diepj

In general climbing with a slight precip prob forecast or small accumulation is feasible. A big risk will be increasing avy danger from any new storm or wind slabs or the effect of increasing load on the existing snowpack. It doesn't take a lot of new precip coupled with wind transport to make for dangerous slabs. Your other main risk is losing visibility. Whenever you go out you should be prepared to get back in limited/no vis. This means knowing the headings you need to safely back down. Mt Hood south side is not a place to navigate by dead reckoning. What seems straightforward in good vis is actually quite deceiving in a white out. For this particular case I'm not sure what forecast you're looking at. Right now I see chances for light snow all day Saturday. NWS says little to no accumulation but mountain-forecast is calling for 5-8" depending on elevation. If you want to climb Sunday pay very close attention to actual accumulation totals. If precip comes through as forecasted on M-F climbing in the early hours on Sunday could be dangerous. As always have a plan B and allow for your objective to change with changes in conditions and your observations.

Yeah, 8 mile. Thanks for the beta!

Sweet! How far up NF 7601 could a person get right now with a 4wd vehicle? NF website says icicle creek road and 7601 are both open but I assume that means no gate but at some point the snow will stop you.

What city/town are you in?

Rare! Thanks for the TR and pics. Helps keep the stoke alive until the weather turns back in our favor.

Sweet! Thanks for the link. There are many things I won't aspire to in that TR including running laps in my mountain boots!

Thank you and exactly. If skiing was what I was interested in I would have TLTs and dynafits hands down. And I'd go to Utah instead of Alaska. Or I'd use the stack of tele setups currently collecting dust in the garage. My main interest is making it easier and relatively safer to glacier travel in order to climb. I don't have an unlimited budget so I'm not trying to have the perfect top of the line solution for every trip and every situation. If I am going to save a couple bucks I want to see if its feasible to do it on the ski side of the equation. Again, I'm after a utility experience not a chance to model a snorkel in blower powder. People have been skiing to climb in Alaska for generations and somehow they made it work without TLTs. How? And what is the closest reasonable modern-day equivalent? This is the question I was really trying to ask. I get that there are drawbacks, limits and trade-offs. I was aware of many and I've also picked up some more insights, so I do appreciate the voices pointing these things out. Given a limited budget I'd rather approach with relatively antiquated ski gear than climb with antiquated climbing gear!

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/28134/1

Thanks for the input everybody. My goal would be trying to get to 11k (not 14...) on the butt or tooling around in the Ruth Gorge. I have pretty good skiing skills so I at least want to try it out. If in the end I find that you're all right I'll be the first to admit it. I've already got a stack of skis and climbing boots so I figured I'd try it out on the cheap first before I pony straight up for the Dynafits and TLTs. I know Denali has been done in the TLT5's but I'm still skeptical about them (with regard to warmth - not climb-ability). I haven't heard anything about the 6 - I'll keep my eyes peeled on those too. I'm going to try the voile set-up and see how bad it really is... Depending on the situation snowshoes might not be that bad either.

Thanks for the input/suggestions guys! I hadn't thought to look at splitboard gear, and frankly had no idea how their set-ups worked but assumed they would have nothing to do with skiing. The voile mountain plates look ideal for what I want to be able to do i.e. ski very carefully for transportation, not rip for the adrenaline. I've got other set-ups for that... Plus I am probably looking to strap on Phantom 6000 boots, so a dynafit retro isn't a great option there. Christoph - I'll shoot you a PM...

As far as I can find online the only way to approach using your mountaineering boots is with an old pair of Silvretta 404 or 500's. While they come up for sale occasionally it seems like they're becoming relatively rare. My goal is to set up a rig for AK and while I know folks are climbing there in TLTs or carrying climbing boots that's not what I'm looking for. I'm also not looking for ski performance, I just want to drag a sled across moderate angle glacier and not do it with snowshoes. In an age of on demand 3-d printing are the Silvrettas of the '90's still the only way to go?

Must be my work - I just checked on my phone and I can see them on there. Thanks for the TR!

Am I the only one that can't see the pics? I've tried 2 different browsers...

I have always done the best hang I could manage given the circumstance. If you're in the lower elevations doing more of a backpack trip you can usually find something decent. I do it as much for rodents as for bears. If you're higher up on the glaciers you obviously won't be able to hang... A canister would be overkill IMO.

I don't have a ton to add to the discussion. When I'm with 2 I always have 60m of rope to have a prayer to pulling off a rescue. Depending on what else is involved it might be a heavier single 60m but I have a pair of 8.0 30m ropes that I join together and then carry coils on each end. This gets you a knot in the middle to start with and you can add extra butterflies if needed. I think this system is pretty nice as you can get a 30m rap and also split the weight between the partners. I can see where you might be trying to work with what you've already got, but the skinny 30s are pretty cheap if you think you'll be running into this situation regularly.

Nice work!! Did you do it C2C or with a bivy at the lake?

That looks awesome! We saw a rap station at the notch where we got on the NR. I was curious where people would be headed from there. I'll definitely add it to "the list". I am really loving these long moderate carry over routes. They've got a lot of variety and you really get to use all your skills.

Sweet! Glad to hear about the trail clearing.

