Dannible

Hell yeah. Wasn't sure you'd make it with all that stuff you were bringing. Good workout, amazing route. I was thinking about doing that again today but I think I've had enough of that hike for the year until it gets covered in snow. Funny shuttle story.

Cool. I was wondering if those would fit. http://www.moosejaw.com/moosejaw/shop/product_Petzl-Trigrest-for-Quark-Nomic-Ergo-Ice-Tool_10101175____?cm_mmc=Affiliate-_-AvantLink-_-na-_-3057_cf5d495&ad_id=Avant&avad=3057_cf5d495

Yeah ditto on that, Chair Peak 1993ish when I was in SAR. Same one maybe? Guy had his helmet in his pack. Nope, I think that was in 2004 when I was in Skagit SAR. Chair peak is a good place for a helmet; both times I've climbed the north face there was a constant stream of ice raining down.

I've used hybrids for a lot of WI4 and mixed to M6. On 4s and 5s I've always been a lot more stressed out about the poor fitting plastic boots I had been using than my crampons (though I've only used clip ons for wi5 I think).

When I was 16 or 17 I helped recover the body of a guy who was killed by rockfall. A helmet would not have saved him, but I bought one soon after. My helmet has protected me from injury by rock and ice fall a few times, and maybe from death from ice fall and from slamming my head on rock features while soloing a few times. Recently I almost killed some people when I had a foothold break off and send a bunch of rock down at a popular spot near Ltown. I like my helmet and rarely forget it; when I do I feel naked.

Nice. Thats the little wall that's visible from the highway coming from Mazama, right? I've always wanted to check that out, but wasn't in a hurry because I thought not too many people cared to shwack up there. Lots of good rock in those parts.

No, I was just skiing. I remember thinking it looked scary but climbable if you could get creative with pro.

Thats funny because this July there was ice and pow on the BBs. Sunbaked, thin, shitty ice, but ice. It's hot where I am. I can see ice forming up in places when it cools down a bit.

Yep. Just find out what works for you. I think that just eating a lot is the biggest thing. Plan on moving slow the first hour. You probably didn't sleep much the night before anyway. Breakfast burrito, pizza, big sandwich; just whatever you can digest in the morning, with some fruit and coffee and plenty of water. Dan Helmstadter enjoying a breakfast of Lays Classic Potato Chips and cheese at a bivy on Stuart.

Wow, crazy story. Since you didn't lose your foot, I'm sure it will be a fun experience to talk about 10 years from now. Nice that it happened at the end of a good summer, and not the beginning. Good work to everyone involved. I'm not trying to change the subject or start a debate, this has been covered before, but in her story Steph said that maybe a Spot Beacon might have been better than a phone. In my experience a phone is more reliable in the cascades (but not reliable enough to make me bring one along very often). Spot worked about 10% of the time for me, even when I was out in the open. A phone has been crucial for Steph n friends on 2 occasions now.

I'll take the patagonia jacket. PMed.

True. But maybe his wife's feet smell like roses. Are you talking about Sunday as in yesterday or a week ago? You posted this on Monday morning. If yesterday maybe they didn't get around to calling yet. I once found a pack that someone forgot at a trailhead. I grabbed it so that someone else who might not give it back wouldn't, and returned it (with fancy ski gear, camera, and wallet containing over $100 included) days later when I got home. The point is, if it happened yesterday there is still hope, and if it happened eight days ago, suck it up, chill out, and move on. Good and terrible things happen to good people every day. Fact of life.

I was thinking that same thing when I first saw these. My friend's skinny slings are about 4 years old I think and we've been starting to worry about them. You don't want to buy these fancy expensive cams and have to pay to resling them every few years. I do like that you can extend them though. Seem worth the bulk because it means less draws.

I think I've pointed this out here before, but calling someone an asshole is probably not the best way to get them to do you a favor. For all they (the person who grabbed the shoes) knew, the shoes could have been there for weeks and were forgotten trash. Did you ask all the other climbers around if they'd seen them?

