wrangler

Nate is absolutely spot on with this! well said. Also, Stone Rodeo has a good variety of moves compared to most south-side routes--technical roofs and a wild finish pulling off a fist jam with your back to the ground--stellar. (and it's totally sandbagged, even for Beacon). I applaud Joseph for replacing the junk protection and shrugging off the trolls.

Dave is absolutely correct, the piece that blew was an obvious POS. It's sad that it wasn't removed (or at least disabled) and someone had to take a dive off of it. The crack takes bomber gear near where the piece blew (check the guidebook photo for a visual). And while strenuous to place, the hand jams in the roof are secure and the piece you place doesn't block the hand jam you need to make the move to the lip. The experience of this climb would dramatically change by putting a bolt in the roof. Accessibility would go up (not a bad thing), but quality (and fear-factor) would go down. It doesn't need a bolt imho. -Shane

hey Ivan. some more info about siege tactics... it can be aided cleanly (or free climbed) and definitely doesn't need any bolts or pins. for the traverse under the roof i use a #4 or #5 nut. on the GFA i did use one of Joseph's Lowe Balls, but on the FFA i found a placement for the nut, which i liked better (probably cause i suck at using LB). the vid shows the first attempt at getting up the route...it took 2 more tries to push it up to where the anchors are now...and another 3 goes to free it. i think it's around 12a/b. As far as i know it's waiting for a second free ascent. when i took that whipper, i was leaning back against a cam in a flaring, dirty slot. as i stood up a bit, it shifted and popped. check the slo-mo and you can see that the next piece popped too. there's a solid placement higher that i missed, but now use before crossing under the roof--i think it's a #2 bd cam. cheers, Shane

I'm in Squamish now and my current partner leaves on 9/1. I'm planning to be here at least through 9/14 and possibly longer. I'm primarily interested in doing long multi-pitch climbs in the 5.10 to 5.11 range. If someone out there wants to tackle something harder, i'm game for that too, though i may have to brush up on my jugging skills. A couple of routes on the current tick list are Angel's Crest and the 23-pitch ('ultimate') link-up. PM me if interested/available. Cheers.

Hey sfog, Did you come close to hitting your belayer on the fall? I'm guessing they would've been just about underneath you on that side of the pillar...?

Climb: Mt. Garfield-Infinite Bliss Date of Climb: 7/15/2005 Trip Report: We headed up to climb IB after gathering some route info (thanks AlpineDave and matt_m). The approach was easy since there was a cairn on the side of the road where the trail started that took us all the way to the base of the climb. We simul-climbed the first 5 pitches in one push, stopping when we ran out our 25 draws. (other gear: a few nuts, and a couple of small cams—micro cams would have been more useful than the #2 and #5 Metolius cams we had. ) We simul-climbed the route except for the 5.10 pitches and the upper head-wall. Route-finding seemed fairly straight-forward for this type of climb. The only real challenges were a couple of the transition zones between pitches (no surprise). Even though I had read and re-read the beta for the 4th class area above the 14th pitch, I still had some difficulties. It wasn’t too difficult finding the grassy 4th class ramp, and I even spotted the 3ft high cedar bush mentioned in some other TRs, although I passed it about 20ft too low on the face. It must have been the exposure without any gear in and not wanting to commit to cutting straight up that prevented me from heading directly up the face. The route appeared to head up to the break in the trees at the top of the 4th class choss, but striking out, straight up the face took more faith than I had. So, I wussed out and decided to follow the comfortable, grassy ramp all the way up and right to the trees, where at least I could sling something. From there, I traversed across, slinging a couple more trees (noting the bail webbing and slings along the way) and eventually connecting back into the bolt line halfway into the next pitch. The upper headwall had the most memorable pitches, especially the blocky, traversing 22nd pitch (picture), where all the exposure finally sets in. Just as we summited, clouds rolled in and began to shower on us. So after an abbreviated summit lull, we beat a hasty retreat, simul-rapping on gri-gris down to the dreaded, mandatory 4th class downclimb. Our last rap off the upper head wall left us only about 30ft above the cedar bush. The wet loose downclimb was an attention-getter, but not all that bad in the end. Another rap/downclimb off the small bush got us back to chains. We finally made it back to our (wet) packs after too many hours of pulling and rapping on heavy, soggy ropes. Ahhh. Overall, the climb was enjoyable in an endurance-fest sort of way with tons of altitude gain, but minimal amounts of “whoa” exposure. I’m glad I did the route, but I probably won’t do it again, mostly because I wouldn’t want to do that many back-to-back slab pitches without a single crack to jam. Would I recommend the climb? If you like tons of slab climbing on bolts, with beautiful views, and can handle a spicy, mostly unprotected, 4th class section about 2000ft off the deck…go for it. http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=11945&sort=1&cat=503 http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=11962&sort=1&cat=500 http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=11963&sort=1&cat=500

Hey Katybird72, Still looking for climbing partners in pdx? I live in NE near Rocky Butte and am always looking for good climbing partners. what level of climbs are you looking to climb? trad, sport, etc? Cheers, Shane