Nick

I climbed the DC, in June, using the lighter Tecnica Bio ascends. These are classified as hiking boots but have a fairly stiff sole and are more waterproof than the light LaSportiva boots. They weigh 2 pounds each. I used them with strap on aluminum crampons and had cold feet all the way up (wiggling my toes as I climbed). Now I use Scarpa Alpha ice boots on mountains like Rainier. My size 8.5 boots only weigh about 5 ounces more than the tecnicas (and I don't even have the ultra light liners) and my feet are always warm. The scarpas are nimble and comfortable, totally unlike my old clunky plastics. I have had frostbite a couple of times over the years and try to avoid freezing my feet now. Light footwear is great, but you can get the alphas down close to Trango S weight if you get the ultra light heat-fit liners.

The Golite Jam pack is great, it is a smaller version of the Gust but has compression straps. It is big enough to carry a full set of light alpine gear for multi day trips, but carries like a tiny climbing pack when you take out rack/rope to climb. I have found that you can survive several nights of bad weather (heavy rain, ice and snow) sleeping in a 20 oz. Integral designs synthetic "bag liner" and a 7.5 oz. Montbell goretex bivy sack, wearing only wool long johns, 3 oz. nylon windshirt, socks, 3 oz. ballaclava, light schoeller pants and a set of very light rain shells. I was supposed to be wearing a light synthetic parka as well, but had to loan it to someone else. Sleeping this light is cold and miserable, but I stayed dry each night until being fully buried in snow on the fourth night out. I think the goretex was defeated by being smothered in snow. A siltarp to keep the snow off the bivy might have helped, a larger bivy would have been better too. Any emergency bivy should close up completely when the drawstring is cinched down. The new compression sacks (granite gear) made of sil nylon, are ultra light and allow you to get a nice warm 2 pound synthetic bag, inside a bivy sack, into a small alpine climbing pack. A big part of going very light is not carrying much in the way of extra garments. Anything you carry needs to function when wet and it must be possible to dry it while wearing it. Down is not good. Synthetic is good. I can get inside my synthetic bag wearing wet clothes and dry the clothes out with body heat. A synthetic bag can handle this; often down cannot. A few more ounces of sleeping bag allows you to stay warmer and drier with fewer garments, so it saves weight. If you are using very light boots or approach shoes, carry some plastic bags to wear over your socks (inside the boots) when the going gets wet. A couple of extra large slings, cordellettes, or webolettes can stretch a small rack because a really big sling around a really big rock is often all the anchor you need, stronger and faster to rig than a bunch of cams and biners and slings would be. A light stove, extra fuel, and extra food can really pay off when you are benighted. Extra layers of insulation can't do much for you once hypothermia sets in; you need to keep your body fueled and hydrated. Extra gloves really are worth the weight. Try to find some that can handle wetness.

I have gotten away with ultra light shells (like the Lowe adrenaline) in bad weather, but whenever conditions are really bad I am wishing for something more stout! It all depends on your total clothing set up. Is the shell just the water proof frosting on top of several burly layers? Or are you counting on the shell to keep the wind out because you don't have a lot of clothing in the first place? Will you be motionless at belays a lot, or just simul climbing from bivy to bivy? The tailoring of a shell may be more important than how heavy it is. I am skinny, and loose fitting shells let the wind blow in and chill me down. Maybe you want two light shells, a close fitting wind shell and another, larger, rain shell that can go over all of your layers. I am just trying out a new waterproof soft shell from OR (Mithril) that seems like it will be a very good winter and bad weather shell; I think it may turn out to be more breathable and less clammy than the standard gore tex gear, and it fits and stretches very well, seems like it works well as anything from an inner layer to an outer layer. In really bad weather you will get wet in any shell, will your clothes keep you alive when you are wet? Will they dry fast when you get a bit of shelter? Will they collect snow and ice in mesh and velcro, zippers and pockets? Simple is good. Make sure the hood fits well over a warm hat plus helmet. Gore tex pac lite seems to breath well.

Those BD shovels, the older Choinard version, and a very similar red one from Scandinavia often turn up at Second Ascent in Ballard. I use an old Choinard shovel that fits on axe shafts a lot for alpine climbs, but carry a bigger shovel for winter use or when Avalanche is a more likely possibility.