Trip: Mount Goode - Megaladon Ridge Date: 9/3/2010 Trip Report: I round a bend in the trail and see the beam of Jens’s headlamp through the trees few hundred feet ahead. Suddenly there is a crashing noise not far away from me in the thick brush to my right. I keep walking and call out to the bear to let it know where and what I am so that it will give me plenty of room to pass. It’s the 4th bear I’ve interacted with tonight so the novelty has worn off. In fact nothing is very fun or interesting in my world at the moment. I’ve been on the move for 26 hours, and have covered over 30 miles of rugged, remote mountain terrain in that time. I’m suffering, and there are still many miles between me and my sleeping bag. Minutes later I round a corner and find Jens laying on his pack half asleep. He stands up with a groan, mumbles a few words that I can’t understand. I’m able to keep up with his never slowing pace for a while, but when the trail starts sloping downhill my knee suddenly feels like it’s on fire and I can only descend at a slow hobble. We’re lost deep in our own minds now, but experience the same pain, exhaustion, and somewhere deep down the same sense of accomplishment. 22 hours earlier we left the trail behind, still feeling fresh after walking 12 miles from the North Cascades Highway. In the dull light of dawn we crashed through thick, wet brush and took our shoes off to cross a cold glacial fed creek. The water was swift, but it was my 5th time making the crossing and it didn’t seem at all treacherous like it once had. We walked past the campsite used by Blake Herrington and I on our first attempt of the ridge three years before and bushwhacked up the hillside next to pristine waterfalls as the sun rose. I was feeling pretty worked by the time we reached the first high point on the east ridge a few hours later and 4000 feet higher, but the excitement of finally getting to head into the unknown brought on my second wind. On my earlier attempt of the ridge with Blake this point was where we changed our plans and started a new adventure: a scary series of rappels down a 1000 foot face so that we could get off Goode and continue on with our plans to climb Booker and Buckner. My journal entry from that trip says “We ruled out the possibility of climbing the route due to our heavy packs and a light rack.” This time my pack weighed 16 pounds when we left the car, most of which was food and climbing gear. From there our route differed from Blake and Sol’s. They made a 50m rap to the north to bypass a couple of chossy towers, but this time the north side was covered in a few inches of snow forcing us to pitch out a few pitches on the crest. Once we put away the rope it was clear to me that our strategy was going to work. We bypassed some of Sol and Blake’s crux pitches on mid 5th rock 50 feet to the left of their route and were on the sub summit (and on top of the ski line) in no time. We stopped to melt some snow and continued on steeper but better quality rock, bringing out the rope a couple hundred feet before Black Tooth Notch. It’s never over until its over, and the snowy last pitch up the NEB turned out to be a surprise crux. Of course it wasn’t nearly over when we were on the summit, but the realization that we were right on schedule and should be in the woods by the time it got dark kept us relaxed. The plan had worked. Jens was the perfect partner for this trip. He’s faster than anyone I know in the mountains, and is stoked to try huge routes and linkups, even when success is definitely not assured. He’s a much better rock climber than I am, but also enjoys the kind of climbing that I prefer: covering a lot of moderate ground fast. He was the only person I know who I thought might be willing to try this. Both of us knew that spending a freezing night out with very little gear was a real possibility. From dawn to dusk we were covering ground that would be hard to navigate in the dark. Sometimes I find myself surprised after completing a route when the summit and the end of the day brings about little emotion beside the desire to do something bigger and more challenging. When I am done with a climb, all I think about is the next one. With this one behind me it feels good to be able to look back and see what a long road its been since my first “big” route, the Northeast Buttress of Goode, four years ago. To be honest, pretty much all I did for a couple of days after this climb was sit around my house feeling good (and a little sore). I’d been dreaming about climbing this route in one push for a year, and for two years before that I had been thinking about climbing the NEB in a push. Almost every decision I’ve made for about a year and a half, from where I live, to what kind of jobs I look for, to what I eat and do on my days off have been affected by these goals. Life goes on, and by the time we pulled back into Leavenworth the next afternoon Jens and I were discussing ideas for future climbs that might put us back into that state of total focus on the moment that we found on Goode. Jens’s story can be read on his blog. It’s interesting to note that I chose to start my narration at almost exactly the same point in the 27 hours that he did even though I started to write this days before he posted that. Gear Notes: Less is more. Approach Notes: Really long. Expect some bushwhacking and low 5th climbing to get above the treeline.

There will still be good days to be had. No one is allowed to use weather as an excuse for not getting out this year. I cant remember being rained on in the mountains for more than an hour this summer, and I was out there some. Less snow is good for fall/winter alpine, more snow means pow turns, and in the mean time it's rock season on this side of the mountains. In short, whatever happens will probably be awesome.

Awesome! Are they still taxing people from the US to get into Bolivia? Was food and water poisoning an issue or did staying with your friend help you avoid all that?

To get to the base of the CNR without snow gear just be sure to drop way down towards stuart lake once you cross under the west ridge. You can scramble down moraines and slabs to the base. We stayed high and used sharp rocks to get down and across some snow patches and it was somewhat warm so we were able to kick steps.

What an amazing route. I've been talking about doing it for years but had never gotten around to it. There was no snow where we bivied, so we made do for the night with what we had and stopped at the first snow we came across in the morning (at the notch) to make drinks. Feels like fall up there! I had a long, cold night in my ultralight sleeping bag, the worst in a couple of years.

We last climbed it in July of 2009. The rap setup we found was webbing with 2 biners, one of which was a fancy new light wiregate thing which is now back in service. In 2007 I left blue webbing around a tree with a rap ring, but I think we used a different tree last year.

Nice trip. I went back last year and climbed these routes again with Aaron. Good stuff! There were a few pieces of tat on Easy Getaway and I found a brand new rap anchor on the back side, so I think that route does get a bit of attention. We also managed to trundle a couple of the loose blocks, so its pretty much as clean as they come.

If you mean the leftward ramp about 4 pitches up, I followed it all the way to its end, scrambled up and left for a bit past the ramp, and headed up a 5.7ish crack to the crest. Never did see the double cracks Beckey wrote about up there.

Steep snow, but it will be all ice in a couple of weeks I'd say. I did this route yesterday. I accidentally went straight up the loose pink rocks to steep sold cracks, which is inadvisable. There are a lot of options up there. I didn't start having fun until I gave up on the topo and just started climbing what looked good.

Crazy weather yesterday for sure. Flash flood style. I work for a rafting company and on a float of 70 or so people, half decided to bail in the first couple of miles knowing that they would get no refund. I was thinking about the people who must be up in the stuart range epicing, glad it wasn't me. Pretty nice change from the 100 degree heat in the valley though.

Yep, shoes are fine. Axe and no crampons for that route. I climbed the G-S NF yesterday and just chopped some steps in the frozen snow to get to the base. I also chopped steps all the way up the last couloir of the TCs (brought one crampon), which was pretty silly.