Lowell_Skoog

I'm guessing it was the "D" hill that you saw. Back in the old days, there were also the "C", "B" and [yikes] the "A" hill. The big hill supported jumps of almost 300 feet. I remember watching jumping meets there when I was a kid. My dad and uncle jumped in the vets class, but never on the "A" hill. What's even more interesting to me is that there was at one time an even bigger ski jump at Hyak. The national record was set there in 1941. I'm not sure where that jump was located. There's very little sign of it anymore.

Ron Judd wrote a nice article about the "D" hill at Leavenworth last week, including quotes from Kjell Bakke and my brother Gordy: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestweekend/2001845763_nwwskijump29.html

Here are some links that describe the SW buttress variation on Inspiration Peak: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/216081/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/vc/1 http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/222827/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/vc/1 http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/223387/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/vc/1

I climbed Goode three times prior to 1990 and never went down the Bedayn couloir. On one of those trips I left a description of the preferred descent route (down the upper NE buttress then over the SE ridge into the SW gully) in the summit register. Later I provided the information to Fred Beckey and it appeared in CAG-2, 2nd edition, 1989, p. 316 ("Southeast Ridge Descent"). Fred's description is a little different than I remember (I recall a long rappel rather than a short descending traverse to the ledge leading to Black Tooth notch) but he described it as the "shortest descent."

Charles Eldridge has put together one of the best one-stop snow and weather pages I've seen: http://www.turns-all-year.com/wealinksfr.html My old snow and weather page is also serviceable, for those who prefer low-tech browsing: http://www.alpenglow.org/links/nwsnow.html

The Mountaineers History Committee has preserved four films produced by Bob and Ira Spring in the 1950s. These films have been transferred to broadcast quality digital videotape and VHS copies have been placed in the Mountaineers Library in Seattle. This is part of an on-going project to locate and preserve high quality movies recording the wilderness heritage of the Pacific Northwest. The following Bob and Ira Spring films have been preserved: Mountains Don't Care (1955) - A film about mountain hazards and safe mountaineering travel produced for the Mountain Rescue Council. Ice Climbing on Mount Rainier (circa 1956) - A journey to the top of Washington's highest mountain, including scenes of the Paradise ice caves, serac climbing on the Cowlitz Glacier, and camping on the summit. Skiing Above the Clouds (circa 1956) - A high traverse on skis across the glaciers of Mount Rainier from Paradise to the White River. Ice Rescue (1955) - A silent, extended version of the crevasse rescue sequence in "Mountains Don't Care". All these films are in color with sound (except "Ice Rescue"). More complete notes about them can be found on the Alpenglow Ski Mountaineering History Project website: http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/movie/spring-1950s-movies.html If you're curious about what climbing and ski mountaineering in the Northwest was like almost fifty years ago, I think you'll enjoy these films. The Mountaineers History Committe hopes to schedule a movie night at the clubhouse in Seattle after we've completed preservation of a few more films. Stay tuned... Preservation of these films was made possible by a grant from The Mountaineers Foundation with the gracious cooperation of the Ira Spring family.

I think they're fine. But I'm an old-school skier who used traditional skis for nearly forty years before getting anything even slightly wide or shaped. I also skied the backcountry in mountain boots exclusively for ten years before I got my first AT boots. So, I'm pretty easy to please.

Yeah, what they said. I don't like hourglass shaped skis on steep slopes in spring. On steeps you'll be making hop turns mostly, not carved turns. Wide, shaped skis tend to hook when you hop them. Narrower, shorter skis are lighter for climbing too. I'm quite fond of my Atomic Tourcap Guides, which are less than 100 mm wide, not too shaped, and very light. Last year they called this ski the TG-10. I don't know what they call them this year.

I have a pair of Silvretta Easy-Go's that shipped with two little plastic clips that you can use to keep the heel pieces from flopping around during transport (like on your ski rack). One side of the clip hooks onto the rail and the other side hooks onto the heel piece when it is flipped forward. See if you can make your gizmos work this way. The 500 has a different heel piece then the Easy-Go, so it would be no surprise if your clips looked different than mine.

There's another long standing paradigm about Mt Index that should be re-evaluated. In CAG-1 (2nd Ed., 1987, p. 209) Fred Beckey writes that the East Face of the North Peak was first climbed on July 1, 1951 by Fred Beckey, Richard Berge, Jim Henry and Pete Schoening. (Note: I don't have the newest edition of this book. Does the latest edition still say this?) In Jim Whittaker's autobiography, "A Life on the Edge," he describes a climb of the East Face of Mt Index with his twin brother Lou in July 1949, when they were both twenty years old (pp. 33-36). Jim writes, "The breathtaking east face is close to the highway and soars more than 3,000 feet above Lake Serene, which lies, blue and cold, at its base at an elevation of 2,800 feet." The book contains a vivid account of the difficulties, which through the twins' enthusiasm and inexperience, almost cost them their lives. In "Memoirs of a Mountain Guide," Lou Whittaker describes the same climb (pp. 43-45) but does not say which face they were on. Maybe the Whittaker twins climbed the original North Face route rather than the East Face. Or maybe that they scaled the East Face two years before the Beckey party did. Someone should talk to them, with a photograph of the peak in hand, and find out the truth. In the Appendix of "Challenge of the North Cascades" (p. 267), Fred Beckey wrote of the East Face of Index, "Why doesn't someone repeat this climb?" It would be ironic if, in fact, somebody climbed it two years before he did.

