psistrom

Curious why you chose to downclimb the Eliot. Was Cooper Spur too avalanch-prone?

This may be too late for you, but I climbed the Middle Sister from Camp Lake last Tuesday, July 12, from Camp Lake. Trail from Pole Creek to Camp Lake almost entirely snow-free, but lots of snowfields above Camp Lake. Most of the Southeast Ridge crest and the dreary boulder field to the west of it, however, are snow-free. We had and used ice axes and crampons--snow fields were very icy in the early morning, but snow softened quickly. By staying on the snowfield just west of the Diller Glacier, we were able to avoid a lot of the loose boulder field on the way up.

Nice. And especially nice seeing it done the old-fashioned way--from the bottom to the top.

I have no interest whatsoever in picking a fight but having struggled up the Eliot Glacier Headwall route many years ago from the bottom up--through the crevasses and over the yawning bergschrund and up the steep rock-scoured ice runnels and then, finally, the rock bands at the top--it seems somehow unearned to slip in from the side, zip up two pitches, and say you've climbed the same route. This seems like Eliot Glacier Headwall Lite.

Very sad. Does anyone know which route Dr. Lee's party ascended? My hunch is Cooper Spur, but some press accounts say he'd climbed one of Hood's "most challenging routes" (though I always discount by a lot whatever the mainstream press says about climbing).

kjlfaiejlifli wrote: To reconfirm Sean's statement about reaching the summit, it's important to note that in the unedited version of today's news conference, when discussing the photos taken by Kelly James' camera, he confirmed that they had all reached the summit...that the photos show this... Assuming that climbers shepherding an injured climber in rapidly worsening weather wouldn't stop to take pictures, does that mean that Kelly James was injured after they had reached the summit and began descending (apparently going a bit too far to the east, at least if they intended to go down Coooper Spur)? Or perhaps it means he was injured, but the injury, at least at that point, wasn't unduly severe.

I just looked at the Oregonian's new map/photograph that someone posted earlier. If it's correct, I'm surprised that the three climbers descended so far to the east of Cooper Spur (and the cliffs of the Black Spider). Perhaps they were trying to stay in the lee of the ridge to avoid the winds from the south and west. If they went as far as the map/photograph suggests, it seems that they might have been able to keep descending down onto the Newtown Clark Glacier rather than traversing back to the west to reach Cooper Spur. On the other hand, I've been in enough windy, bitterly cold, white outs to know that it's incredibly difficult just to move, let alone navigate, and especially on steep and unfamiliar terrain (and apparently with an injured companion).

I was watching yesterday in Brooklyn, but am originally from Oregon and have climbed Cooper Spur, the Northeast Face, and the Eliot Glacier Headwall routes. I still can't tell exactly where the first cave was (the one that the single rescuer descended to). Anyone know more precise details than the relentlessly inaccurate mainstream media?