layton

I'd give the climb a grade T4f, Rd55, and a 4ff grade of 22,a given the circumstances. I think Daler did it in T4am Rd53m, 4fe. Maybe I'm wrong.

What an amazing story! My heart is still pumping. I would do what happened. Shit. I've had random shit clip while climbing, but nothing that fucking scary! Damn!

SOMEONE PLEASE CLIMB SOMETHING ELSE AND CHANGE THE SUBJECT!!!!! Seriosly, we all are climbers and that's that!!! Too much inbreeding on these posts will make us turn on each other. NEW TOPIC! NEW TOPIC! How 'bout the Yoccum TR? Huh! Wow! Or the NY Gully TR! Those guys are needing some serious harrasing too!

Okay, then I'd give Big 4 a IV+ if you climb the cliffs or brush instead of avy gullies.

I agree its not a grade 5 either. I'd give it a 4. 4+ if the climbing is in challenging conditions. As stated by a few folks, the approach should not be concidered.

Sweet, I'm glad that christians can climb 510. I'll be doing that route when I'm forced to move to P-town next year. WAy to go.

I can do that faster Cpt!

I can tie my shoelaces soooo much faster and in way more style than any of you. At the base of Big 4, matt was sitting down lacing his shoes and he's like, "Shit!" cuz I was already done. Also, I can get into my car really fast too. It's like..."Where did Mike go" and then its like, "Fuck!, he's already in the car." You all are big pussies, especially you Russians. You are the biggest pussies of them all. Except Rich White climbers from the seattle area who are around 25-32, or still in High School. You guys couldn't tie your shoes or get into your car in 1/2 the time I could.

Yeah the 1st time I climbed Polar, we got avied on way high above the pencil and got the fuck outta there. The 2nd time we topped out and on the way down every one of our footsteps was burried, but we didn't see any avy. Also the slope after the pencil was creaking like a old wooden floor! I'll wear my elf shoes if I do slipstream.

Fuck! 3 or 4 hours is fast. We did that same route??? Obviously you guys didn't belay or tunnel? Obviously if you make something public, you're gonna get feedback. I bet I can tie my shoes faster that you, Sean, or Andreas which kinda leaves you guys looking like idiots in that respect.

Sweet Dude! I always wondered about potential around the Border Peaks in Winter after staring at American Border Peak from the Baker Ski Area. Someone should make a list of the unclimbed lines that folks aren't keeping secret and make it a sticky. Dru, you've got lots of free time...

Good Job!

Good Job!

How long do you foresee Slipstream being in for? Can you upload a photo please? How are AVY conditions? Glad you sent Polar, isn't it the best moderate ice route ever! Thanks, Mike

Hi richard! Can't go, but I'm glad you're able to emotionally get back to Vantage after the tradgedy. Good for you. I'll forgive you if you don't hop on air guitar! Wear you tripple-helmets and look out for the ghost of Bill Robbins. Hi Bill and Goran, hope it's not so chossy wherever you are

Anyone else feel this way? You do a climb and write a TR and get flamed for chestbeat. Folks just assume you are tooting your own horn. In reality, most of us are not doing climbing magazine worthy climbs. Isn't this BB for the TR's of the mere mortals? So what's everyone doing on this board? I say, write your TR and spray away so all of us who don't solo 7 patagonian routes in a day can say GOOD JOB and we can all for a moment be in your shoes. I haven't read a single TR that suggest the climbers thought they were hot shit...even Polish Bob's account of Pyramid was humble. But most of us get accused of thinking we're all that. I wish we all were. I think lots of the folks who get written up in the Mags are just like us, and all of us have the potential to climb sick and hard shit. Just rambling...

No offense taken Dale! We totally scoped out the descent from the climb, and yes we had a compass but the time that we realized we were going the wrong way it didn't matter. We didn't use it earlier b/c it just didn't seem possible that we could be going South! As for the photos...are they big size in the Photo Gallery. Don't do a search using my name if your kid is watching cuz I've got that Marmot BJ shot!

