Alan Trick

It kind of looks like a mantelpiece to me.

You're right, a little more confidence would have worked as well. Only two screws for the climb made for a bit more run-out than our leaders were comfortable with. It just so happened the the people with more ice climbing experience had the least mountaineering experience so their risk tolerances were a little different.

Trip: Mt Baker - North Ridge Date: 5/25/2014 Trip Report: Since I've never meet CascadeClimber, this is not likely to be the trip report that he's looking for, but I'm giving it to him anyways. With any luck, he'll get two trip reports today. A few weeks ago, me an 4 other guys from the BC Mountaineering Club headed up Mt. Baker to climb the North Ridge. Some hiker friends joined us for the day on Saturday for the hike up to base camp and we were able to persuade them to carry our ropes up for us. Apparently I have awesome friends. Base camp was on a rocky bump at 1900 meters, a bit up and to climbers left of the moraine camp. It seems like a pretty ideal spot if you want to make this an overnight trip. The forecast was for a storm to come in on Sunday night, so we wanted to get up and down as early as possible. We wake up at 11 pm and the sky is completely clear and finally get going at 12:30am. Crossing the Coleman glacier wasn't exceptionally difficult, but our route meandered a little as worked our way around crevasses. Coming upon a large crevase in the darkness is an experience that I doubt will ever become boring. We ended up a little high and ended up traversing straight across to gain the ridge via the hourglass. We didn't bother protecting the traverse, and it was steeper than I had expected. I remember thinking that it would be a bad place to slip, but nobody slipped and things went smoothly. Once we gained the ridge, the steepnees eased off and the snow was punchy and plastic, making for an easy ascent to the ice cliff. We reach the ice cliff just after sunrise (6am) and we can see clouds rolling in from the other side of the summit. We build an anchor and the two leaders start climbing. I was supposed to be one of them, but as I had been finding out that morning, my Petzl strapons were simply refusing to fit my ski boots properly and needed reglar adjustments (leading to some rather terrified and careful climbing). At this point our progress slowed to a halt, over the hour or so that it took the leaders to climb the cliff and set up an anchor, the snow began to fall and visibility dopped to about 50 meters. After the pitch on the ice cliff we simulclimbed the rest of the way to the summit. We finally arrived on the summit plateau at 12 am, and the weather which had been getting increasingly worse was now a proper storm. It was a lovely cocktail of snow, rime, and wind that made you hate your life whenever you looked into the wind. I had thought this descent down the Coleman-Deming would be a cakewalk, having done it 5 or so times before, but I could only see about 10-20 meters in front of myself and there were no tracks for the most part. Carefully following a map, compass, and a GPS without tracks on it, worked for the most part, but navigating around the crevasses was a little frustrating. Half way down the Coleman Glacier, I ran into the strangest sight: a rope team hiking up the route, at 4:30 pm in a storm. I yelled at him, and he yelled back at me and gave me advice on how to get around the crevasse that was currently giving me difficulty. At first I wondered if for some reason there were guides or rescue workers out looking for people, but it turned out they were a group of Microsoft employees who had gotten themselves tremendously turned lost. Exactly where they had been, I wasn't quite sure, but they had convinced themselves that that accidentally descended descended the Deming glacier and were attemping to go back to the Grant-Colfax col and return to their camp at the base of the Coleman. Fortunately we got them sorted out and shortly afterward we heard someone calling in the distance for the lost Microsoft team. Our bedraggled team finally made it to camp at 6 pm and pack up and down to the car at 8:30. Gear Notes: 6 screws and 4 pickets per team, could have used more screws or more efficient use of them. Half-way between the ice cliff and the summit (about 2900 meters) we dropped a picket, it's probably somewhere down on the Coleman Glacier. Finders keepers. Approach Notes: Heliotrope ridge trail

Where is Colin's selfie? I am disappointed.

If you want to go the club route, there's two mountaineering clubs in Vancouver, the BCMC and the ACC. Both provide pretty good amateur mountaineering training. The BCMC in particular has some pretty tough, old climbers with a lot of good experience.

I saw this video posted on another forum. I think it could be pretty cool, but I'm a little skeptical that Stevie Haston just has really good fingerwork and a mere mortal like I would be fumbling all about. I'd really like to get my hands on one and try it out. Seeing is believing, right?

ryanb: I imagine the lightweight aluminum thing didn't work out very well for them.

