spionin

suh-weet! and happy tr anniv!

it was nice to run into you guys. we were totally wasted, otherwise it'd be great to hang and bs about climbing nicely done, and great pictures! hope you have an easier go at the summit soon. cheers!

unbelievable, dudes. wow. i've no other words for this.

thanks! i shoot with canon powershot sd780, which i really like. the battery life is very good, and it's very small (155 g). a few of these pictures are doug's, who uses panasonic lumix dmx-lx2 (it has the added benefit of wide-angle shots). i hear that Arm on vftt has a similar one

dave - i remember seeing one person with skis on back. that must have been you! right on. AA - good luck with finding people! i know what you mean, i've gotten a lot of "i'd be a competent follow, but wouldn't be able to step up if necessary" responses while looking for partners. hope you score it this season! re: pictures. thanks! i actually forgot to put my camera down in the equipment list! it's a 155g canon powershot sd780.

thanks for leaving the fixed piece on route, dude. should help the rest of us go faster and lighter next time

thanks all! it was definitely a full-value experience for my first trip up rainier. val - i'd never climbed glacier ice before, so didn't know what to expect. it plated a bit, but screw placements were bomber! GO, nastR - thanks for the props! as a post scriptum, here's a full list of gear that i carried (i'm particularly happy with how we packed for this). hope it's useful for somebody! http://viewer.zoho.com/docs/bdv7A

Trip: mt rainier - liberty ridgeDate: 7/5/2010Trip Report:doug (cbcbd), bob (bob g, fka dirtbag_packwork) and i climbed rainier's liberty ridge route july 2-5.The route is in excellent condition, and our plan was to do it over 3 days with camps around winthrop/carbon glacier and thumb rock, followed by summit/descent. unexpected storm resulted in an additional (bonus!) bivy a bit above 13k ft.on day 1 we left the ranger station around 14:30, walked out of white river trailhead around 15:30, and reached the top of st elmos pass around 18:30. the clouds were rolling in by then, but the weather was fine. there were tracks from previous parties that we followed through a small crevasse jumble, stopped at the edge of winthrop glacier, and established camp at 20:00.the weather was ok, it was drizzling, and there was some wind from NW direction.day 2 was mostly warm and sunny. much sun screen was used. before dropping on carbon, we saw a party of two head out, and wondered why they had turned around. we roped up after crossing the bergschrund at the toe of the ridge, but unroped after getting up onto it. then followed the seemingly endless climb up the snow slope in baking temps. we followed lower on the ridge under all rock bands, and ascended the final slope toward thumb rock at 17:00. the weather was calm, there was a consistent cloud cover down below, and no wind. another party of 2 was camping at thumb rock. they had been there since 9:30 that morning, and were planning to start climbing very early.b/c we got to camp late and still had to make water, we got up later, at 1:30, and began ascending climbers' left of the ridge around 3:00. the party ahead of us was barely visible. we made good progress. our pictures from previous day showed some rock bands directly above thumb rock, so we decided to lean climbers’ right and go around on snow. this put us on a NW-facing slope, and around 5:30-6:00 we began to feel the wind picking up from that direction.we climbed very consistently, but visibility was decreasing and wind was becoming stronger and colder. around 8:00 we saw the other party stopped before an ice wall ahead of us. the weather had turned, and by this time it was becoming extremely cold, stormy, and we could barely see. we discussed making a stop and digging in, talked to the other party, but they were confident to continue. we found a corniced cave, dug it out, and pitched our tent to try to wait out the storm. the wind got stronger for the next few hours, and we could still occasionally hear the climbers above, taking siege of the wall! we let them know that we were parked below, in case they decided to come down.frozen hair!by mid-day we had decided to stay put until the following morning, and wait until the wind had calmed. we had a nice view of clouds from our cave, we watched lenticulars forming like giant alien spaceships, listened to the snow beating the tent, and drank hot chocolate. although we did not have much extra food, we did have a full large canister of fuel, and were not concerned about water or staying warm. it was still extremely gusty, but we hoped it would clear during the night. trying to get into the tent against the winddoing campsite chores: chopping ice for melting [video:vimeo] 2010-07-03 rainier LR 1 from veronika on Vimeo. [video:vimeo]2010-07-03 rainier LR 2 from veronika on Vimeo. in the morning it finally got quieter. we packed up and left at a leisurely 7:30. although it was again cloudy, it was better than the previous day. we began by ascending a long, less-than-vertical slope of neve with occasional patches of wind-buffed snow, which then gained some patches of solid blue ice. we roped up and simuled for a few hundred feet. there were two sections of more technical ice, but fine with three screws and simuling. doug leads the second part of the ice sectionthen followed a few hundred feet on iced-over snow, and finally the summit hump! we reached liberty cap around 10:20, and the weather was windy but friendly. after a short break we began descending towards emmons. we reached camp schurman at 14:00, 6,5 hours after leaving our cave. another person at the camp told us that the party ahead of us had come into camp schurman at 23:00 the previous night, 14,5 hours after we last saw them. we were glad to hear that they had descended safely. we were back at the car at 17:15.

