Alpine_Tom

Twight said three was the perfect number for his 60-hour Polish Direct epic: one to climb, one to belay, and one to sleep!

I guess we can assume that EVERYONE here got started climbing with "dedication," rather than on a whim. Nasty things, whims. You don't have to spend much time browsing eBay to find a number of climbing outfits -- rope, harness, draws, shoes, chalk bag -- "used once" to get the idea that there are a LOT of people out there who have lots of money to try new sports on a whim. Without having seen them, I don't think I would have believed it myself. Though, and maybe it's just me, if some yuppie is going to try out a new sport on a whim, I'd just as soon he not get hurt or killed doing it. Not only is it bad for the reputation of the sport, but it tends to attract more thrill-seekers. I'd rather they tried it, decided it was boring, and told their friends "don't waste your money. Let's try kiteboarding instead."

My recollection (we did it in July last year) is that the snow slopes below the couloir are about 20-30 degrees. If they're icy, I think you'd have a tricky time getting up them without crampons.

Well, if my not wearing a helmet results in a disabling injury which requires evacuation (say, rockfall on Gib Ledges) I'm endangering more people (climbing rangers, helicopter pilots, emts, etc) than I would be as the driver of an automobile.

Yeah, well, Pikard (Patrick Stewart) is a Brit, so you can't rely on that. They can't even spell a simple word like "color" properly.

So a TR should not be posted and has no value unless it is from a hardman putting up a new route? Whatever. hey, just chill. if i want a route description i will open a guide book and read it, without all the side bullshit. the shitty thing about web sites like this is- they are a good way to kill some time at your useless desk job while you are daydreaming about you next adventure punching your clown to some mountain porn and shunking a shelaque syrup load onto your screen. tr's are spray The point of a trip report isn't to document a route; I think anyone who wants to can find half a dozen guides with route descriptions of, say, the Sloan Peak corkscrew route. What you CAN'T get from Beckey or Nelson is what the route is like currently, or if there's an access problem (the log over the river is washed out) or that sort of thing. Clearly a lot of people DON'T post TRs, because they get called for spraying. I'd prefer more TRs. If you don't like 'em, don't read 'em (like summit logs!)

Climbed the s. ridge of Ingalls Sunday with Alex_Mineev. To celebrate the 48th anniversary of the publishing of "The Ascent of Rum Doodle" we climbed the wrong peak first, doing a daring ascent of the s. ridge of the south peak, exclaiming on the rotten rock and abundant scree, mystified how Nelson could call this "clean rock." Once on the summit, we saw the error of our ways, traversed to the correct peak, spent about 2 hours climbing three pitches because of the traffic there, descended, then climbed back OVER the s. peak to retrieve our packs, and hiked out. The geology of Ingalls is much more fascinating than I'd realized, with all that serpentine mixed in with the peridotite. But climbing a 5.4 crack in sloppy trail shoes is a mistake. At least for me.

health insurance = not sick? Yer insuring your life, just as you'd insure your car, or your house, or your health.

I don't think I'd try road biking one-handed, let alone moutain biking. Everything I hear about him just impresses me more and more...

You don't have to go to Costco, just about any place that does photo developing (Bartells, Cameras West, Walgreens) will make photo prints from your digital camera. At about .19 per print, it's cheaper than the photo-quality paper, let alone the cost of the ink, and the prints won't fade. That said, my father-in-law has gotten phenominal results with his HP Officejet all-in-one fax/copier/printer. I don't remember what the model is, but they change monthly anyhow.

Hey, Barbara Kingsolver is an excellent novelist (try Prodigal Summer if you haven't read anything of hers.) And at the risk of being sounding PC, I think Oprah's okay too.

