forrest_m

i don't see why that should count against me, i mean allison and the ballard contingent are always swaying the ballot in favor of frelard.

re: parking at gradys - there is some parking right there on 24th. There is some angle parking on the adjacent streets. Then there is tons of parking in the residential streets in all directions. It is not a zone parking area. There are no permits or limits. Honest, parking is not a problem, certainly easier than the downtown or ballard locations.

no amount of beta can eliminate surprises on alpine climbs. i agree with dru, for established routes, beta is good. if you want to explore, more power to you. there's an incredible amount of terrain out there. the golden age of cascade alpinism is NOW.

i also vote for Grady's. It is in montlake, conveniently near capital hill, the u district and the montlake offramps from 520.

I agree that the fee-demo program - which in my opinion is a red herring that the forest service is using to distract from the huge amounts of money the lose on other programs - would be a good candidate for an investigation. It certainly affects a much larger group than simply climbers. However, I think it would be hard to treat in a single, short news story - it would almost have to be a series. "This land is our land? - A special report all this week at 11!"

Looking for a good place to take an out of town guest x-c skiing tomorrow. Not interested in a groomed or maintained area. Criteria: - accessible with 2-WD low clearance - below treeline - some road or trail but also offers opportunities for “skiing off through the woods” - has something interesting to look at, like waterfalls, gorges, etc. With this weather, pursuing big views will probably be a waste of time. - Some opportunity for gentle turns is ok, but we’ll be on touring skis, not telemark gear. I had been thinking about something like Jumbo Mt. up by Salmon le Sac, but with the snow level so low, I’m thinking maybe there’s something closer to Seattle? TIA

i agree, the best "rescue" would have been to replace the draw, that didn't occur to anyone in the short time that he was there. we did think about tying him off to my friend's rope, but he had to pendulum hard to get over there and by the time we realized that we couldn't just unclip the crampon, it was basically over. He tried to get the crampon off, it seemed like trying to get the ankle strap off he was going to pull the guy off - he was pretty pumped out even BEFORE this whole incident got started. but my question was more along the lines of "what would you do to help yourself"... the only thing that i think might have worked was to loop the rope over the guard of the tool. even this would have been very scary, since his tools were just hooked over kicked out footsteps. the ice was not real solid - it was a curtain of icicles that had been broken off at the lip of a roof, so the ice began abruptly in a horizontal line, maybe 3-4 inches thick and very picked out from many ascents. i think if it had been me, i would have tried to reverse the last move, hard as it might have been - hanging on with one hand, reaching down and slotting the pick back into the "undercling" and trying to get low enough to grab the draw. at least if you fell, you'd be closer to the bolt. yes, bearspirit/quarry creek

Witnessed last weekend. It’s only funny because nobody actually got hurt... We’re at a small crag near Banff, a wide WI4 curtain with a couple of bolted mixed climbs on either side. It’s getting near the end of the day, and one of my partners is lowering off. On the route next to us, a climber is struggling, but after a few falls, makes it past the crux. Pulling up on a cammed tool, he reaches up and slots his tool into the hacked out ice at the lip of the overhang, then matches his other tool. Our first indication of trouble comes when he says, almost calmly, “oh shit, this is very bad” We look up. His crampon bail has somehow managed to clip itself into the rope end of the quickdraw on the last bolt as he moved past. The last move is too hard to reverse, and he’s rapidly pumping out trying to hold on to his leashless tools. His tools are placed at the limit of his reach and there is no way he could reach his feet even if he could let go with one hand. Everyone at the base of the cliff can visualize the guy swinging around his feet like an out-of-control bat and slamming into the wall, to be left dangling off the bolt by one foot, unconscious and unable to lower. My partner swings over to try to help, but the wiregate biner has slid around in such a way that the nose can’t get past the guy’s boot. In fact, when my buddy opens the gate to try, all that happens is that the rope falls out. The guy is starting to panic now, as he shouts “get it in, get the rope back in.” After 15 tense seconds, the rope is back in the draw, but the draw is still clipped to his foot. His whole body is starting to shake, as my friend tries desperately to free the biner from his crampon without letting the rope drop out again. “I’m coming off… I can’t hold on!” he shouts. “Come on, man, stick it out, stay in there” come the shouts from the ground. The only sound is a whimper, then in slow motion we watch him come off. His hands don’t open up as much as they simply slither over the stops at the end of his tools. He seems to hang there for a second as my partner jumps sideways to get clear, and then suddenly, the guy is hanging upside down in midair. A moment later, a hail of shrapnel falls around us as the pieces of his radical crampon hit the ground. His tool augers in like something from a kung-fu movie. Fortunately, his crampon exploded when his weight hit it, saving him from a potentially serious injury. Seconds later he was on the ground, shaken but not hurt. But it just goes to show that even bolt-protected climbing can be dangerous…

