blurpy

i'm a 'stranger', but was thinking of coming...

thanks, i'll post more later. it was a beautiful day, perfect temps, little or no wind. there was no one else up at the shelter, and it was perfectly quiet except for the crack of rockfall over in the moraine. the snow was drifted and crusty. people had skied it a day or two prior, but it would have been a nightmare yesterday. i broke through a lot, making the going fairly slow, and so i didn't go higher on the spur.

hey, i think you may have been the guys who overtook an 'old' man on snowshoes just below the cabin. i wished i had my skis, but don't think my knees could take the abuse anymore, especially on that trail. your pictures look great, glad you had a good time. come back anytime.

Sunday, 25 Nov, 2007 more here: tilly jane trail

holdover from Quake days (long ago alas). i suppose i ought to drop it, but it did inspire fear in a few geeks back then. i agree that it sounds stupid, but then i hardly have a lock on stupid-sounding avatar names on this site....

programmer with a fancy-sounding title, who doesn't write much code anymore. i'm not a very good climber though...

je vous demande pardon alors.

http://www.jaccuzzi.ch/ could this be why so many hit the summit of Hood each spring?

I neglected to mention that, even though this was no epic and earned us no hardman points, it was super fun.

Trip: Mt St Helens - Monitor Ridge Date: 9/21/2007 Trip Report: Went up Thursday evening, camped out at the bivouac. It was cloudy, and I commiserated with some climbers signing out at Jack's while I signed in. They had been in clouds the whole time, and had seen nothing other than the sand at their feet. We built a fire and watched while it began to clear. I was up at 5am under a brilliant Milky Way, and the approaching dawn signaled a perfect day. We left the bivouac at 7.40. I reached the summit at 11.15 and my buddy at around 11.40. The sky was a bit hazy, but there were no clouds. Rainier and Adams were brilliant. There was a significant (we thought) tremor while we were at the edge of the crater. The rockfall got significantly louder and the whole ridge shook for a few seconds, while deep ominous sounds came up out of the crater. We were quite happy when that was over. During the descent we noted the smoke plume from a fire in the gorge. From our perspective it looked like the Mt Hood wilderness had exploded. Here are some photographs. Hardy souls can see the full album here: Mt Saint Helens Trip Gear Notes: Boots. Saw plenty of people in sneakers. Usually they were dumping out gravel or massaging sore ankles. Approach Notes: vehicular.

awww, i didn't know you were gonna kill it!

but, they're environmentalists, man.... wouldn't you gladly pay $400 for a parka to save a seal pup? look at it this way, weren't hillary and norgay wearing arc'teryx when they hit the summit? how else could they have gotten there? you think they were wearing columbia? get real.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/travel/09FiveStar.html?8dpc

i don't mind the question, especially if i can learn something. there were only two of us, which of course begs the question of whether we should have been roped together at all, but we decided it was better. i downclimbed the chute first, while my buddy anchored me from above. i was able to have 3 good points of contact, as it was pretty easy to set the spike off to the left or right of the ice itself and my toe-points were digging into the ice quite well. i was then standing on a relatively level space at the bottom of the pitch while he downclimbed. had he fallen, he would have slid into a bunch of ice scree on the level area and i could have gone into self-arrest on the flat, eastward of his fall line. i do admit that we simul-climbed while i was on the last 10-20 feet, but i moved east of his fall line and was ready for self-arrest. Perhaps it would not have helped. we were not terribly happy about the guys who came directly after us (neither of which wore a helmet), and someone up above did dislodge a decent-sized chunk of ice that luckily missed my partner (and I was able to call to those below to look out). he is the more experienced climber, which is why he came last. would you have either not used a rope, or set protection points? We thought we were (reasonably) safe, but quite possibly we were taking unknown risks due to inexperience.

We got trapped right behind the team that was so slow. According to the last member of that team, they had some new climbers along, and apparently one freaked out a bit and froze going up the right chute. At any rate, we departed the Hogback at 6am, but didn't top out until after 8. It was literally two steps up, wait a few minutes, then a few more steps. Then it came to a complete stop once they entered the chute. For something to do while we waited, we traversed a bit west above the bergschrund, but that didn't pan out. Once we got past the slow team, it was literally five minutes toe-climbing up the left chute, and there we were. We envied you guys over there to the west, and wished we'd thought of that sooner. Here are a few photos: The Hogback when we left. Looked good. Now we're stuck and everyone's bored, looking enviously at all the guys traversing west. Here's how the chute looked, coming back down. The scene after we got to the bottom of the Hogback. We saw the same guy you did, wandering around on top. yikes. We too chatted with some cool people (perhaps you were one of them). Here are some photos I posted of our trek. Photos from trip up Hood, 11 May 2007.

ahhh, I see, so that was you ;-)

During a pathetic, failed Sunday morning attempt on Hood, we found some crampons just below Silcox. We picked them up around 2.15am thinking that someone up higher would be missing them soon and we might save them a step or two. We met three groups descending from the maelstrom, all cold, wet and irritated, but none had lost their crampons. One fellow mentioned that he'd seen the crampons fall off the pack of a descending climber (he didn't say why he didn't help out). The clouds and 50mph gusts convinced us to dig in around 3.45am at 9000'. We waited an hour or so, as conditions appeared to be improving, but it only got worse and we realized for certain that we'd been denied. We did get a glimpse of the summit in moonlight as we dug in, but that was all the mountain gave us. The crampons are at Lost and Found in the Day Lodge. We found an iceaxe on the trail at about 8000' as we descended, but we left it since we figured its owner would be descending soon.