In fairness, he may well not have known what was involved. As a teenager, I did things my parents "sort of knew about" that were way outside what they'd have allowed, had they been aware of what was involved. I suspect most members of this board could say the same. I imagine a conversation something like: "I don't know, son, it doesn't sound safe to me." "Relax Dad, Mike has done it before, and he knows how to be safe." (Actually, Mike just saw Vertical Limit on cable last month, and thought it looked pretty cool.) It does seem proper to touch the potential hazards, that "most people have no problems, but..." and suggest that if sonny Jim is still interested after he gets home, he might look into some classes.

I've been through Canadian customs three or four times over the last year, and probably about once a year for the decade or so before that, and on one's ever asked me whether I have a record, or to see my passport or anything. It's always just "What's the purpose of your visit?" "Have a nice trip." What are you guys doing to provoke those nice Mounties?

Cool trip report! You make it sound a lot more appealing than Juan's accounts!

Hey, I shaved off that beard months ago. My face has almost stopped feeling cold. Jim Nelson said they'd be okay for climbing moderate ice, when I bought them from him after our Sharkfin outing. I was more concerned about taking advantage of the anti-balling plates. It was pretty scary, though; I'd STRONGLY recommend proper steel crampons with good front points. I should have brought my Simond scorpions. OTOH, when you've got a rope gun like Alex, you can almost dispense with the crampons entirely.

Dammit, Alex, I TOLD you not to post that photo!

A guy was soloing the East Face back in Sept 2001, and fell and was killed. As I recall, he was climbing with someone else (his uncle, maybe?) and the uncle got sketched, so the guy unroped at the loose spot and continued solo. Just be aware.

I expect that's inaccurate. In the DK "Guide to the Human Body" it says about the brain: "...although it makes up just 2 percent of the body's weight, it uses 20 percent of its energy." (My kid prefers this sort of thing to storybooks.) According to http://www.fitresource.com/Fitness/CalBurn.htm, a 200 lb person (like me) burns 576 cal/hr hiking cross-country. But in real life, it would depend on all sorts of variables like speed, weight of pack, weather conditions, steepness, and so on. Those tables are about as accurate at that BMI number. That 576 cal/hr number occurs frequently on the table for a wide variety of activities, suggesting that it is some sort of formula they're just plugging the numbers in for, rather than an actual empirical finding.

Climb: Mt. Baker-North Ridge Date of Climb: 7/31/2004 Trip Report: Alex Mineev and I did this over the weekend. Nelson calls it "a steep, committing climb with tricky route finding and a long approach over a heavily crevassed glacier." Which about sums it up. I had expected something along the lines of the Adams Glacier, reading the descriptions and the photos in Nelson and Beckey. When we got to the base of the climb on Saturday afternoon, though, we were both pretty abashed. The whole snow portion of the route is gone, collapsed into a chaos of icefall, like the pictures you see of the Kumbu icefall. So, the next morning we started out around 5:30, and within an hour we were climbing nearly vertical water ice (okay, maybe 7o degrees, but it FELT vertical!) I did my first ice lead (and placed my first ice screw) and did okay, considering I was using one ice tool, a long ice axe, and aluminum Stubai crampons. On the next pitch, I dropped my first ice screw. Altogether, it was three or four pitches of fairly stiff and extremely steep ice climbing, until we got up to the ice cliff, where it got much less steep, and a little easier going. Eventually it eased out to where we were setting pro with pickets instead of screws, and about that time, we came across footprints; apparently someone else was up there just a couple of days ago. Where's your trip report!!!??? We summitted, finally, about 4:00 PM, both pretty wrung out, headed down the Coleman Glacier route, and got to the car close to 10:00. The top of the trail is pretty demoralizing to hike down after such a long day. It was a lot of fun, in retrospect, although when I was in the middle of it, my feeling was that the only reason I wasn't voting on bailng was that I was more afaid of descending that shit than climbing more of it. Alex did a great job leading the water ice; he said later it was his first ice climbing lead. Today I'm pretty stiff and sore all over, and my middle finger of my left hand (the one I held my ice tool in) is all swollen and sore, from bashing into the ice all day. Pictures to follow (Alex is too busy to download his digital pics, my film isn't back yet.) Gear Notes: Ice screws, pickets, ice tools, crampons, etc. Approach Notes: The Heliotrope ridge trail is in fine shape; the Coleman Glacier route is pretty good, although it's starting to do a lot of end-runs around crevasses.

