bedellympian

Muscular endurance is one of the things stressed at the end of the base period in the Steve House Training for the New Alpinism book. It's basically just doing a lot of (insert muscle taxing activity here). The reason for the change is that my goals for the summer are long endurance climbs, not hard red points. I'll do some more of this conjugate stuff in the fall and try push my hard climbing farther then. Plans for muscular endurance workouts are... TR solo laps on pumpy thin hand cracks Jug a line in a tree with a pack a bunch of times Throw in some hangboarding, campus boarding, bouldering to maintain grip strength and try some of the harder cracks and multis now that my redpoint sport grade is higher than them. Hopefully will be nice and fit when I get off work in late June.

Thanks Sol, I'm taking a week off of training and just climbing fun stuff if the weather is nice. I will be refocusing on muscular endurance training with crack climbing and multi-pitch days on the weekend. Plan is to hit Yosemite and Sierra in late June once I get off work for the summer. Hopefully some stuff in Canada later in summer.

I tried to mix it up for a couple months after reading Sol's post about conjugate periodization. I had been climbing a lot of random stuff (no consistency) with the occasional hang board session (~once every other week). I then spent 2 months doing the following: Tuesday: Easy bouldering warm-up Project 1-2 routes at my limit (total 4-6 goes) 4x4 bouldering arm strength and core Thursday: ARC 30 min Project 1-2 routes at my limit 4 sets on campus board 4 onsight/flash boulder problems leg strength and core Sat/Sun: Early in the training I ARCed a third day in the gym, later I climbed routes outside. Early in the training I worked on boulder problems I could send easily and focused more on the ARCing, doing it as a warm-up both days. Later I treated the ARC as a warm-up and focused on pushing the harder boulder problems and the 4x4. This definitely got me strong specifically for sport climbing, but I feel that having a bigger and more consistent climbing base would have paid off more. Also, you wouldn't want to do this for long, 8 weeks was a lot of intensity and my body had some lingering aches and pains. Results: I sent a climb that I could have probably sent before with a lot of work but I did it easily in 4 tries and it upped my redpoint best two letter grades. ... my 2 cents.

Looks like this thread has been dormant for a while. Maybe some folks will come back out of the woodwork and get us some stoke for the end of this cold snap. I'm interested if anyone knows anything about... 1. "Gothic Rock" north of Sisters at the end of Green Ridge. 2. If you head up the White Water River from its confluence with the Metolius it looks like there are some big south facing cliffs above the drainage at around 5k' that might be similar to Cougar Crag near Bend. Anyone been there? Rock quality? Routes? 3. West Ridge of the Strawberries and the range west of that above John Day both have some domes/spires. visible from the road. Anyone know? 4. Table Rocks near Medford got any routes? Thanks folks!

Good suggestions. I run in barefoot already. I also run on trails as per DPS' comment almost all the time. I do some lower leg stuff but could probably do more. Sol- running is necessary to my sanity. I don't live where I can just do a steep hike out of the front door

So I was running a lot and not climbing this fall due to hand injury. Got better just in time to head to Indian Creek for Creeksgiving and hiked around a bunch with lots of cams and ropes and climbed a lot of long hand cracks. Result: ankles feeling tweaky and swollen. I've had this happen before. When I'm running a lot the ankles are pretty stiff and don't move much. When I hike up hills my feet can get pretty dorsi-flexed. When I crack climb my foot jams are rolling my foot and ankle to the inside. The combo or sudden transition can be somewhat unpleasant. Question: anyone got ideas for how to avoid this in the future or just exercises that seem to be particularly helpful for helping the ankles stay strong with both sports? Ya know, besides being reasonable and careful Thanks, Sam

This is a cool idea. It reminds me a lot of the multi-pace training Frank Horwill (another Brit) used to train middle-distance runners (which is probably about the running equivalent of power endurance sport climbing). He also broke down all the energy systems involved and suggested training them simultaneously to a degree. It resulted in the UK dominating that event category internationally for most of the 80s. It's interesting to me because I've experimented with both concepts for distance running, rock climbing and alpine climbing. I definitely get bigger gains in an area with regular periodization, but can gain more experience due to better all-around readiness when using conjugated periodization. The more common thing seen in distance running is to do "base" period of ARCing/volume and then engage in the conjugated periodization.

Not specific but the village of Trient is a nice spot at the NE end of the Mt. Blanc Massif just across the border in Switzerland. That end of the Massif had way fewer crowds and less glacial gnar to deal with. Several nice huts I visited up next to glaciers. You could hike around the Massif's NE end, sure there are some good mellow hut-hut hikes there that would meet your criteria.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the no-bolt ethic and completely agree with you. This is for a couple Oregon locales I have in mind where we will be connecting discontinuous crack systems and trying to get off of especially chossy piles. It will mostly be a safety net that I want to have dialed. If I find something that is really a nice free climb I may consider putting in two bolt anchors but that is hardly a given.

