scottgg

No snow to walk on, but the plant life was fairly wet from the previous days rain. I would also advise climbing Foss, as an alternative to the long side-hilling between Castle and Unicorn. Looking back, I can see several instances where we could have saved time, and I'm looking forward to trying this this again!

Trip: Mt. Rainier and Tatoosh - DC and Tatoosh Traverse Date: 8/13/2007 Trip Report: I am a goal oriented dude, and I think it comes from my dad. You see, my brother and I spent the last several months psyching him up to climb Rainier with us this summer, and he has spent the last several months preparing his body for the challenge. He added mileage and hills to his usual running routine, and further honed his body with massive quantities of pushups and squats. Pa was physically ready, but once the date was set, he worried about those pesky crevasses that tend to come out later in the season. His solution: invite several of his friend along, in the hopes that more people on the rope would mean less of a chance of getting intimate with a crevasse. Mt Rainier This past Saturday dawned clear, and we joined the hordes for the trudge up to Camp Muir. The weather was forecasted to deteriorate on Sunday, and sure enough, we awoke to high winds and an apparent cloud cap around 13,000’. Started hiking around 1:30am, and made it to the crater rim at 9:10am. I was super proud of my dad, as he kept a super attitude throughout. Miscellaneous thoughts for those thinking of doing this route anytime soon: -Expect your Muir-Summit-Muir time to be about 2 hours longer than it would be in June/July (very circuitous). -I really liked the route, as it avoided the DC proper, and weaved around some awesome seracs and crevasses (generally without being threatened by them). The scenery is much more interesting now than earlier in the year. - The “steep” step around 11,700’ is only about 40 degrees and 20 feet tall (nice buckets kicked in). Nothing to get excited about. - Rainier gets snow even in August (probably snowed a few inches while we were up there). Tatoosh Traverse This summer my theme has been getting lots of mileage in on moderate terrain, and linking easier peaks together. The Tatoosh Traverse seemed to follow in this vein and my good friend Kelly Smith though an attempt on this mini-range sounded swell! Coincidently, his only free day in the foreseeable future was Monday, which was great because I’d be all acclimated from our Rainier climb the day before. So Monday morning saw me driving back into the park I’d left eight hours before. We caught a few hours of sleep at Longmire, and started up the Eagle Peak trail just after 6:00am. We reached Eagle’s cool summit at 7:20am, and could hardly believe our good fortune: several miles of high alpine country stretched off in the distance, with Rainier on our left, and Mt.’s Adams, Hood, and St. Helens looking on from the south. The area is so beautiful, with gorgeous wildflowers, rocky peaks, and lots of wildlife. Each peak had an interesting scrambling route, and the route finding was generally very manageable. This was our first time in the area, so we were please to only loose a half hour or so to wrong turns. After Eagle, we climbed Chulta, Wahpenayo, Lane (which we thought was the coolest peak thus far), Denman, Plummer, Pinnacle, and Castle, which we reached just after 1:00pm. It was then time for a decision… You see, Kelly’s friend (who shall remain nameless), had earlier agreed to start hiking from the Snow Lake Trailhead, and meet us around Pinnacle Peak. We had yet to see him, and we were both worried that something horrible may have happened. So do we backtrack to the Pinnacle Peak Trail, thus minimizing the distance we’d have to walk/hitchhike back to Longmire, or keep going in the hopes that we would run into him, then finish up the last three peaks of the Traverse (Unicorn, Boundary, and Stevens)? We decided to keep hiking towards the final three peaks…. We still had not run into our tardy friend by the time we reached the basin below Unicorn, so we sat down for about an hour and hollered, and looked, and waited, and hollered some more, but no sign of our ride. No problem, we’ll just have to come back and do the traverse again, and get those final three peaks (which I’ve heard are very cool). Kelly told me our ride may even be waiting for us in the parking lot: sweet! But it was not to be, so we started walking west on Stevens Canyon road toward Longmire, 15 miles away. Our spirits were high, and Kelly even estimated we could make it back to the car in an hour and a half, as most of the road is downhill. Thankfully, we never got to figure out how running 15 miles would feel after such a long hike, as a super cool couple picked us up near the Pinnacle Peak Trailhead! Back to the car at 5:00, burger’s in Elbe shortly thereafter. Miscellanous thoughts: Big thanks to Cluck (Scott) for giving me great beta/times for this traverse! Big thanks to the cool Mountaineer’s couple for taking pity on us and taking us down to Longmire! Big thanks to Mark Bunker for getting me hooked on moving fast in the hills! This traverse is very cool, and highly recommended! I will be back to finish this thing!

