CaleHoopes

Honestly, I think when it comes to mountaineering there are so many things involved that you can't just devolve it down to conditioning and fitness. To be a valuable player on a team one needs technical skills and soft skills in addition to fitness. This is especially true as a leader. Also, Si in less than an hour is pretty impressive - but I've never done that myself and had a lot of success in the mountains. I think I once did it in 1:45 with a 55lb pack on the old trail. I think you can climb mountains with fitness that doesn't require running. However, 3 hours with a 20 lb pack and Rainier on the calendar in a month or less? It might be a tough climb.

I thought the three tenets of Mountaineering were: 1. Fashion 2. Safety 3. Fashion ???!?!?!?

Hey, one thing I would say about the local clubs - including the Mountaineers - make sure you keep an OPEN mind and learn all you can. I'm a board member of one of the local Seattle area clubs and no matter what dogma we spew or others spew, get as much knowledge as you can and mix it together to become a fully skilled climber. This includes balancing what the guides, paid instruction teach you. If you keep an open mind, you can learn a ton. Don't take anything at face value at all either. If you question something, read up on it and see what the community is doing as a whole and then make your decision of how you'll add it to your abilities. You'll learn a lot if you don't limit yourself to absolutes. NOTE: One thing to consider about RMI/Guide Companies (not all, but some).... they will teach you some skills you can take away. Additionally, they will teach you some things they only really need you to use on THEIR guided climbs. Some things they do/teach on those climbs may not be skills you'd want to use as an independent in the field. Just pay attention and even ask them - "would you do this on your own? or is this just because you don't trust me or others as clients?" Good luck!

Looks great, but looks unbreathable? That's the REAL challenge, right?

There's a lot to do in the winter. Climb lower and watch the avalanche danger... St. Helens can be an excellent one-day winter climb - assuming you can get up the road to the shelter. Also, you can get a lot of training in over the winter because of the snow. There's a lot of snow in commonwealth basin - which is easy to get to from Seattle - and you can do a great amount of training up there on tech skills and such. As far as Rainier - as long as you're trained up, there's no reason that a Rainier climb would take you more than 3 days. That means you don't really have that many days of vacation to take and if you went around July 4, you could potentially skip having to take any vacation to do it.

So, my opinion (for what it's worth)... Rainier is a fine first mountain. IN JUNE or JULY. December is not the right time for a first ascent of Rainier for someone with no alpine experience. This is a WINTER climb of Rainier. You have no boot pack, you get snow bridges that might not be fully formed yet and often times EXTREME avalanche danger that is in a zone that the NWAC doesn't report on. Additionally, it's much harder to get services to you in the winter for rescue when the climbing season is over. The weather is very inconsistent in December and if you get hit by a storm up there, your skills won't matter. I don't want to discourage you at all. I just want to discourage WHEN you go. Training a rock climber on glacier travel is not that difficult and Rainier is easily within your reach as a first objective. I'd just push it off a little bit and not put yourself and a partner at risk. My 2 cents.

Your third photo is a closeup of Glacier from the East? Looks like the cool glacier on the left hand side?

Hey guys. Thanks for all of the advice. I got exactly what I expected and will be buying a new rope. Now it looks like I got a rope for some fun knot tying practice.

That's totally what I'm thinking too. I just wanted to hear from some experts (or sprayers).

Folks, Call me a n00b when it comes to rope care, but I think I know the answer to my question here... I have a dry treated Mammut Infinity 60m rope that made it into a duffel with a MSR fuel bottle that had a loose lid. When the duffel got home, I found the error and the duffel smelled pretty bad... the rope WAS in a rope bag, however, the rope bag actually smelled pretty bad too. I totally let it all dry out, but I'm thinking that if the rope got soaked in white gas there could be a weakness in the rope. Therefore, it's probably getting retired as "practice rope". Thoughts? I'm really curious whether or not you'd retire your rope in this situation. The bottle was probably only 22 oz of white gas, but was empty once we got home. Anyhoo, let me know what you think - discuss - and spray too, I'm cool with that. Cale

I wanna climb Denali for the cause of my bank account (Climb for Empty Bank). Anyone pay for my permit? (On a serious note - I started with the Climb for Clean Air and it was a great experience. While I did get to raise SOME money that went to the charity, the group is a great group and they do a lot of outside training that you wouldn't get just booking a trip with RMI. I also found it quite cool because what it does is it gets everyone invested in your climb up Rainier. Not the n00bs and spraymasters on CC.com, but the real honest people in your life - family, coworker, etc. It's not a horrible cause unless you're a french climber who likes a cig on the summit of his closest 4km peak.)

