dberdinka

North Rib of Slesse is incredible. I second the NE Ridge of White Chuck. The Houston-Cosley Route on the N Face of Colfax Peak has to be one of the more reliable water-ice routes around and has easy access to boot. It should be mobbed.

You dont understand, it's cooler to be a binge drinking alcoholic than a stoner.

Baker Ski Area has gotten something like 48" of snow in the last two days. It doesn't sound like it's going to let up. No one will be climbing shit anytime soon.

Cool Shot Dave. Looks BIG. Surprising number of these things around it seems. Anybody need a topic for a Geology Thesis??

There is in fact no vacancy. O'Conner is still presiding until a new justice is confirmed. Get your facts straight you right-wing knucklehead.

While backpacking with my wife near the Napeequa River this summer I spent a night near a relatively unique feature in the Cascades, a cannonhole. In the morning I scrambled up near it and took the photo posted below. It wasn't huge but at least 15' across, maybe more. I'm curious how many more of these exist in the Cascades. A large one near Dome Peak is pretty well know and is featured in the Kearney Guidebook. The Pillar of Pi, if not a cannonhole, is certainly an oddity. John Scurlock seems to be aware of quite a few. I've paraphrased part of e-mail from him below. "Dome, Jack, Snowfield (has two), Bear (two also), Arches (up near Arriva), Silver Star, and a couple others that don't come to mind just now." If anyone has photos of these or knows of others I'd be interested in hearing about them. This is found on the high ridgeline seperating the Napeequa River from the north side of an unnamed valley dropping down from High Pass.

The Green Creek Valley in all its Glory

I took a hike up to Heliotrope Ridge on Thursday. The warm, wet October seems to have treated Colfax nicely. Ice lines are definitely shaping up. In fact the Houston-Cosley Route looks in. The crux pillar appears a wee bit thinner than last March. Glacier is seriously broken up a few feet of snow is going to hide a lot of small/medium crevasses.

YOUR MOM! ROLF More importantly why did this take a 100+ views???

The most interesting part is that while sitting in basecamp one of them got diagnosed with what sounds like MAD COW DISEASE! See the Oct 25th blog entry.

NICE WORK! Did you find it worthy of repeats? Looking at your topo you punched right through a wall of grey rock up high, my recollection is that that looked really shitty. Was that the friable pitch? Any thought of traversing out right to stay on red rock??

Nice trip Curt and great photos! We still need to hook for beers soon!

There you go again, you're a Nihilist. THE MAN BELIEVES IN NOTHING! Furthermore that's bullshit. Wilderness is not neccesarily unknown it is simply not impacted to the point where a human presence is evident (to one extent or another) in the landscape. While GoogleEarth might allow you to have some limited knowledge of every square foot of the planet, satellite photos and even airplane rides aren't going to reveal the best line for schwacking into the Green Glacier Basin. That knowledge has to be earned through effort, careful thought and maybe even some luck. To simply hike in there with your eye's glued to a trail at your feet would diminish the experience. Plenty of trails out there to follow already, lets enjoy the challenge of what wilderness is left!

THAT'S A REALLY BAD IDEA. On second thought even flagging it is a bad idea. The best aspect about that area is that it REALLY IS WILDERNESS where as every other valley between B'ham and Shuksan has a fat trail and a parking lot full of Subarus to match. The schwack is only an hour at most and pretty tame by NC standards. Let's leave it as pristine as we find it. ...though obviously that might be tough for you Layton.

Cool. Looks like some great pitches. The approach I described and the approach you took seem to differ significantly, maybe it's time for some flagging.

Every night I pray for another shitty ski season.

Climb: Twin Sisters-Green Glacier Area Date of Climb: 9/3/2005 Trip Report: I can't help it. I keep going back. Good rock, true wilderness all less than 30 miles from home, it's hard to resist. After five trips I think I might be done for this year though. Side Stream of Green Creek The Mythic Wall while impressive sits fairly low in the drainage of Green Creek. Above the glacier at the head of the valley are numerous peak and spires composed of that gritty, sold Twin Sisters olivine. Several weeks ago Tyree Johnson (Ti - cause he's hard like Titanium!) and I hauled overnight gear into the valley intent on knocking off a couple new routes. Fourty feet up a new line on the Mythic Wall I promptly dropped a block that chopped Ti's rope in half. Ooops! Sorry Ti. Lesson number 1: Don't force new routes through steep walls of loose flakes. We retreated upward then scrambled back down to the valley floor where we found a great campsite just south of the creek around 3300' in elevation. Stovepipe and Green Glacier The next morning (9/3) things had socked in sufficently to disuade more intelligent people from attempting new routes with 85' of rope. Luckily I managed to threaten Ti's ego just enough to convince him to wander across the glacier in a whiteout and climb a sweet little pinnacle I had been eyeing since my first trip to the area. The climb turned out to be great. After scrambled some solid 3rd and 4th class slabs off the glacier we climbed a short pitch of 5.4 up a chimney. Ti lead a final rope streching (85') pitch to the summit. The rock was bomber and the face got progessively steeper and narrower leading to an incredibly small summit fin. One of the cooler summit pitches I've ever climbed. Two rappels and some downclimbing got us back to the glacier. For lack of a better name we called it The Stovepipe. Ti leading the summit pitch Ti on Summit The Beer Shrine beckoned and by the time we got back to camp the forecast rainstorm had started. The East Face of Skookum Peak might be the largest wall in the range at about 1200' in height. Rad Roberts and I returned on September 7th with the optimistic plan of doing it in a moderately long day. Five hours after leaving the car we roped up at the base of a stellar looking finger crack. Two long pitches of fine climbing (5.7) led to lower angle and unfortunately rubbly rock in the center of the face. After simuclimbing through the junk we climbed two more steep pitches on good rock directly to the fine summit. Shortly after arriving a fighter jet cruised by no more than 200' out and dropped a wing for us. Based on the summit register this was only the 4th ascent since 1996! (FYI both the NE and W ridges look excellent) Green Glacier and E Face of Skookum Worried about descending back to the east we (I) decided to head down the west side and pick up the logging roads near Dailey Prairie. Five long hours of talus hopping and bushwacking later we finally reached the roads around 8 PM. All that was left was 12 miles of logging road back to the car. I wanted to cry. Rad remained annoyingly optimistic. Thanks Rad for an exhausting but excellent trip. Lesson #2: Don't ever assume that the unknown descent route is better than the known descent route. It still blows my mind that this is only 30 miles from my house. Motivated climbers could easily climb the Mythic Wall one day, camp out and then link the SE buttress of Cinderella with the Stovepipe and get back to car in time for pizza and beer (A stop at the North Fork Beer Shrine is mandatory). Have fun! Gear Notes: For Stovepipe. 1 rope and small rack to #2 Camalot. Approach Notes: Hike Elbow Lake Trail ~1.5 miles to switchback at 2650'. Traverse into woods crossing Hildebrand Creek at 2600'. Immediately ascend to 2700' and begin long traverse into valley. After crossing several dry streambeds climb to 2800' keep traversing then drop down through open forest to the Green Creek at 2770'.