Dude, calm down. No one is spraying or chestbeating here. I mentioned before that en route, we took 8 hours including cornice tunneling. That's not too slow. I'm sticking up for ourselves here. Plus, grades change with conditions. You've gotta understand this this years condtions are pretty fucked up. Our approach took much longer than when I've been up there before to scope it out because the snowpack is 60% below average so we couldn't go up any gullies cuz they were filled with moving water. The descent ridge was in awful awful conditions. I'm sure you and everyone else who's every climbed ice knows that conditions change and this year certainly provided hard conditions. Ask Wayne and David about Colonial and how good conditions were on that climb compared to how it was when other's have climbed it. I'm not saying anything about our ability compared to others who have climbed Big 4, but I stand up for Matt and Myself when I say we did the ascent in good fast style and we had bad luck on the descent. Who hasn't had a little epic before? Come on, lay off you've been there before too. As for the other bickering on this thread...the News. Newstrips and King5 I have nothing agains you and I appreciate your being on the web here to understand climbing, etc... I think the heli may have been KOMO? Whatever...I'm not mad at the media, they're just doing what our society wants them to do. My only complaint is the Bellingham Herald's Sensationalistic article (or their sorce). B'ham Herald, you guys are no better than a supermarket tabloid as far as that story went. I'll be sticking up for Me and my boy Matt for our climb and our good judgement endurance for getting us back after we done fucked up the desent. Once again, who hasn't epic'd, and if you haven't....you will! P.S. I'm not angry about anything on this thread..it's fully expected, and it's hard to put yourself in others shoes, be it us, better climbers than us, or the media.

Goddamn right Matt! Fun fun fun!

Maybe I wasn't clear in my TR. Picture this. We are on the NW ridge trying to get to the notch to desend the N.Face like you said. The trees and rapping were taking too long so we took a couloir on the S.Face that trened westward. This way we could traverse over and down toward the notch, then climb back up to the notch instead of forcing our way through trees. There was a small ridge on the s.face above our travrse couloir the ran the same direction and right below the NW ridge. We gained that smaller ridge. It was very dark so we couldn't see into the distance. We thought we were on top of the NW ridge, not the smaller parallel sub-ridge. We went down (north) the small parallel ridge to the coulior between the NW ridge and the ridge we were on. To us, it looked like we were now in a coulior that was going down the N.Face. We thought we crested the NW ridge and were now heading down the N.Face when in reality we were spit back out into the S.Face. It was too dark to tell we were on the S.Face, not the North. Does that make sense. Look at the Beckey guide for the S.face of Big 4 and maybe you can figure it out on that photo.

Is it their obligation to pay me for photos or am I being a selfish jerk for asking for $. How much should I ask. I have no clue. Please be serious, b/c I will use your advise.

Here's what really happened (click this)

