wbk

I just met and hung out with Alan in the Dolomites. Anyone have this book and want to let me borrow it for a read! I had no idea until he started telling me all these crazy stories about climbing and other shenigans in the Himalaya so when I got on the internet later, i searched for his name and viola... a book by him and his bro!

yeah way to get out there Jason! Totally agree on the fun factor of Sharkfin and that right line is a blast to get on for sure! Nice work.

Climbing Books for Sale: $8 each, 2 for $15 , 3 for $18 The Andes of Bolivia - Adventures & a Climbing Guide - Alain Mesili Points Unknown, Outside Magazine Books A Guide to Climbing & Hiking in SW British Columba Seven Years in Tibet Trekking in Tibet: A Traveller's Guide Rock Climbing Washington - Falcon Guide ALSO: Extreme Rock and Ice Climbing Book - 25 of the World's Greatest Climbs (coffee table book) - $10 Ice and Mixed Climbing Book by Will Gadd - red,mountaineers publishing, brand new $10 Pls PM if interested. Live in Ballard.

Trip: FA: Mt Bigelow - Tribute to Richard, 5.10c Date: 8/23/2011 Trip Report: Tim and I climbed a new, relatively short route on the East Face of Mt Bigelow. Some of you may be familiar with this peak from Washington’s Top 100 list. It’s east of the small town of Carlton (S of Twisp) up the North Fork Gold Creek road. We started up casually on Tuesday morning and hit upper Eagle Lake as the sun was just reaching this beautiful alpine lake. Spent awhile starting at the golden colored granite on Bigelow’s East Face and tried to piece together connecting crack systems. It was tough to really discern what was a flaring offwidth, a potential handcrack or an unfriendly seam from below. Once we figured a potential line, we just went for it and tried not to spend time that would just pysch us out. The granite was very good which was super cool, but as expected the rock was often covered heavily in lichen, face and small foot holds started as brittle edges that needed testing and breaking off and cracks needed to be cleaned of sandy and brittle edgles before jams would stick. This led to very slow climbing as we did all the cleaning with our hands and feet. In retrospect, a wire brush or two would have been worth the weight for sure. The face is steeper than we expected (seemed pretty much plum vertical) and we were happy that we brought a double rack to #3, and a #4 was nice to have along though wouldn’t have been absolutely necessary for the line we chose. Pitch order: P1 – 5.8, very enjoyable climbing up an easy chimney and then traverse out left at 15m or so. Climb up finger crack and layback around and up flake. Then traverse left onto face proper with some nice exposure before hitting the belay alcove directly at the start of a fist sized crack bulge. 30-35 meters P2 – 5.9, up the crack off the belay over a fist crack bulge to a left slanting crack to a good stance. Then step left to a short right facing corner/dihedral and up and right to a prominent left facing dihedral. Up this dihedral to a small, but comfortable ledge besides a triangular perched block. 25m P3 – 10c, step left from the ledge (a bit balancy) into the prominent “S” crack which trends up and left. Mix of hand jams and off hands with thin, smeary feet and then through slightly overhanging jugs to bypass the crack where it pinches down. These moves are exposed but really cool. Then jam left with crappy feet to move through this left traversing crux and into double cracks with a stance. Cleaning and pulling this crux on lead was taxing and required down climbing to rest once before pulling it proper. Double cracks were fists and wider and I was spent and mostly out of gear, so I traversed out left on face holds to a great stance next to a small tower. 35m P4 – Stem between the face and the tower and up to the summit ridge. Unrope and walk north to the Bigelow true summit. Short – 15m? Ben at Upper Eagle Lake Golden Granite on the East Face Line drawn in as best as I can with MS Paint! Circles are belays. Nearing the base Racking & shoeing up, East Face above Tim Tim heading up P1 Tim higher on P1 Me moving past the fist crack bulge on P2. No more shots from this pitch since the bulge blocks view of climber. Starting pitch 3 More P3 Tim topping out! Me on the summit, looking north to Raven Ridge Other interesting looking lines: Formation left of Mt Bigelow (looking from East) Further left yet Gear Notes: Double rack to 3", #4 used twice but not really necessary... didn't place much small gear Approach Notes: 8 miles more or less from TH, ~3500' to base. Great, fast trail.

East Face Liberty Bell Snow dongler French style Traverse pitch More French style

Nice work y'all! Bivying up near Eldo is so rad! The rock quality looks great from those rad shots. 6hrs as a party of three and hauling that SLR around is solid! Stoke for the fire!

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.