philfort

It's quite bare up there. The Eldorado glacier looks like it did last October. I doubt there's snow anywhere on Sahale Arm, other than the little glacier near the top (that has big ice pathces on it though). Quite a different story from two years ago - I recall getting a continuous ski run from the pass down to the parking lot at the end of July. There's nothing left now though. The bugs are *horrible*!

You might want to consider the Willow Creek route too. I think it is the most direct. However, I don't think it has any water once you leave the creek - But it also doesn't have any snow that I remember, so you might be able to go lighter and not take axe/crampons. Easily done in a day, and, based on the lack of any kind of trail (despite what beckey says) when I did it 3 years ago (in september), I doubt you'll see anyone else. It does require some route-finding though. The travel is a little brushy in the lower bit, but becomes open as soon as you head out of willow ck.

Coming down the south gully on Guye peak two years ago, I was suddenly hit with severe diarhea. I left quite a mess in the gully. On a climb of the SE ridge of Fisher Peak (near Rainy Pass) last summer, all four of us left loaves on the exposed ridge. Several years ago in the 'Gunks, we were climbing a popular 5.4'ish route above the carriage road. When we got to the first ledge belay, it smelled like someone had left something - and sure it enough, there it was. Then, I needed to pee really bad. I wasn't too careful about where I went, and it dripped down the crack you climb on the first pitch. Then, one of my friends, who had the flu, suddenly decided she had to vomit - yup, on the same ledge. It was a bad day to follow us on that climb.

Hmm.... Lambone, what's not cool about the rock?? I've heard other people say it wasn't all that great, but we just climbed it on Tuesday, and I thought the rock was bomber! I saw maybe, at most, two loose blocks on the whole ridge. In fact, my partner, from California, who climbs in the Sierras, couldn't stop mentioning how solid the rock was! (this was his first climb in the Cascades, and he came away with the impression that Cascade rock was better than Sierra rock!) We stayed generally on the ridge crest, and went over the top of all the gendarmes - maybe its looser if you turn them? Those "snafflehounds" in Boston Basin are vicious - they ate through my partner's bivi sac, and into his food bag, while he was sleeping! Then while we were climbing, they are a huge hole in his T-shirt which he left at camp. ---wait a sec--- I just noticed you started this topic too, on the 6th. That means you climbed it between now and then. Did we see you guys while we were hiking out on the 7th? We met three parties - I think 2 of them were planning on the east ridge. [This message has been edited by philfort (edited 08-09-2001).]

I have some beta. It might be a little out of date though. Don't follow Beckey's directions for getting up to the ridge below Pyramid. We did. It sucked. All the other parties we saw (3) took a "trail" that follows the ridge from Pyramid Lake. We came down that way - it was slightly better, but we never saw a trail. The snow starts at around 3500ft, and the glacier is in fine shape, but the snow is a little soft. As of May 1999, that is.

We climbed the East Ridge Direct yesterday. Crampons were pretty much necessary for the ascent to the notch; the snow isn't steep, but it was rock hard in the morning. The ridge was great, exposed, solid rock. We did the east ledges descent, which wasn't nearly as bad as we had heard - maybe we got lucky with the routefinding though. We did 3 raps, a bit of traversing, one more rap, then more traversing. We headed back up to the ridge crest just before the (horrible-looking) gully that Nelson/Beckey recommends. I think it took between 60 and 90 minutes from the summit back to the notch. It's very exposed, but there's always solid rock to grab on to. The descent/ascent up to the notch from BB has a little tricky section when you get off the snow going up. There was an abandoned new-looking rope anchored to the rocks there, for a rappel. I wonder what happened there?

I have a few of the ushba screws. I don't have any fears about their reliability, but they definitely don't go in the ice as well as the black diamond or grivel screws I have. I'm not sure if its the tooth design, or just that titanium creates more friction with the ice than steel, but they're definitely harder to get in. No problem if you can push on the screw really hard, but it would be a different story if you're dangling from one arm trying to get one in.

quote: Originally posted by pontus: Now some inquisitive words about RMI standards: Around 0500-0600 am, we passed the RMI group with one (maybe two) client looking very pale and fatigued...and scared. The guides were tucking him in a sleeping bag about 500-1000 ft above the top of the DC. According to the other teams on the mountain they left their client(s) alone(!!!?) as the rest of the RMI group including guides headed for the summit. Can anyone confirm or denie this odd behavior?? I've heard this is common RMI practise. In fact, some friends of mine, a private party, did this when one of their members became sick at the top of DC. Seemed to work well. The others made the summit, and the sick guy slept and got better.

