HighLife

Trip: South Early Winter Spire - Direct East Buttress IV 5.10- C0 Date: 8/9/2014 Trip Report: The bolt ladders were quite exciting. Manky gear, homemade gear! and a missing hanger on the second ladder. If I didn't know better I'd think it was C1+. If you have never been aid climbing these might put a smile on your face. There are enough good bolts to keep things reasonable. The DEB was a fun climb with the third pitch being a 4-star gem. Just don't overshoot the start of the third pitch off to the right like I did. The winds changed and brought the forest fire smoke to Washington Pass. Alex leading p5 heading into the 1st bolt ladder. This pitch with the steep 5.9 crack is probably the crux pitch. Silver Star Mtn is lost in smoke! Hanging out above the hairpin. Alex is as stoked as ever even in a cloud of smoke. Gear Notes: Double set cams finger-#4C4 One set offset nuts I didn't find TCU's necessary An alpine aider per person would be reasonable but not mandatory. 15 draws (4 quick, 9 single length alpine, 2 doubles)

Yah, we are a couple softies and plenty of climbers won't need a rack that big.

Trip: Squire Creek Wall, Darrington - Slab Daddy V 5.10+ A0 Date: 6/1/2014 Trip Report: Yes, we broke the carabiner. No, we found the hanger that way. Details later. To our chagrin the snow pack was cavernous guarding the wet streak of the first bolt. Prudence demanding, we aimed a little right for a ledge across thicker snow. As the snow progressively became too hard for my climbing shoed feet, I chopped steps with a #4 C4. I was pleased with myself… ha. Across the first obstacle my numb fingers fiddled in some small cams (C3 and a mastercam) and I traversed to the wet smear. In it, thick moss and algae surrounded a bolt smack in the middle. Delicious. And slab of course. The next sequence involved aiding, gardening, muddy shoes and desperately trying to stand on slab while groveling a poorly placed tricam and repeated popping of a number one ball nut. Colorful vocabulary deflagrated across the valley. Hands down, this was the scariest part of the entire route for me. Finally past the first “5.8” move we had serious doubts. Was the rest of the route going to be like this? With courage, Matt followed up the ropes. A similar challenge awaited him on pitch two. Pitch two, 5.10 something, squarely placed in the next wet streak on the wall. Cleverly, he moved out right, set a few small brassies in the rib crack and tension traversed back down to the first bolt. Clip. Moving left, he made the next moves on dry rock to the second bolt in the streak. Clip again. Rather than continue with the heinous shenanigans, he harnessed his huevos and ran it out left up the easier cups. Success greeted him at the 2nd anchor. What had we gotten ourselves into… In all seriousness, if the first pitch has a wet streak at the bolt, you may be better served exploring the forest up and to the right of the route to try bypassing directly to pitch 3. Pitch 3 passed with ease, only moderate algae with the bolts on mostly dry rock. Feeling sassy, Matt linked pitches 4 and 5 with our double 60’s. Finally we were making progress! Pitch 6 was spicy, slap and pray indeed. A little step across a wet streak and up we went. Water = bad. Matt thoroughly enjoyed pitch 7. The 10’s on the wall seem to be much more closely bolted than the 9’s. On whole, we encountered a lot of loose bolts en route, tightening about 40% of all total. Ha! Looks like we were the first ones up for the season. 8, 9, and 10 went without consequence and we had finally reached the 50m headwall. Leading out with style, Matt graced his way up. Inspired by the beauty of the face, I followed clean haul bag and all. Excellent pitch. We salute your vision Mr. Whitelaw. Relieved and amazed, we arrived to the beautiful balcony bivy by 3 o’clock. Not bad for all our shenanigans. In all truth, we didn’t think we’d make it after the first two pitches. To our extreme good favor there was a bountiful puddle on the north side of the ledge, a steady trickle in and out. WE HAD WATER! WOOHOO! We’d had suspicions from the large tear streak on the right side of the head wall, but now it was confirmed. Note: if there’s a streak on the head wall, there’s water at the bivy. If not, probably want to water up on the lower ledges. Within the hour we were in the shade, sitting fat and happy. Refreshed and not wanting to lead 5.10 straight off next morning, we rustled our gumption and I put up the next pitch without the burden of a pack. Another stellar pitch. Ropes fixed, our minds a little more at ease, we enjoyed our first ever planned bivy on a wall. This was living life. Moonless night, the stars were spectacular. Next morning Matt woke first, the sun finally prying me out of my bag as it cracked over the ridges. Breakfasted and packed, we touched the ropes at 7. Pitch 13 was less enthusing for Matt with some slimy crack/corner. Overall it passed. However, the anchor surprised us with the broken/sheared hanger. 