Alpine_Tom

This can be a great winter/spring climb, if you get good conditions, and maybe one of the most dangerous in bad conditions. I found that approaching up the ice caves trail and contouring left around the mountain to be a lot easier than schwacking overland the way Beckey describes.

Back in the days before sticky rubber shoes, 5.8 was damned hard in Keds. Now even I can lead 5.8 (sort of); that doesn't mean you need to downgrade 5.8 to 5.4 or something (4.8?); everyone is just aware that 5.8 isn't all that difficult, and 5.10 is "moderate."

A big-name athlete having extramarital sex is a scandal?

My snowmobile story: I was coming back from eastern Wash. after new years with my son, on I-90. Near the summit of Snoqualmie, he had to go to the bathroom bad. At the exit there was a sign pointing to the "Iron Horse Trail" parking, and I figured there'd be bathrooms there. Somehow I made a wrong turn, got onto a road in the snow, and got stuck (in my little ol' Escort wagon.) This was evidently right next to a snowmobile haven, and snowmobilers were ripping by me so close, as I was trying to dig the tire out, that I thought they'd run over my legs. A couple paused and asked "stuck in the snow?" "Yeah." and they'd just gun right past. Finally a guy stopped and said "need a hand?" and it took us about five seconds to get the car back on the hardpack snow. If this had been a climbing area, the problem would have been all the climbers would be getting in the way offering to help, push, get their trucks with their winches... but the sledders have to keep their tachs redlined.

Colin is aid...

Note the pied en canard foot position, the key to safe glacier photography. God DAMN, look at that background! Great photo, Alex!

Climb: Rainier-Gib Ledges (good we needed another GL TR!) Date of Climb: 4/9/2004 Trip Report: Alex_Mineev, mtnsos, AaronB, and I met at Longmire Friday (half an hour late, sorry guys) and headed up to Paradise, after waiting another half hour for the Longmire ranger office to open from lunch. This was my first time climbing with any of these guys, but things went pretty smoothly. A beautiful day, of course; we got up to Muir and got spaces in the hut (which filled up so thoroughly that, when we got up, there were three guys sleeping on the floor!) I spread out my sleeping bag next to girlclimber's little snowman. I've never had the experience of being rained on (indoors) and I was a bit annoyed, but Alex assured us it was a lot wetter upstairs, so I won't complain. We planned on getting up around 2:00, and ended up leaving about 3:20, to head up to the Ledges. Instead of following the ridge up to the beehive as Aaron did last time, we headed up along the snow to the right of the ridge, which simplifies things greatly. An hour of the camp, mtnsos had to turn around because of bad nausea (anyone know if Tums would help altitude-related nausea? Anyone tried?) and Aaron was having bad problems with his feet. His boots were both wet and too small, and his feet were quite cold. So, we stopped at the base of Gib Rock, 2 hrs into the climb, for Aaron to get warm, and continued. The snow up to the ledges was nice styrofoam snow. I've never done Gib Ledges, and I've wanted to for a LONG time. It's not really ledges so much as it is snow slopes. Rockfall didn't seem bad (we didn't see or hear any while up there) and in general the route seemed pretty reasonable. I didn't see the eyebolt that's supposed to be up there either, which was a bit of a disappointment. Once out of the chute, we roped up and headed, slowly and deliberately, to the summit, which we arrived at around 11:00. On the way up, we met girlclimber coming down from the ledges and her third summit of the week. Alex and I trudged over to the summit, slaves to our egos and camera fetishes, and Aaron wisely waited at the rim. The snow on the upper mountain was perfect; just hard enough for the crampons to grab perfectly. Headed down the Ingraham Direct, which involved a rather steep traverse down a snow face. The snow got really crummy, soft and wet, and balled up on our campons worse than I've ever seen; it looked like Alex was wearing those disco platform soles people his parents' age used to wear, and mine probably looked about the same. Once we were out of the way of icefall, we decramponed, and the going got a lot simpler, except for a stretch a few hundred yards long just before Cathedral Gap where it's pretty icy. We had a real scare on the glacier; we heard the sound of an icefall -- a big icefall!! -- Aaron (in the middle of the rope) ran for cover, since it was coming from right under his feet! Nothing fell, but it was pretty scarey. The rest of the hike out was pretty routine. We got to see a couple of skiiers descending the Ingraham, looking like they were having a lot more fun than us. I really hate the scree on Cathedral Gap; Alex wanted to descend Cadaver Gap, and once we were down I wished we'd tried. The DC already looks awfully melted out. I can't imagine it being at all accessable by, say, July. One odd thing; we left Muir around 4:00, and the snowfield was filled with people slogging UP -- snowboarders, hikers, skiiers. I guess they don't close the gate as early as the ranger said. My recommendation would be to do this route fast, and descend back through the climbing route, rather than Ingraham Direct; I think the rockfall danger is less than the icefall danger. The little bar in the train car in Elbe is friendly; they don't mind smelly climbers, and it's convenient. Gear Notes: crampons, helmets, no nitro.

