marc_leclerc

definitely the Willis Wall

no man.. thats when he got abducted by aliens Use of a Protective Aura seems overly cautious in those conditions.

Yeah, mountains are just teleporting from place to place these days... soon K2's gonna be in our back yard!

It isnt really a hike but the Bowron lake Canoe circuit is phenomenal. 120 km's of amazing scenic lakes and rivers. Definitely a must do. Too bad its in Canada though....

yep.. Reinhard put up Pacemaker on the North Face of Robbie Ried... I think he also did the FWA of Judge Howay...

Nice... that is definitely on my list of things to do!

Thanks off-white.... I did leave some of my rack on Slesse, if you are sure that you are going to throw them away I will pay you something for the Hexes.. I have no idea what camlocks are though.

yeah... the direct approach was reapeatedly bombarded by seracs... anybody who tried it that day would have died...

God is supposed to be capitalized.

Nice! Loks like fun... too bad the weather crapped out on Rostrum....

what is happening to this thread????

buy condoms of varying sizes from a pharmasave.... inflate them into cracks and then sling them... they also fit over rock horns very well.... dont get lubed ones though

yes... this mountain would generally be considered impossible in pure alpine style... seige tactics and fixed ropes MUST be used... make sure to constantly test your climbers mental state using flash cards and other such means... camp muir is no place to get HAPE ... I would highly reccommend hiring guided to fix your rope so that you can simply clip in with your handy dandy jumar....

Willis Wall is for pussies... grow some balls and do Dissapointment Cleaver like the real men! If you want to be super tough, hire a guide.... a hot female one and make it an overnighter

pawn shop

you can buy good protection at your local pharmasave

bring a generator and an angle grinder.... or a cordless grinder.. I have one but you cant borrow it Dirtbikes go underneath and around gates reasonably well too!

yah.. very sketch... where we went around this area wasnt nearly as bad... we weren't in much danger of falling seracs... my concern was the plugs of rubble filling holes and crevasses could collapse underfoot... in the area pictures (we didnt go there) there were often seracs collapsing and making lots of noise..

yeah Dru, didnt a similar thing happen to you in 98' or 99'?

yeah... I stopped in the okay-ish places to take pics... we were trying to haul ass but it still took us forever... I think the Glacier is what makes this a grade V route on the commitment scale...

cool... I saw a couple guys up climbing the route last year and talked to them on the trail down.. thats when I decided to do the route

