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dave schultz

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Everything posted by dave schultz

  1. Thanks for the tool and pole recommendations. Still looking for opinions on the snowpack and if anyone has a fuel usage calculation. Thanks, Dave
  2. Good Morning PNW, I am planning on a trip to MRNP in early-July (8-15). Questions: How much liquid water access is there, obviously elevation and route dependent, but what is a general experience? Not possible, 100% snow melt; or possible, might get lucky but don't count on it ... Do people have a standard quantity of fuel / person / day for the summer season? I have my winter calculation, and am planning on that, but I was curious if anyone had another number to compare to mine. Two tools (Cobra/Quark/etc) vs single tool and Sum'tec (43cm or 53cm)? Consider routes like Ptarmigan Ridge, Kautz Glacier, Success Cleaver, descending the Tahoma. I realize this can change day to day or even throughout a single day. I am thinking that it would be better to have two tools and need them (but can still use them) than to have one tool and an axe and really be slower because two tools would be better. If two tools are brought, a normal axe would still be brought. Thoughts? Mt. Baker had a pretty unbelievable snow year (I think the biggest since their record), has Rainier seen the same near-record snowfall? Do people gather a sense that in early-July the seasonal snowpack will still be pretty deep (and this affect on the crevasse bridging at the various elevation). Thanks for your help, Dave
  3. Got it, thanks. Is the overall weight of the older I-Tent lower than the First Light? They currently (or recently) made the I-Tent and the Elderado, both were essentially a more durable versions of the First Light and Lighthouse. Interesting to learn those subtle differences. Good luck finding one.
  4. I don't have one, sorry. But, I am curious. The First Light is the SAME geometry as the I-Tent, except the I-Tent is more durable material, correct? What about the I-Tent would be better in a freezing rain than the First Light, beyond simply a stronger fabric? Thanks for the enlightenment ... Dave
  5. Another option is to skip brakes and buy leashes. B&D makes a set that you can leave on during transitions, short booting, and working in a snow pit, etc. I personally don't own a ski with a brake. I might go even smaller on the summer skis, 65-75mm, your 100-105mm would still not be too wide compared to a mid 80s ski and that is where a 70mm would work up to where a mid 80s would also work.
  6. Shorter is lighter, easier to maneuver, less sticking out of your pack. It also sounds like not a crusher skier ("not an expect") so the extra ski length is just waisted (sounds like more of an approach ski?) Nothing is really "out" with a 100-105 ... ie you can still ski the hard pack and corn and still float enough in the deeper pow. Smaller makes deep snow (significantly) harder; while larger makes hard/corn harder (105 is a little wide, but manageable; much bigger than 10t makes hard/corn almost prohibitive). 110-112 would,be biggest for a quiver of one, but would suffer more hard/corn. You might also consider what will happen when you want a second set of skis. Maybe plan on two right now and have a better system instead of an aftet-thought add on. Quiver killers allow one set of bindings. Early rise just helps the ski float better, also makes it maneuver like a shorter ski in hard/corn.
  7. 100-105mm at waist. 170-175cm length. Look for something with some early rise rocker, and a flat tail. Tech bindings.
  8. Strange request ... I am looking for photos of Rainier from the air. If you are flying into or out of SEATAC and can get ANY photo of Rainier from the air, I would be greatly appreciated. Looking specifically for the conditions of the glaciers around the entire mountain, so any photo you can get would be useful. Looking for pics from now through when I fly in on the 9th. You can send me a message, or shoot me an email at daveschultz125(at)gmail(dot)com or call/text at 239-two-three-three-2002. Thanks! Dave
  9. I think the approach would be the easiest. Getting up Torment would be tough and shitty with it covered in snow. The traverse could be shitty and totally corniced over, making it pretty unsafe. WR of Forbidden could be really awesome, moderately steep, very blocky awesome alpine terrain. (or could be basically covered in snow and terrible, probably somewhere in between). The prospect of bailing after getting onto the north side is tough to swallow in the summer. Might be suicidal in the winter without skis. Would you carry skis across the traverse? This is probably the biggest problem with the entire goal. Mid- to late-December might be your best chance of a "winter" ascent, before the volumes of snow have had a chance to accumulate. I still think the approach would be the easiest. If you think it would be the toughest, you might actually die on the route.
  10. In early July 2014 I used my ski boots with mono point crampons ... you might want something different. For the West Ridge I used rock shoes. Point is, you can probably climb it in anything.