My favorite are the wild country hexes on sewn slings. They are much less prone to be lifted out by the rope than are hexes on wire; the wire tends to act as a lever in transmitting rope movement to the hex. You can slide a hex to the middle of the sling and clip each end of the sling if you need a spare runner for another piece of pro. Also, slide the hex to the middle of it's sling and clip both ends to a single racking biner so that the hex won't swing and tangle on the rack. It is often possible to thread the sling of a slung hex through a constriction (I often use my nut tool to fish the sling through) creating an absolutely bomber piece with just about any big enough hex. The slings on Wild Country hexes are longer than the wires on wired hexes. Wild Country hexes have a particularly effective curved/camming shape and they are extra light.

Why not tag returned gear "returned gear", if it looks undamaged, and sell it at a discount. I buy used ice axes, but would not want a used rope.

OR is making a very good ultra light (3 oz) windshirt now. It is quite breathable rather than totally wind proof. I often wear this shirt by itself when travelling light and hot, and I'll put a light wool shirt underneath the windshirt when it cools down. You can sometimes find them for half price at the OR store on 1st avenue. It is a simple zip neck pullover with one zipper pocket and cinch cords at the waist and neck.

Moonstone makes great very light and compressible synthetic jackets. I use the vest, sweater, and belay jacket versions. None of mine have hoods, but I like ballaclavas and so forth that work better with helmets. I use a detatchable hood for extreme cold/bivy situations. 14 ounces of stove, pot and gas canister can make 100 ounces of water.

My favorite all around crampons for everything from snow to vertical glacier ice are the Charlet Moser 12 point crampons with the less aggressive secondary front points; these are a more old fashioned crampon design with slightly shorter teeth. The shorter, slightly less aggressive, teeth make these crampons easier to walk in, less tiring when walking and climbing on rock in crampons. The simple horizontal front points work great in snow and are also fine on the softer ice we get in this area most of the time. (I have Grivel G14 s as well, and like them, but they are overkill much of the time and not as agile for regular glacier travel). The steel on my Charlet Crampons (2 years old) is superior to the steel used for the Grivel and Stubai crampons I have used; it holds an edge longer. My Charlets have the "new-matic" style bindings, with heel clamp and toe strap. This binding is very secure and easy to use and adjust. The heel clamp is low profile, so it doesn't dig into my heel like the bulky clamps did on my Stubais did. Grivel's "new-matic" bindings are not entirely secure on either of my size 8-1/2 boots; the pivot point of the rear bail falls just ahead of the edge of the boot heel, allowing the rear section of the crampons to move quite a lot even with the clamp set tight. The pivot point of the rear bail is farther back on the Charlet crampons and is much more secure on my boots. My Grivel G-14 s have "fully automatic" bindings, with a forward steel bail instead of straps. My boots fit these bindings better, the pivot point on the rear bail lands over the boot heel and is quite secure. The moral is, bring all your boots to the crampon store and try all the differrent combinations of crampons and bindings.

Norman, Belaying two followers with the reverso BOTH ropes are run through in autoblock mode; the reverso is simply safer because when you fumble or let go of the ropes because you are trying to feed them through at varying rates, the reverso will still catch a fall. You must use the reverso in standard (non autoblock) mode to belay the leader so that you can both take rope in and let rope out with ease. When the rope is loaded the reverso locks and does not want to let rope out; this can be bad news if the belayed climber needs to be lowered, or simply needs slack. It is hard to feed slack quickly to the leader with a reverso in autoblock mode, so you never belay a leader in autoblock mode. If a follower falls and then needs to be lowered from a reverso in autoblock mode you can do it by rigging a small tackle (with a cordelette and carabiners for instance) to lift the reverso up so that it's connection to the anchor is slackened, thus releasing the rope from the camming action of the reverso in autoblock mode and allowing slack to run out. Practice this at home before you use a reverso. How about using two very light single ropes and a reverso when climbing as a team of three? The leader leads on one rope while being belayed by the second follower. The first follower then sprints up to the leaders belay and prepares to belay the leader up the next pitch while the second follower jugs and cleans the route. The followers would take turns jugging/cleaning, each on their own single rope, while the leader would lead in blocks. In theory the leader would only have to pause briefly to belay a speedy and unencumbered follower, though a wandering route might require that both followers be protected at times. Has anyone ever tried this? I haven't.