Like the title says, I'm looking to buy a bolt kit. I will be mostly looking to put in rappel and belay anchors on new back country trad routes. I want to start with a hand drill due to the weight, cost, and few holes I will actually drill. Does anyone have personal experience and recommendations? Best bolts to place in hand drilled holes? Best drill bit? Where to save money and where to shell more out so I have something that works but doesn't break the bank? General tips for someone new to this? Thanks.

Careful climbing up all those ski runs!

Thanks Eric!

Looking for recs on this year's road trips... Indian Creeksgiving: 10s and 11s that don't get gang-banged, aren't hard to get to and still let you get in plenty of mileage. Joshua Tree during holidays: good TR solos, good solo boulder/scramble zones, a good 11b/c to project. Yosemite Valley in late June: first trip to the valley, stuff that isn't too hot, good wall climbs, good free climbs, stuff that doesn't get gang-banged.

Like he says, doesn't seem like an issue most of the time, only with smaller ropes. Though if you're using smaller ropes they would often be doubles which would prevent the flip he's describing. Still, I use a MegaJul all the time and have noticed that skinny ropes can slide through in certain situations such as rappels. I usually backup the raps with a prusik on skinny ropes in the alpine. They do sell a MicroJul for smaller diameter ropes which would be the ticket, especially if you were going to use a single half rope on a climb to save weight.

You could consider Boise, Reno and Missoula too. All have access to cragging and mountains with alpine stuff not that far away. They also have the benefit of not being "on the map".

Here is my TR from the summer of final climbs... http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1151855

Trip: Waddington Range - multiple Date: 7/23/2016 Trip Report: I know this is a little late but I hope it will encourage people to get after it in the Wadd and also contact me if they want any beta. I took a trip to the Waddington Range in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, this summer (2016). We flew into the range via helicopter, with White Saddle Air Services (highly recommended) on July 23rd, and flew out on July 31st. The cost of the helicopter ride was partially funded with the American Alpine Club's Live Your Dream Grant so I was required to write an in-depth TR which I thought you all might enjoy reading and browsing... trip report link I went with my friends Nick, Chris and Josh. We had near perfect weather for 9 days and climbed the following routes: -West Ridge, Claw Peak (5.6 130m) -South Ridge, Serra 2 (5.9 45 deg snow 1500m, TD) -Bravo Glacier, Mt. Waddington (5.7 AI3 2100m, TD-) If anyone wants additional info, and it's not in the TR link, please PM me. -Sam Gear Notes: About what you would expect... pork shoulder and a pressure cooker were essential. Approach Notes: White Saddle helis are awesome!

Jason, I will. My trip was funded in part by a Live Your Dream grant so I'm in the process of writing a fairly comprehensive one for them. Once I'm done I'll link it and provide the basics in a TR on CC.com Some other specifics for the training plan... I started strength training by doing two sets of the circuit and was doing four sets at the end of the first 8 weeks. The isometric hangs were one arm hangs on ice tools. On max strength I started with 4 sets and finished doing 6 sets 8 weeks later. At the end I was doing 4 reps on squat and deadlift with 205# and 250# respectively. Pullups 2 reps with 60# added. One-arm hangs on straight shaft tools 7x7sec with 30#. Weighted laps in gym were done on an auto-belay. I down climbed everything I climbed up. I wore Nepal Evos and pack with 15# padded in blankets. I topped out with 55min of continuous laps on a 5.9 (maybe 5.7 outdoors). Nagging injuries in my arms (one from a bike crash in April, and one from an ice chunk while belaying in Hyalite in Feb) forced me to be pretty chill about this and I was not able to do maintenance of my max strength due to my shoulders being pretty messed up. Weighted hill climbs were done on a fairly steep and loose hill side with 500ft of gain. I wore old approach shoes and did the same deal with weights wrapped in blankets and then also strapped my bike to my pack (awkward as fuh!), when I got to the top I would ride my bike down to prevent impact on my knees with the extra weight but once I got past 30# in the pack the bike descent definitely got a little hairy. Nagging issues from pushing the squats and deadlift eventually required me to take two weeks off from this protocol before my roadtrip to the N Cascades. I cross trained on the bike and was fine once I got to the mountains, but I was pretty concerned for about a week there. House and Johnston recommend recording volume according to aerobic zone determined by heart rate. I don't own a heart rate monitor and in my experience running (even in zone 1) is much harder on the body than biking or hiking. So I just recorded all running time as volume, cut walking and biking time in half, only counted hiking/approaching/ski touring when going in the uphill direction. I've heard folks complain about how the TftNA approach takes too much time and is not intense enough since it emphasizes easy aerobic volume. What I got from the book is that you should do easy aerobic volume regardless of how much time you have. I also didn't think it was lacking intensity; 2 hard strength workouts each week, a cragging day where you hit a ton of pitches in a short time, a threshold day, and a long workout (can be done pretty quickly with a run) on your weekend. That is 5 days out of 7 doing something that is fairly intense in one way or another and only leaves 2 days each week to do easy aerobic volume. I also found that if you are trying to get mountain experience on the weekends you end up getting a ton of volume in those days. Many weeks I would just bike commute to work (20 min each way) and that was almost all of my Mon-Fri volume if I wanted to progress according to the 10% rule since I would then put in two long days approaching Sat/Sun.