24kn firmly stamped in the stainless steel. Holy sh**. What terrifying forces were above us? Was there more waiting to clobber US? We had fear in our hearts. Matt styled out an anchor by screwing a wire nut to the bolt, which we decided to leave in place. Pitch 14 followed with good fun. Little spicy, nicely protected. Cool open book feature at the top of the pitch with high committed feet to clip the bolt. Matt was up. Pitch 15. Executing nicely, he moved through the first 5.10 sequence. Traversing out right to the face he began to pass from view. Up, clip. Up, clip. A little more rope out, a little more rope out. Moments pass. Slack hastly develops, I pull it back as fast as I can. I wait. Ting… ting… swirl. A blue case of chapstick pirouettes through the air. That’s odd… Why was it tinging? I look up and Matt’s back in my view, wide eyed. “What happened, a little fall?” “THE CARABINER BROKE!” “What!?!” In his (Matt’s) own words: On pitch 15, according to the topo, "there is a committing 5.9+ sequence that takes you to an isolated ledge". I attempted to reach the ledge-ish area by climbing high and to the left. Reaching out for the edge of the ledge, I slapped, prayed, and fell. I bounced and slid down directly upon my last bolt five feet below me. I was jerked askew and heard a popping sound. I noticed the rope-end carabiner on my quickdraw was broken as I continued to fall further over clean wide-open granite. The next bolt held and arrested my fall. All told, I had fallen twenty-five feet and could now see Alex again. I hollered down about the broken biner. He calmly responded to double check the ropes and my harness for damage. Everything looked fine so I climbed back up to the now lop-sided draw and replaced it with two, one for each rope. What can I say? I was feeling a bit spooked. I chose a slightly different sequence, attacking the ledge head-on, smearing up the blank rock, which worked much better. Once I had gained the ledge, I looked up and saw that the next bolt was still twelve feet away! oh, Darrington. My personal analysis of the broken carabiner is as follows: I believe that as I fell, my body slid along the bolt, draw, and carabiners attached to the draw through which my rope went, the rope-end carabiner gate was forced open as the left leg of my harness slid part-way into it. The biner was then shock-loaded in the open position against the static leg-loop of my harness. The way in which the force was applied put pressure on the most vulnerable part of the biner, in a way it is certainly not designed to be used, causing it to snap. Jeremy and the other pros at AAI agreed that an open gate, minor axis, shock loaded biner would not be very strong. Less than any of the ratings listed on the biner. This was a weird rare event. One that I am happy to be walking away from. Pitch 16 was fun. 17 interesting. Feeling worked, we traversed out right avoiding a harder 10 sequence. This brought us direct to the easy blocks. 18 was easy blocks, though a little loose. 19 wasn’t nearly as ugly wide as we’d thought. A #4 walked up nicely under the large flake, and at the mouth of the wider 4-6” bulge was a smaller crack that took a small cam. Don't bring a #5 C4. 20 was a bear. Fortunately, there were button heads galore. The hour was getting late, we were worked, and French freeing was sounding very appealing. Taking full advantage of the liberal smatter of pins and bolts, we were able to aid our way through most of the pitch. 21 was pretty. Finger lay backs in a nice crack brought just below the final pitch to the snag. We couldn’t believe how close we were! Gear recommendation for this is 0.5 times 3, tri cams placed nicely as well as we only had doubles. One thing had become clear, the higher we got, the tighter the route held its prize. There was no easing up. 22 had some pucker. The first 5.9 section is gross. Slim gear and a big committing move right. On the first go I backed down, foot slipped and I actually smelled burning rubber… Yikes. Perfect hand crack welcomed me once across. The steep 10- section above was steep and awkward. Funky jams, high feet, weird finger lock. Fell once, then placed a higher cam and pulled through. We had somewhere to be. A little gardening and funky pro, then suddenly, we were on top. We had cell reception at the car, bivy, and the top. Thanks Verizon We made the top at 6. It took eleven hours to climb eleven pitches. The top half of the climb is harder and steeper than the bottom half. Don't try to combine pitches 18&19 into a long rappel. Your ropes will get stuck (ours did). Our ropes also got stuck on pitch 13. Alex the rope gun bailed us out both times. We arrived at the bivy ledge around 9 and realized we would not be into work on Monday. We arrived at Train Wreck just after 1:00pm Monday. Great Climb!!! Gear Notes: Double set cams finger-#3. Triple #1 and #0.5 (pitch 21) would be useful. Bring a #4 and some micro cams, set of nuts, set of offset brass nuts, 4 tricams, 3 small ball nuts and 14 draws. Metolius Torque nut tool, and 2-6 bolt hangers. Alex liked the green 6" big bro on pitch 22.

