jakedouglas

So you went around the back of the thing you "had to get around", but stayed high. Going around the back like that is the standard approach, but when it's dry you can get around without losing much elevation or getting out the rope. There is a move or two but they are easy and not exposed. For what it's worth, people seem to have all different ideas of exactly what "Pineapple Pass" is. I've seen it used to refer to the whole general area at the top of the bowl, the spot you skinned to and have labeled as "Pineapple Pass" in your photo, as well as the gully below the point you labeled as "Start of 3 pitch climb". Did you rappel down this gully or go around the back again to exit the way you entered?

Nice work. Bare feet is interesting. Can you further describe the "2 pitch traverse"? I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

These pieces were there on Friday evening, 4/25. There was a group of 2 climbing there and we assumed the gear belonged to them, but when we came down they had left and the gear was still there.

I use the Stigma skis and they are fine if downhill performance isn't super important. Light enough that they are very nice for going up. The price is also right so you can beat them up without feeling bad about it. I don't think I would ever buy a boot without being able to try it on. That said, shops are usually very low on sizes at this point in the year, so I don't know if that's an option. I would at least try, if you haven't already. The One is also a bit heavier than you need if you are using this as a primarily uphill tool. The TLT is the standard for people who care about uphill/climbing in their ski boots.

Dropped price to $250.

I have found that I just sweat too much to use hard shell pants for anything active and I am no longer doing much lift skiing. They are in perfect condition except for a few nicks on the reinforced area of the cuff from ski edges, a couple around 1-2mm and one around 1cm. Probably used 10 days or fewer. You pick up in North Bend. Sorry, not interested in shipping right now.

Last year my group spent a night around 9k just below Muir and then moved up to Ingraham for the day, before leaving for the summit that night. We felt damn near normal all the way to the top and we will probably use this plan again for taking my girlfriend up this year.

I have almost always found FF down garments and bags to be lighter, with more fill weight of a higher quality, and cheaper, than any big brand. Look at the numbers and you will probably find little reason, if any, to go with something else.

When I learned I rented gear at the resort about 5 times, bumping up the length of my rental skis each time, until I was able to use skis of nearly the length I intended to buy. Then I went and bought a pair so I could stop spending the money on rentals and get into the backcountry. At the time I was probably able to ski blue runs OK or easy black diamonds. I definitely recommend picking up the gear now and throughout the spring as you see the deals. I bought my first pair of skis/boots/bindings at full price during the winter and I doubt I will ever do it again. The spring sale discounts are enormous. If you have any plans of spring/summer touring, be aware things like bindings and skins often sell out. Last spring, I waited a bit too long to put together my volcano touring setup, and had to order the bindings from France because all of my local shops and online stores were out of them for the year.

I saw a guy heading up to Muir with these last spring. They seemed to be able to go up stuff about half as steep as our BD Ascension skins could, in mostly firm but thawing corn. He kept stopping to take off his skins, talking about the benefit of getting the weight off of his feet, only to have to put them on again 10 minutes later when the slope pitched back up. They would be super useful for those flat or slightly rolling approaches and exits, letting you avoid wasting time messing with skins. I think they can be a bit slower on the downhill though. I haven't heard enough about this yet to be convinced to try a pair. You definitely still need skins.

The Vector looks good and has excellent reviews. Looks like a pretty good price here: http://skimo.co/voile-vector-skis

For the record, you do not have to go skinny to save weight. The voile chargers, for instance, weigh the same as my K2 shuksans (listed). My Voile Drifters (125 underfoot!) are actually slightly lighter than my Shuksans. It's crazy how light those drifters are. An alternative perspective is that Shuksans are heavy given their width.

For spring/summer ski mountaineering on the volcanoes you can go pretty skinny to save weight, around 80mm waist. For winter touring, something around 100mm is nice, although people go both skinnier and wider than that. If I were you and I was looking to buy 1 ski to do a bit of everything I would pick something around 90mm that was equally suited to both firm and soft snow conditions. Once you get some skis and use them for a while you'll have a better idea of the tradeoffs you prefer to make. You can also rent different touring skis to try before you buy something.

There are a LOT of existing threads about this, both here and other places. I recommend doing a search and reading through them. Yes it depends on the conditions, your objectives, and your personal preferences. It's really hard to make a recommendation without wrapping up one's own ideas in it. The Voile Charger however is definitely too wide and heavy to be a good all-around touring ski. Look at skis like the K2 Wayback or Coomback, Black Diamond Aspect or Current, Dynafit Baltoro or Manaslu, La Sportiva GT or Lo5, etc. If you can state more specific objectives and preferences then you will get better recommendations.

I looked at the Trailbreaker but found that it was substantially heavier than anything else I was considering. I just got the Gamma MX pants and like them, but can't comment on long term durability.

