Ade

I'm in Florida but a friend said he heard of someone who'd met a guy who'd been to the parking lot at Alpental. They said that conditions looked really bad, which was impressive given that the guy was partially sighted. Be glad you didn't go. Let the speculation continue.

Riddler/Mr Freeze... A party from Portland went up to scope it out maybe they can say more.

Nice! Lot more ice than when we wre there last weekend! Ade

Exit 38 was OK today but like the man said lots of new wet snow everywhere. The forecast for North Bend is for rain starting tomorrow and temps approaching 40. That'll bring the ice down nice and fast . There's another thread with Banks Lake conditions which didn't sound like much had formed about five days ago. I think I saw someone had climbed Fugs. I'd head East too. Or North to Littlewet. Ade

http://www.ademiller.com/climbing/gallery/cascades/washington_ice/x38_2008/index.htm Pictures of CYA at the Black Ice crag. Worth the trip but it's not going to last!

Like a veritable bag of hammers.

Turf 's Up!!!

Finding a 45-50 degree slope isn't so hard but for alpine ice you'll have to get pretty high and that's unlikely to be near an open road.

I just replied to your other thread on this. It seems like you really are serious. You'll note that there are some practical reasons for not doing this in addition to some you could put into the ethics bucket. It would be a lot of effort for a route that is probably only climbable for a few days each season if that. Hardly a trade route. That aside I'd urge you not to start bolting lines simply for convenience's sake. You could argue that the crux could take a few bolts to make it safer. That's a different discussion. From what you wrote it seems you just feel like the descent down Asgard is just too much like hard work. As you pointed out if you want convenient routes with easy access "just drive north to Canada". If you want to avoid descending Asgard in the dark start earlier. I'm old and lazy too. My ankles aren't giving me any love after descending Asgard last night but it never occured to me that a bolted rap line would be the solution. Cheers, Ade

Two or three days of cold nights could make for really good conditions again. If it's wet in the lower gully then I'd probably skip it as things didn't seem to improve much with height gain.

And there was me thinking you were joking. My semi serious thoughts on this would be. 1) It's in a wilderness area. There may be implications to adding a lot of fixed gear. 2) You're prepared to hike 3-4 hours to the route but not spend an additional hour or so on the descent? 3) Multiple parties rapping down on each other would be a mess. It would really only be a reasonable option for the last party. 4) This is a very late year for snow. In a more typical year this route may not freeze up before it gets buried. Hardly anything in the Cascades gets hordes of ascents in winter because conditions are so variable. Contrast conditions on your ascent with ours only a few days later - primo vs. less so. 5) Last and definitely not least... One of the great things about the Cascades in winter conditions is the sense of big commitment even when you're only a few hours from the trailhead. Do you really want to detract from that? Accept my apologies in advance if you are just kidding around. Cheers, Ade

See the NE couloir thread. It has conditions from Sunday. Things need to get much cooler. It was way warm up there yesterday.

I actually got cfire's story first hand while on the approach to Dragontail at the weekend. Awesome yarn that killed a sizable section of the hike. I wouldn't describe Chris as tense at all. He did a lot better than I would have. If it were my story it would have ended something like... "and that's where I buried the bodies".

I typically wear a smartwool hoodie* and a Patagucci winter guide jacket on top. Two hoods - one under the helmet and one on top. I'm fine with wool. It's easier to wash the fear out of it - woolite works great for this. Polypro starts to smell like an abatoir after a few wearings and there's nothing I've found to remedy that. * I couldn't find this on their site - maybe they've discontinued it... loosers

We (Kyle, Chris and I) did this yesterday. It was 46deg at the base and the route felt like it was in late spring conditions. Much of the snow you see in the pictures above has gone. It didn't freeze over night even though the skies were clear. Several of the steps lower on the route had melted out and were running with water. The final pitch had a reasonable amount of ice but it was very wet and delaminating. I wouldn't even give it an M grade in those conditions, it was more like thin ice climbing on poorly adhered wet ice. Several parties did it on Saturday. I'd be interested to hear what conditions were like the day before as they seem to be changing incredibly fast. The route needs colder temps to come back into good condition.

These are all good routes. NY Gully is significantly harder than the others though. The Alpental valley has some significant avie hazzard that makes approaching the routes up there more serious than it might seem giventhe proximity to the ski area - be careful. Approach times get a lot longer. Now you can get into the base of Colchuck/Dragontail in three hours. Once the road shuts and the trail snows in it's more like six. Other things you might want to consider: Stuart, NW face Colchuck, the other couloir Cutthroat, NW couloir (spring) Abiel peak (numerous possible lines) Eldorado, NW couloir More ideas/alpine porn here: http://www.ademiller.com/climbing/gallery/cascades/index.htm

Looks like fun. I'd be up for a go Sunday (leave Redmond Sat PM, climb Sun, back Sun night). If anyone's serious and interested PM me.

New picture galleries of some climbs this year: The Bugaboos Torment-Forbidden traverse Colfax Peak, Cosley-Houston

Errm. That's pretty much how I'd expect it to look. The couloir holds ice but it's quite deep. The face doesn't hold much, if any ice. Conditions look pretty similar to when I did the route a couple of years back. You can't see if the couloir is in unless you're standing below it.

There were two parties on the route Sunday. The skiing looked to be pretty horrible although the crust petered out high on the glacier and there was a reasonable amount of soft stuff.

The biggest thing I took away from Luebben's tests was that there is a huge variance in the failure load and even (comparitive) experts find it very hard to judge a good or bad screw placement. The number of threads a screw does or does not have is a second order effect.

I took a reasonably significant fall onto a screw last season. Can't say it's something I care to repeat. Get very skinny bouncy ropes would be my advice. Ade

We were wondering if you guys were OK. Glad you made it OK.

The upper ridge is pretty much as described in Nelson. The approach couloir looked pretty ugly, I suspect you'd end up climbing the buttress on the left. It's not particularly nice climbing but it'll get you to the notch.

We did this yesterday. The snow on parts of the traverse has melted out a lot there are some big slots to bypass. In many places it was easier to stick to the rock and avoid the snow entirely.