lukeh

Thanks all Ivan - yes the piss flowers are a fond memory - a video montage of various shots of them with Barbra Streisand singing "Memories" would be pretty cool. Matt - i know huh - the text alone was over 30 pages in my Word doc. sharing those facts at a party could be a good vetting process for attracting the right kind of date, maybe. Jason - thanks a lot - That's a great compliment.

Trip: Alaska Range - Denali - West Buttress With a DSLR Date: 5/23/2014 Trip Report: North American terrestrial ceiling, taken June 4th 2014 around 4pm afer 12 days on the mountain. We were lucky as this has been one of the worst weather years on Denali with a summit success rate in the teens when we arrived (now in the 30% range). [video:vimeo]97907181 Some of the most interesting cloud formations/movements I've seen. Mt. Foraker and Kahiltna Dome as a storm approaches. Click on any photo to see a larger version or click here to see all photos on Facebook. DENALI: THE WEST BUTTRESS: MAY 24th-JUNE 6th 2014 Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me the tendency towards positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened. --Yukio Mishima Sun and Steel: Art, Action and Ritual Death, referenced in Steve House's Beyond the Mountain I was forced to admit that on this, my first trip to Denali, I too had grossly underestimated the mountain. I had listened to the rangers' warnings; I had heard no less experienced an alpinist than Peter Habeler pronounce that McKinley's storms "are some of the worst I have ever experienced"; I knew that when Dougal Haston and Doug Scott had climbed McKinley together just six months after standing upon the summit of Everest, Haston had said they'd been forced to draw ton all our Himalayan experience just to survive." And yet, somehow-like Adrian in 1986-I hadn't really believed any of it. --Jon Krakauer. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains Certainly, the climbers who call Washburn's route a 'cattle prod' have been deceived by the severe mountain sickness or a whiteout, because walking the ridgecrest from 16,000 to 17,000 feet is the penultimate mountaineering experience next to summiting. On a good day, you can revel in a three-mile drop to the tundra below--a greater drop than most Himalayan giants. Or you can look east and see Mount Sanford, more than 200 miles away. Or you can meet legendary international mountaineers stumbling down after having suffered up high. --Jonathan Waterman, In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley I asked one of the doctors, Howard Donner, why they volunteered to spend their summers toiling in such a godforsaken place. "Well," he explained as he stood shivering in a blizzard, reeling from nausea and a blinding headache while attempting to repair a broken radio antenna, "it's sort of like having fun, only different" --Jon Krakauer. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains INTRODUCTION: A DEPARTURE FOR ME Selfie overlooking Mt. Hunter from the 17,200ft high camp. It was cold. Denali's been on my list for a while. The scale of these Alaskan peaks offer a plethora of photo-opportunities for depicting the insignificance of man against the grandeur of nature. Denali was also a proving ground for climbing other big mountains in the Himalayan/Karakorum ranges, or at least a better vetting process than the smaller Cascades peaks I've been climbing in terms of altitude, expedition timeframes, frigid temps, etc. Before Denali I'd only been as high as Rainier's summit at 14,411ft in a variety of conditions. My skin knew only above zero degree temps. How would my body react at over 20,000 feet in the arctic cold? As low as 10,000ft I can easily get AMS-like symptoms. As far as the cold, I'm not really sure how I ever leave my warm sleeping bag on freezing alpine mornings. I'm kind of a mountaineering prima donna in some respects. That said, I've managed to pull off a lot of climbing over the past 5 years - typically carrying more weight and meeting more demands on movement due to an interest in night photography. For these 1-3 day Cascade climbs I've been able to dial-in what works for me with food, layers, tents, stoves, etc. But I've never been on a climb greater than 3 days. Denali could be 21 days. So yes, Denali would be different. Harder. A hot shower and a Chipotle burrito would no longer be 1-2 days away. A single "blue bag" and a couple of clean, simple freeze-dried meals wouldn't be enough for waste disposal and sustenance. I wouldn't be able to check NOAA.gov or atmos.washington.edu and bail/postpone if the weather wasn't good. I couldn't check zappos.com if a cool new shoe came out with bright colored laces. I was going to be climbing in storms. I was going to cook messy meals with messy pans and fickle white gas stoves. I was going to shit in a bucket already filled with other people's shit, sometimes without privacy, almost always in cold, windy + snowy weather. I was going to be pulling heavy sleds in addition to carrying a big backpack across heavily crevassed, icy terrain. I was going to have to deal with 5 other people. Daily. For up to three weeks. In tight quarters. I've definitely suffered on poor weather epics in the Cascades. I backed off a Mt. Baker North Ridge attempt in a heavy snow/rainstorm, and completed a Shuksan North Face/Fisher Chimney traverse in similarly miserable conditions, climbing through the night, soaking wet in freezing temps. I figured Denali suffering would be multi-layered and represent a next-level "hurt" compared to these local climbs. Still, I was really excited to test myself. If I could adapt to Denali's harsh conditions it would mean a lot of interesting objectives were within my reach. Ama Dablam, Everest, downtown Chicago in November without an umbrella (or maybe just an umbrella that didn't quite cover all of me)? THE WEST BUTTRESS ROUTE? Mark and I cackle as Scott lambastes a slightly overweight mountaineer starting up the West Buttress. "Instead of measuring your granola out into little premarked baggies, spending hours threading orange flagging around little sticks of bamboo to mark the route you're sharing with a thousand other people, you should have been training!" --Steve House, Beyond the Mountain I always figured I'd climb Denali's more technical West Rib first. I even took a weeklong ice climbing class five years ago--immediately after climbing Rainier for my first time--to set the West Rib stage. The West Buttress route looked too easy, crowded, overall lacking as a "real mountain" experience. Because I hadn't been high altitude-tested or experienced negative 40 degree temps, however, the "Butt" seemed like a good place to get my feet wet (no pun intended...seriously there's no pun here, Denali's mostly snow/ice, not water). If I could survive the West Buttress, then I could take on more technically challenging routes--at altitude--in these harsher environments. Also I was generously invited by a friend and his buddies to do the West Buttress route, not the West Rib. Sometimes you just have to take the opportunities that present themselves. Now having climbed the "Butt", I'd say it's more technical and generally more challenging than I expected. I thought it'd be more like the Rainier Disappointment Cleaver or Emmons glacier-like walk-up routes. It's nothing like that. Not that you can't make some fatal missteps on these main Rainier routes, you easily can. Getting on the Disappointment Cleaver at around 11,000ft is a great example: One wrong step can kill you. This is especially true if someone had tied your bootlaces together at the Ingraham Flats camp as a prank. But the West Buttress route has a lot more "one wrong step and your dead" areas, plus the scale and harsher conditions exacerbate the risk. Jon Krakauer attempted it unsuccessfully in 1987: The West Buttress of McKinley, it is often said, has all the technical challenges of a long walk in the snow. That is more or less true, but it's also true that if you should, say, trip on a bootlace at the wrong moment during that walk, you will probably die. From 16,000 feet to 17,000 feet, for instance, the route follows the crest of a knife-edge ridge that presents a two-thousand-foot drop on one side and a three-thousand-foot drop on the other. Furthermore, even the flattest, most benign-looking terrain can be riddled with hidden crevasses, many of which are big enough to swallow a Greyhound bus, no problem. I figured the West Buttress to be a farmer's route; I mean, how challenging could a climb that succumbed to three hundred freds and hackers a year possibly be? Plenty challenging for the likes of me, it transpired. I was continually miserable, and frequently on the brink of disaster. My tent was starting to shred even in the relative calm at 14,300. The unceasing cold caused my lips and fingers to crack and bleed; my feet were always numb. At night, even wearing every article of clothing I had, it was impossible to stave off violent shivering attacks. Condensed breath would build up an inch of frost on the inside of my tent, creating an ongoing indoor blizzard as the gossamer nylon walls rattled in the wind. Anything not stowed inside my sleeping bag-camera, sunscreen, water bottles, stove-would freeze into a useless, brittle brick. My stove did in fact self-destruct from the cold early in the trip; had a kind soul named Brian Sullivan not taken pity on me and lent me his spare, I would-as Dick Danger so eloquently put it-have been in deep shit. --Jon Krakauer. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains It's also ironic how some of the best alpinist die on less technical routes. Lionel Terray--for example--died guiding a 5.7 rock route in France. Mugs Stumps--Alaskan climbing legend--died falling into a crevasse on lower angle terrain. This is after he climbed some of the harder routes in the Alaska Range. Read Accidents in North American Mountaineering, it's often the experienced climbers who are dying in falls on easier stuff. Since Allen Carpe's death in 1932, eleven climbers on Denali have died in "freak accident" crevasse falls. Nine of those climbers were of Mugs's caliber and had let down their guard on lower-angled glaciers, travelling without rope, with a short rope, or with slack ropes. --Jonathan Waterman, In the Shadow of Denali: Life and Death on Alaska's Mt. McKinley DENALI: BIG, COLD, AND UNPREDICTABLE The combined effect of cold, wind, and altitude may well present one of the most hostile climates on Earth. --Jon Krakauer. