Bosterson

The USFS has released a proposed management plan that would require prepaid permits with quotas even for day use in the Central Oregon Cascades. This would massively restrict access, and would affect climbing on all of the Central OR Cascades volcanoes. Comments are due to the USFS by 5/21/18. I just found out that the Access Fund has a page set up to help send in your comments. If you want to read the whole 188 pg USFS proposal, it is here.

Since the math has been bandied about regarding "cumulative risk," can you elaborate on how you're calculating this figure? I have not messed with complex probabilities and binomial series since high school, so I'm a bit rusty, but after some googling, I came across the formula for a Bernoulli trial, which appears to calculate this kind of thing: P(k) = (n!/(k!*(n-k)!) * p^k * q^(n-k) where n is the number of trials, k is the number of "positive" events, p is the probability of the event happening, and q is the probability of the event not happening. The probability of having k events in n trials is kind of a special/easy case when k = 1, since the binomial constant is just n (the other terms cancelling out), so it appears to effectively pro-rate the number of trials by the proportion of them that are positive vs negative, yielding the cumulative positive proportion for all the trials. When I run the math on this, if the p of rappel failure is 0.1% (.001) and we use n = 1000, P(k) = 36.8%. (This appears to be the inverse of the number you got...) I interpret this as meaning that if the rate of rappel failure is 1/1000 (I think it is really much lower than this, at least for non-alpine climbing), then ~ 1/3 climbers would die in rappel accidents if most climbers average around 1000 rappels. Regardless, this does seem to indicate that 1/1000 is not an acceptable failure rate for an event that will happen more than a few times.

Well said, Jon. I am super sad to see things turn out this way. I remember first seeing Marc on here as a kid with a silly banana avatar, who then turned into an alpine superstar. His tick list outlined in the Gripped article is unbelievably impressive. There were clearly more great things to come from him, and this doesn't seem fair. I don't generally get choked up over the loss of climbers I've never met, but this has me crying. I'll just repeat what Jon said: rest easy, Marc. Thanks for showing us what was possible. The next beer is on us.

I agree with DPS. You can also see on the T-Line webcam that the bergschrund is still gaping. The upper area looks like it got just enough snow to dust things and maybe cover over any open cracks, but not fill them in. If there's a big snow dump and the whole mountain gets covered, you could probably go in a month or two without too much to worry about.

Metolius MasterCam #6. Placed once, never weighted. Too much overlap with the rest of my rack so sending it to a better home. Comes with a Camp Nano racking biner! $45 Mountain Hardwear Castil men's shorts (7" inseam, khaki) - size 32 - new with tags, too large for me. $20 Pick up in Portland or we can split shipping.

I'm at least 85% sure that Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens are actually different mountains. Are they? Please discuss.

1) No. The lower snow is generally soft. The point at which you want traction (early season - maybe top of the Palmer? late season - Hogsback) is the time to put on the crampons. 2) What Ivan said. I've seen people belaying up the top of the Old Chute and knocking large ice chunks down on me and everyone else, totally clueless. Sketched out people can descend and come back another day. 3) I also haven't seen people rappel. If people aren't sure they're comfortable up there (or will be comfortable coming down), they should descend and come back when they're mentally ready. All the ropework up there just makes it less safe for the rest of the hordes of people on the south side. 4) Check the NWAC forecast and don't go unless it's safe, then leave that stuff at home.

Old Chute is a walk up, especially in April/May when it's unlikely to be icy. No need to take a rope, especially if you don't plan to place anchors and belay. Just cross your fingers for good weather and check the NWAC forecast if it's recently stormed. The later you go (May vs April), the earlier you should make your alpine start - both for safety and to avoid the hordes (the Chute seems less crowded at 5-6am...).

From the summit, you make one short rap down to the P2 bolted anchor on the small ledge in the middle of the face. From there down to the big shelf at the top of P1 (second tied off rock anchor), you can make it with a single 70m with just a couple of feet to spare. We watched the party above us do it with a 60 and the guy got stranded in the middle of the face since his rope didn't reach the shelf, but he was able to swing himself skier's left over to the blocky arete, get off rap, and downclimb to the shelf without too much hassle. (He was wearing mountaineering boots, not climbing shoes, if that tells you anything.) So either bring a 70 if you have one, bring 2 shorter ropes (that's a lot of unnecessary extra weight for such a short climb), or else be comfortable rapping partway down P2 and then downclimbing the last 20-30 ft unroped.

