swezeyt

What an adventure!

That is incredible!

That is great. Thanks for sharing.

Nice work!

Those pictures are right on. The only thing we did different was head cliombers left at the white sling. We should have gone straight up.

Jens did you go up that rock scar. We thought there was a sling up there. If you haven't do you know of anyone who has. It looked like there was a really nice corner a couple pitches higher.

It was great running into you guys. Way to get after it in the bad weather!

I thought it was an incredible climb. It definitely had a more serious feel than any route I've done in the Cascades. Give it a couple more weeks and I think the route will dry out a lot and most of the hanging ice from the surrounding cliffs will melt out. That would be the time to give it a go. Oh, and don't go left on the final pitch of the pillar. Go straight up to avoid the offwidth. Thanks again Braden for a great adventure! Here are some more pictures. Looking up at the ice fall and the girth pillar Heading up the ice fall Looking down one of the approach pitches The first 5.10 crack Looking down the offwidth Looking up. Lead of the day!!!!! Braden high on the route A snowfield towards the top Summit of Stuart Cool views to the south

Way to send it in a day. If you climbed it on Fri we were the party below you. I would have said hi if you guys climbed a little slower.

What a great trip report!

That looks rad! Great pics!

Looks like a great trip!

Nice report Rafe. I don't know how I missed this until now.

Although fitness is important and lays a foundation for success I wanted to mention that you have to have the skills and mental attitude as well. By the time I had started this trip I had done 7 wall climbs. This was enough for me to start to really improve my systems and make them efficient. Braden and I sat around for hours analyzing every aspect of what we were doing. We talked about exactly what steps were to be taken at belays to make them efficient. We climbed without daisies to encourage free climbing and reduce cluster (that is until the overhanging bolt ladder). We made it so that the gri gri would be hands free as we were short fixing. We both had a go for it attitude as well. That doesn't mean that we were trying to kill ourselves. It means that we were willing to risk not making it to the top as fast as we had hoped. If instead we had made it in 30hrs we wouldn't have died. We would have gotten cold, dehydrated and hungry, but we would have been fine. It would have added to the adventure and given us more knowledge as to how to move faster next time. When I climbed half dome in a day last fall it took 29 hours car to car. I really learned a lot about what to not do from this experience and the Nose wouldn't have been possible without it.

I would say that my training was about 50% climbing and 50% cross fit (running and weight lifting). This was something new to me. I have always just trained by climbing as much as possible, but it doesn't seem to work that well for me. What usually happens is I get overuse injuries and plateau. For example, when I was training last season by only climbing I hurt my shoulder. It was alright for a while and then flared up again this winter and has been a bit of a problem ever since. I also read Extreme Alpinism by Mark Twight and thought that his approach was probably more appropriate for what I want to accomplish. I needed to be able to move for long periods of time climbing 5.10. This requires finger strength, but not that much. I just needed lots of endurance. Braden had also followed Twight's workout to a tee a few years prior and had amazing results. He had a much more knowledge of training than me and I learned a lot from him. I guess all of these factors contributed to me trying a workout that included more than just climbing. Something that would improve my endurance, strengthen my stabilizer muscles and allow me to go forever. If my shoulder was better I would have trained my pull muscles a lot more. Instead I tried to get a really good all around workout and avoid heavy sets of pull ups and anything else that hurt my shoulder like dips. If all I had done was just climb a lot there's a possibility that I could have pulled it off, but I think my chances were much better by incorporating weight lifting and cardio.