DHC

Topic deleted

Below is a link to a website which contains numerous articles I've written looking at Fred Beckey's climbing career from a statistical point of view. But the website contains much more, including a trio of articles on summit register entries. Enjoy. Statistical Climbing Guide for Fred Beckey

I have posted several used climbing gear items for sale on E-bay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/382564383946?ul_noapp=true https://www.ebay.com/itm/382567967769?ul_noapp=true https://www.ebay.com/itm/382567975228?ul_noapp=true https://www.ebay.com/itm/382567979204?ul_noapp=true https://www.ebay.com/itm/382567983002?ul_noapp=true https://www.ebay.com/itm/382567990576?ul_noapp=true

Trip: Kyes Peak - Northeast Ridge Date: 9/7/2008 Trip Report: Climbers: Juan L. and Dave C. (scribe) I’ve hade this route in my cross hairs for some time, which is described in the Beckey Guidebook as “an enjoyable alpine route”. Juan and I rendezvoused at the smokestack in Monroe at 6 AM and departed the Quartz Creek trailhead (2,500 ft) a little after 8 AM for Curry Gap (3,900). We covered the distance of four mile in 1 ½ hours, actually departing the trail before the gap in order to shave the corner. As we approached the first of many local highpoints along the NE ridge, it quickly became obvious that it would be futile to traverse around the local high points to avoid unnecessary elevation gain and loss. Knee high huckleberry bushes, heather, and exposed roots would make side hilling extremely awkward. So we headed straight up to the steep slope, via green belays to point 4,958. We continue to follow the ridgeline with the aid of a goat path. As we topped out the next high point at 5,200 ft, we skirted around an interesting feature along the ridgeline. I’ve seen cannon holes in rock formations, but never a cannon hole through sod and soil, which was about 15 feet in diameter! In order to clear the step terrain of the next high point of 5,527, we descended to 4,900 feet on the south side, then regained elevation to 5,400+ feet. The roller coaster ride continued over point 5,779 which involved down climbing class 3 rock, to bottom out at the next saddle at 5,600 feet. Up and over the last local high point at 6,000+ feet, then down to 5,880 feet finally ended the 2 ½ mile approach. All along the vistas of Sloan, Monte Cristo, not to mention Kyes Peak continued to improve. At 6,000 feet we hung a sharp left turn along a ledge to reach the base of firm snow. After donning crampons, we ascended the 30 to 35 degree slope along the left hand side of the glacier for 700 feet to the base of the summit tower at 7,000 feet. We found a nice, flat rock ledge to get saddled up for the rock climbing. I lead the first rock pitch (class 5.5), which involved climbing a slab for about 40 feet before intersecting a dihedral. About 20 feet up the feature I encountered two pitons, with a rap sling and locking carabiner. Continuing up the splendid firm rock, I slid leftward for five feet around a head high block of rock, then continued rightward along a ledge to a belay station. After reeling in Juan , he continued up and leftward on a class 5 slab, which took him around a minor rib onto easier class 3 terrain to complete his lead. At this point I briefly lead out climbing under belay, but when the climbing turned to easy scrambling, we un-roped and dashed across the top of snow field on the south slope of Kyes Peak. We intersected the south ridge then scrambled unpleasant, loose rock reaching the summit at about 4 PM. After a short stay on the summit we descended the south ridge of Kyes Peak towards the Lake Blanca trail. This involved tiresome side hilling and re-gaining elevation to the ridgeline, eventually reaching the trail near Virgin Lake at 7:15 PM. We reached the Blanca Lake trailhead around 8:30 under candle power. Juan graciously agreed to hump the 2 miles up the road to the Quartz Creek trailhead to retrieve his Jeep. Along the way he walked past a group of “devil worshippers” dancing and singing around 5 large fires, who fortunately didn’t notice him. Time: 12 ½ hours Elevation gain on ascent and descent: approximately 6,000 feet. I’ll post a few photos later. Gear Notes: Crampons, ice axe, rack of 12-15 pieces will do. Approach Notes: See trip report.

