pinegar

Great Photos and TR! I know how good it feels to succeed after a couple of attempts.

No, sorry, there were only about 5 cams, and 3 nuts. And everything was placed. There were not "sets", or a gear sling. It does sound like you left your whole rack, not abandoned an incomplete pitch. In your TR you say you lost 5 cams, but the others belonged to your partner I guess. Still, call me if you want to describe what you lost.

Looks like we found at least most of your gear: http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=27&Number=836837&Searchpage=1&Main=62707&Words=&topic=1&Search=true#Post836837 You guys must have been seriously rattled if you pulled the rope on a half dozen spaced-out, well-set pieces without noticing. Give me a call at 206.543.1372.

I highly recommend Ken as a partner. Several weeks ago we climbed Orbit and Outer Space on the Snow Creek Wall, and last weekend we did the NE Buttress of Slesse. I found him to be a really safe and motivated climber, and an interesting guy to talk to. He never lost patience with my relative inexperience.

Ken and I climbed Slesse over the weekend, and a few pitches above the toe of the Buttress, we found a whole string of gear that made us suspect that someone had been injured while climbing, and the rope was eventually pulled without cleaning a lot of gear. Corrosion suggests that the gear was there all summer, which also makes me think that few parties have climbed the NE buttress this summer from the toe. Please contact me if you know whose gear this is. I will be in Seattle for less than two weeks.

I will be in Seattle through the end of September, and I'd like to do some one-or-two night alpine climbing trips on the weekends. Aside from perhaps hiking to the top of Glacier Pk., I am only interested in rock climbing for this month. I have no car here, but I have all of the other gear I could need, and plenty of money for gas. Please reply to this thread, pm me, or call me at 206.543.1372 I would like to meet people over a beer, or better yet a visit to exit 38 on weekdays (I'm in the 5.10 range there). My schedule is somewhat flexible, but mornings are best, returning to Seattle in the early afternoon. On some days evenings would also work.

Panos, we should first do sport climbing at exit 38, or fast/easy-approach trad climbing such as around Snoq pass, to check each other out and make plans for something longer. For this, weekday mornings would be the best for me, e. g. later this week.

Hi James, this is just the sort of thing I'm interested in. I can probably not even follow anything beyond 10.c, but I will gladly try. Mornings at exit 38/32 any weekday, or an overnight trip on the weekend would best best for me. I'll be in Seattle through the end of this month. -David

I borrowed a truck from some generous friends, and on Saturday morning, I drive to Cooper Lake and hiked the 2.5 hours or so to the Switchback: in the Pacific Crest Trail where the rough climbers trail begins for the standard east-side Chimney Rock approach. Last year was my first time there, and that time I only located fragments of the trail on the way down. Going both up and down, my tendency (both that time and this time) is to get/stay too high on this side-hill. This year I saved a lot of effort by going up in a better way, and on the way down I never had to rappel. Another improvement over last year's adventure is that I didn't slip on a small loose rock and then land on it, breaking one of my ribs. Fortunately, on Friday I had received my $400 worth of Ebay cams and carabiners, which really filled out my existing rack and was to later allow lots of full 60 m pitches with as much protection as I had the patience to place. Another thing I did at the last minute was prepare an Alpenstock from scrap drill bits and an old broom handle, since I had been far too lazy to bring an ice axe from home. The Wikipedia article states that Ötzi the Iceman would have been incapable of making (on his own) the copper axe which he carried, but I trust that no such slander would have been levelled against me had I (and my tool) been swallowed by the moat, to be discovered a few thousand years in the future. The last snow year was really good for the chimney rock glacier, and I'm pretty sure that the snowpack is several meters higher around my nunatak bivy-site, shown at the exact center of this picture: I didn't attempt the North peak again this year as I was hoping, because I knew it would just take me (solo) too long, and maybe even be dangerous. Instead I slept-in an hour or two after it started to get light on Sunday morning, because there were a few sprinkles, and I thought I might not climb at all. I think I crossed the moat onto the main peak somewhat to the right of where most people do it. It was easy to step across, but the climbing was upper 5th class for parts of this first pitch, and the area near the moat is so glacier polished that holds and protection are relatively scarce here. Everything I climbed in the 7 or so pitches above here was low 5th class, but in many cases more vertical, and with more loose rock. Up at the large heather-ledge with the juniper trees, I drank a few liters of water and left the remaining few liters in my "nalgene cantene" which sadly I never located on my way down. In my second pitch above the unpleasant, ramping, heather-hike section, I dropped one of my blue Camalots from its biner and listened to it bounce and silently fell a long way. Oh shit, only 10 cams left! (not counting the one I left at the moat holding my hiking boots, crampons, etc.) Since I really did have too much pro, rather than make an anchor and rappel /prussuk the single rope to try to retrieve it then, I just hoped I'd find it on the way down. Around this time I was also thinking that I didn't get up early enough, and though I knew I "should" go down and return to summit the next day, I started to think about how warm it had been the previous night.... Without incident, I climbed and cleaned my pitches, and got to the summit just before 6pm, and enjoyed the views there. The North Peak from the Key Ledge: The South Peak from the Main Pk Summit: There was a nice summit register left by a guy named Jay (last name I forgot), who had been there two months before, accompanied by a woman as I recall. His name was also on some webbing, with the date 1998. Pretty cool. Nothing particularly went badly, but when I got back down to the top of the heather-ramps it was too dark for me to continue, so I say/lay in the heather all night. I stayed on the rap line for the first half of the night, then later I pulled the rope and wrapped it loosly around my shoulders to give myself something to do. Once again, it wasn't very cold or windy that night, though it did rain on my a few sprinkles just before dawn. There is a cool little cave in this area, and if I'd brought a headlamp I would have found it and enjoyed the night more in there I think. I was thirsty again by this time, but it must not have been too bad, because what I really wanted was a cold bottle of white wine. Something dry and tart. Rapping down the rest of the way in the morning, I didn't find the cam, and I didn't find that water container, and it took me a while of looking down to see the moat, and strategizing, to eventually land myself on the moat where I had left my other things. I left a large perlon-slung hex about 25m above the moat. For years I've gotten really tired of having this piece of "leaver pro" on my harness. And I felt that since I never augmented any of the webbing-nests or anything, I would do something nice, instead of being cheap and simply chalking the little notch with the knot of a short tied 1" nylon sling for this last rap anchor. I ate some of the glacier and wandered around checking out crevasses and stuff on my way back to camp. When I arrived there, it started to rain, and this continued as I was lounging around my bivy bag for the rest of the afternoon, wondering if Ötzi's last meals of grain and red deer meat tasted as good as my "everything" bagels, beef jerky, cheese, etc. The next morning I left camp at 6:45, reached the PCT at 12:00, and the truck at 14:30. These pictures are from the place where I left the glacier: I'd like to thank John Scurlock and all of the other people who've provided photographs and trip reports of Chimney Rock on the internet. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

