grinter

Trip: Eagle Peak, CA - not your usual suspect Date: 6/10/2011 Trip Report: Eagle Peak is the highest point in Modoc County at 9897' and has been enticing me with its snow covered slopes since I moved to Canby a month ago. A decent waether forecast for Friday got me out chasing my June turns. I started out from the Soup Springs Trailhead at a bright and early 9am and proceeded to slog 2 miles through patchy snow and sucking mud to the Wilderness Boundary and the low pass that allows easy access to the Mill Creek Valley and the first views of Eagle Peak and the Saddleback. A snowcoverd slope down to the rushing Mill Creek tempted me to pull the skins of and catch some quick turns, but I opted to continue my slog. As I approached Mill Creek the bridge I had imagined would grant me easy acces across appeared not to exist and I began looking for a fordable section. With a quick hop across a side channel and toenumbing barefoot wade through the main stream I made it across with no difficulties. I decided the best approach to eagle Peak would be from the Saddleback and finally clicked into skis as I ascended through the timber along Slide Creek. A small drainage leads to the NE where Slide Creek turns sharply west after flowing north from Eagle peaks shoulders. As I truly began to climb here I got some great views of the bowl I planned to descend. From the drainage I made a rising traverse towards the middle of the Saddleback trying to stick to openings in the trees and lower angled slopes. The slight descent along the Sadlleback to the final ridge on Eagle Peak was a welcome relief and allowed me to catch my breath before the final push. The final ridge was climbed with a series of switchbacks and some photos were quickly snapped as the wind and overcast skies were not making for a comfortable summit. Some quick turns through stunted whitebark pine brought me to the top of the bowl on Eagles NW shoulder where I was presented with some glorious turns on mushy corn for several hundred feet. I wound through several wooded "cliff" bands and skied the snowed over but rapidly melting Slide Creek until breaking out into a low angle aspen meadow. Here the snow got sticky and making progress required a bit of effort but I kept the skis on and linked some snowpatches as far as I could before finally relenquished and retraced my muddy steps back to the car. Approach Notes: Soup Springs gets you about a 100' higher and better situated for a snow approach then Mill Creek Falls but probably gonna have to wait til next year for this one

mad props, as baller as this climb looks, the best pic has to be the final deproach ski photo. The look on your face is total enjoyment.

DUCT TAPE

The gold standard in climbing gear.

I'm at Baker this season, so yeah lift accessed powder shouldn't be a problem. I'm just wondering if people that tour actually use wide powder skis with a rando binding or if they're generally just mounted with downhill bindings and saved for the resort days. The skis I'm seeing are generally significantly wider than the bindings. Also, does the rocker make skinning more difficult, seems like less pressure/contact with the snow. Might be null though as you're likely taking these out on pow days where you're basically wading through the soft stuff and contact would not an issue. Anybody still ski straight edges and laugh at all the sidecut fat skis? Thoughts?Concerns?Experiences?

So I've been watching a lot of skis go by my office window lately, and almost everyone of them is a superwide rockered twintips. I know the rocker and wideness help with floatation in the powder, but my question is are these skis just resort toys or would you put together a touring setup with fatty rockered skis?

is that 2135 cu in?

What's that? chairlift up Aasgard, you say? I think there is this mentality that if we do one thing to alter the wilderness it begins a cascade of slow and subtle degradation (notice we've allready gone from trail markers to alpine huts) that ends up turning our natural playground into the urban wasteland we seek to escape. I agree that this is a possibility, but if done properly recreational "improvements" to an area can be far better than everyone meandering around crapping where we please. I don't know firsthand, but i've heard Smith was a trashy place before the state park started managing it and it looked pretty darn nice to me this summer.

