pete_a

A buddy of mine and I had been talking last week about just how taxing on ones legs and brain would it be to climb Rainier in a day as opposed to the standard 2-3 day trip most folks opt for, so we decided with the good weather forecast this weekend to give it a go. We knew that our car-to-car time wasn't going to be anything impressive and our pace was going to be really slow at the end, but we just wanted to see if we could do it. Left Paradise at 8pm on sunday and starting chugging up to towards Muir. Arrived at Muir at 11:30 and fired up the stove to refill the water bottles. By 1am we were hydrated and roped up and joining the masses departing Muir. I had climbed the Ingraham glacier a couple times before but never the DC...figuring out which way to go up the cleaver was a little challenging for our sleep deprived brains but we pounded the caffinated gu at the top of the cleaver and kept on going. The sun came up with about 1500ft to go and we topped out at 8am. Beautiful morning, warm enough to lounge around on the crater rim in lightweight poly. More gu and water and now it was time to head down, there are a couple sketchy snowbridges on the route still, they look like they could fail within a week or two, and the route meananders quite a ways over onto the Emmons and back, and rockfall was of course a concern while on the cleaver, but otherwise the whole route is in great shape. Had to stop at the top of the cleaver and at Ingraham flats to rest the screaming quads for a few minutes, but we were back at Muir by 11:30, put on dry socks, refilled the water bottles and stumbled down the snowfield. Back to cold soda in the car at 3pm. Not exactly record breaking time, but still a hell of a lot of fun to get in a bit of a sufferfest climb before the summer is over.

I was up there yesterday, will be writing a t.r. later. I had thought about soloing but was glad that a buddy of mine joined me for the climb as there are two snowbridges that you still have to cross on the DC route on the upper Emmons that are pretty nasty, the crevasses that the bridges span are not very wide, 8'-10' maybe, but if you were to solo I would highly recommend carrying a rope and pro so that you could tie into an anchored rope for crossing these.

congrats! hell of an accomplishment. just curious how the park service handles permits for doing trips of this nature.... so it looks like you did sleep a little each night, did you have a wilderness permit and the park service allowed you to camp wherever you wanted to along the trail or did you do the trip without registering with the park service for overnight camping?

"...first and only Heli Ski Company in the magical Kingdom..." ...magical kingdom? shouldn't that involve disney characters and a concrete mini-replica of the matterhorn? ...I hope the locals piss in the gas tank of his heli.

Last season Pro-Ski on Aurora had a few pairs of TLT4's from one or two seasons ago that were still lying around. They sold me a pair with thermo liners that had been demo'd once or twice for wholesale (nice guys!). I've heard that the MLT's still don't have the flex of the typical plastic mtneering boot because the lower shell is a fair amount thicker/rigid than say a Koflach or Inverno. Life-Link was having problems getting larger sizes in stock last season, hopefully thats changed this year. Also last time I checked, Life-Link doesn't sell the MLT with a thermoflex liner, they'll only sell it with their goretex-loden which sucks in my opinion.

I'd be interested to know if later in the summer it becomes standard practice to do the approach to the Kautz starting from Christine Falls trailhead instead of Paradise in order to avoid having to climb up the western laternal moraine of the Nisqually glacier which looks like it gets to be a bowling alley as the snow melts away.

They're still using the old permit cards from before this policy went into effect but punching them all to expire at the end of this year. Guess we'll all have to start doing winter ascents in January to get our moneys worth out of the annual permits huh?

If you haven't already, you might want to check out http://www.turns-all-year.com There are a fair number of folks who put trip reports there on the usual late-season ski destinations. Generally some good bets of places to go are- Flett and Russell glaciers -Mt.Rainier Snowdome- Mt.Hood Hadley Peak- north of Baker Sholes Glacier and Coleman Pinnacle- south of Baker ski area I skied the Paradise glacier this past weekend, had to de-ski once to get in a run from 9000 ft down to 6200ft, pretty good snow, definitely better than the boot-tracked suncupped snow of the muir snowfield, had to end run a couple crevasses that were a bit wider than I wanted to hop over.