Trip: Slesse Mountain - Northeast Butress Attempt Date: 7/18/2008 Trip Report: I had wanted to climb the Northeast Butress of Slesse ever since I saw it on the approach to Rexford in 2006. When I watched a video about the climb that theron welch had posted on his website the route was put right at the top of my 'hit list'. Mike, Reinhard and I were going to team up to do the route but Mike had to bail due to work at the last moment. Me and Reinhard got a ride up Nesakwatch Creek road with my dad on Wednesday night and hiked to the memorial plaque in the fading light and bivied. (I litterally slept on the edge of the plaque, it is very flat) Our fist glimpse of the bypass glacier in the evening gave us hope, 'it looks more or less like a snow slope with a couple crevasses', I said and Reinhard agreed. The next morning we set out for the prop cairn below the East face of Slesse. From here we could see that the East face glacier was a horrific jumble of ice cubes. Our route went below this jumble of ice and through a notch in the East Buttress. We ran accross the slab (don't linger here) and as we started heading into the notch a small ice avalanche obliterated where we had wlaked accorss only moments before. We should have heeded to this warning and backed off because of the danger. we reached the notch and could see that the glacier would be tricky but it looked like if we could croos two or three crevasses it would be smooth sailing to the ledges. After rapping out of the notch we started accross the glacier, it was very easy at first until we reached the crevasses halfway up the middle of the glacier. We weaved a path through them and then saw another challenge ahead. 'okay, if we can get through this icefall on the right we can take that easy ramp to the ledges'. I managed to find a relatively easy route throught this section but collapsing seracs to our left were making me a bit uneasy. We then reached the base of a large leaning tower od ice that was blocking our way onto the ledges. I tried to lead the rock up to the ledges on our right but it was wet and impossible to protect, leaving us with one option. We speed climbed uner the tower and traversed and climbed onto the upper shelf of the glacier where we assumed we were home free. I walked over to the edge of one more small crevasse and then suddenly the undercut edge collapsed, I managed to propel myself forward and land on th the other side in self arrest position but I knew we may be in trouble. Up to this point the route through the glacier was reversible, even if we didnt care for it much, but now we couldnt get back accross this crevasse bacause the other side was undercut and above us. It was easy for me to direct Reinhard accross to my side but I was already worrying about how we would get down if necesarry. But we had perfect blue skies and a 0% chance of precipitation forcast for the next three days so I wasnt to worried. We got some water and made our way throught one last easy broken section to the bypass ledges. We were already roped together so we just simul-climbed up the ledges and through a bunch of trees on the butress to a major gendarme. From here I leasd some really easy stuff around to the left and then up an easy but unprotected slab to a tree belay on the crest. Reinhard followed the pitch and I set off through a bunch of cracks and ledges that were tricky to climb with a pack on. This pitch ended with an awesome overhanging stemming corner and fist jamming (felt harder than 5.7/8, so I was probably a bit off-route) I brought Reinhard up and he said, 'that was hard, but a very good pitch'! From here Reinhard took the lead and climbed some esay low 5th ledges to where the route by-passes the crux on the north face. It was getting late however because the glacier had wasted som much of our time and we decided to bivi on a nice little ledge. We were very excited about the next day of climbing on the butress and the finla summit tower piches. After a good sleep we woke up to a surprise , 'why the hell are we socked in clouds'? I ask and Reinhard says that we can't continue in this weather in case it rains. After two and a half hours of waiting for a sign of clearing we begin rapping down. The first few raps back to the gendarme went fine but I knew that we could not go back accross the glacier we had come up on. After trying to find a way down we decided to rap down to a large grassy ledge and then to the north glacier below. It took two raps down tothe ledge of slung horns and a nut for backup then we walked towards te north rib on the ledge and I managed to find a good tree to rap from down towards the glacier. This is where things went from bad to absolutely terrible. I managed to get to a tree above the overhanging wall that stood above the glacier. The only way down, because the cliff was too big and there were no anchors to be found on this featureless rock, was to ties our ropes together end-to-end and do a super long, single rappel to the clacier and leave our ropes. The big problem with this was by-passing the knot in the middle and getting to the second rope. I managed to do this very akwardly on prussiks and had to saw through a jammed sling while being extremely careful not to cut the rope I was hanging on. I felt like A mix between Toni Kurtz on the North Face of the Eiger, with a knot jammed in his rappel so close to safety, and Joe Simpson hanging over the glacier from touching the void, I even had a huge bergshrund directly below me to boot. After managing to get around the knot Reinhard came down and after a long time of prussiking and hanging he bypassed the knot and joined me. Then I asked, 'hey, where did you put the rack'? and he replied, 'oh you have it'. In our nervousness and stress about getting down we had left a bunch of cams (5 of mine) several biners and a set of nuts + some nice runners on the butress somewhere. I was pissed off, I had spent so much time and money accumulatibng my rack and now a bunch of it, and my only rope, was gone. We cut the excess rope off, which turned out to be about half my rope, and had to rap off a bollard, into a gap between another leaning ice tower and the cliff, and I made an intense ice lead up the near vertical wall with no crampons. Luckily the wall was only 20 ft high and we were on the safer glacier and walked out to where the crossover descent comes down throught the woods. We were tired and made one last bivi here and then made the easy hike out to the road in the morning. My Dad picked us up and we went back to Agassiz where Reinhard picked up his car and drove home. I'm glad we got off okay even if it cost us lots of gear and we should have backed out when we first saw the glacier, This trip was a harsh learning experience for me. The rock climbign itself was fine and great fun but we should have taken more care and caution when we crossed the glacier, it is a trap that appears to get better but just gets worse the further you go. I'm not surprised many people have been killed here. So far Slesse has got from me: a set of nuts, a few slings, 5 cams, several carabiners, half a rope and a sure promise to come back and get 'er done. (when the glacier is gone) Gear Notes: A full rack, no doubles neccesary. Approach Notes: Take trail to cairn, cross slabs to notch, cross glacier to ledges, cross ledges to butress.

I was making a scary retreat and I didnt know if we would get out okay.. I ended up forgetting 5 cams and a bunch of stopppers and biners because of stress and so many things going on at once, then the rope was not long enought to rap so we did a big single line rap with two ropes tied end to end and managed to cut the excess 30m of rope. I beat myselft up over this because I have little money being 15 and need money for upcoming trips, which I may now have to cancel. If this was someone elses gear I would have paid in full no matter how much it screwed up my vacation, but since it is my gear I just got pissed off. I intend to get that gear back tho since I know where it is. If my partner lost this gear I would have been completely chocked if he didnt pay me back i would never climb with someone like that

East Face Glacier (we ran very fast accross these slabs) Bypass glacier pics The problem with the glacier is that it appears to be okay as you approach it but it gets bad once you are 2/3 finished. You look at every obstacle and foreshortening makes it looks like 'after this next obstacle it will be okay' but it just gets worse the further you go. Once the tower near the top colapses it will be much better, if the tower remains beware, the next crevasse is irreversible as you would have to jump uphill and it is undercut. You cant see this if you cross it to get to the back of the glacier but once you are accross you think to yourself 'oh shit' we cant get back...

this doesnt really count cuz it was inside but once in a comp I didnt want to dyno to the last hold at the lip of a roof so I turned around, touble toe hooked it and hung from my toes while I clipped the anchors. Another cool rest is on a crack climb called Wayback Layback, you layback a finger crack until a wide section, double foot jam and balance with your nose against the near vertical rock while you rest, chalk up, and prepare for the bold and commiting finishing crux.