Geek, don't you think that's oversimplifying? By way of example, I think it's obvious that there is value in saying "5.9" instead of "a 30 meter crack that varies in angle from 80 to 90 degrees with some good footholds where it is steepest but mostly smears on the lower-angled section..." The value of the numbers is that they allow you to (attempt to) compare the route you are contemplating with routes you have done in the past in order to know what you are getting into. They are concise, and when developed through consensus over the years, fairly accurate. The issue that started the debate seems to be that people are having some difficulty coming to consensus over Big 4 - probably because the relatively few ascents are spread over a long period of time. (i've never even seen the route in winter, so i have no opinion on the matter). I think the issue of "is el cap now a grade II" is a red herring - the grade is supposed to be representative of an average party competent to do the route. The average party still spends 3-5 days on the nose. The fact that a tiny fraction of climbers now climbs it (much) faster shouldn't alter the grade; on the other hand, i think it makes sense that grades slowly change if the time required for the average party declines, i.e. climbs like Slesse that have gone from VI to V as the rock climbing ability of the average climber has skyrocketed in the years since the first ascent. The key word here is slowly. Oh, and Mr Natural, since when is taking one leader fall and then climbing back up to your highpoint (with only one tool, as your second tool is still stuck in the ice where you peeled off) considered "dogging the shit" out of something? Are you in the habit of lowering to the belay and pulling the rope on alpine routes?

marmot and feathered friends both sell/fit them. many good downhill ski shops also fit them if you mail order the liners or buy them online. fwiw, i was leaving on a trip and couldn't find any mountaineering ones in stock, so i bought ski boot sized ones, had them fit, and then cut them down. i then had to sew the nylon skin back together along the top, which was easy even for a sewing gumby like me. it's stretchy, so you can just pull it up and go round and round with the thread. (they're still going strong after many, many days of use.) try to mimic the shape of your stock liners very closely, a friend did the same as me but trimmed the liners too low in front and got massive bruises on his shins.

who says the two are mutually exclusive?

COAST RANGE GROUP ANGST CAKE Start with 8 climbers of widely varying experience and ability. 2 of them are friends-of-friends from a foreign country who have never met the others before a few days ago. For some, this is their first "expedition." Mix in some ambitious plans and very different expectations, leaven with some successes and some disappointments, and spread unequally through the group. Allow to boil over with one serious misunderstanding. Divide into several separate teams. Bake for three weeks of the finest weather the Coast Range has ever seen. When finished, you will have a lot of good climbing but some very hurt feelings that will eventually heal, allowing you to all remain close friends. Decorate by producing an elaborate slide show that explores above issues and is seen by over 500 people, including one canadian guidebook author. Or maybe it just has something to do with this: Tim Matsui Photo

sorry, the story cannot be told without beer. let's just say that decision making with a group of 8 people is not always easy.

do i need a refresher in reading comprehension, or is it true that despite 4 separate TRs, copious route information and annotated photographs, DBB's website does not mention the actual LOCATION of this fabled ice climbing paradise?

I've got a suggestion, someplace NEW, someplace close-in for city folks yet convenient for east-siders, and best of all, it is within walking distance of my house. It is GRADY'S GRILLHOUSE on 24th Ave East (just south of the Montlake Bridge). grady's web page - really good food that is reasonably priced (unlike Nickerson and Dubliner) - easy access from 520 for folks coming from bellevue - usually pretty quiet on Thursday nights, so they'd probably welcome a group. They have several "zones" in the bar, so it would be pretty easy to take over our own area. GG is no stranger to loud, sports-oriented crowds, 'cause lots of city recreational sports teams play on nearby montlake fields - pool table, non-smoking

dru, that's good to know... unfortunately, it wasn't the first (and probably won't be the last) time that i've bushwhacked some good distance parallel to a perfectly good trail.

