bedellympian

Can you be more specific on what you mean by "resources" and "dead ends"?

Totally agree on the ice. Its interesting to see the numbers, turns out I'm pretty similar. For mixed climbing we have a couple local dry tool crags, one up by Bachelor ski are and one at an overlooked cliff at Smith Rock. There is another mixed crag getting developed up on the Cascade crest but its early stages. The other thing I do is go to this less-travelled rock crag in winter and climb the mossy/chossy grooves on gear between the actual rock climbs. Done a few 2 pitch routes that way and it makes for a good bad weather adventure practice day. Also, trying to get on more mixed stuff when I go up to Canada and other places. I feel like mixed is one of the limiters of me doing harder routes in the alpine. Like you said, M3/4 in the alpine is fine. Getting on bolted M6/7 is convenient and straightforward. But getting on alpine M5/6 with confidence opens up a whole slew of possibilities.

If Oregon, I would also say that it is in good shape right now, just wait for a day of sunshine before getting on North as there was fresh snow up there yesterday.

mthorman would you mind sharing where you are for ice pitches and what type of numbers you look for in a pyramid? I had the same idea and feel like my ice pitches are pretty good, but more importantly I want to round out my mixed pitches because of the more unique movement than on most ice.

I'm sure lots of you know who Dave Macleod is... one of the best all-around climbers on the planet and a training guru of sorts. I never looked at his stuff too hard as I was more focused on alpine routes than hard rock climbing, but now that I have a kid and rock climbing is much easier to access in a short time frame from my house than other things I've started taking a deeper look at what he has to say. A big point of his is that you need to work on your weaknesses (duh, though a lot of people don't do that). His classic training example is when he went from 8b to 9a (that's 13d-14d) in 18 months. After years of climbing he realized his weakness was grip strength and started hangboarding consistently which he credits as the main reason for his jump. Of course, everyone seems to hangboard these days, myself included, and its not my weakness (though I'm certainly not amazing at it). He mentions that this came after a good base of climbing movement and described this as doing 1,000 routes from E1 to E4 (that's 5.9+ to 11c). I initially thought I was pretty close but decided to check. I've done a fairly good job of tracking routes I've climbed thanks to MP, guidebooks, and a log of routes. I rounded up to include anything from 5.9 to 5.11 and with some rough estimation figure I'm at about 350 pitches in this grade range, much less than anticipated. Of course if you expand that to 5.7 and up (or 5.0 and up) then the number sky rockets, but a lot of this climbing doesn't teach you much about movement and technique which is Dave's point. This got me thinking, a friend of mine (apparently I hang out with like minded people who like data) had taken all the routes at Smith Rock, our local crag, and put them into a spreadsheet by grade (OCD for sure, but it takes one to know one). According to the spreadsheet there are almost 800 routes from 5.9 to 11d at Smith. I went through and marked off all the routes/pitches in this grade range that I had done and it was less than 100! I was very surprised by this. At first I thought that despite the plethora of routes at Smith there is a lot of crap rock. However, I also think a lot of routes fall off the radar and aren't popular. I think I've probably repeated a lot of the routes, and they are good routes, but there are routes that are right by the car that are perfectly good (2-3 stars) that I've never done because they aren't super classic, or in an obvious spot. So going forward a goal of mine is to increase the number of routes I've climbed in that range, with the ultimate goal fo reaching that arbitrary 1,000 number. Obviously there is nothing magic about the number 1,000, but it gives me a big goal to shoot for in the long term that gets me working on a probable weakness. I've also decided to include boulders in the V0-V4 range as part of this, since its also teaching me movement, and is logistically easier than going cragging. So I guess part of me wanted to post this to put my thoughts out there to see what others think. Is this uesful? How so, how not? Also to see what others have done. Where do you think you are in your 1,000 routes? You could also apply this to ice, mixed, or even alpine (1,000 alpine routes! Crazy!). Or scale it to suite you, 5.6 to 5.9, 5.0 on up, 5.11a to 5.13d?!

Just had our first and we have an old carrier pack a friend passed on, however I would love to be able to do a lot of longish hikes with the kiddo (maybe with extra weight) and am curious if people have things to consider or models that they find really good.

