dberdinka

As far as I can tell during an "Adventure Race" such as this participants have there hands held while doing "extreme" activities. In this case they were required to use a fixed line and jumar as they hiked up the granite sidewalk. Their jumar and rappel setups were rigged by professional guides and everything had a safety backup. Experience or responsibility for oneself were not prerequisites. Evidently the impact was significant. A letter writing campaign or similar might be in order to prevent other crags, Upper Town Wall, Snow Creek Wall etc from being thrashed on for such "adventure races" in the future.

Maybe I missed the discussion in the last two weeks but I'm a bit surprised not to see anything on the impact of the Subaru Primal Quest Adventure Race on Exfoliation Dome and the Clear Creek Area in general. One leg of the race required the approximately 280 participants to follow a fixed line up the Granite Sidewalk, then jumar 600' long static lines up the "headwall" of rock possibly between Jacobs Ladder and Rain Man. At the top they were switched to a rappel setup by hired guides and retraced their steps back to the logging road. As it turns out a number of friends of mine who work in the guiding industry for several different outfits were involved in the rigging and general support work. I was told that...... Approximately 30 bolts were placed for anchoring 12! 600' static lines on the headwall along with all the other lines used to access it. About a dozen of these bolts were placed on the Granite Sidwalk and below the headwall. All bolt hangers were removed and about 1/3 of the bolts were pryed out and expoxied. In addition 1/4" buttonheads where used to anchor edge padding on the headwall. Considering the onionskin like nature of X-Dome there were probably numerous edges to pad. These were in theory all removed. While there are already LOTS of bolts up there, the placement of bolts for short-term use and their incomplete removal seems like really poor form. Of greater real enviromental impact, evidently there was no waste management. I was told "people were leaving their dookies and TP everywhere" With support staff, TV crews, guides etc thats probably 400 people in the area over a 36 hour period. No honeybuckets, no nothing. Of course the irony in all this is that Subaru is also a Principle Partner of the Leave No Trace program, evidently those ethics weren't applied in this situation. X-Dome is somewhat of a sacred place for many us. Remote, adventurous, pristine. Kinda makes my skin crawl to think of the blast of commercial exploitation it just experienced.

Returned home on Saturday night after honeymooning on the Na Pali Coast of Kauai.

Quit your whining......

After reading the bogus poll thread I couldn't help myself....

Woaww! Were in the hell did you come up with this bit of trivia?

What? In person wasn't good enough? A good approach would be to do an easy wall first then decide from there what’s next. You and Frosty should be competent enough to do any of easy wall climbs in a day. Prodigal Son, Spaceshot, Touchstone Wall, Moonlight. Though a common strategy is to fix two ropes then climb it the next day. Personally I think Touchstone wall is the most fun. Moonlight and Spaceshot are both striking but boring. Prodigal is fun too, lots of fixed gear. Do Touchstone if it’s cool and cloudy, Prodigal if it’s hot. If that goes well the next step up is something like Lunar Ecstasy, Desert Shield, Swoop Gimp or the Lowe Route on Angels Landing. They all go clean at C3. I can vouch for Lunar X, it’s really friggin good. Two full days with a portaledge bivi. The first couple pitches of Swoop Gimp were unreal, overhanging micronut seam. Supposedly not as classic up higher though? If you want beta on hard routes e-mail Joe Puryear. He’s very helpful and I get the impression he’s done more than a few, a lot more! For harder aid routes bring LOTS of HB brass offsets, particularly the #4, #5 and #6s. Doubles of aluminum offsets and offset aliens wouldn’t hurt on any of the routes either. I wouldn’t miss the free climbing either. Up by the Tunnel a good day would be to do Ashtar Command and The Headache. Both excellent, solid and well protected. Iron Messiah is another trade route that’s supposedly good. You need rest day activities. Go canyoneering, just do it! Bring a beater rope you don’t mind getting sandy. www.canyoneeringusa.com has lots of good info. Spry Canyon is incredible and can be done without wetsuits there is very little swimming, just bring a change of cloth and two ropes. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!! Keyhole Canyon to Pine Creek Canyon makes for a very fun day though crowded and you’ll probably need wet or drysuits. The list goes on. Kolob Creek and Imlay Canyon are both excellent, long canyons I did overnights in. Or just go for a walk up the narrows. If you just want to go for a day hike the Middle Fork of Taylor Creek up in the Kolob Canyons is very scenic. Free camping is about 7 miles west of the park just off the highway along the Virgin River. Generally pretty quiet. Ask at the gear shop or canyoneering shop in Springdale for directions if that’s not enough info. In springdale everyone eats at the Bit & Spur though it doesn’t quite do it for me. The Pizza and Noodle House is a-ok, so is the little Mexican place Oscars. If the weather is ass there is some fun climbing down near Saint George 45 minutes away, or it’s only 2.5 hrs to Red Rocks. I’m jealous I want to be in Zion

