Alex

nice effort. but yeah, I never attempt stuff like this these days when it's dumped 2-4 feet of new in the last week, especially with freezing levels near 1000-2000, it's just a wallowfest. Generally, the alpine snow climbs tend to be in the best shape after a longer period of settled weather, hopefully with some warming too to make the snowpack more stable.

good price. good luck!

That sucks

Here is a thread on current Banff Ice Conditions for 2015/2016 The authoritative source is usually http://www.gravsports-ice.com/icethreads/ But it isn't particularly comprehensive right now, so please feel free to add anything here Banff/Canmore/etc ------------- Things are generally in. The weather is mild right now and it has not snowed in a week. Stuff is not melting, but not really cold right now. * Even Thomas Creek climbs are all in except Chantilly, which is out. Moonlight is in, Snowline is in, and 2 Low For Zero is as fat as I have ever seen it. Lots of traffic. * Amadeus is in. It has not Chinooked yet. * Cascade is in. Rogans Gully is in. * Johnson Canyon is in * His and Hers are not really climbable right now, Grotto is in and in WI2 shape. A good first lead. * Professor is too wet to climb. * Trophy Wall not really formed up. A lot of the other stuff on Rundle is quite fat. * Whitemans in/hard * Redman Soars in Radium Highway -------------- Stanley Headwall stuff is kind of thinner than some years, but mostly there. I did NOT get a look at Nemesis. Hafner is on the thin side right now. Ghost ------ Access to the North Ghost is very difficult, as the berm that one used to drive on to get there after the big hill is washed out. So, no North Ghost for you! That said, some other stuff in the Ghost is climbed from time to time, best to check GravSports for the latest there. Louise ------- I did not get to look at Louise Falls, though it was on the list of things to do, sorry. It is quite a bit colder in Louise than anywhere else, so I imagine it's fine.

hey cool, yes that practice gully right about now is a good ramble when there is not much snow up at Alpental. It is low-flow and low-angle enough to promote early freezes like this!

Pete Doorish is still around, you know. He is not that hard to get ahold of, and he isn't that old, either. He is a very quiet understated guy, and a good pianist!

No.

I didn't think Psychopath was that bad, but I didn't onsight it either, seconding. My buddy who led it onsighted it. Pressure Chamber pitch should be on this list!

Indeed! I am not sure what I should do with this stuff if no one wants it? what do people do? Its not like if I give the T1s to Goodwill, anything will happen with them...

Closet cleaning some things, mostly I'd just like to find psyched new owners of this stuff, so not looking to make top dollar...! Please contact me directly at recompense AT hotmail DOT com. Scarpa Eiger 43.5 in good shape 20$ Scarpa T1 tele boots sz 6 - 7 in great shape, 40$ Petzl Arctic, no AA adapter, spare bulb, make offer Petzl Zoom w AA adapter, 10$ Two candle lanterns, 10$ both Sony FM/AM radio, runs in a AAA. 10$ Sterno, etc.. Free, you pick up. N NE Supergaiter, size S, rands are good, 20$ Wild Country super gaiter, size L, rands are good, 40$ Petzl childs full body harness, gently used, I have 2, 40$ ea Markill Stormy hanging stove, 40$ MSR Pocket Rocket 20$ comes w windscreen. The TI cup is also avail for 20$ Coleman Peak 1 lantern. I have some mantles for it. 20$ Super Loops, with some basic mounting hardware, 20$ Some older style ice axe leashes. One Wild Things, one Black Diamond, one Grivel, 5$ ea

I can believe its gone. There was nothing to feed it with this year!

Sure, lots of people have slept up there. It will depend on conditions, and more so on the expected conditions, eg so ... you REALLY want to choose to try to figure out how to bail from the summit in zero visibility in the middle of the night when something rolls in? It is typically cold and windy on Rainier summit even during the day. (Not that there aren't days where the air is still, too.) Personally, I'd much rather be down the mountain a fair bit, to increase my chances of non-epic.

I was watching ancient videos of Catherine Destivelle soloing amazingly hard stuff on Youtube, I never realized how amazingly bold she was! I personally don't care about the top grade, I'd rather see Hazel Findlay send the gnar with holds breaking all over the place.

awesome marc

that's as fat as that thing has ever been

Nice. Those West Sidas probably just deserve whatever they get. I like certain dogs after I get to know them (like, Gene's dogs), but I stay far away from all off-leash dogs I meet both at the crag and campground, I personally hate off-leash dogs. An off-leash dog at the crag makes me want to make posts like this one.

I wish the camera angle were a bit wider on the pic, and then I could say with more certainty, but the gully I climbed back in the day that topped out on Backbone ridge was either 1 or 2 to the right of the purple arrow. It wasn't terrible climbing but was the hardest pitch I led that day. When we realized we were actually on Backbone, and that we didn't want to tackle the Fin directly, we then bailed and went back to finish up the route exiting the NF exactly as the Gerber SinkTR shows. The red route line overlays how the North Face exit works, and dumps into the Third Couloir. It enters the Third Couloir probably about a pitch above where the transition from the Second Couloir is, next to a small platform where one can rest. If you did Purple arrow, then you climbed that gully beside the Fin but eventually -> into the Third Couloir (as the Third Couloir is the only thing behind the Fin, and leads to the summit plateau straight away) but the Purple arrow gully there is not the normal "easiest" route to exit the face. I think probably in most years it is not in climbable shape, as it is this year.