So how was it, or when's the trip?

I'll be visiting Seattle for about 6 weeks, arriving on the Thursday Aug 14th (next Thursday). I have been planning to visit chimney rock (again--I had a nice time there last summer). I would like to drive/hike in on Saturday (past Cle Elum and Cooper Lk) on the 16th, to bivy at about 6,200ft on rock just about 300m south of the chimney rock north Pk. The next morning, walk north on the glacier , climb a few pitches, and eventually get to the top. I would be willing to fix a rope or two to come back the next day if it goes too slowly. I would also like to climb the main pk, but it has lower priority. In any case, the plan is for full days of climbing Sunday and Monday, with the hike/drive out Tuesday. So does anyone have those days free? Does this sound like fun? I think the place is just magical, and particularly that S face. I would like to find somebody to join me, someone with a car. It would be great to also do some evening sport climbing and weekend shorter alpine trips in the following weeks. -David

Thanks, these TRs were a great read, with great pictures!

Thanks for posting. Indeed. That one pic, with the cloud sea dissolving, is a real classic.

Trip: Mt Baker summit from Ski Area - NE Ridge / Park Glacier up, Boulder/Park down Date: 2/16/2008 Trip Report: I left my car at 8:00 on Saturday. Visibility was not good which slowed my progress some, but I had advise from a split-boarder while skinning up to Table Mountain, and later two telemarkers who had camped near the saddle SW of the Table, which saved some map and compass work, but there was plenty of this fun to be had later in the day. The thing I like least about this sport is probably the physical exertion, but even that I love. The telemarkers took my picture for me, and then we skied apart: I climbed an extra 100 feet or so because in the white-out I missed the pass just W of Coleman Pinnacle and started up the hill on the other side. And later, I was seriously slowed down at the headwall of the Sholes Glacier, which had perfectly dry snow almost light enough to make upward progress impossible given the slope angle: I spent so much time there that a clear patch drifted through, but there still wasn't much to do but keep going up given my position. At the top, the mountain appeared briefly, and for a while I was above the clouds: I continued to the saddle at the top of the Rainbow Glacier, where I shoveled for a few minutes to reduce exposure to spindrift, and began to relax for the night. The next morning the weather was of course quite clear, And I skinned up the Park glacier, which was very efficient given the low slop angle, wind-hardened snow, and easily avoided broken-up areas. After lunch and some more skinning I was at about 9450ft, between the "halves" of the NE ridge. Here the steepness and still-fairly-hard snow caused me to put the skis and poles on my back and use crampons and ice-axe for the duration of the ascent. There was a small but open bergschrund at this point, and the route steepened a little and views of the N Ridge began: Just above a steeper step at 96000, the cockscomb showed itself, and I was glad I was not on the North Ridge because I probably would have wished I'd brought a second ice axe: Instead, I was creeping along steadily until I came to the prominent part of the Cockscomb, where I didn't want to go up because I would have been uncomfortable downclimbing it (in contrast to everything I had climbed so far). And I couldn't decide on going left or right: At this point I thought the 5% chance my cell phone would work was worth a shot, but as usual in such places, it could receive a signal but was not heard by the base stations. So I fidgeted for a minute, and concluded that the Park was not far below to my left, so I slowly downclimbed the snowy rock. There was just a little water ice around the rocks, and the snow was not as hard as it could have been, so mostly I was knocking it out of the way as I downclimbed. I was very slow and careful, and it was a good workout. Once off the rock I was relieved to find deep powder that would have made it impossible to fall down the glacier, but it was far too steep/deep for skins, and I ended up trudging out a trench until I got back on the ridge above the cockscomb, a little over 100 feet above where I had left it below. The appearance of the cockscomb viewed from the south vindicated my decision to avoid trying to traverse its crown: At this point I got out my ski poles and walked up the extremely wind-hardened ramp to the summit. To ski down it would have been technically easy but not much fun because it was effectively only a few meters wide and pretty steep on either side. The