Sportiva Jeckyl - Eu 39. Tested out once but don't fit my foot shape. New in box. $60 Boreal Blade - UK 7.5 (US 8.5). Tried out a couple of times, just too small. Like new, no box. $80 Shipping included. Save $5 if you want to pick up in PDX.

Why did that guy keep talking about how he was going to "repel?" Are there a lot of bugs in Hyperbole Canyon?

I would agree that best practices for crags includes not TRing through fixed anchors. Last time I was at City of Rocks, I watched a party of half a dozen set up a TR on a short and easy route running directly through the ends of the rap chains. I had visions of Jete at Smith, where the big rap rings at the ends of the chains have sizable divots (like half of the diameter of the ring!) from people running TR ropes back and forth. (When I brought this up with the folks at City, their response was something like, "Oh we meannnttt to set up an anchor...") I think with steel biners and cold shuts, it's a little different because those are easy to replace, but if you're going to have the whole family hang dog the route, you should build your own anchor to cut down on wear and tear to the fixed stuff. And sending an inexperienced second up to remove the anchor is just poor planning.

sold

My friend went up N Sister on 8/19 and the Terrible Traverse was completely dry.

Trip: Yeon Mountain - Yellowjacket Buttress Date: 6/6/2015 Trip Report: For those who like a bit of landscaping, this is one of the sketchier Yeon/Nesmith routes in Tim Olson's Gorge Classic Climbs. Tim told me he and his partner got above the climbing difficulties back in 2000 but had to bail due to weather. Per the guide, you follow Tumalt Creek until near where it forks, then head west up a side gully to a headwall. Traverse into the thin ridge up the left side of the headwall and climb 400-500 ft through downed trees, steep loose slopes, and rotten rock stacks until the ridge meets the side of the mountain. The rope came out at a short rock step. The likeliest weakness was left of the ridge, above a large tree for a belay. I was able to fit a #13 stopper in a crack, then do a thrashy mantle over some tree branches onto a slope above. Then up to a little corner, and up the spine to the base of a tall headwall of loose, mossy rock. We found Tim Olson's 15 year old rap anchor. Everything was loose and sloped and the moss we were standing on was ripping away from the hillside in the bathmat sized area we were in. I made an anchor off some small, suspect trees and started up the stack - unprotected climbing for about 20 ft until you reach a do-or-go-home mantle on some questionable mossy rock to grab a big, solid tree root - hitch it and continue up to easier ground. We ended up doing a lot of fingertip daggering into the moss. Rope drag was awful on this pitch. After this the ridge flattened and met the hillside. As more standard scrambling through brush was required, we unroped here. Unknown terrain was ahead, and while the going was intially easy, we quickly hit another headwall. No pictures, but trending up and right led to a corner where a dead tree and some mossy rock allowed you to do an exposed mantle at a dropoff corner. I was ready to be done with this and didn't rope up, though it would probably have been prudent. After this, we ascended some nice slopes, hit a second headwall that was easily passed via a dirt ramp up its middle, and then we climbed the last few hundred feet up a steep brushy hillside to the top. We then crossed the Yeon Plateau until we met the Horsetail Creek trail, took it up to Nesmith, and descended the Nesmith trail and walked the frontage road back to the car at the Tumalt pullout. Looking back at the spine of Yellowjacket from up by Nesmith: Not sure anyone here goes for this sort of thing, but Mr. O asked if I was going to post this info for posterity. We tore up the moss pretty badly in some spots, so it probably will need time to recover (say, another 15 years?) before anyone else should go up there. Realistically, Tim and I agree that it's unlikely that anyone else has any interest in doing something like this. Gear Notes: #13 stopper, a dozen slings or lengths of webbing for hitching trees Approach Notes: Tumalt Creek