forrest_m

dru - i was wearing a red shirt; dan was wearing a dark blue shirt. our pack was bright red. do you know how often the e. pillar gets done? from the amount of lichen, grass in cracks, etc, i'd guess not too often. more traffic would only help the route... one other beta note, the route is not as committing as we expected because there are fixed anchors (to rap with a single 60 meter rope) to the top of the 4th pitch (per mclane). these consist of either large horns/blocks, bolts, pins or some combination. each belay has one 1/4" stainless smc bolt and one rusty-but-ok- buttonhead bolt (thanks to whoever placed these!). in at least one place, there is a mid-pitch 2 bolt rap anchor.

Dru – a couple more ideas for you to consider, if indeed these questions are truly requests for information and not simply teaser ads for the upcoming trip report… Be very cautious of committing to a bivy where you are suspending even a small portion of your weight from your harness, i.e. the infamous “slightly sloping ledge.” After a couple of hours, even on a 10 degree slope, your waist will be killing you, and you will want to go down in the morning. Smaller and flatter definitely beats bigger and sloping when it comes to ledge selection. If you must hang, try the following trick: you are already planning to use your pack as a bivy sack, you can also suspend it from the anchor and then weight your feet as if you are standing in the pack (even though you are lying down). This will take the weight off your hip belt and is way more comfortable. If you end up on a butt ledge, you will sleep a lot more if you rig up some sort of chest harness or sling under your armpits that will hold you upright. This can be similar to sleeping in the front seat of a car while leaning your head against the seat belt. If you do find someplace to lie down, you may sleep better if you line the outside edge of the ledge with small rocks. This “warning track” will help prevent you from rolling off the edge. As you’re shivering, remember the following two truths: 1) if you are worried about how cold you feel, you are probably not freezing to death (yet) and 2) the best climbing stories involve suffering, so be sure to take note of the things you can exaggerate in future tellings.

we had a thread about this not very long ago

how else would you finish BBB? just did that a few weeks ago and didn't see any other way to go. (pretty cool climb, bottom is strenuous for the grade but the traverse and roof finish are neat)

you guys were hanging out on the river on solstice? WE were hanging out on the river on solstice (we flew out that afternoon). we didn't have much choice, since colin couldn't get into the fairview without an ID. oh, and nice climbing, btw. we thought about coming down the SW ridge but it looks even less straightforward than the W ridge.

anyone know, is there a "CC.com of Alaska"? i'm trying to track down some info. TIA.

actually, it looks to me more like an elephant head facing the other way. the trunk leads right to mr. sunscreen's crotch... that thing you call a face is just a big floppy elephant ear.

marko - you're right, the happy cowboys start about a pitch beyond where the SE spur and the S. ridge join. about the best i can say about the cowboys is that thank god i never have to do anything like that ever again...

Got back on tuesday. Mark and I landed on the tokasitna glacier below thunder peak on monday 6/9, spent several days waiting for it to stop raining, then set out in the early am on the 12th. we reached the summit plateau of hunter around 6 pm on the 15th and the south summit a bit later. with clouds rising from the valley, we decided to skip the higher north summit in favor of finding the top of the west ridge while we had visibility. spent the 16th hydrating in our tent, and then headed down during the coldest part of the "night", arriving at kahiltna base around 6 am on the 17th after a fairly harrowing trip through the northwest basin. we believe that this was the 3rd ascent of this route, which involves a bit of everything that alaska climbing has to offer: icefalls, mixed climbing up to M4, full-on corniced ridge traversing, long stretches of moderate ice, uncertainty and commitment, and a traverse of mt. hunter's 4-mile wide summit plateau. i'll post a longer TR when i get some photos scanned.