Here's the deal. I'm very tired and wired so my writing may not be that interesting. The Approach: I had my alarm set for 1:45 Tuesday night and awoke at 12:30 to the police knocking at my door. "Move your truck!" they shouted through my door. Weary from 4 hours of sleep I moved my truck and was wired by the time I picked up Matt at 2:00am. We drove to Big Four all the way to the parking lot and hiked in. The avy chutes to access the face were raging so we buskwacked and hangdogged up the cliff and trees to acces the face. It was full scale bushwacking. Instead of our hour estimate, it took 3 hours of fighting to get into the upper basin. It was light enough to see by then, and we saw that we could've done a sweet ice climb directly up the cliffs instead! Too bad! The Climb. We soloed up to the base of the 1st ice pitch on firm neve and deep powder sections. I took off and we simul-climbed for a 1,000 feet on very steep ice, snow and rock. It was hard, fun, and classic stuff. Good pickets and screws! I climbed to the base of the crux 1/2 way up the route and hammered in a picket and a screw for a belay. Matt's turn. Lucky bastard got the crux. It was a full 60m of near vertical to vertical ice with shitty ice and shittier snow. Matt did a great job on lead, slinging an icicle. I also slung an icicle on one of my turns, making it the route with the most icicle slinging I've ever done. I'd say the crux was WI5. It was not fat, but it wasn't super scary. Here's a photo: We swapped simul-climbing leads for what seemed like for ever on many long sections of steep ice and snow until I ran out of gear except for my belay picket just below the corniced ridge. Matt then saved both his pickets for right below the cornice (maybe 30-40 feet tall) and the snow like above the crux, was pretty shitty. Matt then spent the next 1.5-2 hours tunneling through the cornice in a tour de force of thrashing. He gave a cry of relief as sunlight poured through our escape hole! The climbing took around 8 hours. Here is Matt digging the hole, the summit ridge, and me on top: The Descent: On top we had about an hour of daylight left. We downclimbed the ridge climbers right until we saw a notch in the trees far below us (1000’). The ridge got very steep and we started rapping through awful rimmed up trees for ever. It got very very dark and we found a couloir that paralled the ridge on the south face. We took that couloir until we figured we were below the notch then climbed back up to what we thought was the ridge. Unlucky for us, we actually climbed a smaller satellite ridge that paralled the main ridge so when we topped out on it, it appeared we were on top of our descent route. What we really did was go down the satalite ridge and it funneled us into the south face again! We descended the entire south face into steep walled canyons getting cliffed out again and again climbing up down left right, and everywhere to get out into the woods finally. By this time we were in the valley basin following a wide braided river. We figured the couloir we went down put us out by Hall peak and we were headed toward the Stilguamish?? river and the road. Hours later (2am) we stopped in the woods and sat around shivering until it was light again (6:30am). We maybe hike between 4-7 miles down river by this point. We backtracked up river to get a lay of the land and after an hour we saw big four…the south face. Around this time the first helicopter sounds arrived. We were very surprised to have a rescue being mounted so early. I always figured give us a day to be late, then mount a rescue. Anyway we hiked forever and finally wound up on the shoulder of Hall peak. We wanted to get to our notch again, but over a mile of steep walled canyons, cliffs, and steep terrain blocked any possible route over. Hall peak looked like vertical slush on rock since it was so sunny out. Looking back, we could hike down river again and find a road. No, we knew the notch descent was the way down and didn’t know anything about the other ways. We had to get there. So we fucking forced a route across all the awful terrain doing raps and downclimbing and upclimbing and tree and root pulling. Our only food for this day was a Pemican bar split between us so we weren’t running. I kicked steeps and tree and bush pulled up the entire south face up to the notch with helicopters flying overhead all the time. I figured they saw us but I guess they didn’t. We got to the notch at 2:45, did a couple raps, and downclimbed to the top of the lower cliff band. We downclimbed and rapped through the trees again and met up with search and rescue at the very very last rapped to the ice caves trail. The Aftermath: The rescue operation was FANTASTIC. Thank you everyone for trying to help us. I would gladly do the same. The parking lot was crazy! There was even a food wagon with hot sandwiches and chili! Several of my friends were in the lot geared up and ready to climb to save us and many more took today (Friday) off to climb it today. The S&R folks were so nice and helpful. I almost wished we needed help to justify all the effort. Thank you all once again for caring. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy. There were a million messages on my answering machine when I got home and tons of folks waiting for me in my apartment. I couldn’t believe it! I went to the Ranch Room and got a beer before I passed out from being up for 48 hours!!! I’m sure I missed a lot I wanted to say, but my memory is foggy and short-term right now. Basically it was an awesome climb with an awesome partner with a crappy descent. I read the B’ham herald this morning. Every word is wrong and they should be beaten for their horrible journalism. We were never rescued or “found.” But we are grateful that if we needed it, you guys were there. Thank you so much everyone who helped or was going to help today. -Mike

But is that cinderella?

Dude, you fell on Diedre?