trees4me

Did the W ridge a couple years ago and this is what I remember: all pitches were ~30 +/-10m p1: From the notch, headed out on the north side and up a chimney-ish thing to gain the ridge again (5.easy) p2: short up and over along the ridge, just south of the ridge crest (my crux? 5.6 I was doing some silly frictiony stuff and not looking for the easiest line) then we scrambled (or belayed?) down easy blocks to sandy ledges on south side (go down and right). p3: looked around from ledges and wandered a bit trying to decide... finally chose a middle line between some small ridges p4: went left and up a bit to get back onto the main N/S ridgeline p5/6: After gaining the ridge it was easy (could've unroped, but we had them on so just ran it out). Stayed on north side and followed easy class 3-5.easy terrain to summit. Apparently I didn't do a TR for that climb... weird. If it's not on the internet it never happened!

W side of Painted, at ~4500'

I've been by this one on the Mt Loop a couple times. Not an ice climber, but it sure looks enticing from across the valley. This was taken on Saturday, I'd guess ~500' of ice.

well someone got all excited in there and she'll never be pink again. It was a fun fall trip with a noob. I wish I'd have gotten one more climb in last weekend. It was a weird year as I did 4 alpine climbs with 4 different sets of partners. I still haven't found a new partner who dreams of obscure alpine 5.4's in the rain... Guess it's time to start skiing.

Trip: Yellow Jacket Tower, - Standard Date: 10/19/2013 Trip Report: YJT on Your Zipper My buddy Coop had started bouldering a bit, so it wasn't too hard to convince him that he needed to get into the alpine. After a couple trips to the crag to learn how to dangle from a rope, we found ourselves driving across Steven's pass in the dark with the gas light on. Coasting into Leavenworth, we filled up on gas, flipped society one last bird, and headed up the icicle. I had forgotten all beta and map, but had read about the climb on the internet, so we were set. Coop paused at the signs stating "private property do not enter", "pass here and die", and "trespassers will be shot". I told him not to worry that we were on route and the signs are just to weed out the gym rats. We huffed and puffed up 2000' of hook creek approach trail, stopping to take in the amazing fall colors and morning light (and mostly catch our breath). Eventually we got to the main approach gully and scrambled awkwardly around the lower chockstone step. Up the sandy gully goat trail for a bit, then to the fork: a couple years ago i had gotten sucked up and left here, so we went right and scrambled up easy rock steps and sandy ledges. Then we were at chicken head wall, hungry and ready to climb. We dinked around trying to hang a pack at ideal goat pinata height, and then peeing as much as we could to attract them to the spot. Once we were satisfied with our goat diversion, we roped up and started up the final class 3/4 approach pitch. I had scrambled this pitch a couple years ago on a failed attempt at this epic tower. This time we pitched this out, not wanting to overwork a new partner's nerves through an awkward class 3+ step. We anchored into a nice two bolt setup at the bottom of the first class 5 pitch, and I then sewed the next 30-ft like I was making a sweater for a dying orphan. Lots of easy placements in the crack and fun/easy class 5 climbing using the crack and the left slab face. At the top of the pitch, I setup at the tree beforer the cave, waved at Coop and yelled "on-belay". He climbed up efficiently, with only one stop mid-pitch to take pictures. A couple scramble moves got us over the cave and onto the large ledge just below the tower. We soaked up the sun and views for a while, then decided we better get after the last short pitch of climbing. I followed the main crack up climbers left to right, worming my way up an unnecessary chimney move, before getting to the base of the final 15' of the climb. This is where everyone says to use a pink tri-cam in the little pocket to provide a last bit of protection. The hole is way bigger than a pink, but I plugged in a red. This really only gets you 6' higher protection than the horizontal crack at your feet. A bit of mantling and grunting and I was on the summit, belaying Coop up from a bomber set of tat, chain, and bolts. The views from this little summit were much better than I had expected. It was a blue bird fall day with a dusting high on the ridges above and fall colors in full force. Edwards Peak and the Hook Creek group looked incredible with snow starting about 500' below. After basking in the sun for a while having lunch on picnic ledge, we began rapping down. 3 raps down our 3 pitches, plus 2 raps down lower got us out. Unfortunately even with extensive effort, we did not attract any goats to our bag. With no goats to rangle and ride down the trail, we set off down the steep approach. Screwed around at the rat creek boulder a bit, before heading to Bavaria for overpriced beer, brats, and slutty german chicks. Welcome to the alpine Coop! YJT Hanging out at the top of the main class 5 pitch (our p2) Just about to top out Fall is here Summit pose Gear Notes: Red or brown tri-cam fits in summit pocket, but just don't fall. Friends with SLRs are even better than friends with boats. Approach Notes: Don't get shot, find a big boulder, go up