I'm dropping the wife off at a party in Monroe around noon, and I'll have a few hours to kill. Anyone interested in running this thing?

Wow, great job! Do you have any aspirations to run the Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier?

I may be looking at it all wrong, but regardless of how much exercise you do, you won't get any stronger unless your feeding your muscles the proper stuff (ie quality protien), right? So what I am looking for is a high quality protien source that fuels muscle growth/recovery, but won't add useless mass. I guess I just equate most protien powders with huge weight lifters, who are super strong, but their added mass is counterprodutive to my goals (Alpental's Mighty Tooth!!!). Hammer nutrition sounds great, thanks for the link. The no sugar thing is perfect; I always chuckle when I look at a protien bar/shake/powder and see that it has more grams of sugar than protien per serving.

Any thoughts on a good protien powder to support muscle growth and increase strength? All the protien mixes I have seen are endorsed by huge "Mr Olympia" types, but I want something more designed for endurance athletes. Thanks!

Thanks for the beta. Anybody care to share a time to shoot for, or perhaps your personal "splits" on some of these peaks?

Wow, that's swell Wayne! Mind-boggling to me!

Not sure what happened..... Anyway, I'm planning on giving the Tatoosh Traverse a go in mid August. I'd like to start at Longmire, traverse the 12 peaks, and descend to a bike on the Snow Lake side. I'm wondering about leaving the crampons behind, and avoiding any rappels? Possible? Realistic? Also, what is a good time to shoot for? Thanks!

Yeah, I would definitely do this route again, and recommend it to others as well. The decent rock, long route, and awesome position conspire to make this a must do route! The approach is not that bad, I think it took us about 3.5 hours to our bivy at 7400'. Dave thought we should gain the route lower, but my stupidity won over and we ended up gaining the ridge crest at the notch just after the crux gendarmes But the following two 5.7 pitches were very cool, as was the 1000' of easy, fun, fourth class rock to the summit. That whole area is so cool, I'd definitely recommend it and can't say enough good things about the sweet snow arête on Eldorado's classic East Ridge!!

Thanks for the story and pictures!

I carried a fanny pack with: 20oz of Cytomax, 2 GUs, and a sawed off trekking pole. Yeah, I agree that down climbing (or up climbing for that matter)the catwalk unroped would be spooky! I went up and down the detached flakes to the right. Another option would be to down climb the North Ridge, but I haven't gone that way before. Here are my splits, if anyone is interested in what to expect: 18:10 Snow Lake Cuttoff 1:01 Base of South Face (accessed via 3rd class gully) 1:03 Start up SF 1:12 Summit 1:21 Base of SF 1:57:20 Back at TH Snow sure helped on the way down! Great way to experience the mountains! As an aside, a few years ago (2002?) Jens K. approached via the Alpental chairlift, climbed the Tooth, and skied back to the car in 1:27!! (source: Speed Climbing Records