A lack of road and trail maintenance is rapidly curtailing access to a LOT of peaks, particularly in BC. In the states we are lucky to have a Park Forest and a Forest Service that seems to have a mandate of maintaining logging roads throughout the Cascades, contrast this with Canada were road access is hit or miss as washouts and decommissioning seem to be rapidly reducing access to some really great climbing! Of course, it's happening in Washington as well just not on such a large scale. Here are some peaks I've climbed in the last 5-10 years where access has become significantly more difficult. Jesus! it's almost every peak I've climbed in SW BC. Habrich - logging road now blocked several hrs hiking below TH to "Life on Earth". Slesse - Road blocked by landslide 1.5 miles before old TH, bridge washed out and trail rapidly deteriorating. Rexford - Access to either side is at least several hrs more hiking than it was 5 years ago due to bridge removal on east side and landslide on west side. Old Settler - I drove to within 45 minute hike of Daphenie Lake (sp?) maybe 4 years ago. Now it's a 4 hr ? hike up the road. Chamois/Les Cornes/etc. - Logging company pulled out, now you need to get a key (Hey Dru! ). Spur roads below peaks are RAPIDLY overgrowing with slide alder. Roads I drove up 5 yrs ago are now bushwacks on foot. In the states, 10 years ago you could drive almost to the base of the West Ridge of the North Twin Sister. Now road blockages and gating have added 5 miles of slogging to get to the same point. Squire Creek Road is perminently blocked a mile or two from the trailhead and access up Clear Creek Road seems endangered as well. Following last falls flooding how many other roads in the Darrington area are now blocked far from once accessable trailheads? A lot I bet. I'm rambling, the point being is that access, particularly in BC, seems to be deteriorating in a hurry for a lot of worthy areas.

7

No photos, but It went down something like.... "Oh, you know that crazy little polish dude who drives a green Jetta?" "Ah, yeah, sorta, my friend here does" "How was the bypass glacier" "It's gone but the weather shut us down" "Ok, have a nice day" Strange indeed!

Why not??

6

As it's a tower (sort of) every route is both left and right of ever other route. Sharing these experiences is a good way to deal with the traumatic stress of being involved. And yes, there really is no good reason not to wear your helmet!

I'm sure the BC Liberal Party will put wildlife before $$$ Maybe we could go kil and stuff one and put it in a museum. It's the 21st century for christ-sakes add some animatronics and it's as good as the real thing!

I don't want to burst your bubble, but it really isn't. The approach from Holden Village is a massive shwack, the ice face is small, the rock is mediocre. But hey, it's a way out there wilderness experience.

Ahuummm, so getting back on topic AlpenFox!, I think doing Salish Peak would be one hell of a day. I'm curious about the best access in there. As I see it you have three options. 1) Hike up Squire Creek Road and trail until you can cross the river and schwack X-1000's of feet up to the base of the route. Uuuughh. 2) Drive up Clear Creek to the 3 o'clock parking lot. Hike 4 miles to Squire Pass then do a long traverse all the way over to and under the north face of 3-Fingers bivi-ing at a nice saddle between the two peaks. ?Better than option 1? 3) Do the standard west side approach to 3-Fingers and cross the west side of that peak (again, ?doable?) to three lakes between 3-Fingers and Salish. Definitely worth explorer-ating. Stefan can you give us a brief TR of how you got in there?

double-post

No, that would be illegal.

Striking similarity!! South Buttress of Gimli is as good an alpine-rock climb as you will find anywhere. *****

I agree. Lots of nice pics and good info, keep it up folks. The TR posting function has made it really easy to get truely USEFUL beta on a lot of peaks. Some posters who have posted sweet TRs in the past seem conspicously absent these days, ForrestM, daylward, Wayne etc. whats up!

Actually, I think that was mine, or is there more art out there? I finally tracked down the actual news release above and am amazed at the SIZE of the outfit they are opening here in my innocuous little hometown. (Maybe I can get a job as a wilderness navigator/spotter) I look forward to the first photo of climbers being buzzed by Blackhawks, I'll keep my eye's peeled this weekend!

No it's not that bad. In fact it's never seemed any worse than the coulior to me. You'll probably encounter some snow getting to the promitory. From there is is simply a matter of picking the right gully system, to climb into. My memory gets a bit hazy here. You'll have a couple choices. You want to climb up and LEFT (Left then Up might be more precise wording) into the biggest gully. Like I said you should be able to see a mess of rap slings half a pitch up. From there it is easy. I don't know how you would call this the crux unless you were way off route.

Still news to me fader...

Climbers have tradionally used routes that cross the border to get into famous peaks like Mt. Redoubt, Bear Mtn, Castle Peak and the Cathedral Group. The National Park Service has even maintained a sign-in register just past the border in Depot Creek as it's is part of the NCNP. Obviusly none of these routes are particularly convient for smuggling compared to Zero Avenue (a long road in Canadian approximately 5' north of the official borderline) or some backroad near Sumas, so I find it hard to imagine that climbers will be targeted, but............. Watch Out! 69 law enforcement officers, 1 airplane and two "sensor-equiped" helicopters (at least one is black!) are moving to Bellingham where they will vigilantly be searching for illegal imigrants, BC-bud, the always ominous WMD and eating plenty of donuts. Better find a new way to get that backpackable-nuke across the border folks. B'ham Border Protection Office