BEAUTIFUL writing! "And thus our mini-epic on Forbidden Peak ended on a rock hard mattress in a room choked with the stagnant smell of stale cigarette smoke. And that is why we climb."

I've done one-day, two-day, and 3-day Rainier climbs. The 3-day climb was a lot more fun, because there was a lot more time to just enjoy the fact you're up there in another world. Especially if you're coming from another part of the country, you don't want to treat it like a marathon route. Take the extra time, get more/better photos, enjoy yourself, talk to other climbers in the camp. That said, I do like Ingraham flats a lot more than Muir; there's much more of an alpine feel there than at Muir. And... don't forget spare camera batteries!

I've got a hall pass for either fri-sat or sat-sun, and the weather looks awfully good. All I need is a partner, but the usual suspects are unavailable. Gib Ledges has been on by to-do list for about four years now, and I really need to check it off. PM or e-mail me at tbreit@comcast.net.

Or, on the approach, "This doesn't really look the way Jim said it would. Oh well, we're probably on route..." A bit later... "Did we cross a stream back there, did you notice?"

I'm guessing that Climberextreme saw that TR from 2 1/2 weeks ago, but figured, reasonably, that a snow/ice climb can change a lot in two weeks in March. Since the majority of people who do routes don't appear to post TRs, it seems reasonable that asking for information would be more likely to get more current conditions than relying on a 3/13 TR.

Is no one going to even nominate Dan (the man) -? He's certainly been influential in killing more electrons on this site than anyone else, more even than Beckey!

If you're going up as far as Pilchuck and Dickerman, you ought to head up to Mt. Forgotten and Sillaguamish. Not technical by any means, but fun, and good variety.

Here's a couple of pictures of Fuhrer Finger: from the base: and from the top: They were taken in mid-june a few years ago. I guess it would be a good snowboard descent, although when I was on it, there were suncups developing that might have made it sort of dicey. There's not much on Rainier that you'd use rock pro for, except maybe for wedging apart chunks of decaying rock.

Well, mountaineering is hot, so this is the time to cash in on it. I expect a book about grieving for lost snomobilers, or Alaska crab fishermen, wouldn't have been so likely to get a publisher.

Well, yeah, that's what I meant.

I've always felt like you learn a lot more from your failures than your successes. And not getting to the summit on a winter climb of a mtn the size of Rainier is no shame at all; the conditions are way more problematical than in summer. When I have to turn back, I take comfort being able to tell my wife "gosh, the conditions just didn't look safe enough, so we turned back." Trust me, parents love to hear that sort of thing as much as wives do. Maybe more. Besides, you can always get it next year (or next week) unless you get killed because people have told you that not summitting is a failure.

N. Face of Little Tahoma? That's gotta be right up there, both for difficulty and objective hazard.

"Power corrupts, and Powerpoint corrupts absolutely."

Do you know any more details about that? I used to have a fantasy called "the five peak week" where you'd climb the five volcanoes in seven days. I can't imagine the logistics to be able to do all that in TWO days.

Christine Gregoir?

My biggest beef is battery life w/ the hard drive based MP3 players. 10hrs just ain't enough -it's less than my total travel time on the trips I'm interested in bringing it along on. And the big spare battery packs just don't cut it. For size anything more than 10GB is more than I care about (I've less than 10GB of mp3's) That battery life problem was a real surprise. I got a 10gb iPod for my wife in the fall, and it goes through a full charge in far less time than I'd have thought -- much quicker than a cassette Walkman with rechargeable batteries. But the interface is fabulous, one of those instances where, after you look at it, you wonder why everyone doesn't do it that way. Compared to the Otis or Rio, which are almost unusable.

Man, my devils club scars are starting to itch again, just thinking about it... I guess it hasn't been long enough yet. This is Lee's photo of the glissade we did: You can't see the scale properly, but it was a good 10-foot dropoff.

Thanks for your responses. I knew about Purebred Dog Rescue, and told Tom about it. He met the guy who runs the local Weimeraner rescue org a couple of days ago. It's too bad because he's a really sweet, friendly dog, he just needs way more exercise and attention than Tom can give him.