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains That sounds intimidating, and it should. It's the type of mountain where in May you can ask how bad an incoming storm looks and receive this reply: ...the person relaying the forecast replied with a macabre chuckle, "Well, major enough so that when it hits, everyone who's above 15,000 feet is going to die..." ...and they aren't kidding. You don't want to get caught in a bad storm above 16,000ft on Denali, even in June. While waiting at the 14,200ft camp I asked the rangers about the weather at 17,200ft. They said with 40-60mph winds your fortified ice walls can topple easily. Your tent can start to shred. While you're trying to rebuild your walls, blocks can be blown away just as quickly as they are put up. The rangers weren't going up there anytime soon. A Lithuanian team who camped next to us at 14,200ft did go up to 17,200ft+ during a storm, however. I imagined them crawling on their belly in a raging blizzard to retrieve a snow saw, blown out of their hands from a 70mph gust. When the weather finally calmed, we met a Lithuanian party member coming down. He said his tent had been shredded at 17,200' and he had to crawl to the emergency NPS locker to get another one. He said some other things that sounded pretty bad but he had a thick accent so I didn't understand. I didn't need to though. His facial expressions and his "I survived a harsh Denali storm at 17,200' and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" cotton t-shirt said it all. Jonathan Waterman's describes one particularly bad storm that occurred while he was a park ranger on Denali: Within 30 hours, more than 5 feet of snow fell at the 7,000-foot base camp; winds of 100 miles per hour hit the 14,300-foot camp. Over a month's time, 22 climber would be rescued. For the next few sections I'll further describe Denali's scale and "hostile climate" while comparing it to Everest. Everest serves as the most widely accessible point of reference for "extreme" climates, so it's a good illustrative tool. Let's start with a blog entry except from someone who's climbed both mountains: Quite a few people have asked me how Denali and Everest compare and they are quite extraordinarily different. Everest for the most part is far more comfortable, especially from the Nepal side. At hints of bad weather, we can escape down to base camp and drink our hot lemon teas and sit in comfy chairs. Denali in a shorter period, has a much higher work load. Overall I remember the heat of the western cwm of Everest, on Denali, in May, it's the mind numbing cold even as low as 9,000'. --Brad Jackson Denali vs. Everest Mt. Foraker encased in a Lenticular and other storm clouds. THE SCALE View of the 14,200ft camp (dots in the center frame) from around 17,000ft. Foraker is straight ahead. "David and Goliath". I face down Mt. Hunter from the Kahiltna. One of the largest landforms on the planet, McKinley's hulking massif occupies 120 square miles of the earth's surface, and its summit stands more than 17,000 vertical feet above the rolling tundra at the mountain's foot. Mt. Everest, by comparison, rises a mere 12,000 feet from the plains at its base. --Jon Krakauer. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains The scale in the Alaska Range is like nothing I've experienced. Walking along the lower 44-mile long Kahiltna Glacier and seeing Hunter (14,573ft), Foraker (17,402ft), Crosson (12,352ft), and of course Denali (20,237ft) rise from thousands of feet into the clouds was eye opening for me. Rainier's Emmons and Mt. Baker's Coleman glaciers all of a sudden seemed small by comparison. High on the West Buttress--which is reached over a week after starting out--you can see just how tiny the 14,200ft camp looks, dwarfed by all of the massive features of rock and ice. Looking out at the vast landscape, I suddenly felt like nothing in this world: A small 35-year-old spec contemplating millions of years of large-scale geological transformations. A humbling sight. An icy ridge on Foraker. I couldn't talk anyone on the team into climbing part of this to show scale/produce an even more compelling picture. THE COLD AND WIND The intense cold is, of course, another unique feature of Denali, comparable only to the Antarctic ranges. The Himalaya is tropical by comparison. On the South Col of Mount Everest (26,200 feet) in late October, the lowest temperature we recorded in 1981 was 17 degrees below zero. On Denali, this would be a rather warm night at only 14,300 feet in May and June. Temperatures between the high camp and the summit even in the middle of the summer are routinely 20 to 40 degrees below and even lower at night. This combination of extreme weather and temperature pummels the unprepared. --Peter H. Hackett, M.D. from the preface of Surviving Denali by Jonathan Waterman Having never lived in Wisconsin in winter or been the target of Don Rickles's crowd work, the extreme cold was going to be something completely new to me. Dave measured temps as cold as -38 degrees Fahrenheit. Park Rangers warned us that they see a lot of frostbite for summit attempt with wind speeds even above 20 mph. Any exposed skin can freeze almost instantly, and frostbite can permanently damage tissue. I met a climber at the 7800ft camp who explained that we were lucky this year, temps-wise. Summer temps had come early in 2014. Last year his -40 degree sleeping bag caused him to shiver in early May at only 7800ft! To stay warm on the upper mountain he had to put on every single piece of clothing he carried, inside his sleeping bag. Every few hours he'd run around his tent just to keep from freezing. In his case Bradford Washburn's statement, "This kind of climbing is about 90% trying to stay alive and warm, and 10 percent climbing", was certainly true. The feeling of never being able to get warm must be one of the most miserable feelings humans can experience, at least before hypothermia arrives and warms you into death. This climber was trying the West Rib this year with a friend who had never been to Denali. They were about to make their way up the Valley of Death, and avalanche and crevasse-prone fork of the Kahiltna which leads to the base of the Rib. He must have felt spoiled this year not having to shiver so much, so early. Unfortunately the storms were the worst this year than they've been in a while. Art Davidson's 1967 winter ascent of the West Buttress had his team experiencing temps as low as negative 148 degrees: For a moment I experienced a keen awareness that up here the cold, surrounding us like a living thing, was waiting patiently for a chance to slip into our bodies. There were nights--especially at the 14,200ft camp--that were extremely cold even without wind. Everything uncovered in our tent would become enveloped in frost. I didn't think of leaving my sleeping bag for any reason, and I really wish my pee bottle was larger. An avalanche could've been heading right for our tent and I wouldn't care. Someone could've offered me sour cream and onion Pringles and I wouldn't even...well no...I'd get out of my bag for those. But the wind really made you truly cold. Whenever its icy trajectory intersected with exposed noses or cheeks it felt was like someone was slapping you--hard--in the face, while hissing loudly directly in your ear before, during, and after. I resented it. I just wanted it to stop, and I felt like each gust that knocked me off balance was a personal assault from Mother Nature. These thoughts reminded me of how egocentric we humans can be. Nature doesn't care about our feelings. Art Davidson: The wind's vicious, I told myself. It's diabolical. Silently cursing it became a pastime. I tried to think of all the words that described its evil nature-- fiendish, wicked, malicious. I called it a vampire sucking the life out of us. But the wind didn't hear me, and I knew my words were irrelevant anyway. The wind wasn't malevolent; it wasn't out to get us; it had no evil intentions, nor any intentions at all. It was simply a chunk of sky moving about. It was a weather pattern, one pressure area moving into another. Still, it was more satisfying , somehow more comforting, to personify the wind, make it something I could hate or respect, something I could shout at. But then the wind would be gone, and the experience on the same terrain would be altered dramatically, making it almost unrecognizable in the calm. Cloud formations resembling something a painter would put down on canvas from around 11k ft. Strong winds pick up around Foraker and the Kahiltna Dome. THE EFFECTIVE ALTITUDE Denali also renders the climber more hypoxic; the barometric pressure is lower for a given altitude than on mountains closer to the equator. This difference becomes noticeable above 10,000 feet or so, and makes the summit of Denali equivalent to anywhere from 21,000 to 23,000 feet in the Himalaya (Mt. Everest is at latitude 27 degrees N), depending on weather conditions. The barometric pressure is also much lower in the winter than in the summer. Lower barometric pressure means less oxygen in the air; therefore Denali is more of a hypoxic stress and physiological challenge than one might expect for its altitude. --Peter H. Hackett, M.D. from the preface of Surviving Denali by Jonathan Waterman Altitude worried me more than cold temps. At least you have some control over your warmth via clothes selection. AMS can come out of nowhere and put you on their knees, regardless of fitness, hydration, etc. Sure you can do things to minimize your chances, but there's no guarantee. Harry Karstens--the first to reach Denali's true summit--described the effect of altitude on his party: The remaining 1,000 feet (300 m) went very slowly because the thin air made breathing difficult; they had to stop every few steps to catch their breath. I didn't move quite that slowly, but I definitely felt like the altitude was pushing down on me--hard--as we rose higher. At both 14,200ft and 17,200ft I'd wake up in the middle of the night breathing heavily, trying to take in more oxygen. 14,200ft has half the oxygen vs. sea level, and it diminishes further climbing higher. Once I reached 19,000ft I was struggling to move continuously due to hypoxia. GENERAL WORK Cecil fortifying our protective tent walls with ice blocks cut using the saw (why the saw is still sticking out of this block I don't know). I spent a lot of time on the mountain packing, un-packing, putting up and taking down tents, boiling water, and making meals. I mean a lot. If you can't re-use existing camp sites with pre-built walls, etc., then you're in for many more hours of work. For me this type of manual labor is necessary, but painfully boring. Brad Jackson compares the amount of work on Everest vs. Denali: Without Sherpas and Yaks, I learnt a lot on Denali. The end of the day does not happen when you arrive at location. Arriving just means setting up camp and building walls. Even departing from Camp 1, it took us 5 hours to dig up our tents after a 2 day blow smothered our tents... Denali was overall colder and the workload was more constant on Denali with fewer rest days (Denali vs. Everest). On the plus side I'm now great at watching water boil in pots lined with food residue. THE TEAM My friend Cecil invited me on this climb. His friend Dave was coordinating the expedition in September 2013 with a few of his Utah climbing buddies. Our team ended up being super strong. Very physically and mentally determined. The team was split between Utah and Seattle, but everyone made time to put in the requisite training and--with Dave at the head--we all communicated well to ensure we brought all of the right equipment, etc. The Utah guys ended up being really lighthearted and fun, but still serious and committed to making the summit safely. The team broke down as follows: Dave - Team logistical coordinator who also runs a guiding company in Africa. Based in Salt Lake City. Cecil met Dave and the other two Utah guys a while ago on an Orizaba climb. Brandon - Oncologist from Utah who runs the non-profit organization Radiating Hope which provides radiation oncology services to developing countries. Based in Salt Lake City. I climbed with Brandon in 2011 on Rainier's Disappointment Cleaver route (photos and report here) to benefit Crohn's disease and lend photographic support to his charity. Tom - Commercial airline pilot with encyclopedic knowledge of greatest hits from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond. Based in Salt Lake City. Cecil - Buddy/climbing partner and recent nursing school graduate. My connection to the rest of the team. Seattle based. Wesley - Cecil's friend who did a stint as a guide. Seattle based. Me -Software Designer/Program Manager who photographs/makes videos with most of his spare time. PREPARATION: LOGISTICS Dave did a great job of pulling together the logistics required for the climb including