Trip: Mighty Tooth - S.F.B.B Date: 6/30/2007 Trip Report: Having recently joined the ranks of Fatherhood, I find my forays in the mountains infrequent at best. So this past Saturday, when a bit of free time coincided with a weather window, I knew I had to exploit it by attempting the Mighty Tooth! I approached my usual partner with this bold idea, and he belched his agreement. Standing just over three inches tall, this portly fellow lives in our fridge and refers to himself as Beer Troll. He actually hails from a proud ancestry of Norwegien Beer Trolls, though the family name has deteriorated in recent years. Beer Troll on lead, Great Northern Slab, Index. I went to bed Friday with the usual butterflies, but what really kept me up was the barely audible din coming from the kitchen. I knew then that Beer Troll had got into my Alaskan Amber, and that he would be less than refreshed when I woke him in a few short hours. Sure enough, when I opened the fridge at 4:00am, he was naked as a plucked turkey, and surrounded by several half emptied bottles of his favorite brew. After a brief tongue-lashing, I tossed him in the car, and we were off! He demanded we get coffee and pastries on the way to Alpental, and when we finally arrived at the empty trailhead he announced he would not be joining me on the climb. He cited a searing hangover and generally lethargy as his reasons, but I was unconvinced. After much threatening, humiliation, and general abuse, he finally agreed to “come for a little ways”. We loaded up our fanny packs, synchronized our watches, and started jogging away just before 6:00am. The trail went quickly, though the gasping and wheezing coming from somewhere behind me became louder and louder, until Beer Troll finally collapsed upon reaching the slopes above Source Lake. He dramatically announced his highpoint, and said he would meet me back at the car. But fearing a wild snaffle may find him first, I decided to make room for him in my already stuffed fanny pack. The snow above Source Lake was nice and firm, and despite the extra weight in my pack I still made it to the base of the South Face in good time. Upon hearing voices above, I threw out my half-hearted plans to do the climb nude, but enjoyed myself nonetheless. The descent involved much slipped and sliding, but we still made it back to the trailhead in just under two hours round trip, 1:57:20. In all seriousness, two weeks ago I ran up the Mighty Tooth with Mark Bunker, and we both round-tripped it in a little over two hours. I pared my gear down, got in some good training runs, and watched my food and beverage intake (much to Beer Troll’s dismay) this past week, and I was stoked to get it done this time in less than two hours.

Cool, I've been wanting to climb that thing!

Nice Colin and Mark!

Man, the Sierras the great! Can't wait to make it down there someday!

That would be Mark Westman with Colin in AK. Marko was actually busy trying to crush his personal record on the Tooth this past Saturday (almost got it too).

As of this past Saturday: the summit of Stuart still held significant snow on all aspects, and the east ridge held nearly continuous snow down to the Sherpa notch. I would imagine that the West Ridge will involve lots of snow, which is not bad, just different. The schrund in the Sherpa Glacier now requires a jump or short rappel, and the Ice Cliff Glacier schrund is surmountable on both the right and left, though detatched in the center.

Every winter I tell myself that this will be the winter my ski skillz improve, but it hasn't happened yet:( I was actually thinking of driving between the two. Anyone have helpful split times for these two routes for a moderatly fast party?

Has anyone tried this link-up, or have any suggestions on how they would go about it? I think the biggest problem would be timeing it so you where on the steep parts while it was cool out. I was thinking the North Ridge of Baker, and the North Face of Shuksan. Thanks!

Hey Tyler No long trips for me, but I'd love to get out for a day or two if you cant find someone to do a long trip with.

Anybody been up there recently? Can you drive to the trail head? Flotation required? Thanks!

Trip: Dragontail - NE Couloir Date: 4/29/2007 Trip Report: Upon arriving at Colchuck Lake Saturday morning and scoping out our options, Dave Conlin (dbconlin), Luke Gullberg, and I decided to check out Dragontail's NE Couloir. I have wondered about this route in the past, and so I imagine others may benefit from this description. The couloir starts about 500ft uphill from the first TC couloir. We encountered a handful of interesting, easy mixed steps and the couloir gradually steppened. It was neat because you could never see more than a few hundred feet ahead before the couloir turned one way or the other. Near the end the coulior narrowed down and steepened to maybe 55deg until the snow ended about a pitch below the east ridge. We broke out the rope and Luke and Dave began dodging falling ice while I inched my way up towards the ridge. The pitch was very engaging, and took the better part of two hours. If this dude's head was not in the way, you could see more of the fun stuff. Dave on belay. This brought us to the east ridge proper, and Dave led us on a simul-block over a notch and onto the south side of Dragontail, where we scrambled up to the summit. Fun route, but probably not destined to be a classic. Lots of easy ground, but the hard upper pitch will probably keep steep snow climbers off this one. And the ratio of step kicking to challenging climbing will not entice technical mixed climbers. But a good adventure none-the-less. Great partners, like always! (this is them near the top of the NE Couloir on D-Tail) Enjoyed the NBC on Colchuck Sunday before hiking out.

Nice Guys! Sounds like you did the August 1971 North Face route in Beckey's Guide. That one is definatly on "the list"!

Thanks for the pics! Did anyone glance up D-Tail's NE Couloir, or have any beta regarding it, especially the rock between the end of the snow and the summit?