Maxtrax

What time were they supposed to be back by? Driving to WA Pass, climbing a route and driving home would be a pretty long day. Cell coverage is quite crappy in that neck of the woods. If you're really worried about them call SAR, or at least the local Sheriff's office to drive by the trailhead and see if the car is still there.

If there was much snow at all there are a few places between Elk Lake and Glacier Meadow that would have very high avy hazard, not to mention the snow dome which is around 30 deg most of the way. Other than that I think it would be fairly straight forward though. My uneducated guess is that the crux would be timing the approach for stable avy conditions and not missing your weather window.

Count my vote for either of the Mammut ropes. I've used the Phoenixes quite a bit and can't believe their durability for the weight/diameter. For something slightly beefier one of my coworkers got the Genesis' about 1 1/2 years ago and really likes them. For pure ice I've heard the Petzl's are good and a fairly nice price point but on rock they get beat up a little fast.

Watch out for beer cans/bottles, fire extinguishers and tree limbs being thrown off the overlook at the top and ticks in the late spring/early summer. Other than that it's a pleasant place to crag from time to time, the views are good and it catches the edge of the Olympic rain shadow

This past April myself and my friends Brittany and Matt climbed the NE Couloir of Colchuck. At the constriction near 2/3rd height we roped up and I first tried to force the left-hand (standard, I believe) line but was turned back by sugar snow, overhanging snice and a thin veneer of ice delaminating from the rock on the left. To try and bypass the direct line through the constriction Matt led out to the right and up for about 40m on M4/AI2 ground until he gained a steep snowfield and could find a belay. We continued up the snowfield trying to get back left to the standard finish but kept getting turned back by unconsolidated sugar snow on top of rotten AI or kitty litter choss and in one case an overhanging chockstone. In two simul leads we got to the top margin of the snowfield and found our way blocked by a relatively short rock face with a few crack systems and one prominent corner on the left with a bit of an ice smear in it. We weren't sure exactly where we were in relation to the standard notch or the summit but it looked like the best option to get out of the couloir. The pitch was about 50-55m long and in the conditions we found it, it went at ~M6 X. To my surprise but elation as I pulled over the small cornice at the top it had topped out about 5m from the summit. I'm curious if anyone else has climbed this variation or if they found a better exit if they got forced into the right-hand fork of the couloir. We found one pin on our first roped pitch at 2/3rd height and I managed to fix a #5 Bugaboo on the last pitch but other than that there were no signs of a previous climb. Thanks, Max

For wide feet and general 3-season mountaineering in the Cascades I would highly recommend the Scarpa Triolets. They are the same last as the Charmoz (direct competitor to the Sportiva Trango S) but way more durable. The Summits and Freney XTs are also good boots but overkill if you don't plan on climbing anything that gets towards vertical. Regarding fit, my first boots were a pair of the original Freneys which fit fairly narrow and destroyed my heals but climbed like a dream. However I have found that in the current generation of Scarpa mountaineering boots (Freneys included) they fit substantially wider than most Sportivas. For my size 9 E-width feet Nepals fit me almost perfectly, Scarpas are almost too wide for me unless I wear my thickest socks or drop down half a size, Kayland Apex Rocks are decent (the old Super Ices were painfully narrow and low volume), Sportiva Trangos are bearable and Garmont Towers are excruciatingly narrow in the toes but actually too wide in the heel, the same way an unmolded Mega-Ride fits me. As far as the Asolos go, every single pair I've tried on (never worn any in the field) have felt great as far as the volume and shape of the last but as soon as I lace them up they pinch horribly on the front of my ankle - bad enough that I couldn't wear them for more than 10 minutes or so around the store.

For digital cameras I've always had the best experience with Canon and Nikon. My climbing camera is a PowerShot A610... nothing fancy but it gets the job done and was cheap. The newer G9 and G10 are pretty sweet rigs too. I've also heard really good things about the Nikon Coolpix series. One thing I really like about the A610 is that it has an optical viewfinder, no matter what the manufacturer says I have yet to find an LCD screen that is viewable in the sun at 10k feet or on a glacier or whatever. I was considering getting one of the Olympus SW series cameras to replace my fairly beat up Powershot but my girlfriend got one last summer and the picture quality is piss-poor compared to my 3 year old Powershot. I love Olympus cameras for film (XA/XA4 and OM-1 and OM-2) but Canon and Nikon really seem to have the digital game dialed.

Way to get at it fellas. That ridge between the false and true summits looks pretty sweet.

Is the fixed #4 not there any more on the second pitch of the gendarme?

My main partner has a pair of the Venoms and loves them for alpine and light duty cragging, if you put a tech pick on the adze it climbs quite well. He has lead up to WI3+ with his. Personally I prefer the Petzl Aztar/Aztarex, though I tend to prefer Petzl or Grivel tools in general over the equivalent BD tools. Plus I find the Venoms a little too light, they get deflected fairly easily (you could also argue that my swing just sucks).

The Squamish is far and above the best windshirt I have used. My partner has the Marmot Ion and while it performs decently, the cut is much boxier and tends to flap around and get caught on stuff, also I agree that the full zip is unnecessary. The OR windshirt seems nice but everything they make is too tight across the back of my shoulders. I've heard good things about the Houdini and CAMP Magic Anorak but haven't had a chance to actually check either one out in person. Other than that I really like my Wild Things non-hooded windshirt as a midlayer during the winter.