… in 4 hours. Mark “King of the Kahiltna” Westman and I are going to attempt the South Ridge of Hunter. Colin left last night for the Cassin. I guess we’re the second wave of Alaska-bound cc.commers. Wish us good weather and good snow conditions!

i've found that, usually, tickets to europe drop in price (a lot) after october 1. the last couple of times we've gone to spain, the cheapest flight we found was the united/lufthansa then spanair combo from seattle-copenhagen-madrid. on the other hand, our spanair flight on the way home has been delayed enough to miss our connecting flight home twice. (this is not really so bad, 'cause you get a free night in copenhagen, but it plays havoc with your work schedule if you were supposed to be back in the office on a certain day...) i think getting the same airline to be cheapest several times in a row is just coincidence, though. i think the best way to get good price is to do your homework, i.e. check several websites and call several different travel agents. when you get quoted a price, go to that airline's website, and see if they have a web special on the same itinerary. i've knocked an extra $50 off tickets twice that way. sorry, no magic, just elbow grease. ps. you guys should think about the ne coast if the south is really hot, i.e. montserrat, siurana, montenejos, each about 1.5 hours apart from just north of barcelona down to near valencia. siuranna, esp., can be cooler 'cause it's near the ocean.

See, that’s just what I mean… 18 hours is incredibly impressive, the dude’s a freakin’ animal. I remember when erhard & loretain (sp?) did it in 43 hour RT and it was revolutionary. So why is the 10 hour time what is so widely reported, in “climbing” sources as well as mainstream ones?

ok, i think the 10c technical crux is "new", i.e. where the crack splits out right instead of staying in the chimney, but they end up in the same place. for the rest of the chimney, i think we all know that 5.9+ chimney with a FA in the late 70s means at least 10b, usually more. as for 5.6, ??? those old guys were super hard. or maybe it was 5.6 until they broke out the aiders?

just out of curiosity... do y'all remember that when dan - did his first rainier climb, he said that he had sprinted to the summit for time, but then walked down. people came out of the woodwork to basically say "who cares what your time was base to summit, climbing is about the round trip, etc. etc." no disrespect to Lhakpa Cela, obviously this is an olympic-caliber athletic performance, but i wonder where are the same voices? why isn't anyone asking "what's the point of a one-way ascent time?"

heaven's gate is super fun. the first pitch of lamplighter has a couple of bolts on it, but is mostly gear. 10c, but burly with 2 separate cruxes. from the belay at the top of lamplighter (which continues basically straight up), continue righwards past 2 bolts to another belay at the base of the 2nd pitch. leave the rack here, you only need QDs from here. 2nd pitch is 10b (long, like 14 bolts), 3rd is 10c, a lot shorter than the 2nd, 4th is 11a, up through two roofs, all the way to the top of the cliff. PM me if you want beta on the secret handhold. a single 60m rope will get you down, but from the top of the first pitch you will need to rap sideways to the lamplighter belay to get down; a 70 rope (or, obviously 2 ropes) will reach the ground from the bottom of the 2nd pitch of heaven's gate. Dave Gunstone did a really nice job of placing the bolts on this one, every single clip is well thought out.

wouldn't claims being down be a good thing for the company?

Sorry for the picking up a dead thread but I just got a really high quote and went looking for names of some other companies to look at. What’s up with USAA? I’ve been very happy with their low-cost and really good customer service for auto and homeowner’s insurance over the years. But get this, we’re only getting enough insurance to pay off our house, and after honestly filling out the extra “climbing” questionnaire, my quote went from $134/quarter to $696/quarter. Obviously, we’ll be shopping around some more… I asked the guy about it, and basically they just lump people into “climbs occasionaly” and “climbs regularly” which includes high altitude. Their questionnaire was really dumb, too, obviously written by someone who knows nothing about the sport. It was full of pointless, debatable questions like “how many rock climbs, on average, do you perform a year?” Do they mean pitches? Days? Can I count 5 30 foot sport pitches at exit 38 as one climb? I think maybe they just took their scuba questionnaire and changed “dives” to “climbs”. There was a lot of space for detail about “instructional courses”, including # of hours, but only one line for “what safety equipment do you use?” Apparently, a long history of climbing without injury and the health benefits of being physically active mean nothing to them. Grrrrr. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

ok, all this "safety" and "strength" conversation is real interesting and all, but i want to get back to the important stuff, like matching color draws. now i have a motley-ass collection of slings (mostly sewn, but some tied, bought, bootied, and borrowed) i use for alpine and stuff, but i will admit to having a matching set of draws for sport climbing, actually 2 matching sets of 8 draws each. now what's cool about this is that it makes sorting gear at the end of the day real easy: the black petzl draws with spirit biners are mine, the bd dogbones with the gold stitching are dans, the old purple petzl's with the rainbow colored thread bar tacks are..

