leora

Yes, Mt. Hood. The one that turned out ok. . . leora

I want to take a moment to comment on how impressed I am at the generousity of climbers in the mountains. In helping out a fallen climber, we had people throwing hundreds of dollars of gear around to help keep the injured and rescuers warm, and, when things seemed stable, trusting those of us staying behind to return that gear. Sleeping bags, down jackets, ice screws, the works. I'm so happy to be a part of such a community! leora

Hi, Brad - Candi, Oleg, and I brought the stuff down. I've given it to Darrell. leora

Yup. I've noticed that. . . I have to remember that while those nice little ice screw clips are wonderful for racking/unracking ice screws while climbing, I have to take the screws off and put them in a safe place (my backpack) if I'm just wandering around with my harness on. . . leora

Yup, busy, indeed - we had 2 teams of 3 traversing at the base of the route - intention had been to do what I call the "full on" Reid route, but with all that stuff coming down, we decided to go up Leuthold, but my partners started to get hit, and didn't quite care for it, especially after an ice missle brushed the hair of one of them as it whistled by. . ., so then we just turned around and went back (and I lost my ice screw. . .). I remember seeing some folks up on the right side of the Reid, who seemed to be there for quite a while. . .

I managed to lose one of my ice screws, today (1/8/12). I suspect that I lost it in one of two places: - in the bowl of Illumination Saddle, or - just north west of the top of Palmer, on the way to Illumination Saddle. I really need to remember to take my screws out of my wonderful little ice screw clippy thing - it makes it so easy to grab them when I'm climbing, but it makes it so easy for them to fall off the harness when I sit down. Did you see it and happen to pick it up? leora

Thanks for the trip report, and good job, decision-making, and all, including using your armpits to warm up your hands. Good move. Until I got to the end, I thought that you were going to say that the wind blew away your warm mitts, which can be a game changer. Chasing clothing all over the mountains can warm you up, but is definitely not recommended, especially when you're alone. I did a turn around on a solo ascent, once, when there was no one anywhere on the mountain. I'd gone up through horrific conditions, met a couple of guys coming down who'd told me that they'd waited at the top of Palmer for an hour for the weather to change, and when I arrived at the top of Palmer, with an inch of rime ice attached to my left side, I thought that I was likely done. Since I *had* solo'd the thing, before, I decided to continue up a little while, since the only thing bad was the weather. About 500' later, I popped out of the clouds and weather to beautiful sunny skies. At the hogsback, I had to decide to continue up, even though the sun would set, soon, and I would miss the evening meeting I'd said that I would attend, or go down. I chose to go down, even though I knew that I had the skill to go up. Something about the fact that there was *no* one anywhere around gave me pause. And it's not like I mind being the only one around, but that time, I just chose to go down, but eegads, it was beautiful! leora

Thank, you, guys for the write up. Although now that you've told EVERYone that it's in such good shape, we'll likely have a lot of company when we head up this weekend, planned before we saw this. . . leora

I should have posted this as soon as I suspected that I may have left my bottle and it's nice (faded) holster at the trailhead in case one of you happened to be going up there this weekend and could snarf it up for me (assuming that you live in either the Seattle or Portland areas), or give it to the Ranger. . ., but I've had difficulties getting to this site. Anyway, if you happen to see it - the last time I REMEMBER seeing it, it was on a log, next to the 1st restroom, and too close to the human waste garbage can. . . For some reason, I seem to have had a penchant for leaving it behind last Saturday. I'd left it at the lunch counter at our lunch stop, and was happy to find it on the way down. I didn't notice it missing until I got home, and couldn't find it in any of my belongings. Did I really pick up my pack and trekking poles and leave my bottle? Really? After 10 years of faithfulness?

Sorry that I didn't get this up, earlier - I wrote up a trip report, and it vanished into Cascade Climbers' heaven before it got posted. . . My partner and I climbed it on Labor Day weekend - roads were all clear, at that time, and some of the questionable bridges over crevasses were no doubt gone. We took quite a bit of time to negotiate all of the crevasses. On the North Ridge descent, one has to know about some 3 specific places to cross over the ridge, the first from the right to the left side, the second from the left to the right side, and the third from the right to the left, when you hook up with the sidewalk-like trail for the last 1000 or so feet. If you know those places (I saw a little orange flag at the 2nd place, this time), then it tends not to be so bad. Our route up followed the green in the picture, below. We couldn't tell that we wouldn't be able to get over the one huge crevasse until we were almost on top of it. We backtracked a bit to another crevasse, where we thought that we could walk inside of it, and potentially find a way out. The blue line in the photo was that backtrack, with the dots being the place where we were inside of the crevasse. If I've pointed to the correct picture, there should also be a red line where another team (friends of ours) made an attempt, but weren't able to get over a crevasse - I'm guessing at which one it was. Their ascent was a much more icy ascent than ours. Ours started out as ice, and then became mostly snow. So, the route picture: And here is a photo of me while we were inside what did turn out to be our last crevasse, at the beginning of the blue dots: And then one more looking back after we did succeed in finding a path through the crevasse, right under that anvil-looking thing which reminds me of that tram over at OHSU. . .: Oh, and I'd like to include the following because it showed the layers of snow: I was in shock that we were doing this climb at the beginning of September, with what seemed like mid or late July conditions. The field ranger whom we ran into was worried about us because the snow on the right cliffs hadn't fallen off, yet, and it was a warm weekend. Fortunately, none fell off while we were on the route. And I loved it when he tried to assess our abilities to climb it - "have you climbed anything similar to this, before?" Indeed - this very route, which I absolutely love. . . leora