  11. What diameter ropes do you use your mega/micro jul with? I use the micro with my 7.8mm and the mega with my 8.7mm exclusively (no other belay device, unless I am bringing a spare) and don't feel there is any issue feeding rope smoothly ... there is definitely a learning curve, but once that is overcome they are brilliant. with something 9.0-9.5 I will still use the mega jul to belay a leader, but belay from above with a gigi ... a little tougher to feed smoothly, but still no real problem accomplishing it. above a 9.5 the mega jul does not really belay smoothly and I use a normal atc guide with a gigi. so your statement claiming the mega/micro jul fails might only be accurate if you are using a huge rope ... otherwise they work like a dream and am actually very surprised they have not caught on like wildfire ... I love mine. back to the original post, definitely some cool stuff, I found a couple new things to put on the list, thank!
  12. Cool write up, it is a stellar, full-value alpine route, especially in semi-early season. When I did it in 2014 there was a huge avy scare and the snow was very soft, so we bypassed the traverse with some rock around the south then regained the snow higher up on the ridge for a shorter, semi-protected snow traverse, then we continued on rock. We then made to rope stretching rappels onto the ledges on the south side. Trip Report is linked below. As far as complete traverse on rock, once we rappelled onto the north side from Torment, we did some snow/ice but then gained a buttress and then essentially stayed on some form of rock the whole time (but not on the ridge proper). If I did it again, I might look more closely at that option. We were the first party on the route in 2014, so no previous tracks or knowledge that the route would even go once we pulled our ropes from Torment. http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1126562
  13. Yea John! Somebody go with this guy to Index, he will not disappoint!
  14. Final Notes: Like everyone, we planned on Beckey-Chouinard but heard that it was not really in good shape with the recent rain/snow and no one had done it for quite some time. While we were on our final night traverse we saw lights rappelling form the S Howser summit, so someone read the forecast right and made a go for it. We brought a sleeping pads, a small jetboil, and tent (footprint and fly) in case we wanted to bivy at the start or mid-route; we never ended up using any of these items. Next time I might not even bring the pad and the tent, and just bivy in a puffy jacket (this was our plan on the night traverse). We also planned on Sunshine Crack, but we never really get a chance to get on it. We also heard that it was still a little early and cold for that route. Based on Sunshine Crack being on the list, we brought a pretty huge rack up to the hut (double up to BD C4 5, plus an old-school Camalot 3.5 and 4). We never left the hut with anything bigger than the 3.5 and found the 3.5 to be very useful and many of the routes, especially NE Ridge of Bugaboo Spire. We brought regular mountain boots and approach shoes. Lots of people running around with approach shoes on the glacier, but we found the added security of the mountain boots justified the added weight. If we had done Beckey-Chouinard I would have worn my approach shoes to keep the weight as low as possible, but for all the other routes the added weight was of no consequence. We saw basically every type of boot imaginable up there, the Sportiva Trango was probably the most common. We experienced some precipitation basically every day, but never got totally shut down with sustained or continuously heavy precip at any point. The precip was probably 50/50 snow/rain and I found the snow to be better than the rain. Lots of fully gloved climbing. Snowpatch Route was probably the only route that had a large amount of glove-less climbing, and that was primarily due to the weather was actually nice enough to not need them. Ken climbed most of Snowpatch with gloves on. We used combinations of full gortex hardshell gloves (thin liner or no liner), thin winter softshell gloves, thin gardening gloves, and tip-less leather Metolious gloves. I usually brought all four pairs with me, and the conditions/terrain would dictate which gloves I would use. We brought a TON of food with us, and actually ended up eating most of it. I used a 125 liter haul bag that weighed close to 100 lbs. It was MISERABLE on the epproach, but for 2:45 of shittiness we got some serious lux stuff for the next 7 days - totally worth it. With that, there were some serious backcountry chefs at the hut, I forgot to ask them how to they keep the meat and cheese from going bad (unless it is special stuff that is designed to be at room temp or if they just risked it ...). There is legit electricity at the hut. We brought lots of batteries and device chargers (I had about 20,000ma available for the seven days, not knowing exactly what would be available there). These were basically dead weight, I will certainly bring less electrical stuff next time. I had a 50-degree sleeping bag in the hut, and it was too warm. I might consider bringing a sleeping bag liner next time. I brought a lot of variable clothes and layers. I ended up using mostly everything, but could have scaled back a little bit. I never once used my wind shirt (and I am a huge wind shirt fan), I found the hardshell jacket to be more appropriate and useful with the variable weather. I you had more consistently good weather the wind shirt might be a good play. On our entire trip we never saw another person on our route, and only on two occasions did we see another party. The guide and client on top of Snowpatch and the guide and clients near Whipping Post en route to Brenta. Our main goal was longer routes, preferably grade IV and we were less interested in the grade III and below; though they did fill in the gaps between the big days and during the questionable weather. McTech and the rest of Crescent Spire will definitely be on the list for next time.