Trip: Mt. Booker - Northwest route via Sahale Arm and Horseshoe Basin Date: 8/23/2008 Trip Report: Climbers: Martin S. and Dave C. (Scribe) Prolog: I had Booker on the agenda for quite some time and had made an attempted several years ago from Park Creek, but was stymied by a nasty moat beneath the Buckner-Booker Col on the Buckner Glacier. I had read a couple of TRs for people climbing Booker from Horseshoe Basin as an overnighter in conjunction with a climb of Buckner. The times quoted in the TRs made it appear that Booker could be done as a long day climb. The weather forecast for Sunday didn't look good, so Martin and decided to car camp along the Cascade River Road Friday night and attempt a one day assault on Saturday. August 23rd: We departed the Cascade Pass trailhead under headlamps at 5:15 AM. The rising sun greeted us at Cascade Pass. There was a light dusting of snow on Johannesburg, from a storm earlier in the week. We topped out on Sahale Arm at 7,400 ft, and began our descent into Horseshoe Basin around 8 AM. Initially we went down soft snow, followed by a short stretch of Class 4/5 rock, then a finger of hard snow into the basin. We did a gradual descending traverse to 6,100 to clear a rocky knob half way across the basin then regained elevation to clear the toe of a buttress at 6600 feet, completing our crossing of the basin at about 10 AM. We quickly hung a left turn, climbing towards the Buckner/Booker Col. At 6,900 we veered rightward on hard snow up and over a wind cirque. We held our elevation at about 7,400 feet as we headed eastward avoiding the temptation to head for the west ridge of Booker. Once we located the notch between the west and east summit blocks, we ascend class 3 rock for a couple of hundred feet then exited rightward onto the easy south slopes reaching the summit at 11:45 AM. We had excellent views of Goode, Stormking and Logan to the north, along with the 2,800 foot exposure off the northeast wall of Booker. There was a summit register placed by Fay Pullen back in 2003 which was in good shape and had a handful of entries. After lounging on the summit for a little over an hour we began retracing our route back a 1PM. The accumulation of the elevation we had gained and lost had its effect upon us as we re-gained the 1,300 ft of elevation out of Horseshoe Basin to Sahale Arm. We arrived back at the trailhead at 6:45 PM. Time: 13 ½ hours Elevation gain: 7,200 feet. Select the following link to view photos. Mt. Booker

We brought one 60M rope. We did three consecutive raps at one point during our decent and the existing raps stations we found were spaced out such that a 60M rope worked just fine. We would downclimb for a stretch then do another rap. Again the number of raps will depend upon ones tolerance for downclimbing exposed class 3 terrain.

No we didn't see orange plastic tiger on the summit. We saw the tiger being chased down the Cascade-Johannesburg coulior by the bear.

