northvanclimber

Here's another vote for the helium. been using it for the last 3 years and have had a pretty good experience with it.

ah, cool. still wonder what would be the best way to use those petzl ice flutes....

so dru, how do you rack your screws? do you use those ice flute things from petzl? can't imagine putting a whole bunch of them on your harness. or do you use a separate belt?

"I find it particularly ironic that now to go ice climbing, we have to drive our cars 500 kilometres to get to good ice on the weekends, instead of 150 kilometres or 100 kilometres," he said. "So we're contributing therefore to global warming, if you believe that shtick." so true... so true.

ah jeez. this sucks! i always loved finding alpinist in my mail. argh.. hey, maybe the US gov't could bail them out?!!

nope. but my friend busted up his foot in the bugaboos this august and a nearby team with a HAM radio called us an air ambulance so we could get him out of there.

i've been looking into this same topic myself and have been getting both positive and negative responses. seems like rescue using a HAM radio is dependent on: 1) being able to access nearby repeaters - my impression is that many are not open to the public and 2) having someone to actually call. looks like if you've done your homework before you head out, the radio may have a chance at rescuing your butt.

it's hard to know when autumn will hit and the non-stop rains will begin. some years i've climbed until mid-october, some years the rains came mid-september. it's a gamble, but if the weather's good, it really is a nice time to climb here.

very interesting article. i'm a little confused though, if i need some sort of rescue, who exactly would i try contacting? it sounds like commercial services use frequencies i can't (legally) access...

Glad everyone got out safely! A couple weeks ago i was up there with a couple buddies when one of them took a terrible fall on snowpatch spire and busted up his foot badly. despite our best efforts to make a splint for his foot, it was apparent he wasn't going to be able to walk back to our tents, let alone back to the car. luckily, a team climbing on a route nearby had a VHF radio and were able to call us a rescue helicopter and even better, the upper vowell glacier made for a nice helipad. we were pretty grateful those guys had a radio and i'm wondering now about the merrits of getting one myself. since a lot of mountaineering and climbing takes place in remote areas where cel phones don't work, do any of you c.c.'s carry radios when you're climbing? dru, any thoughts? i know you have to get an amateur radio license, but that doesn't sound very hard considering how useful it can be...

i think you figured it out all by yourself... likewise, cracks can spread out from screw as it drives through the ice. would be a shame if your axe was in their path...

i was in a similar spot about 5-6 years ago. wanted to start mountaineering but my friends were all sport climbers. took a week-long alpine course, learned a lot (which included repeatedly practicing the skills we were being taught), and met a bunch of guys that, to this day, i still climb with.

LOL... i think your friends (or whomever you've talked to) have been overstating their experiences on the apron just a tad. there are some run outs on the easier routes, but that's usually cause you're going up incredibly easy ground that you wouldn't bother protecting anyways! for well protected climbs there's over the rainbow, which is just to the right of diedre near sickle. barely deserves its 5.9 rating...

oh, and somehow an ice screw (10cm, new-style BD) popped off my harness, likely while i was descending the summit pyrimid . if anyone finds it and wants to return it to it's rightful owner, just PM me. otherwise, it's booty for the next team to head up there...

I'll second that the approach trail is largely unusable due to snow cover. However, the boot track that you and everyone left behind made a great trail for my buddy and i to follow on sunday. it was also impossible to miss the entrance to the correct chimney due to the substancial boot track! amazingly, all the tracks on the approach had completely melted out by monday afternoon...

They don't put planned obsolesence in cause they break right from the get go! INSTANT obsolesence. oh i dunno about that... i've had a whisperlite for over a decade and never had a problem with it. but then again, my buddy bought a simmerlite that we used in the bugs a couple years ago and i don't know if it was just his, but i really didn't like it at all. kept spraying the fuel everywhere when we tried to prime it...

there will always be someone who disagrees with your ethics, but to me it looks like you guys did a great job. afterall, it's just climbing, right?

careful if you do this with half ropes (or really thin singles) because they're so thin. some belay devices won't provide enough friction (although you can remedy this by adding carabiners, etc.). did this once without really thinking about it and discovered it was a good thing i was wearing gloves...

nice TR. thanks for the great descriptions. think i'll have to go hit that route!

local kids in squamish do dumb shit like this all the time... you just can't escape from the idiots of the world...

My vote's for a hut at the bottom of diedre. That way i can chill with a nice bottle of wine while the hordes figure out how to belay groups of three/reluctant girlfriends/sport climbers

so i don't know anything about metal work, but are people implying that black diamond isn't making their picks correctly (ie., this whole laser business), and that's why they break more often? or are they just a bit thinner or something like that...

wow, great job! how long do you figure the approach would be using snowshoes???