I think it’s a false dichotomy to divide the climbing world into “professional climbers” and “weekend warriors.” Weekend warrior does has a pejorative ring to it and to me implies that the person has ONLY ever been a dilettante and that they ONLY do that activity every so often. As soon as climbing becomes a special part of your soul, and not just another item on your “life experience tick list,” then you are no longer a WW. Once an obsessed dirtbag climbing bum, always an obsessed dirtbag climbing bum. Of course, I write this because I’m loath to consider myself a WW, even though I’m lucky if I can equal your 80 days a year (unless the gym counts).

I’ve noticed the split snowpack too, I think that rather than a stormy spring, it comes more from the two mid-winter meltbacks we had. Twice over the winter (in December and then late Jan.) it rained a lot up to pretty high elevations, melting back the snowpack almost to the ground. Winter had to “start over” with snow accumulation in this zone. But above a certain elevation (around 4,500 – 5,000’, seems to me), that rain was still snow, so the melting never happened. Thus, normal snowpack up high, and then a sudden change to very shallow at lower elevations.

when we came down the sherpa glacier coulouir two 1/2 weeks ago, it was glissadable from top to bottom. there was no cornice where it meets the ridge and was very casual. we could not even locate the 'schrund where the couloir meets the glacier. i understand this is a concern later in the season. there were big cornices on the main stuart summit ridge up high near the summit, but from what i could tell, there did not appear to be much of one where the ice cliff glacier couloir comes up to the ridge. IIRC, right up at the top, the ICGC is in the shadow of a rock pinnacle that seemed to have prevented a cornice from forming. 'course, there's been a lot of wind and snow since then, and we were mostly concentrating on getting down, so please be aware that I may be full of shit.

I’m sitting here watching some guys hang a big billboard-type ad on side of the building across the alley from my window. They’re all decked out in that stuff from the industrial part of the petzl catalogue. Two rope technique, a Stop on the working rope, with a Shunt with a shock absorber as a backup on the safety line. I’ve seen their van down at the UW climbing wall, so I figure the company is mostly climber-dudes. Besides, they look like climbers. There’s a guy dangling about 15’ from my window and I’d bet money that the bosch bulldog hanging from his harness with 1” tubular webbing sees some extra-curricular use on the weekends… Anyone know anything about this company? Who runs it? Only thing I can find on the web is an Australian company with the same logo but no seattle info. vertigo web page Seems like a fun way to make a living, like doing those Greenpeace actions but without the risk of getting arrested.

wow, while i'm reading the thread CBS & b-rock made the two points that i was thinking about making. i think it's super valuable to have someone more experienced critique your placements. if you don't have experience, the best way to get it is to borrow someone else's! if you want more than a pitch or two of this, you'll probably have to buy the beer. and of course, easy aid is great because you WEIGHT EVERY PLACEMENT, so you'll quickly see which placements suck. i think tieton is a really good place to learn passive gear because the cracks have so many pockets and constrictions. just don't get spoiled - it's almost too easy there! i like the BD stoppers because the wider profile makes them more stable when places sideways. in the smaller sizes, the bd steel nuts are awesome, and it's hard to beat HB offset brass nuts for thin cracks and pin scars. tricams are bomber in the small sizes (pink and red) but are pretty heavy in the larger sizes, so i generally prefer hexes.

not me, colin climbed it solo. i think it was last year. if i remember his pics. correctly, he rope soloed one short pitch at the rock band at the peak of the lower gully.

hey DFA, properly made tape jobs form a kind of "glove" that is reusable. i agree with erik about preferring sensitivity, but i have found that good technique doesn't totally eliminate scrapes. some hand damage is hard to avoid if you are pushing your jamming limits, because the damage is done when you slip. that said, i will only usually tape up if i go on a road trip to the desert and want to climb for 5 or 6 days in a row. otherwise, i just stare at my scabs and grin all week. hand jammies are aid.