Kevino: I really like the 8.9, the hand is really nice, it runs very smoothly through pro and the weight savings is noticeable even compared to my Edelweiss 9.6. Durability-wise I've taken a 35-footer on it and there was no visible damage/abrasion at all where it ran around a rounded/blunt edge. It took awhile to untie my fig-8 at the end of the day though... We've only taken it on a handful of climbs so time will tell how it stands up to general use and abuse. As John mentioned the weight per meter is almost identical between the Serenity and the Joker, I just don't like the stretchiness and comparative lack of durability I've found in Beal ropes. Another option I like for saving weight on mostly less than vertical climbs, like a couloir with short steps of vertical rock is taking a single 60m strand of 8-8.5mm half rope and doubling it over to 30m if needed for the rock steps.

soft like a baby's butt, exceptions would be the cave and select routes at amazonia and nevermind.

I dig my partner's Mammut 8.9 for alpine stuff but it definitely is not the ideal rope for cragging. I prefer ropes in the 9.4 to 9.8 range for general crag abuse. My favorite crag rope is the Millet silver triaxle 9.8, the hand is very nice and the durability is unbeatable in that diameter/grams per meter category. Even my "workhorse" 10.3 did not hold up as long as the Millet 9.8 has. Regarding belay devices, I've generally found that for 9.8 and up a normal ATC is fine, for skinnier ropes or if there's a large weight difference between climber and belayer a device like an ATC-xp/guide, Reverso 3, Jaws, etc. is nice. Also 9.8's are nice because you can still use a gri gri with them whereas my 9.6 won't lock off in a gri gri.

Your .4 cam is thoroughly fixed, I spent ~20 mins trying to clean it, bouncing on yellow and orange tcu's trying to expand the crack slightly. I gave up after my tcu's pulled out for the 3rd time and your cam hadn't budged. That crack is not forgiving if you place an overcammed piece, that green camalot 10" below your .4 has been there for over a year and a half now and I don't think it's been budged a centimeter.

A good way to get more bang for your buck is to climb the east ridge then rap and climb the south ridge then rap it again.

The ultralegre is a steaming pile in my opinion. The weight savings of an ultralegre + specific oval is negligible compared to the oscillante or SMC green crevasse rescue pulley + wiregate or superfly locker and the usability is severely decreased. I bought one for my first glacier trip and have ever since tried to give it away with almost every piece of climbing gear I've ever sold, to no avail.

For any gear that is either fixed or left behind on an alpine climb my partner and I split it 50/50 no matter who placed it or who couldn't clean it. For cragging we generally follow the above rule except in a case where someone was very obviously a dumbass (i.e. trying to place a #3 camalot in a pod that a #2 will barely go into), then the burden of replacement is on the dumbass.

Have you tried on either of those boots, FYI with the Oly Mons most people go up around a whole size from their normal size.

It's a lighter overall system to bring a lightweight single and tag line than a pair of doubles or twins. Most guys I know use a 6mm or 7mm perlon tagline, I personally have a 6mm although the one time I carried it we decided it would be easier to pull if we just made 30m raps instead of full length raps so I never ended up using it. Here's a quick list of advantages that I thought of for each system: Single + tagline pros -lighter overall -slightly easier rope management/faster belay changeovers -more straightforward to set up a haul on a hard pitch Doubles/Halves or Twins -more insurance if there is damage to your lead line -easier to simul rap -need fewer long slings for wandering routes

I don't have any beta on that route unfortunately but I have considered climbing it a few times and I believe Sky has skied it. The south Tahoma Headwall is a more intriguing route to me than the Wilson.

Morton Wood from ScaredSilly's post is my uncle - you might find his writeup of their climb in the 1955 AAJ useful. Although the technical information (i.e. cutting steps) is outdated it should give a good idea of the general conditions and character of the route. http://www.americanalpineclub.org/documents/pdf/aaj/1955/51_Wood_McKinley_aaj1955.pdf

Depends on your use... If you want a jet engine for melting lots of snow quickly go for the XGK If you want a general purpose climbing/backpacking/travel/whatever stove go for the Whisperlite.

Haha, looks like I'm a slow typer compared to Brittany, her post wasn't there when I started my reply.

skibum: the road was bare for the first mile or so, and spotty coverage for the next 3/4 or 1 mile. From there on it was continuous coverage but often resembled more of a luge track than a trail. On the way in it was mostly super slick walkable crust but on the way out it was almost entirely shitty breakable crust. I probably would've felt comfortable skiing it with ski boots and shorter skis but definitely wouldn't have on my 404/leather climbing boots approach setup. kevino: the bottom 2/3rds of the NE couloir was easy steep snow with very short steps of AI which we soloed. We ran into difficulties at the constriction along the side of the first rock step, trying to get to the exit runnels. All we found was rotten/dinner plating/unbonded AI, overhanging snice and knee to waist deep wallowing through sugar snow. So we took a variation up and to the right which topped out almost directly on the summit. In the conditions we found this variation went at ~M6, X. An extra .5 camalot (used ours for the belay), sawed off angle or short/thin blade might have made it more R than X but the quality of the rock is highly questionable. TC's was very definitely not in (unless you like discontinuous rotten snow that looks like it could fall out of the couloirs at any minute).