transition into the Park, however, was uniform with a soft bed of steep powder below, so I would have been tempted to sideslip down the ramp and drop back into the powder if the Tour de Cratour had not been on my agenda. (Something I had been mumbling about to endless self-amusement for about the previous two days.) As I walked towards the summit in increasing wind I heard a nice gasoline engine and soon saw a yellow low-wing airplane, which gave me an aileron-wave and circled around the mountain a few times until I reached the summit pyramid. The engine sounded a lot better to me than any car or motorcycle I've ever heard, and I was quite happy to have the company. I have no idea why someone would want a fancy car when you could instead have such an airplane. Of course I've seen a lot of awesome winter photographs, and the name John Scurlock did dance through my head as the plane circled, but I didn't know what kind of plane he has, and it wasn't until I saw Dave Coleman on Monday evening that I learned for sure that the sporty little airplane had been John's. The sun set for Shuksan: I took the skins off and made a couple of turns down to the little saddle between Grant Peak and Sherman Crater. I left my pack there and looked E over at the Boulder Glacier which was pretty dark and windy, and I decided to dig a shelter back on the western side of the saddle where there was more shelter from the wind. This picture was taken as I walked back there to my pack: It took 30 minutes to dig a shelter into the rather compacted snow. There was a covered area for my stove and upper body, and the view out my bedroom window was pretty nice Sunday evening, and also the next morning: Looking at the map I decided that skiing into the crater would create extra effort for getting back to the ski area, but since the crater floor was just a few hundred feet below me I decide to walk down and back without any of my gear. A little exercise after breakfast. It's been a while since I've been to Yellowstone, and I've always wanted to see it in winter. A morning stroll. Maybe this was not such a good move. With all of the fresh snow there was no yellow ice visible, and the locations of most of the warm patches and vents were clear because exposed brownish mud or black rock appeared in the white carpet. And of course steam. I had only plunged about 15 meters down the slope when I noticed a very long and uniform band of newer snow about two feet wide, which was either where someone had skied before, or.... There were huge forces in my footsteps, and one boot punched through an eggshell-like layer two or three inches thick. One leg was swallowed. A bright greenish tentacle whipped out of the chasm, then another, and they flailed violently around my head before wrapping themselves around my neck and shoulders. As I fought to free myself, stinging welts formed on my hands and throat where purple knobs on the rubbery appendages bit into my flesh. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in a palatial underground cavern, sitting in a sandy pool of warm effervescent water. Greenish-yellow tongues of flame played from gas jets set within lamps made of human skulls, which adorned sulphur-colored pillars. The light glimmered in the multiple eyes of my now docile radially-symmetric host. After a soothing massage and comfortable soak in the pool, I was re-dressed in my warm, dry clothing, and elevated to the surface through a network of tubes within crystalline water ice. The now-pinkish tentacles brushed droplets of water from the (mysteriously renewed) DWR finish of my jacket and pants, before the water could freeze in the clear morning air. I thanked my new friend and returned to my pack and skis. The ski descent across the upper Boulder Glacier and onto the Park was uneventful. A few huge openings and ice-blocks on the Park glacier were easily avoided, and it was usually possible to make comfortable turns and maintain good speed on paths of wind-hardened snow within the three-to-six-inch sastrugi. On Ptarmigan ridge I saw my old tracks and eventually those of a few weekend skiers. I ate lunch before skinning up the corn-glazed ramp at the SW corner of Table mountain, and met some snowshoers on the Table's eastern end before skiing down to my car in the parking lot, which I reached at 2pm on Monday. My camera batteries had been giving out since the morning, so I only took a few pictures during the sunny return trip. I think my track around the cockscomb is even faintly visible:

I had exactly the same problem and found that brushing a soapy water solution over it in air works better than submersion for finding small holes. I found about 6 of them, but the thing doesn't leak now.