Right. People seek out mountain objectives and long breakable crust runs are just a bonus! If you're already a boarder, then either carrying your board with snowshoes or getting a split is a natural progression in winter travel. It's a bigger leap to just start skiing, one that only pays off if you're willing to put in the time. For any of the gear, just by something cheap to try it out.

If you don't have time to learn to ski and are a competent snowboarder, you should just get the saw out and make your snowboard into a split. That's going to be the cheapest option dirtbaggest option. It'll get you down (not necessarily up) a lot faster on most winter trips. Just get binding kit and skins and you're good to go. Depending on the trip and snow conditions, snowshoes can be the ideal weapon of choice. Plus it's way easier to land a front flip on snowshoes Learning to ski takes time. Learning to skin efficiently takes time. Learning to descend in any snow condition in the cascades takes time. Don't let people fool you, skiing is not faster right away but it can be much much faster.

Here's my thoughts, feel free to disagree: If you're big and/or aggressive enough, all the AT bindings fail. They fail in different ways, but they all have weaknesses. I've broken 4 different parts on dukes, but still believe they're the most "reliable" option on the market right now for me. All the AT bindings have their different problems: Tech, naxo/fritschi, duke, salomon. I haven't heard of anyone breaking an MFD yet, but in time I bet even it would wear out. Mechanical systems just wear out, and if you're focused on weight then you give up a lot in terms of reliability/performance. DH bindings are much more reliable and your AT bindings will last much longer if you use DH bindings for in-bounds. The swap plates or binding inserts are a good way to have a quiver of skis without too many bindings. The drawback is a little more weight (with plates) and a little more hassle when you want to switch setups. If you only change once or twice in the spring, then this is a good option. Naxos and Fritschis are basically dead. Other than to try the sport out for cheap, I don't see them being the right choice for anyone else. The barons/dukes are the only at binding that I'd recommend people ski inbounds. The rest are really a compromise in terms of release capability or durability. While that compromise is generally ok for backcountry where only 5-25% of your time is going downhill, it doesn't seem appropriate for in-bounds/side country where 80-100% of your time is going downhill. I ski my dh bindings in bounds as much as possible because they're more robust and have better release than the dukes. By a binding with a DIN setting for you. If you're set to 8, don't go get a duke, get the baron instead. If you have your dynafits cranked down all the way at a pseudo-10 or 12, then you may actually need a 16-din binding. The higher the din equals more weight and on Shuksans or Havocs you'll notice the weight difference of a heavier binding when you're skiing.

Thanks for the heads up Chris! Probably want to x-post to TAY random tracks too...

Trip: East Wilman Spire - Beckey Date: 9/14/2013 Trip Report: T-man and Mike R let me tag along on a fun climb from t-man's list. This one wasn't really on my radar, but ended up being a really fulfilling fun day in the alpine. Beautiful trail in to glacier meadows, followed by some easy fun boulder hopping up to the gully base. The gully had a thin snow arete for 100-200' in the middle, but was otherwise snow free. T-man headed up he gully climbers right of the snow, while I thought I had a fun class 3/4 ramp system scoped out climbers right. Sucked Mike into my route, he had a 50-50 shot at it and blew it! Ended on a 30' blank slab that t-man through the rope up to us on... enough screwing around in the gully let's get climbing! Standard-ish route was done with a 60m double in three shortish pitches. I took the 2nd pitch as a traverse left mostly class 3/4, and Mike R took the money pitch (3) to the summit. It was pretty airy and I was happy to be dangling around below on that one. I think some people do this in 2 30m pitches by heading straight up the rap route from the end of p1, but that was awful looking rock compared to the solid rock we had climbers left. Three raps got us off the summit, i slipped on the 2nd and had a huge free hanging coo-coo clock move. Grabbed the gear and then to speed time over downclimbing we rapped 4 times down the gully (2 off rusty pitons, 1 new nut and 1 rap sling). mt bikes kinda suck if they're locked to a rack with no key... otherwise mtb are faster than walking Gear Notes: Slings for rapping and maybe a piton or two might be a good idea. Always bring bolt cutters for your partners bike locks Approach Notes: 32x25 is ok for going in, but kinda slow for the flats and going out