I did the cross-country approach from the north via ashnola river road a few years ago, which makes the approach about 8 miles (6 off-trail), and it is not too bad as bushwacks go, but it's still a 'whack. The worst of it is where you have to pass through forests of lodgepole pine, which is a real pain because there's so much downed timber that in places it's like pickup-stix. But it's east side, a lot of it is open timber, there are game trails to follow, and since you are following a valley, it's not like you can get lost. There's no slide alder or devil's club. It's mostly pretty mellow going, it's only steep the last bit climbing up to the lake (lower cathedral?) where you pick up the trail. We took two full days to get from Seattle to the base of cathedral (including the driving), only one going out. On the way out, we decided to stay high on the ridge to the north of the bushwacking valley (sorry, the names have all faded out of my memory), which was incredibly beautiful, and let us do most of the distance traversing alpine meadows instead, but then we had to bushwack straight down the end of the ridge, which was pretty steep and densely wooded. I have a strong sentimental attachment to that area, because it was on the top of amphitheater mountain when I was 12 years old that I decided that I wanted to learn how to climb mountains. I was on a backpacking trip with the YMCA, and the leaders were both climbers and had us bouldering all over the place. One of them taught me how to layback - it seemed like magic to move upwards with only a crack running up and down and no real "handholds". The far point of our loop trip was Remmel Lake; from there, we made a day hike up to the top of amphitheater and ate lunch sitting with our feet hanging over the edge. It was my first real taste of exposure, and I liked it.

what's up with all the dead thread revival lately? discussions that have been dead for weeks, months, or in one case years have been disinterred. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! thread necrophilia must stop!

very cool, rat! i've also been wondering about this route for a while. please post photos, even if they're shitty. (pm me if you need a server to post them to)

Post deleted by mattp, not because there was anything wrong with it except that when other off-topic posts were removed it seemed out of context. My apologies for any hard feelings.