There are a number of campgrounds lining HW 20, and plenty of hiking trails of varying difficulty all over up there. My guess is it'd be less crowded than the Mtn Loop hwy, at least midweek. You can reserve spaces in state campgrounds online, if you can plan a few days ahead.

A perfect list for the beach! I recently finished Seabiscuit, which I really liked. Genome, by Matt Ridley, one of those books you feel like you should restart right after finishing to get all you missed the first time. Folly, a mystery by Laurie R. King. Takes place on a San Juan island. April 1865, the Month that Saved America (Jay Winks) interesting even if you're not a particularly interested in Civil War history. The Book of Joe (Jonathan Tropper) and, my first recommendation: Climbing with Sasha, by Warren Guntheroth. He's a local doc, a Mountaineer (I think). The book is about his experiences climbing with his Siberian Husky. A really fun read.

The body of the second of the Montana climbers who died on LR last month was recovered. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/182570_climber17ww.html

As an authority on Black Peak (having climbed it for the first time this week) it seems like the approach information should be modified. The text says "Many climbers find the way in to the mountain somewhat confusing the first time, with most of the routefinding problems encountered on the approach rather than on the climb itself." I assume they've improved the trail since this was written: it's now impossible to get lost; the trail is very nearly wheelchair accessible up to Heather Pass, and pretty obvious after that. And as a rule, on the driving directions, it'd be nice to have milepost numbers when possible, in addition to descriptions. Thanks for all your hard work, the books are invaluable.

Climb: Black Peak-NE Ridge Date of Climb: 7/15/2004 Trip Report: "You're in a foul mood. Why don't you just go climbing tomorrow?" "Yeah, maybe I will!" "Fine!" "Fine!" And thus are climbing plans made. I set my alarm for a 4:00 AM start and headed off up the highway, still divided between about three different objectives, but decided on Black Peak. Man, it's a tedious drive! In Vol 2, Nelson says that it's an easy peak to get to for a fun day outing. Well, the access is certainly easy once you get to the trailhead, but that drive is, as Juan would say, a mother fucker. I got to the trailhead about 8:00 and immediately began the bug repellant dosing. I got this "organic" herbal bug repellant from Dan Page's shop. Don't waste your money. The hike in is very pleasant, the nicest trail I've been on in Washington, better maintained (probably through minimal use) than the Snow Lake trail at Alpental. I had a brain fart and took the wrong branch of the trail to Lake Ann, and lost half an hour. I got to the base of the actual climb (at 8000') by about 1:00, put on the rock shoes, looked again at the route description (I'd hauled the whole book along) and almost bailed after reading the "low-to mid fifth class for several pitches" but decided to give it a shot. It went pretty quickly, not having to mess with ropes, rigging belays, and all that. I was at the summit in about an hour. All the way up, I kept eyeing the east face, figuring I could bail onto it if I needed to, but the rock was plenty good, lots of holds, lots of features. It's a lot like W. Ridge of Forbidden, or the W. Ridge of N. Twin. There's a functioning summit book up there, and so I read over the previous entries. Someone (I forget who) claimed the first nude ascent last year, and I saw Lee and Josh's entry from last Father's Day. I descended vaguely the s. ridge. The descent sucks; it took me longer to get down than up. Then, some glissading to the mostly-frozen wing lake, and out. Gear Notes: rock shoes (probably didn't need) crampons (handy) bug repellant (needed more) Approach Notes: really, really, nice trail in to heather pass, then talus scrambling.

Oh, yeah, he'll be back. Someone said that a necessary component of being a climber is the inability to learn from your experiences... Great TR, John.