Sounds like you found a better boat, does this one need work as well?

Freeman, Thanks to you, and to all the others involved in coming to help us get off the mountain. It means a great deal to both of us.

Freeman, If we had not had a cell phone we might have gotten off the mountain a few hours sooner. After my partner was injured the possibility of a helicopter rescue definitely made us start to climb an hour or two later than we otherwise would have, which contributed to us spending an extra night at high altitude in bad weather. On the other hand, we were overdue at this point, they might have sent a helicopter up anyway, but we wouldn't know for sure it was looking for us and so might have found it easier to disregard it. I am not sure the cell phone made much differrence in any case. People knew where we were, knew when we were over-due and they knew what the weather was doing anyhow. The only actual new information we sent out via cell phone was when my partner was injured. I am not sure the rescue effort would have been launched much later than it was even without the cell phone call. When the rain first caught us we comunicated with our friends via a small radio. Also, the cell phone battery died for good early monday morning, so we had no knowledge of the ground rescue being organised for us and no way to let people know what we planned to do.

North Ridge of Stuart Epic Climbing on Saturday was wonderful, with perfect weather and only one other rope of two sharing the route with us. This rope of two caught up with us and we waited around 20 minutes for them to pass us at one point. I was climbing with rock shoes, but my partner had boots, and this slowed us down a little. We probably could have climbed faster than we did, but did not feel a lot of pressure to hurry since we had planned to bivy on the route anyway. At about 5 pm we were overtaken by rain. The weather came up quickly from the South, it’s approach was somewhat obscured because we were on the North side of the mountain. When the rain hit we were on the knife edge traverse, two pitches short of the base of the Gendarme. We quickly got across the traverse and onto a small bivy ledge on the sheltered (east) side of the knife edge. We contacted friends who had moved ahead of us by radio and learned that they were able to get to the summit as the rain started. They asked us if they should wait for us at the summit, but we encouraged them to descend to safety. We anchored in, got into our bivy bags and had dinner here. We each had about 2 liters of water left, our clothes were dry, and we were sheltered from a surprisingly strong downpour. We called home and told our spouses that we were caught by bad weather and that, if they did not hear from us again in a day and a half, they should call the sheriff to initiate a rescue. During the night we had snow flurries as well as heavy rain. My partners bivy sack failed to keep water out, this was compounded because a puddle formed on his part of the ledge. When we got out of our bivy bags in the morning his down sleeping bag was absolutely soaked, as was he. My very light synthetic sleeping bag combined with a very light gore-tex bivy bag remained dry, and my clothing was dry in the morning. The failure of my partners bivy gear was a cause for concern, because with the earlier-than-anticipated onset of wet weather we knew that upward progress might be slowed and that another bivy was likely on route. We discussed our options, considering what down climbing/rapping the route would involve, and decided that retreat was more dangerous than going up and over the summit. We made some forays out onto the wet rock, moving slowly and carefully, but were unable to really get moving until the rain let up and the rock partially dried at around 10 am. As the rock dried we were able to scoot up the last two pitches of the ridge, rap down to the ledges below the Great Gendarme. From here we climbed up, encountering some more wet rock which required extra care. We made our way up several pitches and were on schedule to clear the summit as we climbed the loose gully at around 9100 feet. I led straight up the gully after some initial route finding trouble. The soil in the gully was waterlogged and was probably even looser than usual. It was hard to find a way up without straying onto very loose rock. In the end I mostly churned straight up the loose dirt as much as possible. At the head of the gully I dropped a double sling over a big horn, tied into a locking biner with a short bight of the climbing rope, and belayed my partner. After my partner ascended a short distance I heard him cry out and saw him fall amid some large rocks. I was pulled off my feet by the force of the fall, but was tied in tight so only moved a short distance. Later my partner told me that, without a belay, he would certainly have gone over the edge along with the rocks. After a bit my partner called up that he needed first aid and was unable to give me a belay. I descended very carefully, coiling the rope as I went, so as not to drop more rock on my partner. I warned him that I was coming and waited until he had moved out of the fall line. When I got down to my partner he was holding a large wad of tissue to his face. There was a lot of blood on the rocks. He had managed to anchor himself and I clipped into the sling he had put in. He told me that he had been pulling himself upward, lie-backing a very large block, when the whole thing came loose and fell past him, starting a rock slide and