A friend of mine climbed the Boulder glacier on Mt Baker a couple of years ago. They had the whole place to themselves, except on the way down, they saw this guy coming up, solo, wearing jeans, carrying an alpenstock. The snow was really soft, and everyone was regularly punching through into crevasses. They said this guy was bitching about Beckey, how his route description said "there wasn't supposed to be any glaciers on this route!". (I think you can stay on a ridge next to the Boulder for *some* of the way up, but not all the way - this guy was confused. Apparently, he eventually did turn around before the summit, and made it back down to my friends' camp just before they left. He then asked them if he could follow them out, since he didn't know the way back. Back at the parking lot, he asked for my friends' phone numbers in case they wanted to go climbing sometime)

Aidian (did I spell that right? :-)) Here's some info from a friend who did it last weekend: ------------------------- It was a real pain to get across the Roosevelt glacier --- very dark, because of clouds, and we got about 500' too high, so had to descend, then the last several hundred feet up to the route seemed impassible... tried forever, and finally got through with some religious bridge crossings and jumps. A couple years ago it took us 1.5 hours to get to the base of the climb, this time it took over 4 hours! (was getting so late, 8am, that we almost turned around). Mostly we were above the bad weather by this time. We did the direct start, which (because there wasn't much snow) ends in scree/rock rather than snow/ice. The ice arrete was in funky shape too -- on the mellow side of the arete it was slushy-corn-ice-that-doesn't-take-a-screw, and on the the steep (right hand out of the sun) side it was ok. So we wandered left and right: left for the easier climbing, right to place the screws. good fun. Above the arete the weather came in -- couldn't see much of anything. The seracs near the summit were a real surprize to me, I didn't remember seeing them from below, so I was a little confused. Looking up at them in the fog through my polarized sunglasses, the first one looked like a gigantic north-face-of-everest-5km-high-made-of-cracked-rock. I took off my glasses and couldn't see it anymore, so I decided it was funny-icky-weather-clouds. Then suddenly the fog let up for a second and we realized it was an ice serac --- 50m tall of something, but only 5m away from us (which is why it looked 5km tall). The crevasse crossing to get around that thing on the right was the scariest crossing --- not difficult, just frightening cause you could see the light coming up through the snow below you for metres and metres. Lots of people on the summit (1pm), but we were alone on the ridge. It took 5 hours from the lower icefield to summit, so in the end it was ok in terms of time, after wasting so much on the Roosevelt. The Coleman-deming descent is in really excellent shape (regardless of the warnings from the ranger). We descended it at 1pm, and it would have been ok to descend any time of day (even though it hadn't frozen overnight for us).

Sled-heads do it, so you can too. In case you're not trolling - I've been on the Easton gl. twice around this time of year in a 'normal' snow year, and it was nasty broken up with sketchy snow bridges. On skis in early season it would prob. be fine.

People in the UK have a one in fifty chance of dying each year if they ride a motorcycle? That sounds a bit weird.

Wow, those are amazing rescue photos!

Alex, your last sentence makes no sense whatsoever. Did you have a seizure while typing?

The book's photographs, especially, are excellent.

Has anyone been up on the north side of Vesper peak lately? What is the glacier looking like? Still skiable? Sun-cupped?

The Purcells, Selkirks are all subranges of the Columbia Mtns I believe (along with the Cariboos, Bugaboos, etc...).

Has anyone done the 2000ft 'ice face' just to the left of the NE butt? Does it look any good?

Kyle, please post your findings to this thread when you return.... I'd be interested to know how bad/good it is. thanks Phil

Quote from the second article: "A Blackhawk helicopter floated several hundred feet off the top of the Central Oregon peak, rescuing 40-year-old Matt Gorman from slopes so steep, they seemingly stabbed at the sky. " Looks like some journalist is a novelist-wannabe.

Do the approach hike from the Indian reservation instead of Cold Springs. It's very scenic and uncrowded - and should make up for the hassle of going through the reservation (there's a fee, and they look at you like they don't want you there).

That guy in vertical limit had a nice system - his big SLR just attached, with a satisfying click, right onto his harness.

I often take a medium format camera climbing, which is even larger than most 35mm SLRs. I generally keep it in a top-loading "wedge-shaped" camera bag on my chest, so I can access it in an instant (no point in carrying it if it stays in the pack). I attached some webbing for a neck strap (goes around my neck and one shoulder, so the camera bag is slightly off center), and then a thin strap that goes around the waist and connects to itself with a fastex buckle. So basically I wear it like an avalanche beacon. It put it on under my pack. I seen others with similar systems that attach to their pack shoulder straps, so it comes on and off with the pack. Might be better, don't know. This of course only works for glacier walking or moderate climbing, etc... Any kind of extensive vertical rock or ice, and the big blob or your chest kind of gets in the way. Phil

Explained: He dreamt all day about getting back to a life of climbing. And then he retired very recently (after he wrote that blurb), and, apparently, made his dream come true.

We climbed the North Ridge last weekend. Crossing the Coleman glacier was very straightforward - it was not very broken up. The headwall looked in reasonable shape I think. The only thing I definitely recall seeing was that the top few hundred feet of the headwall was already bare ice (darker colour) and there was some rock exposed. Don't really recall how the lower portion looked, so I guess it's not especially bad, although I doubt it's as smooth as normal for this time of year. Snow was firm nearly the whole way on the N ridge, but really sloppy descending the Coleman in the afternoon. I don't think the headwall gets any morning sun, so it'll probably be firm as long as you get a good overnight freeze. We didn't notice any activity on it (no people, no avalanches, no icefall). Phil