forrest_m

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.

oh god, yes, i'd hate to see anyone muck up the pristine natural environment of central park. it's like, untouched by the hand of man...

I agree, kudos to the Everett mountaineers for defying all the stereotypes. Pleasure sharing the cliffs with you. Here’s a few things they did that other institutional groups could learn from: - kept the group size reasonable (about 25, from what I could tell). - picked an area with good route density. You never had the sense that “that group is on every route at the cliff.” Columnar areas, like tieton, are obviously a good choice for this. - they were very careful about rockfall. - they used walkie talkies so that they could keep organized while physically spreading out. Ok, it does look kind of geeky, but it seemed like it really helped to limit the impact of numbers. - most important item: they did not give off the sense that they considered it “their” cliff. A big part of this was simply not trying to ignore everyone who isn’t part of their group, i.e. they chatted, kibitzed about the guidebook, made small talk, etc. Amazing that this is even an issue, but i've been astonished at the antisocial attitudes i've encountered... - Encouraged others to climb through, use the rap line they had fixed, etc. oh, and catbird, watch out, that's my wife you're talkin' about!

Colin and I climbed the NW Face Couloir on Mt. Stuart yesterday (4/27). This is approximately halfway between the N. Ridge entrance couloir and the Stuart Glacier Couloir, climbing a direct line to below the Great Gendarme, then up and right to the summit. The route is labeled “1984” in the brown Beckey guide, and is just left of Kearney’s NW face route. Unlike the lucky folks over on Dragontail, we encountered conditions that could be greatly improved by further freeze/thaw cycles, alternating between crux bands of rock covered with loose new snow and postholing on steep snow. There were a few short sections of nicely consolidated neve, but they were the exception. We did about 1500’ of roped climbing, simulclimbing all but the first pitch. We hiked in to a bivy at the base of the moraine below the sherpa glacier on Saturday, approx. 4 hours from the car. We decided to risk going without snowshoes, and this worked pretty well on the approach. In the morning, we started on a firm crust but as we started up the steeper slopes leading to the Stuart Glacier, we began to breaking through on every step. We finally got up to the base of the route, some steep slabs guarding the base of the main gully. Our hopes were raised as Colin climbed the first 20 feet on sinker neve, but alas, they were the best tool placements on the route. Traversing into a corner on the right, things got interesting right away. The climbing was not really that steep, but it felt hard because of the insecure conditions: 2 inches of rotten ice with a coating of unconsolidated new snow. The bulk of the elevation was a long 60 degree couloir. In firm conditions, this would’ve been great, but yesterday it was a slog. We wove back and forth, connecting exposed rock bands to place gear. Just below the great gendarme (where the original N. Ridge route raps in), there was a very fun 20’ rock chimney leading up and right, then more snow. The summit cornices appeared above. I picked a direct line up the blocky granite above the end of the couloir, aiming for the smallest part of the cornice. Groveling ensued, as I excavating loose snow to find dry tool placements. Though slow, this pitch was fun and very well protected. Pulling the cornice was exciting. I straddled an 80 degree fin of snow as high as possible while taking swipes at the cornice lip with my adze until I had worn the edge down enough to ram a shaft over the other side. My exit from the route had all the elegance of a sea lion pulling onto the beach, but it landed us less than 30 horizontal feet from the summit. Colin noted that when he and Marko climbed the same finish after doing the N. Ridge last year, they traversed around the corner left about 80 feet below the ridgeline and encountered easier climbing. While on top, the clouds which had been swirling around all morning finally let loose with some snow, but it soon stopped. We descended back into sunshine in just a few hundred feet. The summit area was very cool, custardy rime ice coating any rock surface that protruded from the slope. It looked like the aftermath of an accident in a shaving cream factory. [From the constant buzz down in the Ingalls creek valley, the snowmobilers were also out enjoying the day (isn’t that a wilderness area?)] We descended almost the entire Sherpa Glacier in a sitting glissade, where coated nylon demonstrated its total superiority to gore-tex. For the next hour and a half, we regretted not having snowshoes, as our in-track did little to prevent us from sinking, but we still managed to reach the car by 7:30. Under firm snow conditions, like in 2-3 weeks if clear weather prevails, this would be an excellent route, but yesterday was more like a 6 out of 10.

i'll third the beach idea. did this two years ago with some backpacking novices, everyone had a great time. we paid the (only) taxi driver in forks to move our car so we wouldn't have to shuttle. she met us in forks to get a key, then we drove ourselves to ruby beach. while we were hiking (three days - very relaxed), she drove our car around to the ozette trailhead. very convenient and she only charged us $45. send me a pm and if you want contact info. oh yeah, the other great thing about the beach is it's the only kind of backpacking where it's still kosher to build big campfires every night. fun!