permits, schedules, flight bookings, food, fuel and transportation, etc. We ended up going through a logistics company--Exposure Alaska--for food, fuel, van ride from Anchorage to Talkeetna, flight from Talkeetna to the Kahiltna Glacier, a steel shovel, sled rental, and some toilet paper/hand sanitizer at a cost of $1099 per person. I never did the work to figure out the cost of doing this individually, but with tight schedules across the team for prep and a quick back-of-napkin addition it seemed like a reasonably cost-effective idea. The flight alone is $585 through Talkeetna Air Taxi. The hand sanitizer alone was at least 80 cents...so you do the math. The flight to Anchorage from Seattle was only $240, and we stayed at the Microtel for about $60/person (hotel was clean, served a decent breakfast, almost zero dead prostitutes in the spacious closets). Less the equipment below, we're only at $1400 so far for the trip cost. The emotional/trauma-based cost of watching each team member shit into a bucket in open-air bathrooms, however, can't be measured as easily. PREPARATION: CONDITIONING I started running back in November, but a knee injury forced me to retire from running in March/April before I planned to run another half marathon in Vegas with my girlfriend Audrey. Following that I mostly did local conditioning hikes: Tiger Mountain's "Cable Trail", Mt. Si, Mailbox Peak, and Mt. Rainier's Camp Muir. I tried to get out 1x/week. Most of the time I wouldn't bring much weight, but as we got closer to May 2014 I did a lot of heavily weighted hikes (60-70 pounds). I supplemented all of this with frequent mountain bike rides (I have a 12 mile loop that gains a lot of elevation). I also played scrabble with specially-weighted letters that were harder to pick up and move onto the board. I never got an actual "climb" in the whole time, which was unfortunate, but I ended up being in pretty solid shape. At least I told myself that each time I flexed in the mirror after doing 3 pull-ups nightly. More specific training around sled pulling could have helped further, but sled pulling sucks and I hate it, so overall my training plan worked out in my favor. PREPARATION: PROVISIONS/EQUIPMENT Most the equipment I brought to Denali (minus snow shoes in favor of skis). This doesn't include the food/fuel we picked up in Anchorage. I'd end up pulling most of this in a sled and putting the rest on my back. The core set of personal equipment is easy to check based on gear lists provided publicly by all guide companies (e.g. RMI, AAI, IMG, etc). At the base it's essentially everything you'd bring on a local cascades alpine climb, but more + warmer/stronger stuff. Expanding on "more + warmer/stronger stuff", below are the differences and some opinions/lessons-learned on each subject. FOOD Contrary to popular belief, you can't just bring a crossbow on the mountain and hunt polar bear for sustenance. First off, crossbows also require arrows, which are expensive. Secondly, there are no bears of any kind on the route. Hence you need to bring food with you, and you need to bring a lot of it. 1kg (2.2 lbs) per person, per day. For 15 days that's ~33 lbs of food. The logistics company was a great time-saver in this department, but--in hindsight only--I would've procured all of my own food. You should only bring stuff you'll love, and I personally like my food as simple as possible in terms of prep + clean-up. The logistics company included food I'd never eat (so extra weight), and some of the preparations were a little too involved. In the mountains the last thing I want to do at the end of a rough day is go through an elaborate cooking process. I almost always just want to eat quickly and sleep. Or eat quickly and climb in the morning. Again I only came to this conclusion after going through the experience. I hate doing dishes in my regular life, so "cleaning" and re-using pots (that were never completely clean) was painful. I still cleaned dutifully and got used to it. My tolerance for reduced sanitization and hygiene increased every day, but once off that mountain I went immediately back to my germ-a-phobic, picky ways that annoy more hardened people. Actually I didn't even wait until I was off the mountain. A gummy ring Brandon threw me on the last day hit the snow before my hand. I gave it to Tom after he made fun of me. I'd definitely bring a pot dedicated to "just water" for simplicity/cleanliness. I'd also bring more tang, etc. to make the water more desirable. You need to drink a lot of it, sometimes it's hard. Art Davidson talks about having a breakfast of cheese, salami, and candy during his winter ascent. This is more my style as there isn't any dishes, cooking to be done, and it still taste great. Bagels and cream cheese were also good, and I could've done with more oatmeal, something I can eat everything morning without getting tired of it. For lunch you definitely want to keep food handy and warm: To make our lunches edible it had become necessary to carry the candy bars, sausage, and cheese close to the heat of our bodies to thaw out their rocklike consistency. --Art Davidson, Minus 148 Degrees: First Winter Ascent of Mount McKinley It's sort of a rule in the Cascades, but with the extreme cold of Denali it's pretty critical. Dave chipped a tooth on a frozen Snickers, a story I'm considering submitting to the 2014 Accidents in North American Mountaineering annual publication. After I tell people this chipped tooth story, they typically ask me how Dave's funeral went, e.g. was the catering was good? Was there swearing in the eulogy? Etc. Believe it or not, he actually survived the Snickers-chipped-tooth incident! Ok onto water - you really need to bring a lot of it. 3 weeks worth, so about 84 liters. I'm kidding you melt snow, but you should start out with 2-3 liters, unless you want to walk 40 feet on the Kahiltna after leaving the plane, get thirsty, then have to unpack your stove and melt a bunch of water while the plane waits for you to get out of the way. This actually happened to us. No it didn't, but we all almost got on the plane without filling our bottles in the ranger station sink. I saved the day here (holds for applause). A final point on keeping things simple with regard to food: The NPS Denali booklet quotes from Joseph Wilcox's diary on "lassitude", or lack of motivation that can occur in high altitude environment. Joseph Wilcox's 1967 party was involved in one of the worst accidents in the mountain's history. More on that later. With five people crammed in the tent, morale decreased rapidly. There was no interest in cooking meals and by the next day no one was even interested in melting drinking water. We found ourselves very apathetic...not caring whether or not we got enough to eat or if our gear was wet...we just lay there and waited with little or no sleep...by the morning the cold had taken its toll...Jerry Lewis and I had numb feet and I had numb fingers. FUEL AND STOVES Stoves keep you alive and hydrated. You spend a large chunk of time on the mountain watching a pot boil (it still boils if you watch it, I tested this about 30 times throughout the trip). We brought a gallon of fuel per person (~6 lbs). I love my MSR Reactor stove, but for Denali you have to bring fickle white gas stoves like the MSR WhisperLite or DragonFly. We had two WhisperLites and one DragonFly. I really hate these stoves vs. something like the Reactor due to abysmal ease-of-use, but they're more reliable in the extreme cold and higher altitudes. Plus they allow you to avoid bringing dozens of propane canisters. That said I did see some people with Jet Boils. In this (Andy Houseman and Nick Bullock), I believe you see them using a Reactor, albeit they are going light/fast up a technical route in a very short amount of time. I asked the rangers at the 14,200ft. camp what they thought of the Reactor-type stoves. They said propane-based stoves don't work consistently/reliably in the cold, you can get frostbite just trying to light them, and you end up with bags of empty canisters. Needless to say our white gas stoves ended up working pretty well, and I became somewhat proficient with Cecil's WhisperLite. The biggest tip here is to bring a spare pump. We had one break, and despite having multiple stove repair kits, we did not have a spare pump. Because we had 3 stoves though it wasn't a disaster, but a stove is obviously your lifeline to hydration. Our first "night" at the 7800ft. camp. As the trip progressed there was less and less psuedo darkness. Boiling water and cooking seemed to take up a significant chunk of the total trip time. TENT Brandon taking care of some camp chores near his tent. The 2-pound, 2-person or 4-pound, 3-person tents used in fair-weather Cascade climbs won't work on Denali. You have to get something heavy (11 pounds+) like the Mountain Hardware Trangos, the top-shelf Hillebergs, or the tent I bought, the Eddie Bauer Katabatic 3-Person tent. These types of tents will withstand the potentially fierce 50 MPH + winds and hold/shed the several feet of snowfall you'll face throughout the trip. The Eddie Bauer tent did fine and had plenty of room for 2 bigger guys. That said I guess I've been spoiled by Hilleberg's design which allows the inner tent + fly up at the same time. It saves a lot of time. Like my food, the last thing I want to do at the end/beginning of the day is take more time than necessary to put up/take down a tent, which you'll do a dozen times. The ideal Denali tent is probably something like the Hilleberg Nammatj GT or the Staika, which was used on the ill-fated early season Muldrow Glacier expedition earlier this year. I haven't used either though, so take that with some salt grains. STEEL SPADE SHOVEL You need it...in addition to your aluminum shovels. It breaks through the hard stuff when building camp. It also can become critical if you need to build an emergency shelter. Read about this accident on Pig Hill from 2012 where someone died and a guiding company almost lost their license to guide on Denali--in part--because their group did not bring a spade shovel for their summit push. Also--of course--read -148 Degrees to familiarize yourself with the epic snow shelter built by Art Davidson's team on Denali Pass that saved their lives. The spade shovel can also be used as a second tool on the steeper, icier terrain you'll find on the Cassin or West Rib. OK, no it can't. WARM CLOTHES I brought two down coats (one big - Eddie Bauer Peak XV, one lighter - OR Incandescent Hoody), some down pants (Feathered Friends Volant), and multiple warm mid/base layers. Quite a few people were wearing one-piece down suits, which seemed like overkill/less flexible, but I guess you can't predict the weather. Some people also just run super cold. My setup worked perfectly for this trip. As mentioned previously, I did talk to a climber at our first camp who did the West Buttress last year in early May. He said it was so cold he had to put all of his clothes on in his -40 degree sleeping bag to stay warm down low. In 2014 the mountain was a couple weeks ahead in terms of warmth (meaning this year's June 1 felt like last year's June 14th or 21st). I didn't wear the heavy down coat up high, but I had on a lot of mid-layers, the lighter down coat, and kept moving. The main thing I took away, however, is to bring less clothes to save weight/bulk. I mostly wore the same thing. If you get wool the odor isn't a big deal. I'd avoid bringing "changes" of clothes. Just bring enough to keep warm in one layer system. Also pastels and brighter colors are currently "in", something to consider very seriously when selecting clothing. That said I'd check fashion blogs beforehand and these things