The dog is pretty tough, but she stayed at home on that one.

I wish I had paniers. Not having them sure made it harder to stand and my butt sore. I think they are now on my Christmas list.

How was the traverse? Did you make it to Hannegan pass TH?

Trip: West McMillan Spire - West Ridge Date: 8/31/2013 Trip Report: BIKE TO MCMILLAN: A Human Powered Adventure From Bellingham To The West McMillan Spire. With a perfect 3-day weather window, I packed my pack and biked the 70 miles to Newhalem. I tied my bike to a tree at the end of the pavement on the road to the Goodell Creek TH, hiked 1.5 miles up the road to the TH, then the 4 miles to the climbers turnoff where I made my camp for the night. Left camp at 7am, climbed hard. Made the summit by 1:40pm. Raced nightfall all the way back to camp. Made it back to camp with 30 min of light left- the perfect amt of time to cook up instant mashed potatoes. Location (Elevation): Time Elapsed / Split / Real Time Day 1: Bellingham (200 ft) : 0 / 0 / 06:30am End of Pavement (500 ft) : 7:00 / 7:00 / 01:30pm Climber's Turnoff "Camp" (1,600 ft) : 8:38 / 1:38 / 03:08pm Day 2: Climbers Turnoff "Camp"(1,600 ft) : 0 / 0 / 07:00am Heather Bench [top of hill climb] (5,200 ft) : 1:57 / 1:57 / 08:57 Arrive West McMillan Summit (8,000 ft) : 6:40 / 4:43 / 1:40pm Depart West McMillan Summit (8,000 ft) : 7:00 / 00:20 / 02:00pm Heather Bench [top of hill climb] (5,200 ft) : 10:54 / 3:54 / 05:54pm Climbers Turnoff "Camp"(1,600 ft) : 12:24 / 1:30 / 07:24pm Day 3: Climber's Turnoff "Camp" (1,600ft) : 0:00 / 0:00 / 07:30am End of Pavement (500 ft) : 1:30 / 1:30 / 09:00am Bellingham (200 ft) : 8:30 / 7:00 / 04:00pm The Southern Pickets Photo Credit: Steph Abegg stephabegg.com Mt Fury Inspiration, Degenhardt, Terror, Shuksan, and Baker Back home safe! Gear Notes: Hard snow on Terror Glacier. Crampons and running shoes made a sketchy mix. Glad to have brought ice axe.

Trip: Darrington - 3 O'Clock Rock - Total Soul - Total Soul III+, 5.10b Date: 8/23/2013 Trip Report: After getting a bad weather report for the pickets, Alex and I headed to Darrington. Easy approach and great climbing is what we found. A bolt and gear route with a little run-out slab but enough bolts at the tough stuff. Quality hardware throughout and rap stations at every belay. I would recommend this route to a friend.