Dan has a good memory! So, long story short, judging by what you wrote here but more by the pic you posted of your route, you basically climbed the Gerber-Sink. The Gerber-Sink isn't a *precise* route, just like Triple Couloirs isn't actually a precise route, but it is basically the N F Dragontail to the right of the Triple Couloirs, taking the North Face from the toe of the face, through the North Face "bowl" all the way into the Third Couloir, usually. The "gully behind the Fin" is the Third Couloir of Triple Couloirs. What Dan remembers is when I first climbed Triple Couloirs, we did the N F variation (per Nelson) but made the mistake of traversing far to the right and we ended up literally on Backbone Ridge, from which we bailed (off a single nut we left), traversed back left, and climbed 3 mixed pitches and gained entrance to the Third Couloir, which is standard. I did have a trip report up on the Interwebs long ago but I've since nuked all that stuff. I climbed this in ... 1999? 1997? It is hard to remember. You guys had a great outing, way to stick with it, proud send!

nice job to both your party and theirs!

I seem to have lost a red alien on a quite new red omega pacific red wiregate oval biner, somewhere between the top of Middle Eightmile buttress and the road by Eightmile campground on Sat. If found pls give me a shout 206 931 6309 thanks!

so...little....snow

I think the fact that you have the data is great. Seriously. At least you now know how slow you *might* go on future climbs of similar length and difficulty (Ice Cliff Glacier comes to mind, NEBC on Colchuck, Triple Couloirs on DTail, all of them are similar or longer in length, and usually just a bit harder technically), not that you really want to be slow with 3000 ft of vert. I think 5.75 hours to the top of the couloir is the tell, and maybe future readers will read this trip report and understand much better with real data from you guys and your experience that if they are ballpark hitting those kinds of times, they should consider bailing from the top of the couloir rather than continuing on. 45 minutes transition seems like a lot of allowance, honestly. One fun activity is to start just timing yourself for this kind of stuff, in some safe environment. I would have probably allowed 10 minutes for crampons on, harness on, self-belay gear organized, rackup, whatever. If it were colder or you were threatened by hazard you wouldn't have lingered as long I think. I recently made my mentees build trad anchors under the duress of a stopwatch. We started with 7 min on the clock, and all pieces usable. We gradually made it harder throughout the day, getting down to 4-minute times using only nuts and hexes. It is training like this that pays in the mountains. The next weekend they went out and did a route they didn't know, onsight. It took one of the guys 30 min to build an anchor, even after all that practice, but you can imagine he at least had a recent day of just anchor building under his belt to draw from.

Probably too early to say. Good that you are thinking about it N side tech routes on Raindog will be hard to navigate because of the Carbon. But be patient, its only the first week of March. We could have a wet March/April/May which will change the picture at least for the volcanos

Sorry about that. It just tends to be one of the main factors probably for all of us; underestimating energy requirements and feeding the furnace. Maybe not in your guys case. I was thinking about this in a different metric that I often use to judge my own likelihood of "bailure" last night: elevation per hour pace. If you consider that Colchuck Lake is at what 5500/6000 ft? and the summit of Colchuck is basically 8700 (edit), you have your summit day of around 2700 vert, right? The couloir is prob 1300 of that, and the face is probably another 1300. One great gauge of progress in the mountains is to start calculating, every hour, what your per-hour elevation gain is, and set some limits. Just for example, for the dog routes on Rainier, my metric is at least 1000 an hour for a moderate pace on summit day. Usually it starts out much faster, say 1500 or even 2000 ft an hour. Often times for me by the time I hit 12,500 I slow, and by 13,500 I am probably doing 500 ft an hour, due to elevation. You can do the same thing for technical climbs. If you are climbing less than an hour, you should consider bailing rather than hoping condish will get better and you'll get faster. (That almost never happens). Consider a party now, taking 10 hours up this route as you did: 300 feet an hour? Or, much better example to illustrate the point, the last time I slogged up Rainier I met a party that had been going UP from Camp Shurman for 14 hours. WTF? That's just up, not round trip. We met them on the summit, after climbing for about 5 hours. True its a bit of vertical from Shurman, but that's about 400 ft an hour. That is just too slow, unless one has amazing weather. One should do the running math on every climb, and keep track. It can trigger the warning bells maybe sooner than the actual geographic features can. I also wanted to add that on this route, I think downclimbing the couloir would be a long piece of work, and it's likely that it would have taken just as long to go up. Only difference in the final outcome is the bivy. [edit: Colchuck is 8700]

I put that in there especially for you, me, and MattP, Dan.