Looks like Adrien changed his Instagram post. Good for him, and knowing the guy, I bet he just didn't care enough about social media to make the change right away. Cptn, you quoted a post I made on the "Do summits matter?" thread. To be completely transparent I've made the same mistakes of assuming FA-ship in the past, its an easy mistake to make in the scheme of things. In fact, this past winter I claimed a couple "Second Ascents" which could very well be 10th ascents for all I know. That includes the Emde-Ablao on Middle Sister that Adrien and I did without any knowledge of the prior ascent and which I promptly sprayed about, so I'm probably a hypocrite here... though I do like the idea of preserving the adventure as I said, especially in Oregon where resources are limited. Anyway, mainly I'm psyched to see Adrien, Matt and others getting after it this winter and I think it would be awesome to have an Oregon crew competing for grants and making trips to bigger ranges like the Karakoram in the next few years to try exploring more off the beaten path objectives and getting some more good adventure stories here.

Good points. I retract my recommendation!

When I did it in June '16 it was pretty chill. Boot pack on easy snow. Seems like you can stay far enough from the edge to not worry about anything but a fully catastrophic serac failure? I have a few guide friends who are very risk averse but have enjoyed that route as a romp.

These TRs from June 2016 probably help. Compare the snow packs from this year to that to get an idea of how to scale. https://sites.google.com/stephabegg.com/washington/tripreports/vesper-ragged?authuser=0 https://sites.google.com/stephabegg.com/washington/tripreports/bigkangaroo?authuser=0 https://sites.google.com/stephabegg.com/washington/tripreports/burgundy-nf?authuser=0#h.f9kufph9eib1 https://sites.google.com/stephabegg.com/washington/tripreports/stuart?authuser=0#h.8ttdu7i41oye

WA pass approaches will be on snow. Bring boots or GTX approach shoes and light crampons for any steep/exposed approaches. Probably a light axe too, though if you are comfortable you can always do the rock trick ... gloves should be obvious, and a spare pair of socks in the pack.

I second W MacMillan and Eldorado as good options. Edited: Not off Hwy 20 and, but Fisher Chimneys HAS LOTSA CREVASSES, NOT RECOMMENDED!!!

Recent FA claims have me thinking of this thread. The desire to spray about your FA just because no one else has sprayed about the same line, and the desire to continue to claim an FA or similar accomplishment seems to stem from a lot of the same themes discussed here... self-aggrandizement, ego, and lack of honesty. For some reason this seems to be a common issue on Mt. Hood where you have many experienced climbers who have used it for training over the years and would never have thought to report a few moderate pitch variation as an FA and now those of us who have come up in the age of instagram assuming there are undone lines simply because it didn't show up anywhere on the internet. I experienced this issue a few years ago when I went to publish known routes on MP and was asked not to. Part of the reason given by developers and other regulars there was the parking access situation, but the other reason was to preserve the sense of adventure. The community by-and-large did not want to know what was there so that they could continue to practice ground up adventure climbing. Every ascent felt like an FA, until you found some old pins or a bolted belay station, but you had to mentally commit and prepare in the same way. Maybe, for scant resources like Mt. Hood ice routes this same ethic would preserve that sense of adventure. People could simply say "I climbed the Eliot" and post some cool pictures instead of worrying if that exact rock step or ice flow has been done before. Then everyone could go have an adventure and we can build skills for bigger adventures in bigger mountains (which I thought was the point and might actually lead to real FAs).

May is not a great time for rock yet; I would doubt you can get into Forbidden easily either. Weather is also less stable this time of year so that would dictate my climbs. If N Ridge of Baker is a goal I would do a steep snow climb, then a steep snow with glacier climb, then that one. You could do all those on/around Baker. That said, weather could just be junk too so you might do the first two on Hood or another volcano. For alpine rock I would look at the Stuart Range as access can be better this time of year and it will be drier than N Cascades (still a hike).

Its going to be warm AF any day with sun. I would go out the night before and camp just outside the cirque. Scope the route that night so you can top out as sun hits. 9 o'clock faces east, 11 o'clock faces SE, High Noon faces south. First two are straightforward snow climbs (cornice topout is possible but should be small this time of year), High Noon is capped with low 5th rock for a pitch or two. Honestly, I would recommend this as an early winter zone more than a spring zone, its just too warm this late in the season.