JumboJim

We were up there this weekend. It started clear on Saturday night / Sunday evening, but when we got around 12,000'-13,000' everything hit the fan. Everyone climbing turned around at the same time. We were seeing at least 60mph winds with ice around Ingraham flats. It was absolutely brutal. The steps my ropemate took in front of me were completely filled in by blown snow and ice by the time I walked over them 10 seconds later. We'd probably be dead without the wands placed by the guides. Even then, we had to have a person on one end of the rope team stand at one wand and send the other end out to look for the next wand in crevassed terrain. Not fun. At one point we just had to stand still for about 15 minutes as extremely high winds and flying ice made it very painful to stand any way except with your back to the wind. I don't think any parties summited this weekend, except for one or two at the most.

No, it wasn't me. I would only snowboard down if it's clear.

I just said I have navigated off the nisqually glacier in a whiteout before with map and compass. I'm not asking about navigation. I'm only doing the hike for conditioning. I'm trying to figure out it bringing a snowboard up there is a bad idea of I have no backcountry snowboarding experience. I understand the whole navigation bit.

So it sounds like I'll be relatively okay. I've been on Rainier in whiteouts before and had to navigate out very slowly with a compass. That's not the part I'm worried about. I'm just generally worried about snowboarding down with no backcountry snowboarding experience.

I've done backcountry snow travel (with other, more experienced people) by foot and pretty experienced with general mountaineering and navigation skills. However I've never done any backcountry skiing/boarding. Would snowboarding down from camp Muir be a bad idea this weekend if I have no beacon or formal avy training? I'm not worried about navigation and visibility. Would it be any more dangerous than booting it down? I can handle pretty much any type of snow and terrain on a board.

I'm looking for a general use crampon - something for glaciers and steep snow. They will not be used for technical ice climbing. I'm assuming 10 point crampons (and even aluminum) will work. I think strap would be best since I could use it on lighter boots if I had to. I saw the Stubai ultralights, but they are $120 and the anitbott plates are a whopping $40, making the price $160. The antibott weighs 4 oz, for a total of 25 oz. I see BD's stainless contact crampon is on sale for $100 at REI and weighs 28 oz. Then there's always grivel. What do you guys think - are the stubais okay or is there something better?

Do you still think flotation will be needed this weekened after 4 days of sun?

I'm extremely interested in this as well.