Wow! Holy Balls! I'm glad it worked out and I'm glad you're both back in one piece! ????? Like Obi Wan or something? "Use the force Mike..." I was at Diamond Jims on Sunday as well maybe a little to early for the likes of Tyree and you.

Certainly pushing beyond PERCEIVED limits of difficulty is inspiring, but pushing beyond completely REAL levels of objective hazard is folly. I don't know either of you but I'm of the impressive one of you might have children? If so then both folly and very selfish. Congratulations none the less. Darin

Don't you have small children? What the f#%k's wrong with you?

Ross: I haven't climbed the East Pillar. It too looks hard, sustained and loose. Check out Dan and Forrests TR from a couple summers back. Mike: It probably would have helped matters had you not gotten off route on the FIRST pitch. Dru: F#@K OFF! If anyone cares I still think the North Rib is one of the classiest routes I've done in the Cascades. I would HIGHLY recommend that one.

Climb: Slesse-Navigator Wall Date of Climb: 8/16/2005 Trip Report: I'm not sure exactly what to say. Typically I post TRs of climbs I think people would enjoy repeating. Navigator Wall is not one of those climbs. It is a hard climb for hardmen and if you are one of those maybe you would truely enjoy the climbing. However I am definitely not a hardman and I am glad it's over. With that said it was one of the better adventures in my climbing career and I'm happy to have (past tense)done it. I was joined by Sol (aka Frosty) on Monday afternoon and we headed north to get into position for a push on Tuesday. We found that the Slesse Creek road is now waterbarred, no probably for a truck but definitely an issue for Sol's minivan. Luckily it's not a big deal as it's only about a thirty minute walk from the trailhead. I pushed my bike up the road a bit before realizing that was stupid, then chained it to a tree. We headed around to Nesakwatch Creek where we again stopped at the first waterbar. In the morning we discovered that this too is about a 35 minute walk from the old trailhead. Basically a CJ7 would not give you much of an advantage over a Toyota Prius. We left the car at 2 AM and reached the propellor cairn around 5:15 AM. This is a beautiful spot. 30 minutes of outrageous slab hiking got us to the base of the climb. What to say...what to say.... The first pitch was great! And so was the 19th! The rest well...most of it wasn't that bad, some of it was quite good! Sol leading the crux "overhanging fingercrack" pitch On the 5.8 slab pitch mid-route But the headwall, OH DEAR GOD the headwall! Hard sustained climbing on vertical to overhanging, loose, dirty diorite. Mediocre gear and a semi-hanging belay off of two hollow flakes with 1700' of air beneath your heels. I whimpered up my pitch, Sol meditated up his. We both agreed once was enough. That was definitely not what climbing is about for us. From the sandy ledges Sol took us home, gracefully scaling the "outrageous" 10b corner. This pitch was a total anomoly for the climb, 120+ feet of splitter hands on solid rock. Like a Split Pillar in the mountains. A few more pitches and we were on the summit eleven hours after starting up the rock. Cranking up the 10b corner To descend we did two long rappels down the northwest route then quickly scrambled up and over to the loose gully of the standard descent of Slesse. The off-shore flow had moved in as predicted and we had an incredible view of a sea of clouds churning about in the valley below. Twenty-one hours after leaving the car I'm biking up the Chilliwack River Road. My Tikka casts a feeble glow against the gloomy night. A few small rain drops quickly build to a thunderous downpour. I'm soaked, I have miles yet to go and I'm smiling. Gear Notes: Medium-large rack to 4". Extra #2 Camalots for pitch 19. Red Fred topo is perfect. KM clearly plagarized it. Approach Notes: Mellowest approach on Slesse.

you are going to die

I climbed the lower wall via some easier thing off to the right but the arch itself is sweet! Be prepared for some scary hooking, nailing and expo flakes off the belay on the second pitch followed by quality A1 nailing. A good way to get a taste for Squamish Style A3. Bring half-a-dozen Lost Arrows, a few bugaboos and a few sawed off angles along with the regular schwag.

Nice work boyz. That route is the shizzy nizzy! There isn't THAT much loose rock though, it deserves to be more popular. Hope you guys crush on Friday, Saturday still open Ti?