lazyalpinist

Was there this 09.13.08. Road is stopped much earlier than previously. Hike has been lengthened maybe 30%. (All on road with some interesting berms.) This looks to be permanent as the berms have been seeded (with grass?) If you haven't been there before, the trail off the overgrown road is obvious. Try not to take one of the rabbit trails earlier on as they don't lead to Static Point. The correct trail is by a pipe that is 1/4 full of dirt and there is a cairn marking the start.

Goat Island scramble.

Thanks. Once we arrived out our high point the PC slabs made sense as the approach. I think we were still 2-4 pitches below the ramp up from the slabs though. We'll try again next year.

Earlier this month Julie and I set about to climb the SE Ridge of Argonaut. A small paragraph in Beckey is about the only beta on the route. (Some additional stuff on Summitpost.org is mostly a repeat of what the CAG states.) Didn't seem too difficult, but who knows? Route is upper right skyline Because of limited beta we figured on a 2-day climb. Saturday was spent hiking in over Long's pass and down to the Fourth Creek intersection with the Ingall's Creek Trail. The afternoon was spent scouting an approach. This involved leaving the trail north about 12 minutes east of the Fourth Creek trail and following a dry creek bed north for a bit. The dry creek soon became wet and the SE ridge started forming on our left so we gained the ridge. The lower ridge was full of game trails that we scouted to 5000' or so. Satisfied that we had found an appropriate approach, we headed back to camp and dinner. Ridge visible through the trees Sunday came and we were at our previous day's high point in less than an hour. Things were moving smoothly. Then there was some 'shwacking, followed by some boulder hopping. Then things got a little 3rd/4th class on us. We roped up for a short pitch only to see we were a touch too far east. We rapped from our location and started scrambling again. The terrain got 4th/5th class on us, so we roped up for 3 full belayed pitches. This is when we got a decent view that we were apparently doing "the complete SE Ridge" and not the 6 pitches to the SE Spire that Beckey describes. Above us we could see the route, and between us and the base of the route still had 2-4 pitches of technical terrain. It was noon. We knew to climb another 10 pitches was going to be putting us in bivyland. We bailed off the ridge to the west (6 raps) and hiked some meadows and 'schwacked our way back to the Ingall's Creek Trail. We got back to the car before dark. Bailing from our high point I've looked at so many photos of this peak since then to get an idea of our route, and have an idea about where we were, just not a great concept of how to start the route that Beckey describes. "~from the east flank take a left trending ramp to gain the ridge..." Does that mean taking the Porcupine Creek drainage up through the slabs to about 7000'? Not sure. Has anyone done this route? Did we miss some easy approach element?

Found a purple 5.10(spire) rock shoe on Guye Peak, just a little way down from the North Summit. Left it in the permit bin at the Snow Lake trail head.

OK, so low grade. I'm sure lots of stuff that is south facing is dry, but R&D usually has a decent drip higher up that may or may not be present.

Looking to get on some mid grade multi pitch in the Icicle. I was wondering if anyone has done R&D this season and how wet if at all it is on the upper portion? Thanks.

Judging from current live view of Icicle Junction (in town) it doesn't look like that water is flowing. 27° is current temp. You might get lucky up the creek. http://www.iciclejunction.com/minigolfwebcam.htm

I am looking for one permit for the day of Friday August 4. Do you have an extra? Know a buddy who has an extra? Thanks.