I have only placed my big bro like 3 times in ten years. The key is to find a very parallel spot in the crack, otherwise is it hard to get the ends of the tube to sit firmly. Like a nut, all it takes is one crystal to make your placement unstable, but you need much more surface area for the big bro. If you can’t get both sides to sit nice and flat, at least try to place is to that if it starts to rotate, it will at least be moving into a constriction (again, like a nut). Or get the crystal/bump/knob inside the tube, so that the big bro sits in the crack like the rod in a toilet paper holder. The problem is that these imperfect placements usually concentrate all the force on a single point on the tube rather than distributing it around the circumference. I’ve found that they’re pretty easy to place with one hand if you get the location right on the first try, but as erik says, it’s almost impossible to adjust or fine tune the placement without two hands. This is one piece that usually stays home unless we know we need more than 4 or 5 big pieces (i.e. almost always)

there was no loose rock at all when we did it in february. (i apologize for the chest beat, but it is my 400th post!) i have also come down it in the summer after doing the east ridge, and i don't remember thinking that it was shockingly loose, i.e. no worse than many other gullies out there. i do remember that the well established rap stations higher on the ridge did disappear in the gully, though we thought we had just missed the best descent line in the dark.

It is above the ski resort town of San Martin de Bariloche (most people just call is “Bariloche”). While technically in the same province as Fitzroy et. al, it is about 500 miles north. It’s a reasonable side trip if you’re planning to travel in Argentina anyway, but it’s pretty out-of-the-way from how most people get down there. There is bus service, I think it’s about 20 hours… it took me 5 days to hitchhike from Rio Gallegos. The valley itself is a nice place, lots and lots of climbing from 1-10 pitches on good (though usually not immaculate) granite. Routes with fixed gear are pretty spicey, though it’s been years since I was there and it is likely that the Bosch revolution has arrived in the meanwhile. The whole valley was very crowded, not so many climbers, but tons of trekkers. Hut serves decent meals, though I remember thinking that it is kind of expensive. When I was there, they didn’t mind us hanging out in the hut on bad weather days even though we weren’t staying there, but that probably depends on how crowded it is. You can take a city bus from Bariloche up to the ski area then hike (about 2 hours) up to the hut. The Bariloche area is pretty pricey, it’s a major resort destination. In the summer, graduating argentine high school students flock to the area, making it sort of an alpine Ft. Lauderdale. (In the winter, it is a huge ski resort). You can save money by camping in the valley (free), but you have to compete for space with free roaming mules and horses. They hobble pairs of them together to keep them from running off, so they stumble around the valley all night like a seven-legged-race. I lay awake night after night wondering if they were about to trample me in the tent. Don’t know anything about the pants.

Charlie – it sounds like you are looking for someone to tell you it’s going to be ok, when what you’re actually hearing everyone say is “maybe yes, maybe no, it’s a judgment call that none of us can make from in front of our computer screens.” If you don’t feel like you can confidently make the call on the scene, it seems to me you have three options: a) get a companion with more knowledge, b) make a less ambitious plan that doesn’t take you through such unavoidable avalanche terrain or c) go for it anyway, figuring that you’ll probably get away with it. Many people choose C all the time, because they simply don’t know that a danger exists, and most of them are not killed in avalanches. That does not mean that you should ask us to endorse you when you do so. In response to your specific question, the little trees you can see in the photo only go maybe a quarter of the way up the pass, and wouldn’t provide much protection anyway – much of what you see is slide alder mixed with little scrubby pines and boulders. There is no way that “a little bit of scrambling” is going to avoid the avy danger, though I suppose you could climb up and over dragontail via one of many technical routes… the rest of the pass is all scree slopes broken by steeper domes of bare rock. There are terrain features you could use to reduce your exposure to small slides, but they would be unlikely to protect you from anything really big.