IMO a descent of the N ridge is not implausible, but it depends on what you objective is. If you need to do it to link something up it would be doable. It isn't plausible as an alternative to for getting back to Boston basin. It would require a lot of downclimbing. There are no established stations for rapping, but there aren't a lot of places where it would be efficient to rap. It would be a long day I think to ascend the W ridge from the top of the couloir and downclimb the entire N ridge to the bivy spots.

NW Arete of?? (Mt Sir Donald? It looks similar...)

We didn't have any trouble finding the right spot. After rapping through the col the rock spur you have to drop down and around is obvious. Once you navigate around that, and knowing that you need to gain the ridge around 7600', the spot to head for is again pretty obvious. The part of the glacier that approaches the ridge crest is pretty broad, and it doesn't really approach it anywhere else near that elevation. I don't have any photos looking forward on the glacier but I'll see what my partner has. There are bivys where the glacier meets the ridge, a few very small ones shortly after the corner pitch (this is where we stayed) and then it looked like there would be a few more further on once things melt a little bit more.

Trip: Forbidden Peak - North Ridge Date: 6/14/2015 Trip Report: This was our first trip into Boston basin and on Forbidden. We got a taste of the area on Mt Buckner a few years ago and when the weekend was looking free enough the recent TR by jefetronic made us pull the trigger on short notice. The approach to Boston Basin wasn't too bad - a little brushy down low but direct. The weather was great and we made nice time heading up. Nearing the Stream Crossing in Lower Boston Basin We easily found the rap station at Shrkfin Col and rapped onto Boston Glacier. No issues with the Bergschrund there yet. From there navigation on the glacier was relatively straightforward with a few end runs here and there as we did a falling traverse below the big rock outcrop and then worked our way back up to the North Ridge. Rapping from Sharkfin Col Crossing the Boston Glacier We climbed the 5.6 corner onto the ridge proper before clearing a nearly melted-out bivy ledge. There were trickles of water melting off the snow but not enough to easily collect any so we melted snow for dinner. Evening at the Bivy Morning at the Bivy Bivy Pano We climbed some steep snow from the bivy before gaining the ridge top proper. (Thanks for the steps jefe!) Steep Snow We simuled a bunch of the ridge before pitching out the last few rope lengths before the summit. We got off the the west side at one point because it looked easier. It ended up being a little bit tricky and occasionally loose. once we got back on top of the ridge things were a lot better. Definitely recommend staying as true to the ridge as possible. The quality of the rock and the position is as good as it gets! Mid-Ridge Upper Ridge We made the summit and soaked in the views before heading down. Since we hadn't been on the W Ridge before we weren't sure what to expect, other than that the descent would be time consuming. It ended up taking a LOT longer than what we even thought would be a worst case. We tried to rap some sections where we came to realize would have been far easier to downclimb. Trying to rap the lower angle stuff meant we struggled with some stuck ropes, which were easily freed, but soaked up more time. We made a final rap and got established on the snow in the couloir and downclimbed. We made it to the glacier as light faded. Fortunately the traffic on the route left us a boot pack which was relatively easy to follow by headlamp and got us back to the upper basin camps. We found the trail and continued to the lower basin camps and arrived there around midnight. We realized that even if we continued we weren't going to get back to work in Portland by first thing Monday so we grabbed a bivy spot and made a second night of it. We cruised out the rest of the way in the morning and headed for cell service to report back the all-clear. In all a really enjoyable trip! Gear Notes: Pickets (for glacier, not used) Single cams .3-2, a #3 sized hex (used ) small-med nuts, lots of shoulder length slings and a few doubles for natural pro and liberal placement extensions. Approach Notes: Marblemount RS for a permit, then Boston Basin to Sharkfin col and don't look back.

For those tracking the picket saga, they were gone when we descended the west ridge on Sunday...

Just noticed this because of the thread bump about cats... Climbed Reid Headwall with a team of 3 on March 7. We roped up to cross the upper Reid and get on the route. Middle guy busted through and fell in to his arm pits. Without the rope on he would have corked. Not super deep but it wouldn't have been a good situation. Snowpack was thin this year, and we knew we were on some bridges. If our plan had been to leave the shizz at home I don't know if we would have turned around first or not. Once we crossed the bergie we put it all away... Had another buddy drop in one late season on Jefferson. They were unroped and didn't think they were in an area of crevasses. Didn't see any signs. Figured they'd all be open by then. All's well that ends well, but it is long odds paying off when you're the one carrying the rope and your partners still manage to extract and load you into a helo within a couple hours. I have crossed the Reid and the White River without even pausing to consider roping up in the winter. Maybe it made sense then and maybe it still does now, but my thinking has changed. Just throwing out a data point for mutual edification since we're probably not the only two that roll this one around.

We were the third group on the route that day. There was a major rock or icefall that happened right behind us in the first couloir. It came down from overhead on the left flank. Other than that we didn't get anything significant other than what the two teams ahead were knocking off of the runnels. I also didn't hear any rockfall overnight, even though our tent was only about 30m from OP. Guess I was sleeping soundly! Later in the day we saw and heard a few bomb as we descended from the pass and hiked out. We used a couple pins. In fact we used some of everything on the climb - slung a natural feature, 3 pins, 2 hexes, a tri-cam, 2 nuts, 2 cams, 1 picket! All in 150m of climbing - we solo'd to the runnels and in the couloirs. In the stuff we protected I didn't see anything larger than a medium to smallish nut or cam/hex to maybe .75 C4 size max.