Trip: Chair Peak - North Face Date: 1/1/2014 Trip Report: Climbed the North Face of Chair on New Years Day with DPS and GerritD. DPS has climbed it many times (17th successful summit?) and proclaimed it to be in great condition. We climbed 4 full 60 meter pitches. P1: great ice for the first two thirds perhaps, tapering off to firm snow. 2 decent screws and a good pin. Ended with a belay at a large wall of solid ice that took the 22cm all the way. P2: great ice again at the beginning, tapering off to snow. Ended with a tree belay. P3: started out with a line between ice bulges that took great screws. Conditions fell apart towards the top with steep climbing on breakable crust with unconsolidated snow underneath. Glad I wasn't the leader. Really stretched the ropes to belay from an even bigger tree. P4: hard to leave the belay because the stance was disintegrating underneath us, but after that it was easy climbing on 45 degree snow for half a rope length to the ridge. Then traversing under the summit block and up the side to the top. We weren't comfortable downclimbing the initial descent gully, so DPS gave us a belay from the summit to a stand of small trees on the rib separating the two southern gullies where we found some tat. From there we rapped exactly 60m to the start of the "normal" raps at the col and did 2 more to very easy terrain. The last one was probably not necessary, even for us. Shared the ropes with another pleasant party on the way down. Thanks to DPS for leading the whole thing and taking us on our first real winter alpine climb. Didn't take out the camera much, but here are a few pics: Looking up at great ice on P1. Great views all day. Looking down P1. The best ice on this pitch is just out of sight below the dropoff. It was probably the steepest part of the climb. Looking up at P2. Hanging out at the 3 piton anchor on the way down, waiting for the other party to pass us. Looking down the last rappel. Gear Notes: 2x60m ropes. 1x22cm 3x16cm screws. A few placements bottomed out, so a couple shorter ones would be nice. Only rock protection used were 2 small cams and a pin for a belay at the base of the route and 1 good pin on P1. Double slings for trees. Approach Notes: If you're a scared noob, rope up before traversing under the North Face to the base of the route and throw in a few pickets on the way. It gets fairly steep.

Trip: Colchuck Peak - Colchuck Glacier attempt Date: 11/2/2013 Trip Report: This weekend we headed up to Colchuck Lake with hopes of climbing Colchuck and/or Dragontail by the scramble routes from Colchuck Col. With a storm forecast, we didn’t have much in the way of expectations, but were psyched to get out and try something. We drove to the trailhead Saturday morning where light rain was falling but storm conditions hadn’t yet manifested, and set off around 11:30AM. Rain turned into light snow as we hiked up, and the wind picked up to the point where I put on my helmet in case of falling branches. We met a local solo climber heading down who had bailed on his plan of climbing the Colchuck NBC after requiring goggles at Colchuck Lake. Sure enough it was full on storming when we reached the lake, with very low visibility. A peek through the blowing snow. This was the best the weather got on Saturday. We were a little nervous about sleeping in the woods with the high winds so we headed to the boulder field and tried to setup camp at the flat site there that is reasonably sheltered, but tent stakes wouldn’t drive into the ground and we didn’t have enough cord to secure the tent to anything else. We ended up retreating to a site in the woods along the trail where the tree activity ended up being pretty mild that night. We also ran into a pair of hikers heading down from an attempt to cross Aasgard pass, where they reported being blown over several times by the winds. The forecast for Sunday was better, so we crossed our fingers and headed to bed. We ended up leaving camp around 5:30AM and once we got out of the trees we could see stars in the sky, which lifted our hopes. The boulder field was very tedious, with a thin layer of snow and ice covering everything. This just got worse and more painstaking as we worked our way up the moraine, with all of the scree and vegetation slick and loose. I believe it took us around 4 hours to gain the top of the rocks that go up the middle of Colchuck Glacier, a brutally slow pace for the elevation gained. We stopped here for a break and to pull out the rope. I understand the Colchuck Glacier does not form many crevasses of significant size, but we were wary of any late season openings being covered with the new snow and didn’t want to risk it since we had brought the rope along anyway. Colchuck as it got light NBC closeup Sunrise We found the glacier to be loaded with fresh snow from the storm, almost always knee deep and sometimes wallowing up to our waists. This was hard work, but we punched it and made rapid progress for the remainder of the climb, at least 2x as fast as we had gone so far. We topped out at Colchuck Col just after 11AM, certainly the longest it has ever taken me to gain ~2500 feet. Wallowing Looking south from Colchuck Col Gully up Dragontail visible in the background My partner had to pick up his roommate at the airport in the evening, so we had agreed that we needed to be heading down by 12PM. Neither of us had been up Colchuck before, and as we looked at the thinly snow-covered rocks of the scramble up to the summit plateau and reflected on our experience with those conditions earlier in the day, it became clear that we would not be able to make it up and down within that time constraint. With substantial disappointment we turned around to head down. Scramble up Colchuck, thinly covered with snow Plunge stepping was easy and we flew down the deep snow in great time. It would have been an amazing ski in these conditions. As we got down towards the moraine, we stuck to the east side of it, in order to stay on easy snow as far down as possible. This ended up being a mistake when the snow started to run out and turn once again into sketchy alternating sections of icy scree and hardpack snow with bad consequences for a slip. We had to traverse back west, climbing a little to gain a rock outcropping, and eventually regained our path through the boulder field from earlier in the day. Admiring Dragontail on the way down Ice tools useful for crossing scary vegetated slopes. What a shit show. Back at the tent and happy to be off of the moraine, we had some food and a 15 minute nap before rushing back to the car. On the way down the trail, we had to cross a number of large blowdowns that had fallen overnight. Maybe we were stupider than we thought to be up there in such high winds. It had also snowed substantially to quite low on the trail compared to the day before. As usual the hike out seemed to take forever and eventually it got dark. After stumbling around for a while it became impossible and we had to dig out a headlamp. Finally back at the car in the otherwise empty parking lot, I almost had a heart attack when the battery barely kicked the engine over and it immediately died. 2 more attempts got it to start, with a big relief. Revived by Heidleburger, we drove back in time for the airport pickup. We will be back, but probably not until the boulder field and the moraine are covered. The area is stunning right now and we had a great time. See ya Gear Notes: hard shell and goggles Approach Notes: snow and blowdowns on trail, slippery boulders and moraine