  15. Day Six - Seven: Hounds Tooth to Marmolota Traverse:
  16. Day Six: Crescent Tower to Whipping Post to the Hut:
  17. Day Three: Eastpost Spire via SE Ridge and down NW Ridge:
  18. Trip: Moderate Bugaboos 16-23 July Date: 16-23 July 2016 Trip Report: Ken and I have done a couple objectives together, the last big alpine one was our linkup of Nooksack Tower-Price Glacier-Shuksan in 2014. We decided on the Bugaboos for this year. Day 1 Fly into Calgary, drive to Canmore, pack, last minute supplies. Day 2 Drive to the trail head, approach with about 175 lbs of shit in 2:45, scouted the Bugaboo Snowpatch Col and refined some glacier travel skills. Day 3 NE Ridge of Bugaboo Spire. We had three big factors working against us on this route: 1) time due to botching the approach to the Bugaboo-Crescent Col (we were WAY too far left, lots of shenanegans to get back on route), 2) leaving half of our food in the hut (oops), and 3) experiencing some variable weather (rain, sleet, hail, snow, fog, blue bird). The traverse from the North Summit to the South Summit was quite complex due to wet conditions and poor visibility. No issues on the Kain Route descent. Very long day - 19 hours hut-hut. We were the only party on the route and did not hear of any other party summiting any other spire. We wore some form of glove for every pitch on the route. Day 4 SE Ridge to NW Ridge (up and over) Eastpost Spire as an active rest day. Easy, fun simul-climbing and soloing. Good practice. Perfect weather, but we needed an easy day. We thought we were the only party on the route, only to find out later that another party was somewhere behind us, but we never heard them. Great views of the higher peaks and of Applebee Dome and the terrain on the north. Day 5 We originally planned on the Snowpatch Route on Snowpatch Spire, but with the updates morning forecast and with the current weather outside we elected to shift the objective to Pigeon Spire's West Ridge. We found getting up the BS Col to be straightforward but we could see that the weather was starting to roll in. Between the top of the Col and the start of the route we got totally socked in with mostly frozen precipitation, but with a fair amount of liquid precip as well. Visibility was between 25 and 75 feet the whole time. We simul-climbed up and down the route in about four hours. We were the only party on the route, and did not hear of any other party summiting any other spire. We opted to use the Snowpatch rappel route in order to gain familiarity with it, it is at least 30-60 minutes slower than descending the BS Col. We got back to the hut, which was below the weather ceiling, dried clothes and gear, finished off all our booze, took baths and sun bathed. Having had a relaxing afternoon, we were ready for another big day. Fireball!! Day 6 Snowpatch Route (SE Corner) on Snowpatch Spire. We did not get any updated weather forecast, so working with an old forecast we were hesitant to get on this highly committing route, we left the hut with a solid backup plan if the weather looked like a no-go. We moved slowly trying to let the weather make up its mind, and finally decided to go for it until we needed to make a decision about the ability to turn around with consideration to the prevailing weather conditions. After a while it appeared the weather would stay good enough to finish the route to the summit shifted into a higher gear. I thought the route seemed dirtier than the NE Ridge, but it probably get much less traffic. This route was definitely longer and felt much more committing based on the type of climbing compared to the NE Ridge. Rack-up to summit was only about nine hours and we spent a long time on the summit to give a guide and client plenty of time to make most (if not all) of the rappels to the glacier. It started raining after we got below the BS Col and we were about 14 hours hut-hut. Day 7 Having misread the forecast (not reading: PERFECT WEATHER), and wanting a slightly easier day, we opted to do a 3rd and 4th class scramble to the summit of Crescent Spire and Whipping Post with the intention to traverse to Brenta and Northpost. The poor rock quality (loose choss) combined with the marginal reward of the traverse motivated us to modify our plan and simply descent Crescent Spire via the Whipping Post and back through the Eastpost-Crescent Col; this decision also allowed a guided party to continue to Brenta without another party on the route for rockfall/safety considerations. We took a large siesta on the descent to Applebee and then took a refreshing dip in the lake above Applebee (once we moved the iceburgs out of the way). The watch said about 5-degrees centigrade, but it felt colder. Day 7-8 Once we realized out forecast reading mistake, and recognizing potential weather the next afternoon, we bounced some ideas back and forth and settled on an early evening (about 1.5 hrs from then) departure for the Hounds Tooth to Marmolata Traverse (with the option of adding the Pigeon Feathers and Pigeon Spire to the traverse). We left around 1815 (having been up for 12 hours already) and summited Hounds Tooth and reached the start of the East Ridge of Marmolata before the sun fully set (at 2230). With the clear skies during the day and the nearly full moon we knew we could have lots of ambient light - and we were right! Headlamps were only needed for the actual climbing and everything else was manageable with just the ambient light. We took it slow and easy, short pitching most of the route with a few sections of simul-climbing. We reached the Marmolata Summit at 0400, and it started getting progressively lighter out. The descent was simple, with only one rappel station needing to be beefed up, and only needing to add one station to further reduce the chances of getting a rope stuck while pulling it. A short nap at the Marmolata-Pigeon Spuire Col, and some bergshrund shenanigans put us back at the hut before 0900 for a 27 hour day and around 14 hours hut-hut for the route. We ate as much of our remaining food as we could, then took a well earned mid-day nap. Day 8 We awoke from out nap, continued to eat as much of our remaining food as we could, watched the crappy weather roll in, and packed our bags for the hike out the next morning. Day 9 An easy hike out in the mist and fog was rewarded with burger and beer in Radium, followed by a refreshing dip in the Radium Hot Springs pools and hot tub, then a drive to Calgary where we had another big dinner with plenty of beer, followed by an uneventful drive to the airport for the red-eye back to New York and South Carolina.