I think Paul Brikoff was the victim in this accident. I believe the survivor's name was Bob Grant. They were both quite young, in their early twenties. This was in 1952. I believe Chris Jones mentions this story in "Climbing in North America." You may be interested to learn that this bit of historic trans-Atlantic instruction was preserved on film. Dwight Watson introduced Otto Trott to a group of young Mountaineers including Fred and Helmy Beckey and Sigurd Hall during a climb of Mt Shuksan in August 1939. Watson filmed them climbing the Fisher Chimney route. This film has been preserved by the Mountaineers History Committee and a VHS copy can be checked out from the club library. Here are brief notes on the film from my website (http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/movie/dw-movies.html#shuksan-climb): I believe Otto taught the boys how to flatfoot on this trip. Prior to his instruction, they chopped steps whenever the going got icy.

No, I had not heard of Frank Hill before reading Harry's posting.

Great stuff, Harry. I especially appreciate the long and tortuous journey you had to make to dig up this history. The fact that you reviewed several newspapers for the entire summer of 1929 and then stumbled on the 1927 Mt Index article by accident is fabulous. What a treasure hunt! ---- BTW - Readers who want to follow the link to my website in Harry's first article in this thread may need to remove the final period '.' in the URL.

"Isolation Traverse" is the name our party gave the route after we skied it in 1983 (since it goes over Isolation Peak and it is...well...isolated). I don't know if anybody called it that before then. Actually, Matt, the Picket traverse is the hardest of the three routes you mentioned. Here are a couple of links to my journal notes from the two times I skied the route: http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/ms/lds-journal.html#lds-journal-p159 http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/ms/lds-journal.html#lds-journal-p912

Here's a photo I took during my Coleman Basin campout in November 2000. Except for the flash inside the tent, it's kind of hard to tell the difference between moonlight and daylight. I think you can see my snoozing partner's shadow in the lower left corner of the tent. Someday I'd like to get a skiing action picture by moonlight. Dream on...

I have done tele turns in my AT gear for my brother's camera when the terrain was really flat. The reason is that a telemark looks more dynamic on film than a parallel turn in those conditions.

Maybe it's a Fluke-ism. We used to say that at Fluke when an engineer went on vacation without having all his documentation up to date.

I've had two very memorable full moon ski experiences. One was skiing down from Camp Muir on the winter solstice by full moon. The other was camping out in Coleman basin (near dberdinka's trip) and skiing powder there in the middle of the night. In my opinion, full moon skiing is the finest experience possible in the mountains. If another full moon with good weather comes up, and you're looking for a partner to get out skiing for the night, please feel free to contact me.

My engineering contract is winding down, so yesterday I had some time to clear my mind and make some phone calls to search for the Ptarmigan scrapbook. Perhaps Monday is a good day for phone calling. For whatever reason, I had uncanny luck making connections. I talked to Ray Clough's sister, Chuck Kirschner, and then Gert Harby. Chuck told me that he organized a reunion of Ptarmigans and their spouses last summer and about 18 people came, including Gert. Of the surviving Ptarmigans Chuck located, all but two or three made it to the reunion. Some brought pictures and other memorabilia to share. When I reached Gert Harby, she said she did not have the Ptarmigan club scrapbook. She thought the last person to have it may have been her brother. Her brother is in a nursing home in poor health, but she put me in touch with his daughter (Gert's niece) who lives in Sedro Woolley. I spoke to Gert Harby's niece on the phone. She described the effort of moving her parents and their possessions from another part of the country to a nursing home near her. Over a very few days, she had to box up all her father's possessions and ship them home to Washington. She kept everything, including hundreds of mountain photographs, scrapbooks and other mementos. She doesn't really know what she has and couldn't tell me whether the Ptarmigan scrapbook is there. She said "it could be twenty years" before she is able to go through these materials, so she didn't know how she could help me. It was clear that she found the prospect of going through all those boxes daunting. Through all of these phone calls, I was amazed at how helpful and friendly everyone associated with the Ptarmigans was to me, a complete stranger. Everyone I spoke to was supportive of my efforts to dig up Ptarmigan history and all of them said they would like to see any book that results from the effort. It's a sign, I think, that the Ptarmigans themselves appreciate that their group was special. Yet I doubt that any of them understand how widely acclaimed the Ptarmigans have become over the years. I didn't feel I could ask anything more of Gert Harby's niece than she had already done by speaking to me. So I left her my name and phone number and offered that if she ever got inspired to go through her father's possessions, I would be willing to help. Perhaps in time something will come of it. For the sake of her privacy, I am not going to post the name of Gert Harby's niece in this forum. I've sent a message to Harry Majors with this information and I've recorded it in my address book. Should I get "hit by a truck," as we say in the engineering biz, I hope that someone may be able to pick up the trail where it has ended for now.