Congrats Ivan! Heck of a big mountain huh? Amazing you spent a week at 17k...I was happy to be heading back to 14k camp after two nights up high, but it woulda been cool to check out the north summit as you did...doubt many folks have the energy for a side trip like that while they're up there. Any chance you recall seeing an igloo at 14 camp? just wondering if the one my team built and I slept in is still standing. Ryland....come on now, we didn't have freshies every time we skiied...the god awful sastrugai and breakable crust we had for our final ski down towards basecamp threw me to the ground plenty and broke my sled

Very Cool! I've always wanted to spent a night up on top... Cheers to ya Thinker. Isn't there a buried plane that is visible in one of the caves? And I thought there was a small pool at the bottom of one of the caves too that some folks went skinny dipping in once.

At the last minute we changed our plans and didn't end up going...saturdays forecast looked too soggy, and we didn't want to hike all the way in there only to get skunked. And our no stove, no bivy sack, and running shoes plan wouldn't have worked that well when the rain started. Oh well, I'll try later this summer... Hope that EternalX was able to go, this hot weather would be perfect for minimalist travel to Olympus.

Time to start planning those mid-summer ski trips to the Flett and Russell glaciers, the road opened up all the way to Mowich Lake on July 10th.

Thanks Lowell! So does anyone know how we can convince Ben, Sky, and Jason to slow things down a bit...you guys are ripping through the mountains too fast . Congrats to all you guys who put in first descents this year...I've got one or two projects that I don't think anyone has gotten to yet, hopefully they will remain hidden until next season.

Nice mellow weekend of July turns on Ruth Mountain. Hiked in Saturday in light drizzle and Ruth was totally hidden in the clouds. The climb above Hannegan Pass was nasty! patchy snow with a climbers trail that was a mud filled trough. On the way up we did spot what looked like a finger of continuous snow off to climbers right that would've been a better ascent route, camped at the last stand of trees below the glacier and skinned up to the top around 7pm and got a nice run back down the north aspect to camp before the clouds closed in again. Sunday morning had two more runs off the top, smoothest corn was on the east and northeast aspects, softened up by about 11am, nothwest facing slopes still firm then. Skiing back towards Hannegan Pass we did find that finger of continuous snow that took us all the way to Hannegan Camp below the pass. On the hike out we could see that several of the chutes below the glacier were still continous straight down to Ruth creek...would've been a fun option had we been able to see them on our approach hike on saturday. Hadn't been on Ruth before...hell of a great view for such an easy trip. - brought rope- didn't use it, brought crampons-didn't need them. Only two tiny crevasses visible right now on the glacier.

Hoping to climb Olympus over the July 4th weekend. Want to go as light as possible...running shoes with crampons and all that silliness...but what I am wondering about is, will the snow be melted out enough that there will be running water around Glacier Meadows? I want to skip bringing a stove if at all possible. Anyone know? thanks! While I'm asking....anyone have recommendations on how much and what (if any) pro should be brought for the summit pinnacle?

$16,000 to join a guided expedition....is it stupid to think about a self-organized trip to take a crack at something this big in the Himalayas? Its more of a dream than a plan at this point, but I'd like to get my arse to Cho Oyu in five years or so...just wondering if anyone can offer some advise on where the hell to get started when considering a trip to Cho Oyu. Gracias...

I am assuming that Chad spent a fair amount of time at 14k or higher getting acclimated before trying this...right? Anyone know how long he acclimated? Round tripping Denali in under 24 hours is incredible, I can't imagine travelling all that terrain in one day. Cheers Chad! Rip it up on Khan Tengri!

Yes we brought too much shit, but as was said before, a lot of the excess weight was food and fuel to better our odds or being able to hang in there at 14 until the weather was good enough to go for it. From our experience if you go there at the start of the season (May) don't expect to find many hand-outs of food and fuel, but by the time we left there were a fair amount of teams, such as ours, that was eager to dump more than a weeks worth of food and fuel. When meal planning we followed the NOLS cookery plan for 2.25 lbs of food a day and it was more than enough for all of us I think. I bought a small scale to weigh all my food and was glad I did otherwise I think I would've brought even more than I did. Despite eating till we were full every night we still all lost about 10 pounds...I've already put it back on from beer drinking. We did bring a pressure cooker and it was great, heavy, but it did reduce our fuel consumption at least one ounce per person per day and made cooking dinner a much faster process. We didn't take it above 14k camp though. My footwear setup worked great. Did the whole trip in Dynafit TLT4 boots with thermofit liners, they were comfy on the climb and were suprisingly capable of doing french technique for hours on end, and they only weighed a couple ounces more than a pair of koflachs...that combined with using a pair of dynafit bindings instead of silvrettas made my rig really light. Still needed heater packets in my liners and overboots on summit day though. One big regret....my camp booties blew...Climb High down booties weren't warm at all, even when put in my 40 below overboots. Bring another brand, Ry and Ash had Parbat synth fill booties and were complaining their feet were too warm and sweaty. Definitely bring spare fuel jets for your stove, we replaced ours before heading to 17k and our stoves were still fussy as all hell in the thin air. The only thing I brough too many of were changes of underwear, I never took a bath and changed base layers until back at 14k from the summit so I only needed one change. I guess thats about it for lessons learned on the climb, all the training we did was well worth it...no regrets about all the mornings getting up before dawn and hitting the gym to haul my ass up the stairmaster with a backpack on.