FYI, we climbed Sunshine route on Sunday. The Bergschrund just above Snow Dome was right up against the rock heap above it, now, so had to deal with crossing the lousy rock. We were able to climb into and then up the bergschrund wall just below Horseshoe rock and went up climbers left of Horseshoe Rock. The wall on the Horseshoe side was ice, so ice screws and ice tools are/were helpful, there. On the way down, we went down Cathedral Ridge until we got to where bvail crossed - the bridge he'd taken across was fallen in, but we were able to climb in on the lower lip and get to the mound that I noticed in one of his pictures. Here's a picture (from Saturday) of the route we took to the snow dome: And here's a picture (from Saturday as well) where the green route is the one we took up, and the purple route, down:

Update: it got tucked under some rocks, and has been found by the owner. WOOHOO!!!! ________________________________________________________ Anyone else on Cascade climbers happen to have been at Cloud Cap Campground on Saturday, 8/13/11 around 2pm or after, and see a little green sack with things like an iphone, headlamp, and batteries in it, among other things? We likely left it right next to the Pay Fee station, where my car was parked for our adventure up the Sunshine route, and while we were successful on Sunshine, we were unsuccessful in finding the missing sack with goodies. Email to leorag@live.com if you know of its whereabouts. (or send a private message if you're a member of Cascade Climbers, and don't just hover here. . .) leora

Rick, at Leavenworth Ranger station, was right - getting into Glacier Peak was difficult, which is why we didn't get there over the 4th of July weekend. . . While the first several miles of the route we chose, the Little Wenatchee River trail, were fairly straight forward, the last 3 or so were super slow going, at least for us, with heavy packs, since we really did think that we could go to Glacier Peak over what were 4 days for us. . . In the first several miles we had only about 2 river crossings of any note (and those could easily be walked through if you have waterproof boots), and one mess of a downed tree that needed to walked around, and what looked like several snow avalanche debris fields to walk over, and yes, a bit of route-finding in the woods, and some route-finding in the last low meadow, where if you happened to notice where the trail went, instead of hugging the river, then you'd be on your way up to the Meandering Meadow, with only minimal delays, crossing snow fields (for which we took out our ice axes). We were able to cross the little Wenatchee at its source, near what I think is called Sauk Pass, at the western base of Kodak Peak. In the following picture, we were on the eastern edge of Meandering Meadow, headed directly at Sauk Pass (wide arrow) at the western base of Kodak Peak (narrow arrow): When we arrived at Sauk Pass, we'd travelled the 7.2 miles in about 7 hours, which we thought was incredibly slow, and knowing that we still had another 7 miles to get to what we considered the first camp, we decided to call it a day, take in the views, and do a light exploratory trip to the first camp the next day, Sunday. First up on the views was Glacier peak in the center in the distance: And Kodak Peak: And in the southerly direction, Mt. Stuart, rightmost of the big mountains (appears between 2 clumps of trees - hard to see in this low res version of the picture, actually - but I think that you can get the drift that our camp had stunning views): Sunday started with some light rain, and Kodak Peak became completely invisible, as did everything else - so much for a day of easy routefinding and exploring (yes, we could have done it, but it wouldn't have been as fun). We took our sweet time getting up, and when we finally "climbed" Kodak, the clouds started to lift high enough where we could get a full panoramic of the surrounding area. By the time we reached the top of Kodak, the clouds were at about 7,000ft, so no Glacier Peak view. Here's a view of camp after I'd gotten about 100 ft up, looking back at Jason, almost topping out at the first hill, and Rita just leaving the tent area (behind our tent was about a 1000ft drop off): And here's as we were about 100ft from the top. It got nice and steep (consolation prize for not climbing Glacier. . .): Here's a view from atop Kodak Peak of the Little Wenatchee River valley curving off to the right (the valley that we came in through): Alas, in spite of the new views, rather than do our route-finding at that point, we decided to head back out. For some reason, it took about 5.5 hours to return. Thinking about the hour and a quarter that it takes us to run a similar distance (at a slow pace), those 7 miles seemed incredibly long. . . On Saturday, we saw one backpacker and her dog, with plans to do a loop backpack. She'd split by the time we returned to the car. We did see (because of their footprints) that others had gone out via the Little Wenatchee Trail, but didn't see where those tracks started, and we'd seen no sign of other footprints in that Meandering Meadow on the way in. Speaking of meadows, the lower meadows were absolutely filled with Glacier Lilies (also known as Yellow Avalanche Lilies), and Mountain or Tall Bluebells, while the woods had many Trillium in bloom. Simply stunning. We'll have to return.