Trip: Joahnnesburg - East Route Date: 8/15/2008 Trip Report: Dates: August 15-17, 2008 Climbers: Juan L. and Dave C. (Scribe) Photos: by Juan L., except for photo of Mixup Peak and “Doug’s Direct” route from Mt. Booker taken by Dave C. Prolog We considered a variety of different routes and approaches before settling on the East Route via “Doug’s Direct” approach. We eliminated the Southeast Arete with an approach using the “trail” up the Middle Fork of the Cascade River due to a the forest fire which ravaged the valley in August 2003 followed by flood damage in October 2003. We also considered using Gunsight Notch on the south side of Mixup Peak as an approach, but reckoned we would probably have to contend with moat along with more side hilling than “Doug’s Direct” approach. August 15 Departed the Cascade Pass trail head around 11AM, passing the usual hordes of hikers on their way to Cascade Pass and Sahale Arm. We left the masses of humanity at Cascade Pass as we headed south towards Cache Glacier. After clearing Mixup Arm we rounded a spur and hung a sharp right on the glacier ascending to a rock rib at about 6,700ft. Initially we scrambled up easy terrain. Glancing towards our left we noticed a nasty moat beneath Gunsight Notch. At about 7,000 feet the terrain steepened and turned into down sloping class 3 slabs. Be breached the north ridge of Mixup Peak at 7,300 plus feet and had our first views of the east route of Joahnnesburg along with steep descent of the east slopes towards the Cascade- Johannesburg Col. We carefully down climbed loose rock and then steep heather eventually clearing the toe of buttress on the south side of the Triplets at 6,000. At a little after 4 PM we arrived at a reasonable bivy spot at 6,300 ft, on heather next to a supply of running water. While descending we spotted a cinnamon colored bear foraging below us, which did not notice us because we were downwind. In the evening Juan and I pasted the time observing the bear, which was later challenged by a black colored bear for grazing rights. The interloper was sent packing by the cinnamon hued bear. After supper we ascended to the Cascade-Johannesburg Col to reconnoiter our route options. We settled on beginning the route at the Col, allowing us an easy transition from snow to rock. There was a granite staircase a couple hundred feet beneath the Col, but we would have to breach a moat via a collapsed snow bridge. I ventured a glance down the Cascade-Joahnnesburg Couloir, which in the current conditions would be a suicide pact as an ascent or descent route. As the sun set, the angle of the light made the aftermath of the forest fires in the north slopes of Formidable and south slopes of Joahannesburg obvious. A full moon arose over Spider Mountain around 8:30 PM, making a headlamp unnecessary for the frequent pee runs. August 16 The weather forecast called for afternoon pyrotechnics so we were determined to get an early start. Shortly after departing camp at 5:15 AM we donned our crampons to ascend the snowfield to the Col. We harnessed up at the Col and I lead a couple hundred feet of class 3 scrambling, placing the only piece of rock protection we used on the whole route. After reeling Juan in at a comfortable spot on a ledge, I lathered up on jungle juice to ward off the mosquitoes who had been feasting on my flesh. The terrain backed off and in a couple of hundred feet we reached a bivy spot on boulder field, where we left behind our crampons. The ice axes came in handy ascending the steep heather above us. We climbed a series of rock gullies and ribs veering to the left a rock tower, topping out on the false summit at about 8,000 ft. We rolled off the south side of the summit ridge, traversing along a goat path generally about 100 ft beneath the ridge line. There were a couple of nasty gullies along the way which looked difficult to negotiate from at distance but were passable. Right beneath the summit block we cleared the last of these gullies near the ridgeline. We quickly polished off the remaining elevation to summit arriving at 9 AM. The weather was not threatening, so we lounged on the summit for an hour, transcribing what names we could read from the severely water damaged summit register onto water proof paper that Juan donated. We retraced our route back to the false summit, at times blindly groping for hand and footholds caused by the shadows of the ascending sun directly in our faces. From the false summit we did a series of raps (6 or 7) intermixed with down climbing. We breathed a collective sigh of relief as our boots touched the soft snow at the Col. We motored down the snowfield reaching our bivy spot around 2:30 PM. Rather than bust our chops ascending the steep terrain up and over the north ridge of Mixup in the hot afternoon sun, we decided to reward ourselves by lounging around and watching the cinnamon colored bear fatten up on blueberries – from a distance. August 17th The electrical storms never materialized the previous day. We decided we would sleep in until 6 or 7 AM. The skies were still clear at 2:30 AM when I answered nature’s call. However thunder and lightening to the south of Formidable was our wake up call at 5 AM. We quickly ate and packed, motivated to clear the steep terrain of “Doug’s Direct” route before it became wet and slick or we became a lightening rod. Intermittent sprinkles refreshed us as we trudged up the vegetation. In the back of my mind I thought about stumbling upon the cinnamon colored bear sleeping in the waist high foliage. Along the way we silently moved past two large imprints in vegetation where the bear had rested. We temporarily relaxed when we topped ridge, thankful the storm had passed off to the south. We carefully descended the down sloping class 3 slabs with loose rock for 300 feet to more comfortable slopes. From the Cache Glacier we put it into overdrive arriving back at the trailhead around 10 AM. Postscript When we signed out at the ranger station in Marblemount, a ranger wanted to know if we had seen a climbing party making a nighttime climb of the NE rib of Johannesburg under a full moon. We told them we hadn’t. With the steep north slopes of Johannesburg they wouldn’t benefit from the full moon, which was low on the horizon, until they darn near reached the top. I hope they brought plenty of batteries for their headlamps. Photos can be found at the following link. Cascade-Climbing-Photos Gear Notes: Bring a minimum of eight double slings. Depending on your skill and tolerance for down climbing steep, exposed, class 3 terrain you will do numerous raps. We brought eight double slings and used them all, because several of the rap stations we large blocks requiring two double slings