Yup, after a year and a half of planning this trip (and god knows how many postings on this bulletin board by me looking for advice), Ryland and I and the other three members of Rednecks on Ice are off to Denali to freeze our asses off for a month. Yeeha! Many many thanks to all of y'all who passed along advice from your first-hand experiences up there, you definitely helped us figure out what to skip and what to double up on. May all of you be blessed by good weather and get in a ton of climbs, and go harvest some sweet summer corn snow on Rainier for me while we're away. And if you happen to be Denali bound yourself...if you come across a megamid with James Brown pouring out of the speakers, come on in and say 'howdy'.

Alpinfox- Checked out your t.r. months ago...got lots of good info from it, and thanks for all the advice in your post... We're trying to keep from bringin too much crap, we're all following the NOLS meal rationing system of about 2lbs of food a day, I know that we could plan to accept handouts from other folks to cut our food weight, but we want to try to stay self sufficient. I'm bringing a thermarest chair kit, our group of five decided to bring a megamid to do our cooking in as we can't really squeeze 5 of us into any of our tents, and I think we've got a good variety of food, we're bringing pressure cookers so that we can actually cook 'normal' meals with reducing cook times up on the mountain. And I picked up a dehydrator a while ago and have been filling up a few ziplocs with bananas and strawberries, and been dehydrating peppers and onions to add to our dinners. One of our team members is coming from Atlanta...he's cooking us up with instant cheese grits, bacon grits, and god knows what other flavors of grits.

So the mountain gods are providing some good weather so far this spring? Thats good to hear... My group is just about ready I think, we've got all our food figured out, all the damn gear has been bought, and we've spent a fair amount of quality time learning a the tricks of what the hell to do when you're hanging from a rope with a sled above you, a pack strapped around your waist, and skis on your feet. We were up on rainier this weekend practicing the art of skiing with sleds while roped together...not easy, but still hopefully a better option than snowshoes Really grateful for all the input everyone has provided on this thread (and all the other threads I've posted). Ivan- you leaving soon for AK? Ryland, myself, and the rest of the Rednecks on Ice expedition is Alaska bound Thursday May 15th at 10pm...can't wait to end the trip planning and start the suffering!

I think Cayuse Pass is supposed to open at noon on the 18th, so from there its not all the far to get in to White River...if the road is clear (I think some guys biked it last weekend for Little T) you can get to White River in less than an hour. Beat the crowds and head in to ski or climb before the road opens...just my opinion.

I spent my first couple seasons skiing on leathers...its all about matching your boots to your skis to make sure you have a good time. I'd stay away from anything with too much sidecut or skis that have a waist wider than 70mm, then you may be asking too much of your leather boots. My first pair of tele boards were BD Synchro X's that had a 55mm waist and a tip that was something like 70mm. Something you might want to think about is your choice of bindings with leathers....3-pin cable will virtually never release even in falls, and you will take plenty of falls learning to tele on floppy gear. An old tried and true binding that you can find used for dirt cheap is the Riva 2...the way it is designed its pretty easy to eject out of it in a fall and without having a beefy plastic boot to protect your ankle from getting sprained you may want a binding that doesn't hold onto your foot too tightly. Just my 2 cents...

Erik, thanks for joggin my memory...I think Twight wrote about ginsing being beneficial for increased endurance not helping with AMS, but he also talks about ginko for AMS and I think he mentions taking garlic tablets as a blood thinner to help with frostbite prevention.

Did Mark Twight in Extreme Alpinism write something on the use of silberian ginseng to help with acclimitization and reducing the occurance of AMS? just curious....probably gonna end up bringing a whole pharmacy of herbal supplements to help keep me from needing to dip into the diamox bottle on Denali next month. Anyone have experience with using ginseng at altitude?