can change rapidly each season. The day you change your underwear will be a happy day (typically 5-7 days in). Definitely bring 1-2 extra pairs unless you hate yourself and everyone around you. If you do hate yourself and everyone around you, one-pair is fine. Final tip is to bring 2-pairs of medium weight "long johns", vs. one medium and one expedition weight. It's more flexible, less weight. For up high you just wear both. Gloves? I brought my OR Alti Mitts for up high, my Raab Ice Gauntlets when it wasn't frostbite-y cold, a couple pairs of lighter weight liner gloves. I also brought these moo cow print gardening gloves for the plane rides and for just hanging around camp looking for fellow gardeners. All worked well. SLEEPING BAG I went with the -30 degree Eddie Bauer Karakorum -30 Stormdown bag. Worked just fine, but I'd rather have a waterproof bag. The down in this bag is water resistant I guess, but why would you want to get the nylon all soaked through in the first place? You get a lot of condensation in the tent and a couple times the temps rose and the snow would turn to water once it landed anywhere. It would just be nicer to have a fully waterproof bag, just in case. You never know, you might sit on Cecil's pad and pop his pee bottle that was carelessly left underneath inside the tent at 17,200' on June 4th at exactly 11:33 PM. Hypothetically speaking. BOOTS/OVERBOOTS I bought the La Sportiva Baruntses a couple years ago for a Rainier winter ascent that never happened. After spending a lot of money on custom orthotics and going through 2 boot fitters to bend/stretch the sidewalls, I could finally wear them without significant hot spots. If they fit like the Nepal Evos I would've had zero problems, but they don't for whatever reason. The Spantiks (probably the ideal Denali boot) don't come in my size. A lot of people had the single boot systems you see on 8000m peaks like Everest. The Millet Everest GTX or the Sportiva Olympus Mons Evo were pretty common. Like the one-piece down suits these seemed much less flexible and probably hot on the lower mountain. This probably meant wet, sweaty, blister-prone feet. One UK military team was pulling these out of boxes at the airport. They looked unworn - a bad sign. Maybe these integrated boots make sense if you have feet that get really cold, really easily, or you're doing an early May ascent. I also brought ski boots (lightweight Sportiva Spitfires) to the 11,000ft camp and cached them with my skis. For overboots I went with the Forty Below K2 Superlights, which I only wore on summit day and they worked just fine. I didn't have a big problem with cold feet at any point, but again weather was warmer compared to previous years. Sometimes I'd get cold toes after standing around too long up high, but nothing serious (I cried a little, but you couldn't tell with my goggles on). At least one other climber named Andy did get frostbite on a big toe, but he's doing OK now. Standing alone on the edge of the rocky cliffs just outside of the 17,200ft camp. The 14,200ft camp is seen as a cluster of dots 3k feet below. SKIS I didn't want to buy expensive, new ski boots just for this climb, so I decided to follow Cecil's lead: Bring what I had and cache it lower, then carry my mountaineering boots in the sled. This worked out nicely. I own the La Sportiva GT skis with the tiny, weight negligible Sportiva RT bindings (< 8lbs total). If I were to do it again I probably would've brought the skis up to the 14,200ft camp as you can run laps in nice, dry powder from 14,200-15,200ft. A lot of skiers did exactly this and I was jealous. On our descent the whole mountain was covered in fresh powder, so it would've been nice to ski it some more of it. Motorcycle and Squirrel Hill with a sled may have been awkward to descend, however. SLED Strap a bunch of cord to a plastic kid sled and you're good. The sled was annoying skiing down from 11k, but not too bad. PVC pipe may have been nicer to keep the sled from trying to pass me on the steeper stuff. Overall pulling the sled did really suck. It's just a lot of weight, especially on steeper sections like Motorcycle Hill and the icier sections of Squirrel Hill (11-12.5k feet). Sleds would tip over on Windy corner and even find their way into crevasses, but you could mostly just muscle through it. We were all pretty happy to get to the 14,200ft camp where we knew our sleds would hibernate until we went down again. The way down wasn't fun either, but it went by pretty quickly. TIP: Don't try to ride your sled down the 15,000-16,000ft 50-60 degree blue ice headwall, even if dared with taunting chicken noises. Use the fixed lines instead. Reinhold Messner supposedly learned this lesson the hard way. Cecil pulling a sled as we move up the Kahiltna glacier toward the 11k camp. We were all pretty overjoyed to finally be rid of our sleds at the 14k camp in a few days. BACKPACK I had a custom 100L+ Dan McHale pack made a couple years ago to help haul all of the photography/video equipment I bring on climbs. It worked nicely for this climb. You want a bigger pack for flexibility IMO, especially for things like split cache carries. A couple people had smaller packs and it can limit what you can carry. I used this 10oz 25L pack for the summit push from 17,200ft (and as a stuff sack before that) - worked out nicely. AVALANCHE GEAR There was dissension within the group on whether to bring transceivers. Avalanche fatalities on this route--while not common--have occurred and there are plenty of avy slopes plus falling snow to load them (Motorycle Hill, Squirrel Hill, headwall below the Buttress, smaller slopes on the Buttress, Denali Pass, above Denali pass, Pig Hill). I didn't have a strong enough opinion here based on the available West Buttress avy data to put stakes in the ground on transceivers. We ended up lightening our heavy loads by leaving them at home, for better or worse. OTHER GEAR We brought a 50m and a 60m rope, a couple GPSs with topo maps/route info loaded, a few pots for cooking, a picket/screw each, a couple snow saws, a shovel each, probes, and we rented a sat phone. I made limited use of the sat phone, and found a kindred spirit here in Jonathan Waterman while re-reading "In the Shadow of Denali": Although we did keep our friends and family informed, contact with the outside world depressed us. Mountaineering involves a necessary isolation, and, once broken, the lurid fantasies of showers, hot meals, and the opposite sex ravaged us as cleanly as a subarctic tempest. It was still nice to check-in with Audrey as she updated me on local mountaineering fatalities just before my summit attempt. DRUGS I brought Ambien, Diamox, and Cipro, Sunny D, and some purple stuff. The Ambien worked great. It allowed me to sleep at night despite noise. There shouldn't be any shame in taking Diamox. You can't train altitude sickness away, people are just affected differently even when all things are equal (fitness, hydration/satiation, acclimatization schedules). You aren't stronger because you don't feel the effects of altitude, you might just be lucky. As the storm continued, trade in critical supplies became brisk and cutthroat. Expeditions with an abundance of some particularly valuable commodity like toilet paper, cigarettes, Diamox (a medication to prevent altitude sickness), or Tiger's Milk bars found increasingly favorable rates of exchange. I had to trade away an entire half-pound of Tillamook cheese to secure three Diamox tablets. --Jon Krakauer. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains Thankfully I didn't need the Cipro. I should've also brought antacids as I developed a bad case of acid reflux at 14,200ft. It got even worse as I ascended further. This doesn't happen to me in regular life. Tom was nice enough to spare some of his Tums. He also was generous with Imodium AD which serves to purposely constipate you, preventing inopportune defecation urges. The team also had Dexamethasone, but thankfully no one needed it. Although on those really cold mornings an injection would've probably helped us leave the tent. Ibuprofen was also used a lot to manage various sources of pain, some emotional. PERSONAL GEAR/CLOTHES The rest of the gear is standard personal stuff you'd bring on a 1-2 day cascades climb. PEE BOTTLE/WASTE DISPOSAL Based on some advice from a colleague I brought a 1.5L collapsible Nalgene. I would even go bigger next time. To quote Barbara Walters, "bring a huge pee bottle if you ever climb Denali". Getting out of tent in the middle of the night in a storm is the last thing you ever want to do. I usually go 2-3 times per night, even at home. The 1.5L I believe only gets you 2. For solid waste we intended to bring two CMCs (Clean Mountain Cans) provided by the ranger station, but we ended up with only one. Someone left one on the Ranger Station's front porch area. Handling solid waste matters--or "taking a shit" as some would say--was probably the single worst part of the trip for me. We all shared this really thin, shitty (pun intended), biodegradable bags that would fill up in about 6-7 goes. The designated bathroom areas were often fully "completely open to the elements, that had an inspiring view but left tender flesh dangerously exposed to the full brunt of a windchill" (Krakauer, Eiger Dreams...this hasn't changed since 1987 it seems). PREPARATION: PHOTOGRAPHY The midnight sun on the West Buttress ridge. The incredible stillness, immensity, and remoteness of the world that only the three of us inhabited gave me the notion that we were stopping for a moment in a fairytale. Something magical about the ice and rock and sky seemed about to disappear. I tried to grasp an impression of the forms and colors around us, because I feared they would suddenly vanish, to be recalled only with the vagueness of a dream half remembered, like a memory from earliest childhood. --Art Davidson, Minus 148 Degrees: First Winter Ascent of Mount McKinley The primary difference in preparation here vs. a shorter Cascade climb was around power and storage. I ended up getting the Sherpa 50 Solar kit to charge my Canon batteries. I also brought 5-6 extra batteries. For storage I brought a combination of SD/CF cards totaling over 500GB in storage. I ended up using 2 batteries for the entire trip, and never changed out a card. Reasons? When the weather was good, we were moving. When the weather was bad, there wasn't anything to capture. My idea of 1-2 time-lapses every day? Didn't come close. So I carried a lot of extra weight, but you never know, the weather could've been great 7 days in a row in which case I may have taken much more video/time-lapse footage. Also there is never really any darkness during Alaskan summers, so you aren't doing battery-draining long exposures. I brought my heavy Canon 5D MKIII and my trusty 16-35 f2.8 and 70-200 f4 (no IS) lenses. I should've brought an extra lens cap, however. Mine fell hundreds of feet down on the fixed lines. I missed some great shots later as my front element froze. If someone finds the lens cap somewhere in a crevasse below the headwall, please return it. Camera-geek talk sidebar: I'm looking forward to the lighter weight, full-frame mirror-less systems to offer more ultra-wide zooms and work out their kinks. The Sony A7R looks like a huge step forward, but it was too new/un-tested to rent and bring on a 3-week expedition. Plus there isn't a smaller, lighter ultra-wide zoom lens which I require. Weight + bulk savings would've been nice though. PREPARATION: LITERATURE It looks like the CascadeClimbers post max-length ends here. For the rest of the story and pictures see my blog. To just look at all of the pictures (80 total)/captions, go here.

