mountainmatt

There is no alpine to speak of out there, but check out Whitesides, Table rock, and Looking glass for some good climbing. Looking glass also has some aid routes that go in the winter when its bug free. Watch out for the black flys in spring. Good info here: http://www.southeastclimbing.com/index.htm

This is a personal favorite of mine: LINKY

What an awesome looking location! Nice pics as well! Too bad about the management hassles.

Waypoints are a great way to get around, but as mentioned above, it does you no good if the batteries die on the GPS or if you are not coming back the same direction. Another way to go about it is to use the GPS to pin point your location and then navigate by compass. This came in really handy two years ago when topping out Liberty Ridge in a white out. We were not positive where the descent to Emmons was and we could only see about 20-30 feet. We used the GPS to get our UTM coordinates, found where we were on the map, and proceeded to walk down with little problem.

Yay! Gear rep night! Is it going to follow the same format as last year (raffle #1 at the FF store, and raffle #2 over at the south lake union grill?)

I had a bunch of my cams reslung through Yates. However, I am pretty sure you can send cams back to Metolius, BD, etc. and they will do it as well. Yates will be a little cheaper, but they may not have all of the original colors (for example, some of my orange tcus have green slings).

Sounds like a great trip! Nice to see some different photos of the route as well. As for gear, I guess the fixed stuff comes back pretty fast. I tried the route earlier this year (April/May) and backed off halfway up the black tower. Besides the fixed heads, there was very little fixed gear anywhere on the route. From what I hear, a lot of people have had to place at least a few pins post clean up, so you guys were right on par for the course.

The article and the news story said snow lakes (there is a snow lake up there) but of course the map shows snow lakes over by the Enchantments. Yeah, that guy seems to be a real gem.

Heard about this on NPR this morning. Any know the details? Linky

Nice work! Sweet pics! So besides the black tower, did the rest of the route go clean? How much fixed gear has returned after the big cleaning?

I would definitely recommend a duffel for the trip. Each porter is only allowed to carry a certain amount of weight, and a duffel will save you a couple of extra pounds. I found a cheap, but thick sided duffel when I went (Target had nice ones for ~$30). I would also recommend putting anything you don't want wet inside a thick trash bag inside the duffle. Just because a storm is coming doesn't mean the porters will do anything to keep your bag dry. Have fun!

Or...

I just made this real fast, but this is how I remember the route going. The mistake we made the first time going up was heading left at the top of pitch 2 (dirty 10+?). If you head out right from the trees, you come to the crack system that takes you to the chockstone and the chimney.

Trip: Chair Peak - East face Date: 10/19/2008 Trip Report: Destination, Martha, and I headed up to get on what will likely be one of our last alpine routes of the season. Since I had recently injured my hand at Index, we decided to go for the easy route on the east face of Chair Peak. From what I could find from previous trip reports and on websites like summitpost, the route looked fairly easy and I thought it would be a looser version of the Tooth; a perfect fun easy day out. We hiked up to the ridge just above Snow Lake, and then took the lower ridge over to the set of trees just below the peak. This was a mistake. We ended up having to bush whack our way up a drainage to the base of the talus field. When looking down from above, it appears that you can get to a talus field earlier and bypass a lot of the bush whacking. Oh well. Once at the talus field, we cruised up a mix of snow and rock to get to the base of the route near the large chimney in the center of the face. The sun was out, but the wind made things pretty cold. I was shaking pretty nicely by the time we started climbing. To simplify things, I led all the pitches and then brought Martha and Destination up at the same time on double 8.5mm. While the route is not particularly hard, I would mention that there was very little gear to be placed on the route, and the gear that could be placed was not bomber. This also complicated the belay situation a great deal, causing us to have to simul-climb at one point with little gear between us. There is definitely more loose rock on the route than on the Tooth, but it was not as loose as (for example) the Improbable Traverse on Guye peak. I kept thinking that maybe I was off route, constantly looking to the left and to the right to see if there were any cracks or just something for some gear. But I never found them. When I finally led below the roof, I finally found a fixed pin, suggesting that we were on route the whole time (this was confirmed when I compared our route to the picture shown on summitpost and in the Beckey guide). After pulling through the roof section, we came to the summit ridge and traversed over to find our friend Doug had just finished the NE buttress route with his friend Andrew. This was perfect, as they could show us the way down the NE buttress without having to use the loose south route descent. After four double rope rappels, we hit the ridge that took us near snow lake and the main trail. After that, we cruised back to the car for some Pringles and Gatorade. (Thanks Martha for being the photographer ) Snoqualime pass area: Chair from the ridge near Snow Lake: Destination loving the snow field: Route taken. The rappel stations are shown coming down the NE buttress: Route from Summitpost (similar to the suggested route in the Beckey guides as well): Me at near the base of the route: Me belaying at the top of pitch 3: Destination near the summit: Me on the ledge near the last rappel, enjoying the view: Heading down the last rappel: Ice is starting to form on the NE and N sides Gear Notes: Double ropes are nice, small gear, stoppers, runners, and sense of adventure. Approach Notes: Hike the snow lake trail head to the ridge just before the lake, take the talus field early to get to the base. Descend the NE buttress route, walk the ridge down to the flat area just east of Snow lake, hike the nice trail out.