hi there! was it you we talked to yesterday afternoon?

you got it dude. check your pm.

right on, you guys! that "patterns" photo is just unreal. how compacted was the snow? did you have to bring flotation?

oh, bummer dude! that's quite a trace to leave on a mountain.

Trip: MSH-mother's day ski - worm flows Date: 5/9/2010 Trip Report: cbcbd and i joined the select few [hundred] skiers, boarders, walkers, and at least one extreme iron-boarder in the annual mother's day attack on mount st. helens. per tradition, we all wore dresses. as pictures show, we persevered through rough weather and tricky route-finding to make this epic ascent and shred in the name of our mothers. on the ascent snowboarders have mothers too in case your dress gets wrinkled doug and fellow seattle mountain rescuers - the new fashion police who looks better? then we took it one step further, and started represent'n our MOTHERlands! Gear Notes: SUNSCREEN Approach Notes: 25 min from parking lot to start of snow.

thanks for organizing and hosting, matt et al.!

oh - it wasn't my birthday! it's the name of a tour in the guidebook. sorry for the misunderstanding

i ain't hatin' yeah, i think it's a good route with distinct skin-up/bomb-down sections. i think i only had to push myself on a flat section at the very end, and it wasn't bad at all.

Trip: wa pass - birthday tour Date: 5/1/2010 Trip Report: crap, i didn't mean to throw this into ice forum (habit, weird)... doug (cbcbd), dave (dbconlin), karsen, and i went out and did the birthday tour this saturday. it was awesome. i tried this tour last year (this same weekend), for my first go at tele, and we didn't get super far (surprise!). as it turns out, around the same time, dave and karsen had "the worst tour ever" on this route when their partner's unleashed ski made a trip down into one of the basins, forcing them to spend the day searching for it instead of making sweet turns. anyways, we all wanted to get back and do it right. the weather was just around freezing with almost no wind, and occasional pockets of fog made for flat lighting, though nothing that ever interfered with route finding. there were a few inches of fresh snow, sometimes over ice on south aspects, which made skinning interesting. the skiing was great, the company was great, and we dispensed with the tour in 5 hours flat. there are tons of options in that area for exploring, it's really awesome. after the skiing we had some beer and pizza next to the car, and doug and i went over to cascade climbers' annual ski-in for more beer, fire, camping, and hanging out with random skiers. THANKS!! doug skins up at blue lake col dave enjoys the sesh karsen climbs on at the entrance into the last, narrow, icy coloir doug, relax'n in the backseat how to retrofit skis to prevent your tips from diving

solid climb and a stellar report! thanks for the descriptions, the beta, and i really like the note about the strategy had you not found a cave. too bad about the weather, you guys. it was warm and sunny there on thursday.

+1

if so, i'd totally attend. -v

because this is what some of us have to get through before we can climb full-time but really, this is spam. just a funny coincidence.

i'd offer to ski-tow you in a sled, but that might be tad tough through the trees, dude. looks like it's either a b&b stay or a short approach from the tent

don't know. i'm guessing that if you brought another pair of of skis with misaligned bindings into it, they would probably still be misaligned. as a negative control, i have a pair of skis with properly aligned, same-type bindings that work equally well in the livingroom and on the slopes. with only two data points, can we really assign significane though? the wind really picked up around noon. around 1 o'clock things got really nasty. yes, had we turned around, we might have had an easier time.

good point. i came home, and in my very controlled livingroom, i clipped the boots in. it's definitely a problem with the binding. the rods are off by about 3-4 mm, big off, considering the length of the pins in the front. back to the shop this week i go. damn.

hey doug. yeah, i'm not entirely sure what's up. i can click into the front pins, but when i go to lock down the heel it torques the boot out of the front pins. this may have happened when i crashed, or more likely (since i've crashed MANY times before in much worse ways) the binding isn't mounted completely straight. i haven't skied on this setup before, so i don't know. yeah, my other skis have the same bindings and i've never had any problems. i tore my mcl two years ago when my binding didn't release, so i avoid locking on the downhill. i did it on the mellower terrain down below b/c it was the only way i could ski down.