That Brooks range tool does look really nice. Too bad they had troubles with it. I have a leatherman and apparently you can get a 1/4 inch extension for their proprietary bit driver, so I might try that.

I was looking for screwdrivers with replaceable heads and they all quite big and bulky in the hardware store. My multi-tool has screwdrivers, but the heads are a little too small and the tool's shape makes the screws difficult to access. For the record, I have a pair of Plum Guide bindings, and Dynafit Speeds. I've found this tool which might work, but I'm not sure.

You missed the colon in your "http://" on that first link there. Yeah, that beacon looks like pretty good bang for your buck. Unfortunately, I think all the Pieps stuff looks ugly :-/

I lead trips with the ACC and I would have no problem skiing with an old F1 user. Oddly enough, I've never seen one though (probably because they already have their ski buddies and aren't looking for new ones). The handful of F1 users I've seen had just recently acquired them second-hand because they were cheap, have no training, and were probably less likely to find me than a Saint Bernard (Saint Bernards are awesome, just a little dated). As far as I see it, this is a reasonable policy. I've never actually enforced it (once I should have, but we were already out at the TH by then), but it gives me an excuse to keep out the people who are trying to do the absolute least safety-wise.

I have some 27.5 that I've used a few times and found to be too narrow. I would warn you though, I don't think the 27.5 is much different than the 27. But I'd be happy to sell it if you're still interested.

I'm going to be visiting Smith Rock in a week for the first time. I'm fine with getting up early, especially for multipitch routes. Can anyone tell me what time tends to be 'early' and what time tends to be 'late' there?

It is unfortunate that we will have one less gumby in our resorts. It is a true joy to watch them as they slip, fall, and do the splits because it lets us feel so much better about or mediocre skills.

I've been told sportiva's are wider, but they don't do much for me. The front of my foot is rather wide where as sportiva's tend to seem wider around the heel.

I was explaining the gear and the costs of getting into backcountry skiing to someone recently and they asked me if you could buy used avi beacons. I don't think I've ever seen anyone trying to sell a used avi beacon, but I don't really know why. Aren't there people who decide to stop skiing and want to get rid of their expensive gear?

Pardon the thread hijacking, but I knew this guy. He was a member of both the mountaineering clubs in Vancouver. From my recollection, he was a careful and thoughtful climber. He was supposed to go to Mt. Baker with me next month.

My hypothesis is that since guides are typically surrounded by people (clients) with a limited understanding of the mountains, they get jaded and begin to believe that everyone else is like that. My (limited) experience with guides is not so much that they are being intentionally rude, but that they automatically assume that I am making decisions from ignorance rather than a large body of knowledge that might be a little bit different than theirs. I think this is probably just an unfortunate side effect of their trade. Often IT workers develop similar attitudes. Also, amateur climbers can be like this too, but I think it is less common.

These killings weren't motivated by religion. It's quite simple actually. The US kill a Taliban leader, the Taliban have to respond. The Taliban doesn't have the capability to kill any US military, so they resort to the closest thing they can find.

Yes, Mt. Baker is awesome for this. Don't try it up in Canada though. I'm sorry to day that our ski patrol are all humorless dullards.

I had a friend who tried that once, it didn't go very well for him.

I thought of that, but the idea of descending the Coleman Glacier that way doesn't excite me too much. In my memory some of the crevasses are significantly harder to see from above. I've been thinking of the idea of biking up Glacier Creek FSR.

Hey, I'm planning to be in Europe for the first half of July. I haven't made any solid plans yet, but I would love to do some climbing in Chamonix if I can get it to work. My climbing experience is not as widespread as yours, mostly climbing in Squamish and the BC coast with two trips to the Rockies. I can comfortably lead 5.9 (trad) & WI 3, I have lead harder. My mixed experience is minimal though. Edit: rock leading ability would go down a few notches with mountaineering boots instead of rock shoes.

Is the washout new? We were able to drive up to the snow on the road just a few weeks ago.

It depends, those will probably be fine for glacier walking and general mountaineering, probably not ideal for ice climbing though. I know a guy who ice climbs in those, but I wouldn't. I've heard it said that strapons work, but there not quite as good as the real thing.