dropping a large rock onto his face. I got a look at the injury, which was already clotting; bleeding was now almost stopped. It looked to me like the flesh down one side of his nose was severed. I covered the wound with two bandaids but did not attempt to wash the wound because we had very little water to drink and because the large amount of bleeding had probably done a pretty good job of cleaning the wound. My partners’ clear (day time) glasses had been destroyed and there were marks where his helmet had impacted his forehead. One eye was black. His pupils were the same size and he seemed coherent, though he also seemed to be stunned. At first he wanted to continue climbing, but I thought this a poor idea as mild shock symptoms were setting in (shivering and reduced ability to concentrate on the matter at hand). As soon as I said that we should not rock climb any more today my partner agreed wholeheartedly. I was somewhat shaken as well and felt the need to watch out for carelessness on both our parts. All this took quite a while and we then spent more time trying to locate a somewhat protected bivy site low down in the gully (where we felt threatened by rock fall). I wasted some time leveling the floor of a small cave formed by boulders, which turned out to be too narrow for my partner to fit in comfortably. We would have been more comfortable if we had descended to the very bottom of the gully, where I could now see a man made bivy spot, level, with rock walls around it, but my partner felt that it would be more exposed to rockfall, and he was hesitant to negotiate the narrow and very exposed ridge to reach this site; it was now getting dark and without glasses my partner has very poor night vision. As a result we spent a very uncomfortable night on a steep dirt slope beneath a sheltering outcropping of rock on one side of the gully. My partner was able to sleep soundly while hanging in his harness. I could not get comfortable in this position, so I dozed sitting up on a narrow dirt ledge that I carved, tied in, but not hanging by my harness. I was able to get into my sleeping bag and bivy and I gave my belay jacket to my partner, who was now without a sleeping bag. To keep warm my partner wore his boots inside his bivy bag. During the night his boots tore a hole in the bottom of the bivy bag. At some point we called out by cell phone and passed on the news of my partners injury. Inside my sack, later that night, I turned on my cell phone and checked messages, learning that a helicopter was supposed to come looking for us in the morning, and that the sheriff wanted me to call and provide more information on our location. Calls to the Sheriff’s number proved frustrating; I was low on battery power and was talking to a switchboard operator who knew nothing about the mountains or about our location. We had already given precise information about our location, my partners injury, and our dwindling resources to one of our friends who had gotten off the mountain the day before, knowing that he could pass this information on with clarity and precision. In the morning our bivy sacks, and the entire upper mountain (when it was revealed by passing holes in the clouds), was covered by a two inch growth of rime ice. The fact that the route above us was covered in ice, and that a helicopter was supposed to be coming, made it easy to decide to descend the short distance to the bivy site on the ridge at the base of the gully. During the morning the cloud level dropped, leaving us in the sunshine. We melted ice to get some much needed water, dried out gear and ate. The clouds closed in again before the helicopter showed up. We listened to the chopper flying all over the mountain, from time to time it flew close by us, but we couldn’t see it through the fog. My partner was convinced that our best chance was to keep moving up and over the mountain. Even if the helicopter spotted us, they would need a substantial clearing in the clouds to lift us off. We decided to gear up and head up as soon as the ice cleared up. It took until around 2 pm for the ice to clear since the gully is north facing. We climbed up the few short pitches to the sandy ledge beside the very top of the Great Gendarme. I was belaying my partner up to this point when the helicopter appeared through a hole in the clouds and hovered near us for a while. We exchanged incomprehensible hand signals. We could not hear a thing; I could not bring my partner up to the ledge until the chopper flew away for a bit. The helicopter made a final pass after my partner gained the ledge, and then flew off. We could see that with the clouds continually closing in and with the spires close around our position the chopper would not be plucking us off the mountain tonight. We found large piles of rime ice that had dropped from the rocks and collected on the ledge and so decided to melt ice for water. Dehydration was one of our biggest worries, especially in terms of getting through the cold nights. At this point we made a difficult call. We were concerned that another icy night might make it hard to get over the summit, on the other hand we knew we would have to bivy somewhere high on the mountain; tricky navigation problems, cold weather, poor visibility and my partner’s poor night vision made an attempt to descend by headlamp seem risky. We decided to melt as much ice as we could, make a hot meal and bivy in the relatively protected spot where we now found ourselves. In hindsight I might have chosen to stuff our packs with ice and