Speaking of Dee Molenaar and brushes with greatness, have you seen his personal copy of his book "The Challenge of Rainier"? He took the first copy off the press and for years carried it with him to any lecture or meeting were mountaineers were present. It's full of signatures of climbers like Hillary, Tenzing, Shipton, O'Dell, Bonatti, Messner and so on. I met Dee at a lecture and book signing for "Cascade Voices" by Mac Bates. To my surprise, he asked me to sign his Rainier book. In my copy of "Cascade Voices" he wrote above his picture: "To a younger generation role model, Berg Heil!" Boy, that made me feel good.

No, that's Dee Molenaar on the left. The guy on the right posts here now and then, so I imagine quite a few people here know him... I'm having a hard time thinking of famous people I've met (besides a few climbers and skiers). I did meet J.P. Patches when I was a kid. Does that qualify?

I'm disappointed that the Skagit gorge slides may keep the North Cascades highway closed for a while. Still, the problems in the gorge are interesting from a historical perspective. In JoAnn Roe's "North Cascadians" and Fred Beckey's "Range of Glaciers" the authors write that in the 1890s road planners concluded that the Skagit gorge was not a feasible route through the mountains. In the 1880s, after gold was discovered near Ruby Creek, prospectors built what was called "the Goat Trail" up the canyon, using a boardwalk secured to iron spikes drilled into the rock. Austin Pass and Hannegan Pass, near the Mt Baker ski area, were discovered in the late 1800s by Bellingham men looking for a better route to the Ruby mines. Cascade Pass was for many years considered a more suitable route for a road across the mountains than the Skagit gorge. The Harts Pass road was built from the Methow Valley to the Slate Creek mining district because prospectors concluded it would be easier to get there from the east than from the west, up the Skagit gorge. It looks like those old-timers knew a thing or two.

A lot depends on what sort of partnership you have with your spouse. If your relationship is 50-50 (like mine) you will immediately find your free time cut by 1/2 when your child is born. (Actually more like like 2/3.) Some couples seem to have a different balance. I think that must be the case for parents who keep climbing at a high level. For me to disappear for long periods of time on a regular basis to go climbing would not go over well at home. I never quit climbing when my son was born, but I cut back quite a bit. I've been ramping back up a little now that he is in elementary school. I have also diversified my interests. It was partly because I needed to be closer to home that I started writing a book. Ultimately, I think most climbing parents don't regret the decrease in climbing time. To be honest, I think my obsession with climbing when I was younger was partly due to not having much else going on in my life. Kids change that, in a good way.

Here is a short item from the Port Angeles newspaper, posted on Tuesday 11/11. It's the first news story I've seen that mentions Ben by name. I've been a little worried that the web might have gotten ahead of the authorities on releasing his name. That could be painful for family members. http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/sited/story/html/148626 Olympic National Park: Kayaker dies after capsizing on upper Elwha River 2003-11-11 by BRENDA HANRAHAN OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK -- A 24-year-old Bellingham man has died after his kayak capsized on the upper Elwha River. The man was identified Monday afternoon as Ben Manfredi, park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said. A seven-person team from Olympic Mountain Rescue and eight park staff were recovering Manfredi's body by hiking into and out of a steep canyon Monday afternoon, said Larry Nickey, Olympic National Park's fire and emergency operations coordinator. Sunday's kayaking incident happened in an area known as Goblin's Gate, where the Elwha River shoots down a rock passage into Rica Canyon. Maynes said the stretch of river is a challenging whitewater area, but noted that Manfredi was an experienced kayaker and avid ``extreme'' sports participant. ------------------ The rest of the story appears in the Tuesday Peninsula Daily News.

I resisted shaped skins for a long time. On traditional skis, they are not necessary. But on the newer, more shaped skis, they will probably improve your climbing. I finally bought my first shaped skins to use on a pair of shaped skis I won in a race. I was careful to shape them symmetrically. In other words, they are no wider at the tip than at the tail. This makes it possible to fold them carefully in half with no glue exposed. I marked the mid point with a felt pen to make this easier. The symmetrical cut makes them a bit narrower than the ski near the tip, but I've noticed no problems with it. My main complaint about shaped skins is that they are a pain to fold up. You have to be very careful to avoid exposing the glue to contamination. With parallel skins, you just rip half the skin off from the tip, fold it at the 1/4 mark, then rip the rest of the skin off, fold it at the 3/4 mark, then fold the two halves together at the 1/2 mark. This is much easier to do in a windstorm than carefully peeling the whole skin off and folding it in half upon itself. Another tip you might consider is to get a really wide pair of skins and cut a pair of thin skins off them (say 1 inch wide) before shaping the skins. You can use the thin skins on low angle road approaches to maximize your glide. I prefer fairly traditional skis (like the Atomic TG10) that you can use a straight skin on. I still use strap-on skins when the pollen comes out in June.