I can't wait for the current pack trend to die (lighter, poor durability, and poor comfort). I've certainly tried the overpack a small pack thing, but it always sucks. Not worth it in my experience. If you drink a little muscle milk before you go, and decide you can carry a whopping 1-2 more pounds of pack weight in that 65 lb pack then try the Deuter Aircontact series. The Deuter bags have been pretty durable for me, and heavier fabric is worth every ounce when strapping 6 foot long knives to your back. I've pushed 100 lbs in my Aircontact65, though that was a bit too much.

Trip: Cutthroat Peak - N Ridge to False summit Date: 8/25/2013 Trip Report: Finally lured my friends out for some alpine rock. They both did the cutthroat classic on Saturday (Matt placed 11th overall!), so it was easy to convince them to climb the north ridge on sunday. The cc.com and t-man's beta was good, thanks! It sounded like pitch 1 was the worst, so we looked around for the "hidden gully" referenced in an old Mountie report. Found it! Pitch 1 was probably my favorite, easy climbing with lots of cracks for pro up a gully feature. To find the gully go to the apex of the big dirt fan at the right in Boo's photo ( link ). The gully heads left from this fan. Starting up pitch 1: Pitch 1 went for about 45m to some nice trees, then we belayed up a loose class 3 pitch to the ridge. From the ridge it was a series of fun steps broken up by easy class 3 scrambling. starting up the ridge: After a couple pitches along the ridge I ran into a problem I didn't really like. I didn't see any good pro in the first 10-15' and there was one move that felt a bit above the 5.6-.7 I was expecting. After feeling it out, I bailed to search out an easier path. I decided to climb out left on an awkward exposed traverse that had the advantage of me not decking if I fell. Definitely the hardest moves of the day, but there was at least 4 routes through this area I saw so I probably should've just looked around. Past my manufactured "crux" and we were enjoying the ridge again. And the slabs were a fun super grippy finish to the false summit. (false) Summit! After reaching the false summit, we could finally see south and the sky was black with thunderstorm. It seemed to be moving pretty fast right at us and I was a bit worried about the speed of our raps, so we bailed. Saw a bit of lightning not too far off, and the rain hit at our last rap. Really cool route, with great friends. This was the first 3-person climb I've done and M&J's first alpine rock climb. We were definitely working out some kinks and could have been more efficient. Overall this was a big intro to alpine rock and they did awesome. Even with my crappy leading abilities we made the false summit car-to-car in under 11 hours. We figured it would've added 2 hours more for us to tag the summit and back. Pics are all by Matt, thanks for being the ice cream in our alpine sandwich! Gear Notes: hexes, nuts and tricams to 2.5" lots of doubles and a couple triples and singles single 60m rope sweet 3-man rap technique worked great Approach Notes: go to wedding, then pack, then drive to trailhead and sleep next to portapotties in parking lot

That's it! The lower part of that page was very faded and we couldn't make out the last few lines. The 1991 group was barely legible, and I didn't make out the 2004 group at the bottom. Must be pretty harsh winters up there ! It's a cool area, and I'd like to go back a bit lighter and faster for a traverse ROG-ABC-Warr-Cons linkup, basically a Tunnel Creek high route. That'd be cool!