Ah - thanks Water for the clarification on the ice cliff vs. glacier/chute. Yeah true from the Turtle you can see a continuous line of Muir climbers all the way up the route - nice to be on a different part of the mountain.

I think we left the crater around 10am, which was not good. We spent too much time resting near Pt. Success and too much time in the crater. I guess the plus side was that the snow was more skiable, but below 13,000 the crevasses/bridges were pretty sketchy IMO.

Trip: Mt. Rainier - Kautz Glacier Date: 7/12/2014 Trip Report: Me skinning up the last 20 feet to Rainier's summit. Photo by Alin Flaidar. Walking to edge of a cliff on he Wapowetry Cleaver around 11,000ft. A "super moon" lit up the mountain nicely. Alin, Dereck and summited Rainier via the Kautz Glacier route this past Sat/Sun. We carried over and descended the DC route Sunday morning. I skied down where crevasses would allow. Highlights: We made it up to the base of The Turtle (~9600ft) in about 3 hours. No rope was needed until the Ice Cliff (~11,300ft). Crossing the lower Nisqually and ascending The Fan was straightforward. There was a huge party (30 people?) camped at the base of the Turtle from the Utah Climbing Club. We didn't see them for the remainder of the trip. There was a somewhat larger party who ended up camping above us at Camp Hazard. We got up earlier to avoid getting behind either large parties – thank god! We did see four people above Wapowety Cleaver as we came down the DC route. There was a chance of Thunderstorms in the forecast, so we brought a 4-pound 3-man tent which I would’ve rather left home to save weight. I watched a thunderhead form the entire afternoon until sunset, then dissipate into nothing. No precip. A Chihuahua-sized rat circled our open tent looking for food – I tried to scare him off. I slept 0 hours. There was a small drip/water run-off at 11k, but it dried up in the afternoon! Disappointing. The water below The Turtle won't dry up as far as I can tell. Right before crossing the ice chute area below the Kautz Ice Cliff, large blocks of ice (car sized) came down in front of us. We crossed this section in a hurry 5 minutes later. Both the lower and upper ice cliffs were a lot longer than I was expecting. For the upper cliff we climbed near some large nieves penitentes on the right, which we used for rests periodically. We simul-climbed both sections fairly quickly, Alin leading. He placed the occasional screw. There was hard ice all the way up, most of it good (picks and front points stuck well). It got a little rotten near the top. A fall most places would definitely have been catastrophic. This was Dereck’s first time ice climbing and he did great. His rock skills transferred nicely. I would’ve been shitting my pants simul-climbing those long stretches with two people's lives on my shoulders (or straining calves). He had a screw and a tethered axe just in case he got pumped at an inopportune time. I had the same as I'm certainly no ice-climbing star. Above the Ice Cliff there were several large crevasses, some hidden. I jumped one and my left leg punched through. I planted both tools and pulled myself out. Dereck jumped the same crevasse and both his legs punched through. He did the same, Cliffhanger-style. Neither of us died. We then punched through a couple more random spots. This was a dicey section, especially with the increased temps. Our pace quickened up toward the Nisqually above the Wapowety Cleaver. We saw one other party above the Ice Cliff – a guy named JR who was cruising with his son. He’d done the Fuhrer Finger the weekend before with his girlfriend. We had been looking at the Finger from below The Turtle – it looked gnarly. JR knew the way so we followed him around and down around Wapowety Cleaver. He had cruised past all of the other climbers still on the cliff and caught up with us. I guess some had asked him to wait behind them, which he of course didn’t. That would’ve been a big mistake and probably cost him hours and an even riskier descent down the DC. There’s a huge crevasse system that cuts you off from joining the DC route up high, so you traverse toward Pt. Success then up to Columbia Crest. It was cool to see this new area near the summit and to see the DC route from a different perspective. I skied across the summit crater and then we boiled a couple liters at the crater rim before heading down. I skied down to around 13,000’ in shitty, uneven snow, where the first major crevasse bridge awaited. It was hot, I wasn’t about to die when that thing collapsed so I waited 15-20 min for Dereck/Alin and we roped up. The DC descent is sketch now—especially in the heat. Dereck and I were up there less than 2 weeks ago and it was the tamest I’ve ever seen it. Things had changed dramatically – stuff opened up everywhere – longer jumps, sketchier bridges. The snow was also super soft and wet by the time we hit the bad sections. I honestly don’t know what was riskier, simul-climbing the Kautz Ice Cliff or descending the DC in that heat. I skied Ingraham Flats, the Cowlitz, then down from Muir to the top of Pan Face then almost to the parking lot. I was dehydrated and overall had a sad time descending due to heat, lack of water, and zero sleep the night before. The snow was heavy/wet – overall the descent gets a thumbs down. I also haven’t skied much this year so my skillz are poor, making it harder. The snowboard descent 2 weeks ago down the DC was much more fun. Still I don’t regret bringing the skis. I met Dereck/Alin in the parking lot maybe 1-2 hours later. Dereck’s heels were badly blistered. I needed to pick my gf up from the airport so we had no time for a celebratory meal, but we all felt really good about getting this one. Alin and I especially, who have had it on the list for years. This was Dereck’s third summit: He’s done the Emmons, then he snowboarded down the DC with me after a single push, now Kautz. Not a bad intro into mountaineering. This was my ninth time summiting Rainier. I still really want to do Liberty Ridge, the Tahoma Glacier, Gib Ledges, and board down Fuhrer Finger. Next year hopefully. This was Alin's first climb this year - his bike fitness paid off as he was in great shape. Sky in the Paradise parking lot. Iphone pic. Rainier and the super moon from an Eatonville gas station. Iphone pic. Dereck and I headed up "The Turtle" below the Kautz Ice Cliff. Photo by Alin Flaidar. At our 11k camp on the Wapowety Cleaver, watching a thunder cloud form due east. Forecast said chance thunderstorms, we saw none thankfully. Photo by Alin Flaidar. Drying my sweaty socks out, can't beat the view. Iphone pic. I couldn't sleep all afternoon due to the heat, light, and some other reason I don't understand. I watched this thundercloud grow large, then dissipate over a 4-hour span. We had clear weather with low wind from here to the summit that night. The Kautz Ice Cliff from our camp. Our tent is left, Camp Hazard is to the right. A lot of people camped here. The boulders above Camp Hazard look like they could come loose at any moment, so we stayed away. Just above Wapowety Cleaver on the Nisqually Glacier. Alin's self-portrait on the Nisqually Glacier. On the Nisqually Glacier above 13,000ft. We can see the DC climbers, which is a completely new perspective for me. Large impassable crevasses/icefalls separate us. Pt. Success - another climber we met named JR and his son. They helped us with route finding above the Ice Cliff. JR and his son behind a crevasse that seemed to span the entire Nisqually Glacier. End running this to get to the summit caused a detour toward Pt. Success. I snowboarded down the DC under two weeks ago. The DC route now looked completely different as the warm temps have been peeling open crevasses everywhere. This is on the Ingraham Glacier near the DC entrance. Really rough sketch of the line we took up to the summit. GPS track overlaid on Google Earth map. Red lines indicate paths we should have taken. The lower Nisqually and The Fan were very straightforward. We didn't rope up until the Ice Cliff above around 11k ft. We should've taken the yellow path here. You can stay closer to the Cleaver as you get toward the top, crevasses permitting. Gear Notes: 5 screws, used 1 on the lower and a few on the upper. 2 pickets, 0 used but almost fell into a crevasse several times above the ice cliff. 7.7mm 37m rope for simul-climbing. Approach Notes: Didn't rope up or use crampons until the ice cliff. Can't ski all the way to the parking lot anymore.

Awesome! Especially love this image:

Awesome guys - nice work. Jealous - I wanted to do this one this season.

Thanks - sure I hope it's helpful.

Thanks - yeah the descent makes it all worth it for sure.

Trip: The Enchantments - In a Day Date: 6/29/2014 Trip Report: Went with my gf to the Leavenworth Rockfest the other weekend. My right elbow is injured so I needed to keep myself busy during the day. I started at the Stuart Lake trailhead and was in the upper enchantments in just under 2.5 hours. Aasgard was clear of snow, but the Enchantments themselves still had a lot of snow. I postholed a lot near rock boundaries and slipped a bit - almost rolled my ankle more than a few times. Just below Lake Vivian the snow stops and it's clear back to the Snow Lake trailhead. Didn't bring much - my phone, a coat, some spikes just in case (didn't need), and some gu/blocks + 2-ish liters of water. Took a few phone pics but mostly kept moving. Larger pics on Facebook. Gear Notes: Brought spikes, didn't use. Brought a whippet, probably just needed a pole or two. Approach Notes: No snow until the Enchantments proper.