yes, our view of a natural untouched wilderness free of human influence is false. Native Americans certainly exerted large pressures on the landscape (burning grasslands to aid in hunting maintaining prairie ecosystems comes to mind), but their influences result from their actions to sustain themselves and while it might not always have worked out in nature's favor(extinction of the north american megafauna) I think it was certainly carried out with a more respectful and benevolent attitude than our current relationship with the land. We on the other hand do not gain nourishment(screw your hippy "I climb to live" mantra) from the landscape, we consume recreation and aim to conquer in our adventures. Our actions are not carried out with the thought of how to live in the wilderness, but with how to obtain maximum enjoyment and get the hell back to civilization. We are simply "traveling through" and do not concern ourselves with the stewardship required to live in and maintain a healthy environment. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the view that urban and natural environments are divided is wrong and thinking we should keep trail markers out of the wilderness to preserve their integrity is akin to thinking that interstates don't really need painted lanes because drivers will figure out where to drive on their own.

helly hansen enigma sure do wish I had $700

I like it, your photo certainly solves the problem, although I imagine all those and knots and the biner might like to get wedged in inopportune spots while pulling the ropes. This only happened after we exhausted our rap rings and were rapping directly off of the webbing (yes, I realize this is not ideal) I think normally the EDK jams against the rap ring and you have a setup similar to your photo without all the fanciwork. Its probably possible that the knot could get jammed in the ring as well which would be no good, but isn't that a potential problem with the above setup as well. Like I said before, I've dangled off of it on multiple occasions, it works, but there are issues and other setups that I would rather use.

I've done several raps with a 60m 9mm lead rope and 6mm perlon tagline. It hasn't failed on me but I do have reservations about the setup. I always use the eurodeathknot to join the two, just make sure to cinch the knot down really well and leave some tails. The different diameters make the knot look like its going to slip but I've seen it hold solidly enough times to trust it. I always set it up so the larger diameter rope is through the rap ring and tag line is pulled but there can be issues. The tag line can be finicky when thrown, after a few misadventures we started keeping the tag line coiled or bundled in a jacket and feeding it out as we rappeled. Another thing to note is that the 6mm will stretch and feed through your device differently. The last time I rappeled on this setup I watched the results of this while my buddy rapped. The tag line went through the device faster and the EDK slipped through the webbing so the tag line was loading the anchor instead of the larger diameter rope. It was a little spooky to watch the knot slide around. By the time my friend was at the bottom the EDK had moved ten feet and now the larger diameter lead line needed to be pulled. For the record, I prefer climbing on a twin setup if I want the option of full rope length rappels. equal stretch = not sketch

in Soviet Russia, rock climb you

Assuming you're in the Portland area check out the Mazamas. Up here in Washington theres the Mountaineers. If you're in college check with your recreation department. They often have outdoor programs that lead trips. Mazamas Some people don't like the club mentality but it was a great way for me to meet people and get introduced to mountaineering when I moved to Wasington. Read Freedom of the Hills Freedom of the Hills Being a fit active college student is really only going to help you on the physcical conditioning aspect of mountaineering. There's a lot of technical skills and decision making that can only be learned through experience and is often more important than fitness.

Been there, already done that... allright you get FP credit, but I'm still claiming FFP, links are aid

I bought used Fritschi freerides last season, got them mounted on a used set of skis with used skins and strapped it all onto my feet with a used pair of boots, and loved the setup. No weird spontaneous free-heel action for me. granted I wasn't ripping any sickly steep lines, although the gear did get me up and down the Muir Snowfield in March. Given the price of new AT gear I would go with used gear and spend some cash to get it all mounted and tuned by a professional ski shop. They should be able to tell if the gear is in working order or not. I would recommend Backpacker Supply as they did an excellent job for me, but alas they're no longer around.