Let's start with the money shot: Colin approaching the summit. Several people have asked for more details, so here goes. Let me start by making it clear that this was Colin's idea; when we set aside this weekend to climb something, I would have been content with something less ambitious. But it was an appealing thought, as I've been thinking that this low-snow year might be a good opportunity to get first winter ascents of primarily rock climbs. We almost bailed when family plans meant we had to be back on Sunday, but we were both able to rearrange our schedules in order to take off Friday. (I traded workdays, but I think Colin just ditched school...) We drove up to Newhalem on Thursday night and sacked out behind the car. Our plan was to go light, light, light: summer weight sleeping bags, lightweight shell jackets. The rack consisted of 6 nuts, 2 cams, 2 tricams, 1 ice screw and a couple of pitons; we brought a single 8.6mm rope. We started hiking at 5, and had gotten past the old road and onto the steep hillside as the sun came up. We joked about "winter" conditions, as there was no snow anywhere to be seen. We finally hit snow about 4,000 feet, and we were wallowing a bit as we went through the small cliffs just below timberline. As we broke out of the dense trees into the more open basins, we put on our snowshoes and began the long traverse. In shaded areas, the snow was loose, deep powder, but anywhere the sun had hit had a substantial breakable crust. We (barely) made it over the pass into Terror Basin without removing our snowshoes, as the final slopes were a bit steep and icy for comfort with no edge control. We descended to the extremely windy low point below McMillan Spires and climbed back up to a more protected spot just before getting onto the glacier, a few hundred feet below the very impressive S. Face of Inspiration. Huge rime ice feathers outlined the ridgetops like a halo. We pitched the tent around 3:30, and spend the next several hours getting rehydrated and stuffing calories. Even so, we were horizontal by 7 - as Colin put it, "one nice thing about winter climbing, you always get a lot of sleep" We got a little later start the next morning, but were moving by 6:30. We got about 100 feet out of camp breaking through up to our thighs before putting the snowshoes back on for a few minutes of EXTREME snowshoeing up a very steep snow ramp into the flat basin below Inspiration. We dodged a few still-visible crevasses up to the base of the Inspiration-Pyramid couloir. Our first view left us very psyched: the 5.8 chockstone, visible halfway up the gully, sported a frozen waterfall to its right, promising easy passage, so we were able to quickly simulclimb the entire couloir to the col at its head. The waterfall turned out to be 8 feet of steep ice, the rest was a firmly frozen snow crust. Spooky views onto the very cold north wall of the Pickets opened up. I led off from the col, up some snow slopes onto the rock. At first it seemed improbable, as the rock was plastered with what appeared to be custardy rime ice. But to my surprise, it took good tool sticks - at 8,000 feet, a week of melt and freeze had firmed it up enough for decent climbing. Weaving back and forth, and connecting snowy ramps with rime-plastered bulges, I ran the rope out until Colin reached the rock and then found an anchor, a complicated affair of opposing nuts and an angle piton. Though the climbing was not too hard, placing gear certainly was. Long excavations were required to find usable cracks, as the rock is quite compact in places. Colin took over the lead; after one difficult move, he disappeared around a corner, and the rope began to move very quickly as the angle kicked back and the terrain became more snow than ice. I'm not sure what to rate these pitches; Colin called them low-fifth class, which I suppose is true, but it was also pretty runout and insecure in places. In poorer conditions, they would have been very scary. The last pitch to the summit was mine, mostly steep snow, with some heart-pounding exposure on the last hundred feet to the summit. On the knife-edged crest, I forced myself to stand upright and take three steps. OK, enough of that, back to all-fours. No anchors anywhere in sight, I stamped out a hole in the snow on the exact summit, sat down, and braced my feet, preparing myself to roll over onto the south face should a collapsing footstep send Colin sliding off the north side. I looked around at the breathtaking scenery, forcing Colin to stop every 15 feet for another photograph. Still straddling the knife edge, we spent some time digging for the fixed rap anchors, but quickly decided that it would be easier just to downclimb the last pitch. Colin disappeared around the corner, re-placing the pro, and I was alone again for a few minutes on the summit. We downclimbed to a good piton crack about halfway down Colin's pitch, then made three raps back down to the col. The sun was already going to work on the rime, and it was frighteningly easy to clear the rock of ice now; a sideways swipe of your axe now broke off large sheets. Clearly, we had slipped through a narrow window of good conditions. We down-soloed the gully to just above the waterfall; the morning's crust had given way to very soft glop, and the occasional snow blob collapsing from the cliffs above made us want to hurry. We fixed an nut and rapped, then another from a fixed sling below the chockstone, before downclimbing the rest of the couloir. Safe from falling objects now, we put the snowshoes back on and retraced our steps. We reached camp at 3:30, packed as quickly as possible, and began racing the daylight back around the huge basin, reaching treeline just at dark. The next hour was perhaps the crux of the trip, as we attempted to stay on the faint trail, especially where it was only barely covered with snow. Luckily, we never lost it for long and the car's reflectors showed up in our headlamp beams just before 10 pm. We didn't see any sign of avalanche activity (except debris at the base of couloirs). All sun-exposed slopes above 5,000 feet have developed a very firm crust over 12-14 inches of unconsolidated powder snow, all on top of a very solid base. I suspect that the next significant snow loading will set off an avalanche cycle of epic proportions on SE - S - SW exposures. When Colin suggested the climb, I must admit that I was prepared for a total sub-alpinism epic of barely-snow-covered-logs and desperate brush (with a possible climb at the end), but conditions were perfect and the approach was very reasonable. This was Colin and my first climb together! I will scan some more photos later this week and post a link to a gallery.

chuck - thanks for sharing that. glad it came out well. noone conquors mountains, we're just lucky when we can sneak in and out without them noticing us.

wayne and david - congratulations. nice to know that you never have to go up on that face again, right? sounds like you had pretty bad conditions for the route, although i don't know if it often gets much better. when dan and i were up there, we had a lot of problems with loose, unconsolidated snow and spindrift, but we were able to get some solid ice screws in on both of the ice pillars (sometimes tied off short - we didn't have stubbies). the ice was often very thin but generally not rotten. we carried one picket each, tied off as a deadman, these were often the only pro or belay anchor. retreating off the route would be very hard, since the rock is really bad in most places. did you find our fixed pin at the base of the crux pillar? wayne, as to your questions about underestimating the route, maybe you're right, but it seems to me that the route has a very serious reputation. i don't think you can see the face from the highway without knowing that it is going to be big, shady and scary. along with the twight connection, i think this serves to deter most of the people who might "get into trouble" up there. there's no question that it is a very committing route, it would be quite difficult to retreat from the middle of the face. again, good job!

Colin - I can't believe that you had the energy to boot up the computer after you got home last night! Too much energy, man. I was asleep about 10 minutes after getting home... The pickets in winter are really wild looking, lots of cool rime ice formations like a miniature patagonia. I will post some photos in a few days when i get my film back.