I figured I'd post this here in case folks were interested. This year I followed a plan I made that was based on "Training for the New Alpinism". The focus was on strength which I had very limited experience with prior to this. I also chose to allocate an extra day for climbing each week and remove the threshold workout since I was a collegiate runner and have 10+ yrs of bi-weekly threshold workouts under my belt but only 4 yrs of climbing, and wanted to significantly improve my technique on ice/mixed this year. I trained from the start of 2016 (Jan) and peaked for a two week trip in late July. Here is my plan... Weekly Schedule (first 16 weeks) M-Strength T-Zone 1 W-Pitches R-Strength F-Zone 1 S/S-Climb/Ski/Hike Aerobic Metabolism (mostly Zone 1) -start at 150min/week -10% increase/week -50-70% down week every 4th week Cicuits (first 8 weeks) 1. Turkish Get-ups (full) 2. Split Bench Squats (legs) 3. Push-ups (arms) 4. Box Step-ups (legs) 5. Pull-ups (arms) 6. Squats (legs) 7. Dips (arms) 8. Hanging Leg Raise (legs) 9. Deadlifts (legs) 10. Isometric Hangs (arms) 11. Incline Pull-ups (arms) 11. Incline Pull-ups (arms) Max Strength (second 8 weeks) 1. Squats (legs) 2. Pull-ups (arms) 3. Deadlifts (legs) 4. Isometric Hangs (arms) Strength Endurance (until road trip in June) 1. weighted endurance laps in gym (boots and pack) 2. weighted hill climbs (steep) 3. Max Strength maintenance (see above, OR hill sprints, car pushes, bouldering) Weekly Schedule until roadtrip M-Zone 1 T-Weighted Laps W-Weighted Hills R-Pitches F-Zone 1 S/S-Climb/Ski/Hike 10 days in North Cascades 2 down weeks (hiking and light running, some easy cragging and hangboarding, one max strength workout) drive to Bugaboos to climb while waiting for weather window, heli into mountains and climb big routes I feel like this got me in pretty good shape but also wrecked me a bit> I probably could have chilled out on the max strength, I got pretty excited when I started seeing big gains and pushed it. If anyone has any questions I would be happy to answer them, or if anyone with more experience has suggestions for how I could improve or tweak this in the future I would appreciate that. -Sam

almonds and chocolate chips or any similar trail mix type of thing, pb and honey sandos, whatever snack bars are cheap... clif, odwalla, fig bars... if they taste good, wont freeze solid, and have plenty of calories I'll use it

Haven't done it this year, but did it last year around this time with my wife. Should be fine given we had more snow this year, crevasses were not an issue. I would bring some light crampons just in case its firm in the morning, and a light axe never hurts for comfort either. If you are quite comfortable in that situation I'm sure you could run up there in tennies but since you're asking I'd suggest erring on the side of caution.

I was with the only other party climbing in there when it happened. We ran into Steve and Alex coming down to camp as we went up to try the same route. I only met Laurel once when cragging at Index but we got in touch via facebook when we both saw that we were going to the Waddington Range. I was really looking forward to sharing the experience in there with her and her partners. My thoughts are with her friends and family. -Sam

For those who have been up there a bunch, what do you prefer and find most reliable for given areas? Environment Canada doesn't seem to have the ever-helpful point forecast that NOAA does (or maybe I'm missing something?). Been checking multiple sites but having trouble pin-pointing data specifcally for higher elevations. Thanks, Sam

Thanks for posting Max, I was disappointed not to read a sick FA story, but I totally agree with your assessment. If groups want to practice long-roping for crevasse travel they should go to other parts of the mountain, maybe where there are actual crevasses, and not endanger everyone else. Like diepj said, there is a reason most of the local and competent climbers don't climb Hood during tourist season.

Nice Work gentlemen! Glad you got some good conditions this late in the season. I would not have expected that.