10 hours from camp to summit

Trip: Mt Stuart - off route on the west ridge Date: 8/15/2010 Trip Report: ***Disclaimer*** The information presented below is potentially inaccurate and misleading, we were certainly off route at points, any attmepts to follow our footsteps are foolish and you should just climb whatever looks good to you, you'll get there eventually. Ken and I had a "successful" summit on our second attempt at the West Ridge, we had aborted our fourth of july attempt for a quick jaunt up Ingalls, when impending clouds, strong wind and late season snowpack kept us huddled in our bags instead of charging up the route. After bivying past the gorgeous Ingalls Lake Saturday night we began our push after a headlamped party cruised through our camp on their way to the North Ridge. Instead of ascending the couloir immediatly after the scree field, we continued through the trees until we found what surely was the correct gulley and headed up. A couple hundred feet of mild scrambling brought us to a short headwall that had me wanting to rope up but hey its only third class until Long John, so we opted for the climbing shoes and tackled the obstacle, topping out in this gulley well below LJ tower. The gulley went easily and we tiptoed across the lingering snowpatch at the base of LJ in our rock shoes thanks to the existing bootpack. We opted for the right hand side and Ken handly climbed in a little corner, while I foolishly lead myself further right out onto the edge with some more exposure and delicate moves. After the tower we were presented with our next routefinding issue: trails led up and down from the LJ notch and multiple weaknesses appeared to lead through the next ridge. Remembering the beta mentioned staying low we headed off on the lower trail and crawled through a squeeze ledge, then opted for a small v-notch. After the V we rested here before the final gulley to the summit notch. We roped up at the notch and led off above some killer bivy ledges until rope drag and a nice ledge had me bringing Ken up. He led off onto a ledge that disapeared onto the North Face. Shortly after h disapeared I heard "piton". excellent, we must be on route. I found the moves above at and above the piton very enjoyable and was able to enjoy this large crack with solid chockstones for the next pitch. The next pitch led up another corner with some ugly, loose blocks, after gently tapping a few and not liking their wobbly, creaky reponses, I gingerly kicked loose gravel off the few likely footholds and stemmed off the corner to avoid touching anything more than necessary. I brought Ken up here to keep the rope from dragging on the numerous loose blocks and potentially taking him for a ride. We summited on the fifth pitch, isn't supposed to be four? Oh well, we never stretched the rope out and probably could have pulled off our pitches with a doubled half to save some weight. Summit views were glorious. The most recent entry in the register mentioned how recent rockfall had increased the difficulty of the climb, could have been referring to the loose, nastiness we encountered, but I don't know if that part is even "on-route" and while scary it climbed pretty easily, just don't touch. Our path down the Cascadian proved that the ascent is only half the battle. The scramble to the ridge below the false summit was awesome, but this quickly turned to loose nastiness that continued to irritate has we entered the Cascadian and the sqweeters and black flies started to devour me. I finally relentedand deplyed the Maxi-DEET, i'll take longterm cancer over short term misery any day. Well we finnally crawled out of the bottom of the Casacadian, into a full on thrash towards Ingalls Creek, there's supposed to be a trail somewhere, but thats for folks we enjoy staying onroute. I'd been hoping to make Longs Pass before donning the headlamps, but that wasn't going to happen as we were losing the sun and we hadn't even reached the creek. Apparently we obliviously crossed trail somewhere, because after filling our water bottles and turning on the lamps we just headed uphill towards where Longs Pass. Thrashing in the dark was wearing on us and an inviting soft patch of pine needles proved to be all the incentive we needed to spend another night out, Working on Mondays is for suckers anyways. Of course, in the morning the trail up to Longs Pass proved to be an easy 15 minutes off to our left and the rest of the hike out proved uneventful. Best guess for our route to the summit notch. Gear Notes: ice ax unnecessary, the two remaining snowpatches were easily crossed in rock shoes

cool pics, Is that Bear Breast Mt rising form the mist in the last photo?

I've been there, got our ropes stuck twice on the Piasano Pinnacle. Nothing like prusiking in the moonlight. Nice climb.

I haven't been in there so this all just a guess, but I bet it will be full on snow conditions. The road to Chambers lake(Snowgrass flats TH) was still snowed in last weekend. I've also been running into more than expected snow everywhere else.

should be plenty, I've only been there once, but I only remember clipping three or four bolts before topping out

exactly, just didn't want to be a dick about it