well, no disrespect intended, but i don't thing i would consider that to be an Epic. maybe if they had run out of food a day earlier. i consider Epics to be big deal, once or twice in a lifetime events. what those guys had was an Adventure - they dealt with unforseen circumstances with fortitude, but i never got the impression that they ever thought they weren't gonna make it. however, that wouldn't stop me from saying to them "dude, that was epic!" as a compliment. Epic, like so many slang words, has a way of slipping into other contexts, "the powder was epic [good]", "that was an epic slog [bad]", "sorry i'm late, i had an epic getting out of the office [ironic]"

When climbing magazine had their first epics issue, they noted that if an epic occurs to you, by definition you must survive. People who do not survive do not have epics, they have tragedies. OTOH, they made it clear that other people can die during your epic. I’m not sure that the E1 stuff really counts as an epic, it’s just being late/tired/beat-up. I’d argue that all epics have to include at least one incident , i.e. losing/dropping a piece of critical gear, an injury, trapped in wrong watershed by avalanches, stuck in lightning storm above the irreversible traverse, whatever. To me, to qualify as an epic, your survival must be in doubt. Thrashing through the woods for an extra six hours with blisters while your SO gets worried may suck ass, but it’s not an epic… I recently read “This Game of Ghosts,” which didn’t change my opinion that Simpson is one tough, epic-surviving dude… but it did make me think that maybe he has to be because he is so unlucky? That guy has had more epics than anyone I’ve ever heard of. I love the part at the end… injured high on a Himalayan peak in a fall caused by his partner’s crampon breaking, he is being lowered – again – down an unknown ice face. His partner turns to him and says “I think you’ld better take this” and hands him his swiss army knife. Talk about sang froid…

just another plug for fish duffles. they rock. they are cheap (like a third the price of the patagoinia bag). they are just the right size - huge, but managable. i have used them for numerous expeditions, as sleds, on horses, etc. everyone who i have been on big trips with has gone out and bought themselves a fish duffle when they got back. you would be foolish to even think about buying any other expedition duffle.

thighs. the muscle you use walking down stairs.

I’ve been suffering the last three days with a highly unusual amount of muscle soreness. We hiked up the mighty Mt. Si on Saturday with some out of town friends, and for three days, I could barely walk, particularly down stairs. I have not been this sore in many years. Now this would be easy to understand if I were coming off the couch, or if this was a super-intense workout. What is so strange is that I’ve been doing a lot of aerobic/leg work the last couple of months, to the extent that hiking up Si is barely a maintenance workout. (I did the same hike twice in one day a few weeks ago and was tired but not in pain...) What gives? Why was I so sore? I’ve had 2 ideas: 1) Two of us scrambled to the top while the others started down; we ran down a ways to catch up, and then it was a slow hike down. Maybe my muscles just got really cold and crampy? 2) Since these were friends we hadn’t seen in a couple of years, we were drinking a fair amount the night before and the night after. Dehydration? I forced myself to do a long bike ride last night, so I’m feeling better now, but I’m still baffled as to why I was in so much pain.

i think the sum total of my royalties from my fabulous career as a outdoor industry model is the jacket i was wearing in that photo... i still use it for commuting to work on my bike.

i didn't have anything to do with it... i just have a friend who is trying to support his climbing bum lifestyle by hawking a few photos.

"necesitas una cabeza que no tiene rocas dento" but it would be even better to say something like "necesitas no ser tan gilipollas" (such a stupid jerk)

Grady's Grillhouse 2307 24th Ave E Seattle, WA 98112-2606 Phone: (206) 726-5968

We have a family friend who worked at the border in upstate new york in the early to mid sixties. He confirmed all of my worst suspicions that border guards pick on you just because they can, but according to him the reason is not that they were picked on as kids, but because the guards are all bored out of their skulls. Example: Background: the sexual revolution is gathering steam. Birth control pills are easily available in Canada but require a difficult-for-a-minor-to-obtain prescription in the states. You find a teenage girl coming back from Canada with her mom. Ask them the usual questions, slip in one about drugs. They say no. Search their purses. As our friend put it, “often enough to make this worthwhile” you would find a vial of birth control pills in the daughter’s purse. Turn to the girl and say “no drugs, huh? What are these?” Now the fun really begins. Mother turns to daughter and says “Yeah, what are these!” All in a day’s work…

i dunno, it's the first i've heard of it. am i doing anything cool?

well, yeah, but my point is that you guys aren't disqualified from voting just because you live near the proposed venue...