Nice Matt! Looks like some nice weather to be climbing slab in

Your pics of the Dolomites are sweet! Looks like a great trip!

I was under the illusion that the changing corners pitch was the crux (14a)? Even if its the great roof, there is typically a decent amount of fixed crap on it. No matter, if he can onsight it, it would be sweet!

Heads up: I picked up tickets yesterday and they are already getting low at Second Ascent. Might want to get them now if you want to go.

That is just fricken sweet! Way to get 'er done!

This (to our knowledge) is the first time the route has ever been done. Since the route was just discovered, there were loose boulders (that eventually would have fallen out naturally) that would have made the route very dangerous to future parties. Additionally, we removed some moss and tree branches to allow the route to go cleanly. We did not add any bolts to the route and tried to leave it in as near as "alpine" conditions as possible. I would not say there was "extensive damage" done by any stretch of the imagination. If you are still concerned, please PM me, or better yet, go climb the route yourself and see exactly what we did. I think you will find that the "damage" is similar to the other alpine routes in the enchantment region.

I am not sure what the serpentine ridge bivy spot is since there are many places to camp right around there. Do you mean the one right at the south end of the lake near the large boulders and a couple of trees? If so, you are ~5-10 minutes from the base of the route. As you hike the main trail around the lake, the main trail cuts east to go towards Asgard pass (over boulders, then into the trees). If I understand you correctly, the bivy site is almost right at this intersection. If you continue hiking south on the trail (instead of going east), you will eventually come to the small rock band where you head west to the base of the route (see the map above). Its actually surprisingly close to the lake.

Thanks I made it up in Illustrator. Evan and I both independently made sketches of the route and took a lot of photos. Then I spent an evening with a couple of beers making it. If anyone finds any corrections or has suggestions on how to make it more accurate, please let me know and I can update it.

Actually, we had to cut about 20 small branches off of there using my tiny climbing knife. The original lead through the trees was really "fun". If you look at my hands in the Sunchips picture, you can actually see all of the sap on my hands (hot!)

Trip: Colchuck Lake - Sunchips 5.8 - FA Date: 7/26/2008 Trip Report: A while back, Evan and I headed in for four days of climbing in the Enchantments. On the first day, we searched around for potential new lines in the area. On day two, we climbed the west face of CBR (which is a fantastic line, no TR for this one since I think the subject has been covered pretty well). On Saturday, we headed over to look at one of the potential new lines we found right near the south side of Colchuck Lake. After a short hike up the hill, we found what looked like a nice 3 pitch line following a series of cracks and ledges. The route appeared to be a new line (that or it hasn’t been climbed in at least a decade or two). The climbing was excellent, easily protectable, and made up of mostly 5.6 moves. Each pitch contains a short 5.8 crux, but is well protected. Each pitch is ~25m long ending with a large ledge and a good-sized tree. On the descent, we started cleaning, brushing, and removing some branches from a tree that blocked the route. The next day, we climbed the route again; switching leads around to make sure we agreed with the gear suggestions and ratings. We also spent a descent amount of time cleaning the route, trundling rocks, removing vegetation, brushing off the moss, and establishing three belays around the trees. This route should be a nice day out for new alpine climbers, for a rest day, or people looking for something short to do as a warm up for the longer routes on Dragontail and Colchuck. Enjoy! The appraoch: Building carins on the way up: Looking up at the approach, Sunchips in the background: Where the route goes roughly: Looking up from the base: Evan on P1: Matt on P2: Evan on P3: Sunchips always taste great after a day of route cleaning: Topo (I have a much larger one, but cannot get it to post that way, PM me if you would like a copy): Gear Notes: Rack to 4", Single 60m rope, a few longrunners Approach Notes: Hike to the south side of Colchuck lake then see pictures and map above

Nice work there Tim and Ben! As always, I love the photos of Tim and the sweet backdrops. Sounds like we need to meet up sometime at the Sloop so I can hear all the details