  19. I'm not sure how he advocated lowering with a gigi, but here is how I do it: Biner into the downhill hole and you can pull the gigi sideways which offsets the angle, at some point the braking power will be overcome and the person will begin to lower. There is a very small angle where that transition happens so doing this process very slowly is paramount. I also really only do it for short distances (back through a crux, down to a ledge, etc ... NOT from a belay station to the ground). The descent is stopped by releasing the gigi and it returns to its normal, locked position. If you are climbing with two followers, and need to lower one, you can block the other (best that they do not continue to climb) with a simple knot in the system to prevent them from also going down. If you are trying to lower a single a long distance (belay station to belay station/ground), there are several ways: You can rethread the rope through the other side of the gigi (the unused side) in the lowering orientation (opposite that of climbing) and add a second biner to the system. Then you can remove the original biner from the system. You obviously cannot really do this maneuver if the rope is loaded (so they need to be at a ledge, or with you at the belay station, etc). Normally when lowering you would need a backup on the brake strand that you are controlling the descent with. Additionally, you can clip a biner through the downhill hole and rotate the entire system back to the master point and release the original biner in the master point (causing the rope orientation to be reversed like described above). You could add a prussic to hold the load in position while you made the switch. This would allow either method to be done under a load. Remember, if using a prussic, your system must allow the prussic to fail without dropping the load (ie you also need an backup to the prussic for that unlikely situation). Another method is simply transitioning out of the gigi for the lower, a munter is the classic and easiest method to lower someone. There are also probably many reasons to NOT lower someone with the gigi as it keeps the gigi out of the system and available for you to use.
  20. The ice is certainly variable. But, overall, the grade is relatively consistent. It might move a half grade up or down. A easy four in awesome shape could probably be considered a three (but then was it maybe a three the whole time?). A middle-of-the-road-five in terrible shape is probably not really climbable simply due to the danger, but it is still a grade five, but it might take a grade six climber to be comfortable enough to climb it in those conditions, it still doesn't make it grade six (good use of the 5+ rating, this I imagine would be terrible enough that it is not really protectable or has very infrequent reliable protection, and could possibly introduce a factor two fall onto an anchor). Sea of Vapors is a good example, and probably the best example to dis-prove my opinion on ice grading as it is so inconsistent in its potential condition, but its grade is consistent at WI6. When it was put up in the 90s it was considered to be the hardest ice climb in the world, hence it gathered the grade seven rating (the FA was also likely the thinnest it has been in while also being climbed, according to Waterfall Ice). Under today's standards and with the other hard routes around the world, I think it clearly falls into the grade six category (but still has the grade seven attached due to the FA and it keeps the prize with climbing what was once the hardest ice route in the world ...), but it probably never fits the grade five description. If it comes in epically fat, someone who leads grade five might be able to give it a go and get through it, but that means they probably can climb grade six, not really that the route is actually grade five. The variability in conditions will make it seems harder or easier, but the grade 1-6 is relatively consistant. I think in the moderate grade of three and four there is a tremendous amount of gray area and overlap, because there are so many variables (like trying to sandwich 5.3-5.10 into two divisions). But, once you break into the grade five and six realm there is a little bit less gray area (similar analogy to 5.11 and then 5.12). When trying to differentiate between a grade five and a grade four - there is pretty big, clear line (at least the way I read it). I view a grade six as essentially a grade five that is just harder (normally longer; similar steepness but fewer ledges, rests, features; protection will he harder to place, probably hanging belays due to the length and sustained nature).
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