Trip: Mt. Rainier - DC - Single Push + Snowboard Descent from Summit Date: 7/1/2014 Trip Report: I've always wanted to snowboard down from the summit of Mt. Rainier. Dereck and I started out sometime shortly past midnight on Tue July 1st. The lower mountain had severe winds that forced me to adjust my board or get pushed on my face. The winds lessened as we climbed higher. I reached the summit crater 6 hours and 56 minutes after leaving the parking lot. Not a record, but fast for me. It would be fun to stay fit and try again with skis - my board is heavy. The mountain was the most mild I'd seen it, only a few crevasses that were barely worth mentioning. We snowboarded over all of them on the way down. The summit was nice - sunny, very little wind. We chatted with three rangers who were up there for their 3rd day in a row. They said the crevasses were opening up fast - they noticed them getting visibly larger each day. I asked about Lib Ridge (I wanted to climb it this year but I'm afraid I'm missing my chance) - they said people have been on it quite a bit since the accident. One party was swept 1,000ft down in an avy, uninjured, and self-rescued by retreating back down. Boarding off the summit was fun. We cruised across the crater and down the upper mountain without issue. The snow was soft enough to edge. We descended most of the DC to the top of the guide's fixed lines. The deadly runout you see below the DC while descending was a good reminder not to fall. There were 4 areas you had to take off the board: DC bottom, Cathedral rocks, Muir, and Pan face. Only the first one takes sort of a long time. After Pan face we boarded all the way to the parking lot. The severe winds had stuck around, but only down low, so they cooled you off in the rising heat. I skied down Baker, Adams, and Rainier last year. This year I boarded down Baker, now Rainier, so I guess I might go board down Adams this weekend. But then I should probably get on some more tech routes. The real story here--however--is that Bellingham is getting a Chipotle this fall. I was complaining about this to one of the rangers who lives there and he filled me in on the news. Post N. Cascades climbs when you just want to get home but you also want a quick, good meal - this is now going to be possible!!! All pics are from my phone. Bigger versions of the pics on Facebook. Bigger versions of the pics on Facebook. Gear Notes: No rope. Lighter-weight hiking boots that fit in my snowboard bindings. Alum cramps and whippet. Approach Notes: Snow to the parking lot with 4 rocky gaps up to the summit.

It was underneath this

Trip: Mt. Baker - Coleman Deming - Snowboard Descent Date: 6/22/2014 Trip Report: On the summit just before 11am about to push off. Someone peed right at the launch spot (left of my board) - nice work. Snowboarded down from the summit of Mt. Baker Sunday to the treeline (about 6,000-ish ft (?) of continuous boarding). It was the most fun I've had snowboarding. My phone mysteriously died so I was unable to take any pictures on the way down, which really sucked because there were plenty to be had. Things to note: -There were no open crevasses at all on this route. Maybe a tiny crack or two you had to squint to see as you walked over. -Ok there's one crevasse that can sneak up on you just below the Heliotrope Ridge on the left off the boot path, that's about it -All snow was hard going up in the early morning with a staircase more or less to the summit -Coming down snow was mostly good corn, except it could've been a little softer on the Roman Wall. We waited until noon then just went for it, you could def. get an edge in by then. Overall a nice way to spend a Sunday morning. I'm back from a Denali trip so look for a TR on that soon with a ton of pics. Going up Mt. Baker again after getting back from Alaska was definitely strange; The mountain seems so much smaller to me now, but still one of my favorites. Some interesting observations: -Someone did leave 2 full Coronas in the snow right on the path around 8,000ft. I couldn't tell if they were a generous offering to whoever wanted them or they were saving them for the way down and were very trusting people. They looked delicious. -Someone had a camp setup underneath this massive, I mean MASSIVE serac/ice shelf just under Colfax that-from the top of the Roman Wall--looked like it was cracked on all sides and could move off at any moment. This was around 8300 feet as well. The same piece is actually shown in Google Earth so maybe that feature always exists there. Gear Notes: -Brought typical glacier travel stuff, route was so tame/safe relative to how I've usually experienced it that the gear felt a bit superfluous. -Aluminum crampons and lighter weight hikers (snowboarded in these as well) -Bring skis or a snowboard, it makes the trip roughly 500-20,000 billion times more fun. Approach Notes: Snow starts at the treeline around 4500ft and can be skied/boarded--uninterrupted--from summit to this point w/o issue.

Nice work guys - haven't done a winter ascent either and looking to do this route in the next weather window.

Thanks all Eric_K - yeah ski descent would've been nice - especially me almost skiiing into a crevasse. Ran out of go pro battery unfortunately. ARBrandon - I use Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing. There's a bit of time-remapping for the footage on the cliff that this capability in premiere, but for the rest something lower end should work fine. bstach - sounds - various sources - premiumbeat.com had a lot of good ones.

Trip: Mt. Adams - South Route Solo Ski Descent (Go Pro Stills) Date: 7/1/2013 Trip Report: Headed down around 11k ft from the summit of Mt. Adams in late June/early July 2013 (lower quality Go Pro still). I ended up skiing Baker, Adams solo, then Rainier solo in 2013 for the first time. I don't ski well but I'm learning and getting better. I switched from snowboarding to save weight/quicken the transitions. I still love snowboarding. Click pic for a larger version. Follow me on Facebook if you want my pics/video in your feed every now and then, interspersed with ads about your friends liking Verizon. Mt. Adams was my first solo “mountaineering” experience (2009). It felt empowering to climb a mountain on my own for the first time. It was in November when the mountain was covered in ice, and the approach was in bad weather (high winds, blizzard-y snow, a few puddles). I was alone on the mountain while I setup camp under the Lunch Counter (9k ft) after the sun disappeared. A full moon came out that night as the skies cleared. I found something for myself that I’d continue to seek out for the next 5 years. I was fascinated with how the stars and moonlight interacted with the rocks, ice, trees, and mountain streams. I enjoyed reflecting on the shadows and watching how they move under the massive expanse of the universe. I also like Mountain House-brand freeze dried mac ‘n cheese. I called my then-girlfriend from my tent as I was looking out at the glowing upper mountain against the backdrop of stars. I tried to describe the profound affect it had on me, but I couldn’t really do it justice. It had to be experienced. You had to go out there, roll around in the snow, eat some of it, then spit it back out to really “get it”. Seriously though I wanted to share it, but there was also something attractive about the solitude. Robert Frost writes about this idea of the allure of darkness. How tempting it is to let it swallow you up, to give into it completely, but how we resist it, instead trying and live life outside ourselves. The next day I ended up meeting some cool new people, climbing with them, and getting some amazing light and clouds for photography. It was also the first time I had written about a climbing experience, which I found I liked. In other words, Mt. Adams has some significance for me. Back to 2013: My plan after June's Mt Baker North Ridge climb was to continue the recovery from my Nov 2012 bouldering-related ankle injury by going up Adams as fast as possible. I hadn't been back since the fire had scarred the landscape. The bare, blackened trees at the lower elevations contrasted with the blue sky and white clouds and snow-covered upper mountain - a visually inspiring start to my climb. I went up fairly quickly to 10k feet - 3 hours of skinning before developing a bad case of altitude sickness. It put me on the ground for an hour. I also lost my sunglasses when I switched to goggles. I tried to get things under control with food and water, but it didn't help. Earlier I blew past some guys lower down and I saw them passing me now. One said something about "you shouldn't overdo it because that's what can happen" (referring to me) to his friend. I wanted to tell him to f-off, but all I could do was drool and make an "uhgh" sound as I lay sideways, completely immobilized on the steep slope halfway up to Piker's Peak. I tried to flip him off but in my confused state I mistook my middle finger for my thumb, so it looked like I was drooling, moaning incoherently, and giving him a thumbs up. What a pathetic sight. A lot of people were on the mountain so I tried to appear like everything was OK as best I could - hoping to to avoid the barrage of concerned questions. It mostly worked, but there were a lot of people. What a contrast from my 2009 trip. I knew the AMS would either pass or I had the strength to descend if needed. Eventually I rested enough and continued to the summit, the the feeling of nausea/headache slightly reduced. I think the problem was that I drank nothing until the Lunch Counter (9k ft), and was going full steam. I had brought a nalgene vs. a camelbak and paid for it. Constant sipping helps me avoid AMS on fast ascents vs. more sporadic nalgene gulps. The descent from the summit (12,281ft) to Piker's Peak (~11.5k) was pretty icy and choppy, but doable. I had mounted a Go Pro on my pole, and another one on my ski. The Go Pro on my ski fell off around 11.5k ft and thank god someone saw this. I dug around for 10 minutes and recovered it. $400 mistake averted. Piker's (~11.5k ft) back down to the Lunch Counter (9k) was the most enjoyable part of the trip due to the good, corny snow. Visibility then started to suffer as the clouds moved in a bit lower. Below the Lunch Counter visibility worsened and the snow became heavy and uneven. It really sucked to ski in this stop-and-go stuff, especially with my limited skills. I went too far right and found myself off-route near some cornices. The cornices cliffed ahead of me so I back-tracked and pushed off the first cornice. I skied left of this cornice on a steep slope toward a few other straggler climbers. I triggered a small avalanche in doing this. I skied clear and watched the snow continue moving for a while, listening to the varied hissing sound of a minor avalanche. I needed to get lower as I still felt like shit, so I ducked out early before the avalanche had finished performing. I found an entry back onto the main route a bit lower. I was questioning whether or not I could make it to the car due to my lowly, waterless state. I finally reached the dirt/rock walking trail amongst the scorched trees. A group of two men + two women my age were nice enough to give me just a little bit of water they had left. They also offered scotch and company to the car, but there was no way I could swallow alcohol or interact coherently with people. I let them go ahead. When no one was looking I forced myself to puke there between some of those blackened trees that inspired me earlier. Doing this reminder me of the scene from Zoolander where Matilda said she was bulimic and Zoolander asks her if she can read minds. After puking I felt better and made it back to the car where recovery finally began. The long drive back seemed to go quickly. Despite the altitude sickness, I was happy I made the trip. I'm always happy I make these trips, even if I'm solo and even if things don't go as planned. A few moments of joy within hours of misery somehow makes it all worth it. I was also able to capture some Go Pro stills I thought looked interesting. Heading up to the summit. Go Pro still (all are unless specified differently). About 12,000 feet, almost there. Ski crampons came in handy here. Headed down just below the summit. Go Pro mounted to the front of my ski. Visibility drops toward 9,000, getting me off route. About to bite it up near the summit. Will the two people in the distance laugh at me? Or will they laugh *with* me? Answer: A. Not a big slapstick fan. The distance. Scorched earth. Phone pic. The drive back into Oregon. Mt. Hood hiding behind clouds to the right. Phone pic. Approach Notes: This was back in July so everything was good.