Tstab, I can't find anything on the 2011 festival, but I found a post about the 2010 fest. In 2010 it was held at the Portland Rock Gym... you should ping them and see if there's a fest this year. I almost headed down there in 2010 to check it out... http://www.portlandrockgym.com/ And here's the poster: http://aaronmulkey.blogspot.com/2010/09/portland-ice-festival.html

Nice job! We were just across from you doing my first multi-pitch route on Liberty Bell up the Beckey Route. Nice summit!

I always take the approach that the pack is never waterproof - so if I think the weather warrants it, it all gets stuffed in a garbage bag as a pack liner inside the pack. Never thought of DWR on my pack...

I've had a similar experience in the wind. The reinforcements on this tent rock and the tie in points are excellent. You can even add more tie ins if needed and the poles are bomber. +1

I don't think it matters. Basically, the knot at the end of the rope that's tied in or clipped in is no longer in the system so that carabiner with your figure-8/butterfly is the main attachment point now. Usually, if this is an end person, I have them tie in anyway so the biner is already an extra piece until you clip the knot on the kiwi into the harness. On a middle person, I'd just use the same biner - keep in mind if you use the same biner, have a partner check that its locked both when clipping in the Kiwi and then re-extending the rope.

FYI.... this boot rocks. I and a climbing partner used them on Denali. While I missed out on the summit, he took them to the summit with no cold injuries. I did get cold toes in camp a few times, but I believe that's less to do with the boots and more to do with not warming my feet correctly in my sleeping bag when getting up in the morning. These are very good technical boots too - if a bit flexible. I climbed for 9 days in Ouray on them last year - they were great as far as the feel on the ice. However, what I found was that they were flexible enough that I had to tighten laces every four hours to keep them comfortable on ice. These have become my primary mountaineering boot. The liner is flat awesome - you can get them fitted (I got them fitted in Bellevue at Sturtevants). They take a good beating by a boot fitter, get custom footbeds and the heat moldable liner has never left me with water in the boot from sweat. I've climbed Rainier twice in them, Baker on a horrible day and been to 16,500 on Denali with them. They climb awesome. Besides, Dane is a fan (especially of the boot liner): http://coldthistle.blogspot.com/2010/04/la-sportiva-baruntse.html

Nice TR! I'd like to do this route someday, just need a weekend.

Use the Kiwi if you're going to get to a spot where you need to extend it out again. That's the best use of it. If you're going to do your climb with no extension at all from where you're doing the coil, you can simply do a mountaineers coil and then uncoil it in camp or something.

Don't disagree with that point NotMessner... However, you've added probably another 8 oz to your kit that way... just saying. I think that's a fine solution to up a 3 season to a 4 season. I have an extra set of poles for my Nallo 3 just in case I am going into nastyish weather with it.

Don't forget the venom...

I hope this isn't saying you used crampons to glissade... Ask Wetslide about that experience...

BTW, the ROPE GUIDE in the Climbing Gear Guide 2012 is pretty awesome: http://www.climbing.com/print/current/april_2012_304_gear_guide/ - You should be able to find the issue somewheres.

I personally think 5mm is just fine for prussik cords. Really? You bought a 30m 8mm rope and are taking it back because you can't make a few prussik loops, a few cordellettes and a set of foot loops? 5mm isn't that expensive and it never hurts to have them around for lighter adventures. After coming off the DC a few weeks ago, I'd guess that the 30m + 5mm prussiks would have been just fine. The crevasse danger then wasn't too bad - although I'm sure we've had some melt out. Our riskiest crevasse crossing was because some dumbass on the first team of the night took the wrong trail when there was a split at the flats - and our dumbass team followed the line. By the time we came back down, the bad trail with the 4-5 ft crevasse jump was already blocked off and we descended the trail we SHOULD have ascended. Without that added bonus, I think we jumped ONE other crevasse and all the snowbridges were pretty awesome. I think you'd do great there. FYI, the route up the DC itself is MOSTLY rock scrambling from the nose to the rest at the top of the cleaver. I'd say 85% rock and about 15% snow and ice (and probably even MORE rock now that two weeks has passed). ADDITIONAL NOTE: 30m not that bad of an idea right now. Your biggest risk is NOT crevasse falls, but more likely full on rock fall. That means if you can swing a short rope interval, less weight and go a faster speed, I would. The blog is warning about rockfall and I can tell you we had more than a few close calls on our climb - and we had 11 people in our group. One suitcase sized rock went between rope team members at one point. If lighter means faster for you, I'd stick with your 30m rope and move faster to get out of rockfall zones. With how direct the route is right now, you'll spend more time in these zones then out in the standard glacier travel anyways.

This gets much harder with Expedition Sized packs. I've never had problems with the 40 and under range, but 50+ and it really starts to be a problem. I contributed to my torn hip flexor by pinching myself for a whole leg of climbing on Denali. Yuk!