continue climbing. It felt great to melt 5 or 6 liters of water, drink our fill for the first time in almost two days, and eat a hot (freeze dried) meal. We made a comfortable, level, bivy ledge where we could lie close together for warmth. We stuffed my partners legs, and the torn end of his bivy bag, into his large pack (which has a long extension sleeve). We organized gear and got the rack, etc. put away in bags. We were getting used to being miserably cold at night, and so were feeling OK until it started snowing at around 2 am. The snow stuck. When we got up we were completely covered in 2 inches of snow. Even my synthetic sleeping bag was wet inside. I suspect that the snow covering defeated the breathabillty of the gore-tex bivy bag Now we were out of choices. We were beginning the day cold and wet. It seemed to be snowing harder and harder. Even though my approach shoes were kept dry inside my pack, they were wet and my feet were numb within minutes of putting them on. Our gloves were wet and our hands were soon numb as well. Before leaving we took the time to check the compass bearings for the summit ridge and for the east ridge that we would be descending. We got organized to climb as fast as we could, quickly ate half of our remaining food (12 ounces of granola), racked up and started up the last blocky pitches leading to the summit ridge. We were climbing by 7:30 am. I was glad to let my partner lead these pitches since he knew the way. The climbing would normally be easy, but the rocks were covered in snow and very slippery. We agreed to be very methodical, to place protection often and to keep pitches short. My partners hands went completely numb and had to be re-warmed inside my coat between pitches. My partner climbed boldly and quickly and we were soon on the summit ridge. At the summit we set our altimeters, and, checking the bearings, we carefully picked our way down to the East ridge. It was very windy now, with poor visibility and driving snow. We were both very cold and aware that we were undoubtedly getting hypothermic. As we dropped down from the summit we got a call from Seattle Mountain Rescue on our radios. What a relief to hear this call! An SMR member named Allistair was somewhere above 7600 feet and headed our way up the Cascadian Couloir. SMR had gotten the channel number we were using from a friend. We let the SMR people know our location and elevation and told them that we would descend the E. Ridge to the 9000 foot level (where you make the turn downhill toward the Cascadian). We were OK to find our way down the mountain on our own, but it was a great relief to know that we would have help on the way. I am extremely grateful for the efforts of the mountain rescue, sheriff’s departments, and military pilots to help us out of our predicament. Along the way it was very good for my moral to know that people were trying to help us. At the same time I think it was vital to our survival that we kept moving on our own and did not wait to be rescued. It is also possible that we would have pushed harder and gotten over the summit a little sooner if we had not been distracted by the possibility of being picked up by a helicopter (though the ice on the route accounted for much of the delay at this point). I am not sure whether or not we made the right call to bivy just below the summit, but It might have been no better had we gone without the extra water and the hot meal and then bivied in what might have been a more exposed location at the summit. The other option, descending in the dark, cold and with one of us nearly blind, might have been an equally poor choice. We could easily have ended up stranded in the Ulrich Couloir, or been injured. On the whole I feel that we did fairly well in overcoming a number of obstacles thrown up by bad weather and rock fall. My partner was a very solid companion. He thought clearly, never panicked, and kept us moving upwards toward safety. He kept his sense of humor and his ability to focus on the essentials through everything. We moved when we could and got into shelter as soon as we couldn’t move. We both enjoyed the actual climbing in spite of everything. The North side of Stuart is incredibly beautiful. Our bivy gear was just adequate. I was using very lightweight gear, but had a comprehensive survival kit in part because the individual elements were light. The small size of my bivy sack and sleeping bag were the biggest problem; I am not large and barely fit inside my bag. Roomier bivy gear would have been better in every way. In the future I will carry a bigger bivy bag and sleeping bag, warmer (extra) gloves, and I would be much more likely to carry my boots, instead of approach shoes, on an overnight route with no bail out route. I will also never use a plastic water bag again. I have avoided using down sleeping bags since one nearly killed me on a winter epic in the White Mountains of New Hampshire 25 years ago. Now I will think twice about even tying in with someone who is using a down bag. Looking back it is hard to believe it took us so long to get over the summit of this mountain. Everything seemed to slow way down after my partner was injured. I think the cold nights took more out of us than we were aware of at the time. We are both recovering from mild frostbite of the hands and feet and looking forward to our next climb. I would like to add that our wives probably went through a great deal more anxiety and suffering than we did, yet they welcomed us home with kind words, good food, etc.

