KaiLarson

Assiniboine, N. Ridge

Mount Baker, North Ridge

Mount Baker, North Ridge

Kelty Cosmic Down is a great bag. Comes in a short version. Compressible and light so they can actually carry it. http://www.mountainsports.com/msmain.asp?Option=Detail&Detail=081363&Product=Kelty+Cosmic+20%C2%B0+Down+Sleeping+Bag+Short

Curious. How much did your packs weigh? I'm looking at P-Ridge next season and am trying to reduce pack weight. Did you wish you had rock gear? Anything you took you didn't need? Anything you didn't take that you wished you had? Do you have a gear list?

NICE!

There is a very active Facebook group, Utah Outsiders. Better than any of the other forums. https://www.facebook.com/groups/utahoutsiders/

Nice pictures and trip report. We were on the route on Monday, a couple of days before. (hopefully, our foot prints were still there for you.) We took the lower start to the ridge, looping around the foot of the ridge to access it from the other side. I think that your higher start looked better, as we had to contend with some evil crevasses and exposure to gain the ridge (scariest part of the whole climb for me.)

Obvious troll is obvious.

Nice. Terrific photos. (although the one of the bushwhacking will likely give me nightmares.)

I stayed at Appleby. If I were to do it again, I'd stay at the hut. It's nice to have a sheltered, comfortable place to stay when the weather turns bad, and I'd rather not carry the extra camping gear in on that steep approach trail.

Awesome trip report. Some of my most memorable experiences were like this. Nothing went as planned, I was frightened, I suffered, and I learned a lot from the experience. Great pictures too.

I've got a review of the new Olympus OMD EM-5 and a few pocket cameras on my hobby blog, here: http://larsonweb.com/blog/

These guys had a floorless pyramid tent: http://www.summitpost.org/hell-on-liberty-ridge/205062

Very nice.!!!

I'd been climbing for 20+ years when I got my State Farm insurance. They asked some questions about climbing. I answered them truthfully. (said I mountain climb and rock climb, etc.) They didn't charge me extra. It may help that I bought a lot of insurance from them and I told them I'd take my business somewhere else if they denied me or had some sort of climbing exclusion. (I have $2 million in life, auto, home, and a $3 million umbrella.) My disability is through work. It's a group policy with no exclusions.

I have coverage through State Farm and NorthWest Mutual. Neither care about climbing.

I don't know if you've actually tried to use a system that uses biners as pulleys or not, but in my experience, using biners instead of pulleys sucks. Particularly with just a couple of people trying to do the pulling, the friction of the biners makes pulling really really hard if you're actually trying to haul someone up. My solution is to use Revolver carabiners instead of pulleys. The decrease in friction is very significant. (With two people pulling, it can make the difference between being able to actually lift the victim and not being able to lift him.) Revolvers have other uses as well, so they aren't single purpose crevasse rescue gear like pulleys.

A number of options are available. Pocket cameras with zoom lenses: The Canon S100 is the smallest of the pocket cameras that will still give you decent image quality and full controls. The Panasonic LX5 is larger than the Canon, but still is pocketable. I own both the LX5 and the S100. I prefer the LX5, as it seems to give consistently better real world image quality than the S100. If space is at a real premium, however, the S100 will work too. If you want interchangeable lenses, but don't want the weight and bulk of a dSLR, the micro 4/3 format Olympus OMD E-5 is the way to go. It's a pro quality camera body with excellent image quality and a built in electronic view finder. Much smaller than a dSLR. I can carry my micro 4/3 camera and 3 lenses for the same weight and bulk as a small dSLR. The Sony NEX series cameras have small bodies, but the lenses are much larger than equivalent m4/3 lenses. The result is that the camera/lens combination of a NEX camera is significantly larger than a m4/3. Lots of good choices, but if I had to only have one climbing camera, to do everything, it would be the LX5

Thanks for the replies: We've got 9 days. Hoping to climb one or more of: Baker N Ridge Shuksan N Face Rainier Ptarmigan Ridge. Currently have plane tickets for the first week of June, but could possibly make changes if necessary. What is the wisdom of the collective? Should I push back the dates of my trip? Just bring snow shoes and hope for the best? Assuming things are still very snowy, what fun routes benefit from a good covering of snow?

I'm headed to the Cascades first week in June. Was wondering what kind of winter you folks had. Cold? Warm? Snowy? Dry? How are snow levels? How are conditions likely to compare with normal?

I love the twist leash. Better than any other leash I've used. Easy to get in and out of one handed. Keeps the tool well oriented for steep ice. Slides up and down easily, for grasping the head. I wish somebody still made them.

This is June 14-15, not July, right?

No longer need a partner.