Thanks kevino. I'll remember to check there from now on.

I have read that it can get quite icy in the late season, and the weather this fall would seem conducive to that. Anyone been up there recently?

I just moved out to North Bend from Seattle and I like it so far. I live about 1 mile from several trailheads that provide just about any distance of daily training runs/hikes I want and there are a handful more trailheads within about 15 minutes drive. Extend to 20 or 25 minutes and you can access everything in the Snoqualmie Pass area, which has a ski resort. The resort is at a lower elevation than the other resorts in Washington and gets a bit less snow, but there are extensive backcountry options for skiing and alpine climbing in the area, which are pretty popular. I would hesitate to call North Bend itself a "mountain town" though. Some neighborhoods can have that feeling (mine does, a little bit), but other areas seem to be getting developed into prefab suburbs. I think a lot of people just happen to live here but spend most of their time commuting to Seattle for work, and aren't necessarily into "mountain life" or outdoors recreation.

Trip: The Tooth - South Face Date: 10/20/2013 Trip Report: DPS and I had a great trip up The Tooth today, leaving the parking lot at 6:30am. I figured all of the snow would have melted out by now, but I quickly regretted wearing trail running shoes with mesh uppers when my feet got soaked by step kicking and postholing up in the bowl. We swung leads with me starting on P1. As soon as I got out of the shade it must have been 75 degrees. I had dressed for chilly weather with long underwear bottoms and a heavier weight long sleeve shirt and I sweated my guts out for the rest of the climb, finishing off all 3 liters of water that I brought before we even got back down. We were treated to amazing views and encountered only one other party on our way down. We found the rappel tree at the top of P2 to be well on the way to toppling over, and so we moved the anchor to a sturdier tree/root thing right next to it. Thanks DPS for the handiwork. The only "mishap" was that the 60m rope we used did not quite reach the ledge for the second rappel station on the way down Pineapple Pass. I had to reach out and clip myself to the anchor and then downclimb to the ledge. This ended up not being a big deal but it was interesting to find this rope be so much shorter than the other 60m I had used before, that reached the ledge with a foot or two to spare. Stretch maybe. On the hike out, we saw some guys on Rap Wall doing some very tough looking dry tooling. All in all an awesome day, home by mid afternoon. Approaching on often breakable crust Coming up P1 Rainier selfie Looking up P2 Looking up P4 DPS on the summit Glacier peak behind me Moving the P2 rappel anchor DPS heading down Dude working hard on Rap Wall Fall colors are in Gear Notes: Used: Sunglasses Did not use: Soft shell, hard shell, insulated jacket, gloves, warm hat, and anything else I brought in anticipation of cold/wet weather Could have used: Sunscreen, swimsuit Approach Notes: Just enough snow on the talus field to be annoying.

You should check out this recent thread .

Taken!

Sorry, I should clarify that I don't have time to ship it right now as I'm in the middle of moving. I'm looking for someone to pick it up at my house in Capitol Hill. Need it gone by Saturday. If I can't get someone from CC I'll have to throw it on craigslist.

I was told that for touring, you may want to select a length a bit shorter than otherwise, or kick turns will be a pain. I guess this is probably a function of your leg length mostly, but as a rule of thumb I was told to not really go longer than your height. Both of my pairs of skis are at least 1 size down from the recommended length for my weight (especially considering pack weight). This reduces stability at speed, but I do like the maneuverability. YMMV.