Maestro

Taehee and I were up there Sunday morning to look around, but we had already decided not to try to climb after our companions' mini-epic on Saturday. We originally planned to climb together, but they went in a day early and didn't wait for us. They reported high wind that made their rap rope go horizontal and a very difficult descent in the snow. We camped at Snow Lake when we found their tent there, and they got back to camp at 1:30 am. We listened to the wind roaring overhead as it got towards morning and decided it would be in our best interest to come back another time. We hiked up to Lake Viviane just to see the place as we had never been before and as we topped out at the lake about 8:00 or so, we got hit by this Antarctic blast with blowing snow that neither of us would want to try to do our first technical alpine route on our own in. Like a previous post said, even the goats looked cold. I could imagine trying to climb with frozen fingers and feet. Is it true the permit area goes all the way down to Nada Lake like a guy up there told us? I had thought it was just for the Enchantments Basin

PRICELESS!!!

I'm a retired band director, hence my board-name. I am also a composer and the avatar is from a page of my manuscript (of course now I don't write it out by hand any more...notation software is sooo nice). Edit: I just saw that this thread is 3 years old and dormant for a year before Dru just woke it up!! Oh, well, I guess it can take on a new life.

This forecast is usually pretty accurate for the mountain: http://twister.sbs.ohio-state.edu/text/forecasts/rec/SXUS46.KSEW

OK, I’ve stayed out of this fray so far, but at the risk of getting barbecued, I’m going to jump in because this is partly my doing. I am the “novice” that e-mailed cbs asking for personal beta. I had started a public thread about a week earlier that brought a few helpful replies, but I went to cbs off the board because I read his TR and he had just been up there the weekend before, so I thought he might have a good handle on conditions, etc, etc. I am posting this because I feel partly responsible for the flaming he has taken when he was just trying to be helpful. I sincerely appreciate the time he took to write that up for me. It was his decision to go public with it, but that made sense since it was a detailed write-up that others might find useful as well. Having that move on the slab labeled 5.9 surprised me, but didn’t scare me off because that is within my limit and of my companions’ as well. The situation is this: I have been climbing casually for over 30 years, but have only in the past year gotten really into it heavy duty because I finally have someone to live with who does it with me instead of starting a big fight every time I go. I am going up there for the first time with 3 other people who are also going up there for the first time. I personally feel fairly confident about the route, but I wanted beta about the rack because being a typically lazy climber, I don’t want to haul this big rack up there if I will only need a few pieces. Same for crampons, ice ax, etc. I also wanted to know which pitches would be best led by me and which could be done by my wife, who is more of a novice—albeit a very talented one who will very soon pass me in climbing ability. She can already send sport routes that chew me up and spit me out. Many of you no doubt like the adventure of finding your own way. We’ve done our share of that, but more on class 3-4 scrambles. I’m sure we will soon be there on technical alpine routes too, but for now we appreciate the beta.

This bizness of not being able to view the results until you vote--again--is really gonna skew the results. I voted for myself yesterday. Then when I tried to look at the results today, I had to vote again to see them...so I voted for my wife. She's not a member, but she is an active climber, can send harder routes than I can, and is my favorite partner (yes, that kind too)!

Top-roping and lowering through the chains is just plain lazy and irresponsible. Here is a variation on methods already described that is easy and--with a little practice--quick: 1. Lead climber clips into chains with his daisy chain or cows tail, threads a sling through the chains, and sets up an anchor with locking or reversed biners, threads rope through the new anchor, pulls up the rope and raps off. An autoblock on the rap makes it easy to clean the draws since you can stop and use two hands. Or you can lower off, since the rope is now through your biners and not the chains (but your belayer has to stop you to clean each draw). 2. Then you can top rope the route for as many climbers as you want. 3. Last climber clips in to chains, cleans the anchor, threads rope through the chains, pulls up rope and raps off. When installing and cleaning the anchor, be sure to clip the rope to your harness while it is untied so you don't drop it.

On the down-side, permits for the "Mt. Whitney Zone" are even harder to come by than the Enchantments. If you don't have one already, apply NOW!!

Thanks for all the beta and advice. I just hope 100 of my closest friends don't decide to climb that route on the same day.

Just above that is a small crag called "Squishy Bell" with 4 short, very easily top-roped pitches (5.5 - 5.9). Gritscone, already mentioned, is closer and includes some harder (5.5 - 5.11) top-ropeable routes, also quite short.

You are right: I stand majorly corrected. I was just guessing about the length and way under-guessed, even though this version doesn't have fixed (tied) leg loops. I dug out the old piece of webbing I used to use for that and it is closer to 20'. But I do think my harness is more comfortable and safer than that diaper sling was in the old days

I learned this diaper sling back in the '70's when real harnesses were a luxury most climbers didn't own. This is easy to demonstrate, but a bear to describe in words alone. If you can't follow this, I don't blame you. OK here goes: Take a long (at least 8') piece of 1" webbing and find the middle. Then bring the middle between your legs from the back so you are holding a sort of loop in front of you and the two ends of it are running back between your legs. Hold this in your teeth while you reach behind you on both sides and grab the two strands and bring each of them around the outside of your legs to the front, one in each hand. (Are you still with me ) Then bring both of those strands back through the loop you have in your teeth from the front in towards your body and pull the ends all the way through and drop the loop out of your teeth and pull them taut. This forms the leg loops. Then run the two ends in opposite directions around your waist until you have just enough left to tie your knot of choice. To tie in, you do your rewoven fig. 8 through the all waist loops and the top of the original loop, which is below the waist loops. To belay, you clip your locker in the same way. I hope that made some sense. You can flame me if it doesn't...