Just got off of the phone with a person at the Darrington Ranger station - Lots of closed roads and trails on Glacier Peak. Only access route that we worked out was from the completely closed Forest Road 49, with a 7 mile road walk in to get to the trail#649. It sounded like another 9.5 miles or so to the PCT from that point, and then over to WhiteChuck. She said that (mountaineering) folks who tried it, earlier, came back with their tail between their legs. . . The person at the Verlot Ranger station has no info, and started suggesting routes by reading Becky's book to me, starting with Milk Creek, and Darrington's person said that the bridge is completely out on Milk Creek, so doesn't suggest that one. . .

Wayne - "upcoming guide"? I don't know about that! Dhrmabum - thanks for the compliment. leora

Ah - great to hear from you, Rick, and get the exact scoop! On mine, I forgot to mention that having a hammer (on my ice tool) was convenient, as some of pickets had to be driven into this ice/snice. . . leora

Trip: Mount Hood - Steel Cliff(s) Date: 6/25/2011 Trip Report: So, I have to know, are they the Steel Cliffs, or the Steel Cliff, as Oregon High has it? Whichever, it looks as though anything on top of that shoulder, is called the Steel Cliff route. I think that what we did was the green route in the following picture, and I think that what is expected is the red route, but I'd be curious to hear what others have done. This photo was taken on June 25th late morning: Here are what I think are the same routes from a sligthly different angle (This photo was taken on June 24th at about 9pm): We started at 9:45pm (yes, PM) on Friday, June 24th - the forecast was for high winds, with even higher gusting winds, until about midnight. I figured that by midnight, we could start the actual route, with less fear of stuff being blown down on top of us. The freezing level was forecasted to be low-ish, below 10k feet until sometime on Saturday, after which, it was expected to rise, hence my desire to do at least some of the route during the night. One of my partners thought that we were crazy to start a technical route in the dark. Had I ever done so, before? On a route that I didn't know? Hmmm - I couldn't remember if I'd had or hadn't. . . Anyway, we were there, so we went. I found the base of the route by noticing that a rock field started. We headed up from there. We switched leads and I stopped paying attention to where we were going, as long as it was up, I was happy. A little while later, we stopped for a rest and one of my partners said that he just wasn't feeling it. We hopped him up with Toblerone and caffeinated Gu, and he and his carpool mate went back down - we'd done nothing that we thought was "technical" up to that point, so we didn't worry too much about him heading down. We were all used to steep terrain. Michael and I continued on up, but after a while, it was looking like a maze, and we couldn't see a clear path, so we decided to try to take a snooze and wait until light, with Michael suggesting that maybe we should think about roping up (and putting in pro) from now on. When the light came, we moved up, but for some reason, Michael wasn't interested in roping up just there. Maybe the light gave him courage, I don’t know. So we went up, and we started coming to one challenging section after another. We finally chose one of the challenging sections, and started up that. I tried, first, in a gully with rocks – how hard can that be? I hooked both of my tools on a nice rock and pulled up. I was a happy camper until I noticed that there was a crack in the rock, on the side that both of my tools were on. I moved one. Michael decided to head up to my right, right in the center of the smallish gully. He managed to clear the band of rock, and noticed a softer snow gully off on the left side and headed up that. I followed, noticing that his legs were longer than mine, so it was all I could do to get my leg up on top of the rock band before heading up the soft left gully. I neglected to take pictures of that gully. Sorry. At this point, we knew we had to go seriously up, and finally roped up. I took a couple of pictures while Michael was setting up. This one was due east of our spot, with the sun rising, looking toward the Wy'east: There was this slanting (non-90 degree) rime ice: but Michael suggested that I head up the 90 degree stuff. I’m so malleable, so I did it, hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t peel off with me on it (but the rope and my belay would have held me, right?). It didn’t peel - and it was only 5 feet or so before I felt as though I was on something solid, and saw a huge gaping hole to my right, which would have made that slanting bit of ice a real challenge, since it was over that hole. . . whereas, where I was, I was able to casually walk over to my left, and see a really easy path to, what turned out to be, the top of the Steel Cliff, although I didn’t know that at the time. I went the entire rope length before belaying up Michael. We switched leads and he got us to the top, which put us solidly onto the Wy’east. Here are the views after topping out. First, the obligatory shadow of the mountain: Then, looking down the route we took: Then the look up the rim (part of the Wy’east route): And then a look at the rock and rime ice melting off from all around the rock (see how much space there is between the ice and the rock?) which gave me pause, thinking about what I’d climbed. . .: For those of you interested in Wy’east conditions from here on out – they were spectacular, with someone having skied practically the whole thing, earlier, including the traverse around the gendarme! Here is a view while going along the rim toward the west – looks like folks lined up going around Crater Rock: Here’s a view, with the big gendarme in sight: It was so beautifully covered that I was tempted to climb up and over, but we went around and then beneath it (in the skier’s tracks). Here is my foot, with the rope draped around it, having just gone under the gendarme, and about to go up the last bit to the rim, again, but looking down: And here’s looking up, from that same spot, at climber’s right – we went around that second, small gendarme, to the left, as part of the rim walk to the summit: That's it - it took us 11.5 hours to summit, including the snooze and a couple of rests and such, but yeah, compared with some of the studs and studesses on Cascade Climbers, we were slow. . . (FYI, on the summit, we met two guys who had done the Devils Kitchen headwall - they said that it was about 1/2 snow and 1/2 waterfall ice.) Gear Notes: Didn't seem to be any call for ice screws. Pickets are handy if you don't like chancing oblivion. Approach Notes: We headed northeast from the top of Palmer, following a fairly gentle slope down onto the White River, and, as near as I could tell, ended up right at the base of the route.

