far from ideal we’d say and our 5am start time had us at the summit by 11:30am. Tim and I took turns all day pushing each other and I was fully aware of our luck in having such a great partnership (too much mountain man love?)! Corn from just shy of the summit block was in good form all the way to the notch above the Frying Pan. Frying Pan was in OK shape (some corn, but turning to mush) and lower than the Meany was heavy mush. We pushed several wet slides down as we contoured down the forest approach. This trip was a good reminder how friggin awesome the Cascades are to not only have rad peaks,forests, rivers but these big ass volcanoes intermixed with them! Therunningdog Contemplating the chossy rock! Gear Notes: 30 m half rope, two pickets, crampons (never used this stuff), 1 set of teles, 1 splitty and heaps of sunscreen and carrots. Approach Notes: Still all snow!!

correct - schrund was not an issue... just a step across on the left side but it'll be melting out rapidly i'd predict and will be a rock pitch soon enough. we had some thin snow over rock in spots.

I'm going to be with a friend in the bugaboos from july31/aug 1st - aug 6 or so. Any chance anyone will be there around the same time? Looking for two things: a) I'd love to stay on a few days and climb more if that works for you. b) If you're returning towards Seattle (or via Spokane) near Aug 6-8th, I'd love to grab a ride and buy you beer, share in paying for gas/driving and all that good stuff. PM if you are interested.

YEEEAAAAZZ. Let's get out for some craziness one of these days!

good stuff! ran into ethan a few times that weekend. man he has a lot of hair!

Trip: Whitehorse - Niederbrum/Lone Pass/High Pass/Whitehorse Glacier Date: 6/3/2011 Trip Report: Jeremy and I climbed Whitehorse this past Friday. Getting to blocked bridge is same as before and road is quick and easy to get to. Hiked road to Niederbrum (sp.?) trailhead and then took the trail up. Made fast time on the approach and soon we were post holing up to Lone Tree Pass. It was cloudy with the sun poking through a wee bit from time to time. The snow was surprisingly soft and mushy for having little to no sun since last weekend. I guess the ambient temps have been higher than we expected. These conditions resulted terrible post holing to High Pass and up to the summit. Shrund is wide open but still an easy step across on the left side. Snow was pretty fresh above ~6000 ft… though I’m sure that’s all changed after Sat and Sunday’s weather. Yes, I’m sure many of you are wondering why we didn’t take skies. Wasn’t in the cards for us to get the gear all together ahead of time and the snow was so mushy and sticky, I’m not sure the skies would have helped all that much. For fun, I got greedy in a descent gully and didn’t bother to follow our up tracks so we ended up too far skier’s left of the up trail and we bushwacked out. Took an extra 2-2.5 hrs of fun, North Cascades bushwacking. Pretty silly and annoying (and a good reminder that I’ll hopefully remember for the rest of the season)--we’re laughing about it now. Good trip, great partner. Idiot patrol on the summit More photos: Gear Notes: Roped up for glacier and shrund at top, placed two pickets on way to summit.

Good stuff Jer and Blue! Look forward to more stories!

just got off the phone with FS: road is open again, mudslide work completed