I can read in the guidebooks that the West Ridge route on Prusik Peak is rated at 5.7 and has 4 pitches, but other information is a bit vague. Having never been to Prusik--or anywhere in the Enchantments for that matter--I would like to ask for a bit of beta from anyone who is familiar with the route and willing to share what you can. Specifically, what would be an appropriate rack? Since it is a fairly long haul up there, I obviously don’t want to schlep along a ton of hardware that won’t get used. And what is the order of difficulty of the pitches? From reading the books, I am guessing that, from easiest to hardest, it would be 3-1-2-4. Does that sound about right? This is to be sure the right person on the team leads the most appropriate pitches. If these questions are already answered somewhere that I missed, I would appreciate a link to that thread. Anything I didn’t ask that you feel would be helpful would also be much appreciated.

Originally he had included SUCTION CUPS in his list of aid gear. He got so many e-mails from climbers that he took that out. There is a l-o-n-g thread about this article over on rc.com.

OK, since no one has answered the original question, let me give it a try but this beta is almost two weeks old and may be outdated: As of May 7, the Blue Lake trail was intermittent snow and dirt up to where the LB group turnoff is. From there on up it was deep, posthole hell type of snow. That continues all the way up to the ridge where the S. Arete route on SEWS starts. The gully up to the LB-CT col was dry on its lower half and had snow on the upper half, but step-kicking was pretty easy and the postholing not too bad. We were doing the Beckey Route and it was in great shape. Just like summer. The other routes that we could see with southern exposure looked the same. Edit for PS: There was significant snow going down to the rap anchor. Quite a ski if you are wearing rock shoes The rap route itself was dry.

The Forest Service office in Cle Elum reports that the road is open all the way now, the mud slide having been removed a couple days ago.

It depends what kind of climbing you are looking for. For wildly exposed alpine scrambling on 14,000' peaks, you can't beat the Elk Range, which is where the Bells are located. The climbing on them is mostly 3rd and 4th class, as the rock is too chossy to put up any significant 5th class routes. The traverse between the two Bells is one of the classic climbs in Colorado and you don't even need a rope, especially if you go south to north. The Bell Cord Couloir is a classic snow climb at least through June. There are a couple technical rock routes on nearby Capitol Peak, plus another classic 4th class scramble route. In Rocky Mountain National Park (which is nowhere near Aspen) you can find some fine alpine technical climbs, culminating on the classic lines up the Longs Peak Diamond Face. Get the book "Colorado's Fourteeners: from Hikes to Climbs" by Gerry Roach. It is the most popular of several guidebooks detailing what is available. If you want technical rock climbing that doesn't involve high alpine routes, head for Boulder. Rifle, mentioned above, is more a sport-oriented area, but closer to Aspen, further west out I-70.

Yeah, they are in there and are pretty decent. The Josune segment is especially good. In his commentary, the director (forgot his name--he has some shots of himself, bouldering) says it was shot by someone else. I think it is better than most of the ones he shot. Both that and the Leavitt segment are quite long and show most of the route being climbed. Maybe he will eventually turn into a respectable film-maker, but he needs to grow up some more and stick with the climbing footage. I don't want to look at someone's snotty nose

Totally agree with that assessment! He did, however, grow up a little with his second effort, Inertia 2. It has more sustained climbing and less other crap, although it still has way too much wasted footage on boxing and other irrelevant junk. But there is a good segment of Randy Leavitt doing a first ascent and some others that are worth watching. You just have to skip through the nonsense

All the advice given so far is sound and the descriptions of the Muir Snowfield are certainly accurate, but if you are a newbie to the snow, I would like to offer one small caveat... Climbing from Pebble Creek, where the trail ends, onto the snowfield is usually quite steep and can look just a little intimidating if you are not accustomed to snow climbing, especially on the way down. But having said that, I wouldn't want to discourage you because that section is very short and all you have to do is use the steps that others ahead of you will already have kicked. Keep your eyes focused on your feet and you'll be over it before you know it. Trekking poles, while much-maligned on this board, would be very helpful and I strongly recommend them. The hike to Muir on a nice day is a really beautiful one. Many of us do it frequently as training to get in shape for bigger climbs. Think hard before you deny yourself that pleasure, especially if you have the weather with you.

...and I only have 24,987 to go to catch up!

4/21 10:03 PDT Dru is ONE post away from 25,000

I'm new enough to not have been around in the days of the late lamented "old" cc.com, but I still got sprayed after my very first post on the "new" one... Welcome to the neighborhood, or rites of initiation??

Too bad Colorado's high point is not an interesting climb, when there are so many other 14ers that are, but IMHO the view from the top is worth the slog, especially if you are just ticking off state high points.

Any South-Sounders out there who want to venture an opinion about Spire Rock and Warehouse?