Nice shots Jason!

Trip: Mt. Baker - North Ridge - Experimental Go Pro Footage on the Ice Cliff Date: 6/7/2013 Trip Report: [video:vimeo]84864525 Experimental video using Go Pro footage from my June 2013 climb up Mt. Baker's North Ridge ice cliff (trying to make a bunch of boring Go Pro footage interesting). This climb was a new level for me - it was an unforgettable experience. Please use headphones or a good sound system when watching this video as it's sound-intensive. Following Piotr up Baker's North Ridge ice cliff this past June with a skis on my back. This is the first of two steep pitches on the eastern side of cliff proper. Climbing the second pitch left me with some of the most heightened feelings I've ever felt climbing. The climb's difficulty (for me), theshenanigans we had to go through on the approach, and the ski descent all came together to make this among my most memorable climbs yet. Perhaps only Stuart's Complete North Ridge later this year would eclipse it, but both are very different. I tried to climb Baker's North Ridge in July 2011. A climbing partner'scrampon mix-up from halted that (story/picshere). I tried again with a strong team in May of 2012, but a storm turned us around at the base of a section of the ice cliff none of us were going to climb anyway, causing quite the epic (story, pics, and videohere). I tried again in August of 2012, but we couldn't seem to find passage onto the ridge due to late season conditions. We spent too much time trying a different route up the extremely broken up Roosevelt (story, picshere). Everyone knows that the fourth times a charm I think, so me, Catalin, Piotr, and Alin tried again in June 2013 and we finally got it. It was one of the best, most intense climbing experiences I've had yet. A washout/road closure added 16 miles of boring fire road walking to the approach (round trip). I somehow convinced Piotr, Catalin, and Alin that I could pull them on a bicycle attached to my dirt bike with some static rope as a way of overcoming the approach difficulties. Cut to me in ski boots on my Husqvarna 450 with full overnight pack and skis on, pulling Piotr in the dark, eight miles up a bumpy fire road at 15-20mph, with zero communication between us to the bike's noise and no way for him to stop. At first he said it was so fun he might pay to do something like that, but after a couple miles and rougher roads it became pretty precarious. I kept looking back, expecting to see him dragging along with the overturned bicycle, his pack caught in the spokes. Thankfully he made it unscathed. I dropped him at the Heliotrope trail head, put the bicycle on my shoulders with a sleeping pad as buffer, and hauled ass 8 miles back to beginning of Glacier Creek road to pick up Alin/Catalin. Alin would ride on the back of the bike (it's not really made for 2), and I'd tow Catalin the same way I did for Piotr. This worked out fine until I needed to stop at a bridge and Catalin kept going until the static rope pulled taut and sent him flying over the handle bars, hitting his helmet on something hard. Miraculously he was not injured so we kept going. By this time it was pretty late so we opted to sleep, then haul overnight gear up to a basecamp on the Coleman to make sure we did the climb with maximum daylight. The original plan was to do it in one push with lighter packs, but we wanted to give ourselves the maximum chance for success - what with this being the fourth attempt for Alin and me This was the first real climb I'd done since my ankle injury (bouldering accident) that incapacitated me for 5+ months, so I wasn't overly excited about a heavy pack plus skis, but oh well. I also didn't really know how to ski very well yet, but I knew enough it turned out. Anyway I'll let the pictures and captions tell the rest of story, but this was a really special climb for me and one of the highlights of my year. I ended up skiiing both Rainier and Mt. Adams solo after this after realizing how much fun it is to ski these big volcanoes. Piotr ended up breaking his wrist while riding his bike back in the dark. He did some impressive leading of both ice cliff pitches and some sketchy route finding around the large schrund area up top. I remember coming out of the chimney on the second ice pitch and being shocked at how much further I had to go on what felt like vertical terrain. I don't think I could've led that - nice work Piotr. Someone also broke the window on my rig and stole only my favorite pair of jeans, which were so hard to find due to my height. They took my jeans and left my Ipad mini. If you ever see someone in the town of Glacier with cool jeans that look way too long on them, please let me know. We rode the whole way home exhausted with a missing window, so I'd like to have a few words with the a-hole who did that. Note: Almost all pics are Go Pro video stills. I did bring a DSLR up and over, but didn't really use it. Organizing gear 8 miles from the trail head due to a road closure. I had a crazy idea to tow team members on a bicycle from my motorcycle to cut down on the approach. It worked...kind of. Photo by Piotr Chadovich. I don't usually wear ski boots on my 450, or do I? Photo by Alin Flaidar. We didn't originally intend to take an overnight pack past the trail head, but we got in later than expected and wanted to give ourselves maximum daylight to climb this thing. Good choice in the end. Anyway, I guess all this shit actually does fit in/on a 52L pack. Comfortably though? Not sure I'd go that far.Photo by Alin Flaidar. From our camp on the lower Coleman - a familiar alpine scene - blue sky, clouds casting shadows on the rock, snow and ice. I haven't tired of it yet. Piotr and Catalin fueling up at camp. Late afternoon stroll on the Coleman in shadows and clouds for some crevasse rescue practice Skinning over cracks in the lower Coleman looking for some large holes in which to lower ourselves. The next day. Long morning shadows follow us across the Coleman toward the North Ridge base. Hole patterns over a crevasse on the Coleman. Piotr greets the morning Sun. The North Ridge is straight ahead. Crossing over a 6' wide snow bridge on the largest crevasse I saw on the mountain. It looked like a cathedral. This picture doesn't do it justice, but trust me it was massive. One other party behind us taking the ridge. Clouds move off the West side of Baker as the sun continues to rise . Me on the North Ridge with some extra weight on my back. Colfax and Lincoln are behind me. Conditions were perfect down here. It got really windy higher up. Moving higher toward the bass of the ice cliff proper after a steep traverse that emptied into a large crevasse. The exposure left overlooking the Roosevelt Glacier was pretty spectacular. Piotr getting ready to lead the first pitch of the ice cliff. Following on pitch one. Me trying to come to terms with how I'm going to get up and over the cliff's abrupt corner. Looking down often to enjoy the view and appreciate this incredible climb. Setting up getting up and over the corner. It looked like it was going to be tricky. Relieved to be over the corner, some easier climbing until we get inside the chimney above. More steepness to go past the chimney. Catalin and Alin probably hated me by now as these chunks probably bounced off of their helmets. On the edge of the corner. Some nice exposure on the right. This should be enough to make about 8 snow cones for my belayers. Just trying to be thoughtful. Might even be enough for 9-10 snow cones, thinking about it more. Piotr's anchor in the chimney. My GoPro went dead just before I started climbing the second pitch here which was one of the most elated moments climbing. Ridiculous exposure on both sides and much steeper than the first pitch, seemingly sustained for longer. Above the ice cliff, relaxing to 55-60 degrees...ish. My second Go Pro. I also brought a heavy DSLR/lens up and over. I didn't take it out of the bag once past camp. Steep but easier on the upper North Ridge. God sprinkled in some high winds and low clouds to add drama to our climb. We arrive at the serac and crevasse maze on upper North Ridge's bergschrund-y area. The snow bridge directly ahead was wide and weak, I almost punched through. Piotr did an admirable job of trying to navigate through this thing, which at times seemed a bit unnavigable. Thin, weak and wide bridge over a sizable crevasse. I punched through past my knees and peed my pants a little. Broken pieces of ice litter some of the most interesting terrain I've seen. Piotr working his way through obstacles, doing some solid route finding. I thought this crevasse had much more of an overhanging, weak lip than it actually did so I crossed it pack/ski-less. I didn't need to do that it turned out, but look I got this picture. Some really fun, sometimes steep broken up terrain at the final stretch. We had no idea what would be at each turn, and at least I was very surprised we reached the summit plateau without running into several un-crossable serac/crevasse sections. Having to retreat back down the ice cliff would've made this a serious epic. We nodded to the true summit on our way toward the Roman Wall, we'd all been there before (I'm pretty sure). I skied down a decent chunk back to camp. It was so icy down low I nearly skied straight into a giant crevasse. Everyone punched through the ice but my skis raced across its super slick surface at speeds that easily took up up and over a hill. Our route up the North Ridge. An unforgettable climb. This was the fourth attempt at the North Ridge for Alin and I. Persistence works. Copied from my blog. Follow me on Facebook if you want pics/video from me in your feed every now and then. Luke Gear Notes: 8 screws I think? A few pickets. 2x60m 8mm half ropes. Approach Notes: 8 miles extra each way (this was during the washout). Leaving car here meant a broken window and stolen jeans. Pissed.

Thanks Jason/SacredSilly. Jason I would say 85%+ are with my Canon 16-35mm f2.8L lens, but sometimes I bring my 70-200mm f4 for telephoto shots. The nicest UWA lens I think is Nikon's 14-24 though, especially for night shots. It's big, heavy, and expensive though.