Thanks, stevetimetravlr, for seeing things my way. . . I don't know why I didn't think of that, myself, though. After all, I had a rope, pickets, a belay device, crampons, etc. Dang it, I could at least have taken a look around!!! Maybe this weekend. . .

Just in case you like looking for things in the Hot Rocks, I managed to not kill, maime, or otherwise injure someone when my unclipped shovel handle managed to go careening down the Old Chute and, apparently, into the Hot Rocks, said the one person whom I'd so carefully belayed down, and who did manage to evade injury from the projectile. I don't seriously expect someone to find it, but I know that there are so many nice climbing studs on this site who like a challenge, and I wanted to oblige. . .

I keep forgetting to post that I found a ski crampon on the south side of Mt. St. Helen's on 1/2/2011. I left it at the climbers' registration box in the evening of 1/2. By the way, St. Helens was absolutely beautiful that day. leora

I found these on the west side of the south side going up from the lunch counter area on the 2nd of October, 2010. I haven't gotten around to calling REI to find out if they know who the renter was. The gloves are nice. . . (A year earlier I found a faded pick or read snow glove on the East side of the south side of Adams, between the Lunch counter and the false summit - if you kept the other hoping to one day find this one, let me know. . .) (And found a nice fuzzy liner glove on the way up to Kautz on Rainier in about August). leora

FYI, after 3 months, I went back there, and, low and behold, I found them. . . Pretty darned amazing.

I lost my Julbo glacier glasscase with glacier glasses and chaimy (sp?) cloth inside. It was somewhere on the Divide Camp trail, PCT, or the rest of the approach to the base of the Adams Glacier on Mt. Adams. The glasses were lost on 8/25/09. Send private message or call 971-214-3875 if found. leora

From Piker's peak to the summit last Sunday, I chose the snowiest route across, and also up. Nice suncups creating steps for the final steepish part. Snow all the way to the hut. Survey marker on the real, real summit was visible. Others chose a mostly scree route up from Piker's Peak. Not my cup of tea. . . None of us used crampons, either, but the snow was soft when we ascended, so not much point. I blazed a glissade track from the summit plateau (after skirting around the big water flow) on down about 3/4s of the way to the piker's peak plateau, which was happily followed by others. Yes, there are some wild and crazy people glissading who have no clue how to use an ice axe. We helped out a few of them, especially one guy whom we thought was going to cream us. . . Yes, you really CAN glissade in control. . . Anyway, I'm expecting all snow to be gone on that route from piker's peak to the summit, this weekend, with all of the sun we've had. . .

Friends of mine did it last weekend, and said that it was fabulous - they headed right, and did have to climb up on the ridge to get around 2 of the crevasses. They said the headwall was easy climbing at about 45degrees. Another group that I met told me that they'd done it, went left, and wound up on the south side toooooooo soon, so climbed up more on the ridge, and dropped back down on the glacier. Maybe see you on the summit - I'm heading for Adams Glacier. . .