There is a really big rock poised to fall from the top of the first pitch on the East Ridge of Ingalls (the gully). It looks like it is part of the big flake next to the set of cracks where you might set up a belay anchor at the top of the gully, left of and above the chockstone in the notch. I started to set an alien in the crack behind this stone (it looks like part of the solid rock) but the action of the cam made the whole rock wiggle. This was in late July, 2004.

The Genie is OK, but the Golight Jam pack only weighs a few ounces more and will hold everything you need for a few days of alpine climbing. Who needs a summit pack?

I have both the air tech and the air tech evolution. I will continue to use the air tech often because it is slightly lighter, but the evolution does everything a bit better than the old air tech. It has exactly the same pick and adze, but the moderate angle at the top of the shaft makes the tool set better in "piolet ancre" mode, it seems to allow a more comfortable, positive and strong wrist angle both in self arrest and when using the axe as a brake durring sitting glissades. I find the angle does not interfere with using the ax as a cane, or when plunging the shaft into snow. I like the steel spike on the evolution better than the aluminum spike on the old style ax; the steel spike is easier to get through hard hard snow and is slightly more secure when used as an ice cane.

The Cold Cold World packs are my favorites! I have carried fairly heavy loads in them and found them comfortable and very well designed. Granite gear makes some excellent light packs as well, but the Cold Cold World packs are tougher and better made. If you can get everything you need in the Chernobyl that would be best, but if you carrt a lot of stuff then get the Chaos.

I don't like the multi looped sling because it spreads the gear out in a big fan that seems to get in the way more. If you are not a large person you may find that the multi looped gear sling gets in the way. When I want to organise gear more compactly I put several peices together on single large keylock biners. This allows you to easily remove gear without removing the biner from the sling, while also allowing the gear to stay in a tidy clump on the sling, easy to throw behind your back (or switch sides).

I have an Arva 9000 and a Tracker. I lend the Tracker to freinds who don't own a beacon so that they will find me fast (the tracker is relatively easy to use, though not foolproof). I have practiced a lot with the Arva and am very fast with it; as fast or faster than any other beacon. The key to speed with any digital beacon is to get to know it well. When you know your beacon well you can quickly get a sense of the orientation, shape, and size of the parabolic curve you are following and you will be able to RUN right down the induction line in seconds; as soon as you know which way the line is bending, and about how far you are from the burial, you will be able to anticipate where the end of the curve is and get right to it.

Elongation is not the same thing as the rope stretch resulting from a fall. Elongation is a measure of the low-load stretch in the rope; it is a measure of how stretchy the rope is when you are jugging or rapelling. A rope with a lower impact force will stretch more durring the high impact of a fall than a rope with a high impact force.

I like the alphas very much. Very warm, light, comfortable, fairly nimble.

Granite Gear Alpine Light is my favorite pack. I have carried up to 55 pounds in the thing and found it comfortable.

Rabbit runners are a good replacement for some of the shoulder size runners that you ordinarily carry. When stretched full length (with a biner clipped to each end loop) they give the same extension as a double runner. They weigh about the same as a single length runner and are easy to shorten and carry as described in the above posts. They do not replace the two or more double length runners that most people carry; the double length runners can sling a much bigger horn (though two rabbit runners girth hitched together would sling the same horn, and would be easier to get around a big tree).

A good freind has used the Cold Cold World Chaos for years and loves it. I use a very similar 3 pound pack that costs less than $200 (second ascent) this pack is the Granite Gear Alpine Light. It fits me exactly right and so I love it. I have carried as much as 55 pounds in it on approaches and found it very comfortable even though the hip belt has no padding. Both the GG alpine light and the ccw chaos are specifically designed for alpine climbing (simple and light but with a few handy climbing features).