ScaredSilly

Nice to hear of a positive outcomes. Beers to all.

Excellent weight loss plan - too bad winter is coming on. Congrats boys.

Part of me is not surprised. But but on the other hand bummed as it was the only descent rag in USA. One of the few the proud owners of 0-25. Anyone need issue 8? Make me an offer. If I get desperate (i.e. my stocks tank) I might sell a duplicate 0 and 1. In the time mean folks can temp me with some offers.

One time we left the parking area at 2pm for a quick run up the south side. We got to the top around 7pm. We figured we would get back to the car just after dark. Well, seems we misplaced the trail back to the parking area. It took us a couple of hours and lots of walking up and down the PCT before we found it in the dark. Got back to the car at 2am. Of course this was summer. Hope the missing person shows up with a good tale.

Ditto with what John said. OIF is really a big social scene. That is unless you walk up the road and do some of the climbs not in the park. And there are some fine climbs to be had. If you want to fly Grand Junction is your best bet as it a 2 hour drive from there.

Bummer, I have gotten to the point that I leave nothing in the car and nothing at the base. Just think of climbing a 5.11 with a pack as training ;-).

What you meant to say is that as commander in chief your first executive decision was to make your climbing partner the official party biographer. And that after a full review (i.e. sanitized) that a biographical photo alum will forthcoming.

I use a steel or brass wire brush, BTW I think my next FA is going to use the thread title as it's name "weapons of moss destruction" GREAT.

An interesting PNW mountaineer who did a little mathematics ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/science/11schramm.html http://research.microsoft.com/schramm

In many high use areas folks are moving away from using trees as rap anchors and replacing them with bolted anchors. In most cases I see nothing wrong with it as was said it removes the tat slings from the picture and gives the trees a bit more space to breath (i.e. branches are not broken, roots are not exposed, etc). In a few places I have seen folks replace the tat with a long chain around the tree which is certainly not better in my book. My suggestion would be to leave them. As for the other bolts, bolting next to cracks is for lame ass single digit IQ buffoons. Chop the fuckers (nicely)

The fall can be quite nice after a few storms have settled in. I climbed it late one October. There was no one on the hill. I had it myself sans a few spirits following me up the Spur.

Okay, I can see what you are saying. I guess while watching the pocket debris dump it went more to the left. It just seems that the direct is less of gauntlet when the pocket is still hanging. Here is what we climbed to by pass the magic carpet. We came in from left.

Huh? We came no where near the pocket glacier doing the original start. Yeah the north glacier does dump stuff but as I said you are in the firing line for a couple of minutes. How long were on the pocket glacier?

We by passsed that ...

Why are so many folks so hot on running the Pocket Glacier gauntlet? In less than 2 minutes we walked under the Slesse Glacier and casually walked up to the base of the buttress.

Sunny, mid 70s, light wind and ... Oh wait that was for Malibu.

It is in wyoming - where men are men, so are the women, the sheep are nervous, and the antelope run wild. Oh yeah, if you see a wolf shoot it. PS I would take the above description of going into the Cirque with a grain of salt. The approach is pretty casual until Jack Ass Pass then it is just up and over.

Here is a photo of Mont Blanc du Tacul http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/117842.JPG If you look carefully in the shadow to the right of the triangular face you can see people on the slope. There are several parties on the route which takes a sweeping right turn towards the skyline. Notice all of the avalanche debris at the base? Oh yeah - notice the snow walls in fore ground built by dirt bag Brits too cheap to stay in the huts . As for the acceptance of death in the mountains. I am not so sure it is acceptance but more that there are way more people in the alps than in the mountains of North America. The Alps are huge and very accessible by many many people. So I would expect that there are more deaths but on a per visit basis it is probably very similar to that in North America

Very nice, you should let some know about these in one of the Geology Dept. as I am sure some would be interested in them.

While my partner and I now climb with a 70m rope and it is becoming more popular to use 70m ropes setting raps for this length is not a good idea. Given your first hand experience I would that you would contact the hut warden know.

Both alive: http://www.kirotv.com/news/17257621/detail.html

As some have said 50 Crowded Climbs can be a blessing or a bane. But either way it is a classic in that it gives people a pointer to at least one climb in particular area. I have done 20+ of the routes, a few friends are well into the 30+ routes. Of those on the list my highlights both came in 2000 when that spring I did Castleton with Allen Steck who was 79 at the time and then two months later did the Cassin. My most recent was Slesse. All good fun.

On 19 July 1939 Wiessner and Pasang Sawa Lama had a breakfast of hot tea in camp IX Wiessner felt strong enough to the summit before dark and with a day's food he Pasang set off. They reached the summit-bulwark at the top of the snow basin, from where it was some 575 meters to the summit dome. Coming to a rock-band they found themselves faced with two possibilities. They could either go to the right, where the route led under a dangerous looking balcony of ice, posed ready to break off above their heads, or go to the left, where there seemed to be a gully in a precipitously steep wall of broken black rock. Wiessner who always felt safer on rock opted for the left hand choice even though technically appeared more difficult. The day was surprisingly windless Wiessner was even able to climb without his mittens making full use of the sense of balance he had developed on the Elbe sandstone. At 18:00 hours Wiessner reached what he later reported to be 8382 meters. Only 15 meters would have brought him access to the summit ridge, which he did not expect to present any serious climbing difficulties. They later down climbed the gully ...

As of last week it was still big, bold, and moving. I would not get anywhere near it as it is regularly calving chunks off. We came in from the basin and went up the toe of the buttress. It involved an easy scramble and a quick traverse of a snow field. We found a nice place to hop onto the rock where the snow field was not too under cut. This is original start and does have some exposure to falling ice. But less so than the Pocket/Bypass Glacier. We bivied above that after doing a couple of vegi pitches as well as some 11a climbing with sparse protection followed by a bunch of slabs. There was a snow patch to the right of the buttress for water. See attached markup of Marc's photo of our approximate route. At the time the weather was blue bird and the route very dry. Found a fair amount of bail gear but Marc your rack was not seen. The route was nice but many stacked blocks on the upper pitches that are less than trust worthy. Heard a guy took a 60 footer which cut well into his rope when a hold broke earlier this year. The descent was long. Especially, because the road is gated at the highway which adds to the hike out. We left the bivy around 6am and got to highway around 10pm. We bivied along the road and walked back to the campground where we got a ride up to our vehicle. BTW does anyone know why the Slesse Creek Road is locked? We meet someone with a key as we first arrived that was going in.

Like others have said the decision of a helmet is probably moot. As for the descent route I will not question their decision as I have no idea of the current conditions. However and although it has been 15 years since I did this it is certainly possible to climb a route from Cloud Cap, descend the south side, and return to Cloud Cap without doing a shuttle or awful hike. Simply descend the south side until it possible to traverse below the Steel Cliffs and cross the Newton-Clark. Again though this is condition dependent. When I did this traverse, I climbed Cooper's Spur in mid October. Excellent conditions with hard ice and snow from top to bottom. The Newton - Clark was bare ice. Either way sad to see such an accident.