Thanks all. Fairweather - it was actually a special battery that was a bit larger than a motorcycle battery. It did not perform as expected so I could only get stills vs. a timelapse unfortunately. Maybe 1.5 hours. The cold probably had something to do with it, I think a Lithium Ion battery might have been better.

Trip: Mt. Rainier - Muir - Christmas Lights + Large Battery = ??? Date: 1/7/2014 Trip Report: Audrey outside the Muir hut. Click for a larger version on 500px.com Larger versions of these pictures are on Facebook, feel free to add to your feed if you want. Happy New Year everyone. Audrey and I brought Christmas lights and large battery up to Camp Muir for some pictures to help close out the holiday season and bring in the new year. I carried the 5 pound battery . Rock climber turned Alpinist. Iphone pic. I met this astronaut-looking person up around 7,500ft. Iphone pic. Wind gusts picking fights as the sunset. Around 9,000 feet. Iphone pic. Respite from the gusts in the Muir hut. Decorating for the holidays. Ran into Olegv getting ready for sleep. Their Nisqually Ice Cliff attempt turned into a Gibraltar Ledges climb after seeing that the route wouldn't go. Olegv. A beautiful night. Spindrift allowing for ray-tracing. Self-portrait overlooking the Cowlitz Glacier. More Christmas posing. Me watching Olegv and his partner make their way up the Gibraltar Ledge route around 5am. Composite of around 15-20 images over ~1.5 hours. Audrey heading down back to the car. That pack looks big. Iphone pic. Copied from my blog. Gear Notes: Crampons advised, snow shoes with good traction prob OK. Brought skis as well - there's quite a bit to be had. Approach Notes: Icy as fuck just above panorama point to around 8000.

Thanks for the comments/reading all. pdxtaco I use Garmin Basecamp to generate a GPX file I just drag into Google Earth.

Trip: Mt. Fernow - In Deep Snow Wearing a Dress Date: 10/5-6/2013 Trip Report: Click for a larger version. Linsey coming back down from Fernow's 9,249ft summit around 9am. Fresh snow was thigh deep in places. A frosted Mt. Maude (left), Seven Finger Jack (middle), and Mt. Rainier (middle distance) surround us to the south/east. I've now climbed 9 of the 10 tallest WA peaks, not necessarily on purpose. Larger versions of these pictures are on Facebook. You can like my Facebook page if you want to see my photography in your FB feed sometimes. This post will primarily be visual, but here are some things I'll remember most: --The sound of the wind picking up at night, high above our camp at 7,700ft. I couldn't sleep and I heard the wind slowly build in the distance. There was something powerful/profound about listening to it come alive that night. --We saw no other person past about the 4-5 mile mark lower down. --Me constantly questioning avalanche danger, especially after another party doing Carne relayed--second hand--a sighting of a larger avalanche in the area recently. Ultimately we saw only pinwheels of all sizes and smaller debri. There was one mud/slash snow avy lower down, and one narrower proper slide under the summit block, but still pretty minor. We heard a massive roar at some point, but saw nothing to indicate is was an avalanche. Linsey suggested it might have been military aircraft, which we did spot the next morning. On our way back we had sweeping views of all suspect slopes in the immediate area, only pinwheel and sloughs could be seen. Ultimately it seems there wasn't enough of a snow base to cause any major slides. --Being thankful to Linsey for not allowing us to ditch snow shoes early on. Post 4-5k, the snow would go up to my thigh in many places, and snow shoes became pretty crucial to our success. --After some route finding difficulty, Linsey plowing down an aggressive descent path from the col below Seven Finger Jack to the West. I guess I had to follow. --The sometimes verglass-y, snow covered final scramble being pretty sketch in places on the north side. After topping out, we opted for a short rap off to the east to mitigate sketchier down-climbing. --The weather being mostly perfect the entire time. --The golden larches filling themselves in on snowy ridges against the large scale, frosted rock features of these gorgeous Entiat mountains. --A final tense questioning in the early morning, dark hours before going up the long 2,000 avy slope to the summit. --Glacier Peak looming large, pink in the early morning alpenglow. I opted not to bring my telephoto lens to the summit. I now regretted it. --Linsey wearing a dress and gaiters about 8 miles in around 7,700ft and walking around the larches in this surreal, completely isolated landscape. Walking on shadows. Last rays of light. Walking on shadows II. Cliffs and a girl in a dress. A broken larch. Listening to the wind. Time-lapse still of a time-lapse that will become part of my nearly complete Time-lapse project. Ready to rappel from the summit. Northeasterly from the summit. Patterns and slough on the descent. Glacier Peak to the southwest. Victory march back to camp. Left - where we came from. Middle - our camp. Bottom - coming down from the steeper 2,000 slope from Fernow's summit block. Blue and gold. Close to 9k in total elevation gain, about 19-20 miles round trip. On part with Rainier less max altitude. Trailhead to the summit. Tricky descent from the col. Some say they take the glacier to the left, it looked pretty steep. Elevation loss bottoms out to the right, camp is where you see the text. South side of Fernow for the final 500-600 feet.The Entiat river's source is at the base of the south side. Glacier Peak looms large to the Northwest. Copied from my blog. Luke Gear Notes: 30m rope for rap off summit. Not strictly necessary for stronger, braver down-climbers. Alum cramps for me with a super light axe. There was some technical, steeper rocky/icy stuff, but we were able to down-climb and avoid the harder ice sections. White dress and as usual the heavy camera gear. Approach Notes: Snowshoes were pretty key to speed. Skis would've been nice I guess, but the snow was so variable at in many places had hidden rocks, not sure it would've been great.

Thanks - yeah I'm sure the summit sucks for a bivy - I wouldn't be camping on it for comfort. As always main motivation is typically interesting photo perspectives, often resulting in extreme discomfort (Little Tahoma summit comes to mind).

Trip: Boston Basin - Forbidden Peak Approach - Date: 9/1/2013 Trip Report: Audrey placing a light source for a time-lapse on an exposed ridge between the Taboo and unnamed glacier below Forbidden Peak. Click the pic above or most pics for a much larger version of Facebook. Audrey and I went to try and camp on Forbidden's summit by climbing the West Ridge. We instead wound up hanging out in the Boston Basin area, relaxing and taking in the gorgeous scenery. We made it to the high camp in only 2.5 hours with a 40-pound pack, then cruised up some waterfall ledges and skirted the Unnamed Glacier below Forbidden on the left (West) side. After some glacial traversing on moderately steep terrain, we turned around (see pic below for route info). The snow wasn't great for steps, and Audrey's still pretty new to snow/ice. It wasn't super steep, I just didn't like it. There was a thin layer of soft snow on ice, and you couldn't really kick good steps, yet blowing "steps" out was easy to do. That said the sun was doing more softening as the day aged, but mostly I was dreading downclimbing in the morning on super hard snow in alum crampons with a bad runout. I brought a picket but it wouldn't go. I needed a screw and didn't have one, otherwise I could just belay her down then solo. Anyway, I'm sure more experienced climbers wouldn't think twice about this section/have any issues (later we saw two guys cruise over it w/o much issue as it softened up even more). I ended up downclimbing back to Audrey, anchoring in the softer snow by a glacial lip, lowering her off the 10 foot little ice cliff back to rock, then climbing back on the glacier alone the way we came. We talked about options, I did some scouting around a corner that would bypass a lot of the glacier, but we ultimately decided there was plenty to enjoy down lower. Heading back down to some seracs that offered shade on their "safe" sides, we relaxed then went exploring on the ridge between the Taboo Glacier (below Torment) and the Unnamed Forbidden Glacier. We found a cool little bivy spot on a ledge overlooking the very broken up, loud Taboo Glacier. The Milky Way came out as darkness fell and after some pics and a time-lapse set up, it was off to sleep under the stars, which looked brighter than I've seen them in a long time. I woke up a few times to loud rock fall and glacier break-up activity, which did not surprise me. In the morning we headed down over the beautiful slab granite and waterfalls as the sun rose. We were back to the car in no time then stopped in Arlington for some French Toast. The route is super accessible/short/moderate so I'm sure I'll be back soon. I hadn't been to this area before and am happy to have made the visit. I'm also glad I had the opportunity to just chill and enjoy the surroundings vs. having to constantly move and worry about deadlines. Sometimes it's nice to stop and smell the massive seracs near glacial moraines. Audrey admiring Johannesburg Mountain from the main camp in Boston Basin. Large blocks of ice slowly slide down a thousand feet of slab granite. Johannesburg, a shadow, a grassy knoll, morning. Click for a larger version. Alleyways between large seracs cast shadows on the rock and each other. The sun causes them to break further and slide down the hillside. Click for a larger version. Lush green on the left (East) and the Taboo Glacier on the right (West). Johannesburg on the left and Glacier Peak in the distance to the left. Click for a larger version. Audrey down-climbing the exposed ridge at night. Forbidden Peak West Ridge, Route Photos Route up to the West Ridge of Forbidden. A party of two came down in the dark, you can see one headlamp on a rappel a quarter of the way up the rock. We went up to the green "x" then I decided to turnaround. The concern was downclimbing sketchiness in the morning. Audrey has little to no experience on snow and the snow wasn't great. I lowered Audrey off the glacier, then scouted the blue line, which would go avoiding more snow, but still would require a decent amount of downclimbing on hard snow in tennis shoes and aluminum cramps. Looking at this pic though it looks pretty casual. The basin was beautiful so I didn't care either way, there were photos to be had everywhere. Audrey checks out the Taboo Glacier while the party of two continue to descend the gulleys below Forbidden's West Ridge. From the car you can get up this thing pretty quickly if you're motivated . Yes Steve House, I do offer ice climbing lessons. Photo by Audrey Sniezek. Copied from my blog. Luke