A rare spotting of the Olympic Honey Badger

Fisher NCNP

April in Wallowas

Photos of climbers trying to snowshoe, I still don't know what happened here

If you want to go cheap, i've got an old 3-season 2-man that has worked pretty well for winter camping. It's a 2-wall from the early 90's so it only has a small amount of mesh. Not the best in super high winds above treeline, but depends on what kind of winter camping you're doing. price: sixer of winter ale pm if interested

Trip: Mt Pugh - Date: 12/1/2012 Trip Report: A quick condition report for anyone looking to get out high. We made a quick run at Pugh on Saturday. Snow was falling at Metan Lake, but no snow sticking until above 4000'. Followed the summer trail until the edge of the trees then donned snowshoes to climb to stujack pass. Boulder field was mostly filled in, but a few deep holes kept in interesting. Big difference in snowpack above Stujack Pass (5500-6000'). Soft windslabs had formed on both sides of the ridge, but were deeper on the NE (4-12" Q1). Easy to trigger this upper layer, and there was a deeper soft slab in places (18-24" down Q1.5). Spent 1.5h wallowing in snowshoes to make it up to pt 6170 before giving up. Could just see across the Straight, but no summit view. We weren't gonna make the summit in daylight and the reactive softslab was getting deeper. Wish I had skis up high, but that's a long way to carry them for 1k of skiing. Took everything, but only used snowshoes and a second ax (for a rocky crux). My bro pulled over the crux with just one ax. Gear Notes: ss, avy gear, 1 ax Approach Notes: 4h to stujack, pretty easy, very low avy risk until boulder field

Trip: Chair Peak - West (or NW) Ridge Date: 9/14/2012 Trip Report: We got skunked last weekend trying to cram a 2 day trip into 1 day. Since the weather continues to be fantastic for climbing, Ryan and I took Friday off to grab one last alpine rock climb for the season. There was no way we were letting a failure linger through the winter! We're both pretty new to rock, so we haven't done much in the area. At this point in the season we wanted a test to prove that we'd made some improvement. After going through the long to-do list the West Ridge of Chair Peak was selected. The reported grade III and class 5.7 climbing was going to be a challenge for us, but we were up for a test. In all, the climb went very well. The beta in Martin's report and in this blog post were good and easy to follow. We ended up doing 6 belayed pitches, with a bit of scrambling to the summit. looking up the chimney/gully at mostly solid rock looking down at the chimney/gully from the ridge Chockstone chimney, fun face climbing above A cool exposed belay at a horn. Our pitch 3/4 just below headwall step. Exposed but easy ridge travel We had two small variations (or misreadings) with the beta: 1) we started with a nice easy ledge pitch by taking climbers right of the main chimney/gully reported as the start. This allowed us to belay from the top of this ramp in a spot protected from rockfall, and reach the ridge in a single 50-55m pitch (our pitch 2). 2) At the "headwall" (a 10-ft high wall) we just went right over the top and stayed on the ridge. I looked around for pro, and found a loose horn on the right that didn't look good, but further right found a upward flaring pocket that somehow held a pink tri-cam. This offered a small amount of protection, but mostly just piece of mind for mantling over the headwall. Once over the headwall the climbing eases, but remains exposed. We avoid simul-climbing (as it's just not a technique we're good with yet), so we scrambled some and belayed 2 more pitches. Not sure if I'd call it 5.7, definitely 5.6. The face climbing along the ridge and going over the headwall step was really cool on good rock. Overall, it was a fun climb and we were stoked to get back in to NBBG for celebratory beers! more pics if you're into that Gear Notes: Don't take crampons and ice ax, we did and it was only good for impressing the sorority girls on the snow lake trail... Gear to 2 or 2.5". I mostly placed nuts, with a few larger pieces. 60m single was fine, 50m probably would've worked Approach Notes: NE Buttress, scramble past roped party, 10 min of easy scrambling gets you to the base of the chimney.

That's a great variation! Better to have an Olympic tarn to yourself than be with the masses in Royal Basin anyway.

did you find a summit register up there? I couldn't find one last year. Finger traverse looks pretty cool, have to check out that way next time!

the local walmart was out of helper bears, is that something I have to go to REI to get?

We found 3 slings, 2 were faded enough to be from 2004, while one seemed shiny (2009 i guess...). I saw a film canister, but it had a note from the 70's in it. Everything was soaked and rotting so unless you brought your own paper/pencil there was no way to leave anything. It's a nice vantage point and a fun area, but a bit loose. Definitely a good adventure

Is there a snow patch by the false summit still? We're hoping that some of that patch is still left for water. cool climb, nicely done.