Colin

And just in case some of you are curious about the subject matter more than simply "sending the madness," this slide show will be about two 6,000 ft. routes on the North Buttress of Mt. Hunter - the Bibler-Klewin (AKA Moonflower Buttress), and the harder but less-known Grison-Tedeschi (AKA French Couloir) - and about heading up them with just daypacks!

Drew, Speaking of snowed-up roads, how 'bout some cross-border information reciprocation: How far can you drive the Chilliwack Lake Road right now? I presume there is no chance of driving UP the road to north side of Slesse, but can you at least get to the turnoff? And can you typically get there most of the winter?

Trip: Mt. Stuart - Upper North Ridge Date: 5/26/2008 Trip Report: Dan Aylward and I climbed the Upper North Ridge of Stuart on Monday. It was fun - mostly rock at this point, but still with some mixed flavor. The Teanaway River Road will probably be drivable to the trailhead by next weekend, and the North Ridge will probably be all rock-shoe terrain in 2-3 weeks. Some photos in my nerdy domain: colinhaley.com

Trip: North Early Winter Spire - Early Winter Couloir Date: 5/11/2008 Trip Report: Mark, Dylan, and I had a fun time on NEWS on Sunday. None of us had climbed the Early Winter Couloir before - it is much more a snow climb than an ice or mixed climb. There were a couple short steps of AI3, but it's mostly just steep snow. It is a fun route in any event though, with a short approach and nice ambience. The upper ridge was snowy rock climbing; a bit slabby in one spot. In the warming temps the couloir will get dangerous from failing cornices. Some photos and whatnot: colinhaley.com

Trip: The Tooth - East Face Date: 3/15/2008 Trip Report: Wednesday Night Alpinism: colinhaley.blogspot.com Approach Notes: A desk job, or university classes.

On April 24th I'm going to give a second Seattle-area slideshow of the Torre Traverse, this time at the Wilde Rover in Kirkland. The slideshow is about a ridge enchainment of Patagonian summits Aguja Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger, and Cerro Torre that Rolando Garibotti and I completed this past January. The event is organized by the American Alpine Club, and our local Cascade Section chair, Al Schumer. The event is free for both members and non-members, and is a good opportunity for non-members to learn a bit about the AAC. The slideshow will start at 7:30 PM but come early (anytime after 6:00 PM) to get a good seat, buy your own dinner and beer, and visit with friends. There will be a brief Cascade section meeting before the slideshow. Wilde Rover Irish Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA (see www.wilderover.com for directions).

Hey Panos, I used to work for Jim for several years at PMS, and asked him about Nooksack Tower a bunch. Jim and Chuck Gerson made the first ascent of the Nelson-Gerson route in May 1982, and then the foursome went and made the FWA of the Tower the following February, VIA THE SAME ROUTE, THE NELSON-GERSON. I'm sure of this. In Selected Climbs Vol. 1, Second Edition, on page 298 there is a photo of Kit on the FWA. That is the first pitch above the col on the Nelson-Gerson. Ade Miller and I went and made an early spring ascent of the Nelson-Gerson a few years ago (Must've been April '04), and I'd recommend the route. I think we posted a TR, but I wasn't able to find it during a quick search. Hope that helps.

Couldn't resist chiming in here... As for whether or not to use wrist leashes: I at first thought that going "leashless" was totally contrived and stupid, just a silly style game. Now I never use wrist leashes - and it has nothing to do with 'style.' I don't climb without wrist leashes because I think it is more 'pure' or better 'style' (after all, anything with ice tools is aid climbing in a sense), I climb without wrist leashes because I think it is EASIER. It is easier to place pro, easier to de-pump, easier to match, etc. And in the past when I used wrist leashes I always had them set loosely, because otherwise they messed up my swing, so going 'leashless' is not harder for me to hold onto my tools (and the new breed of tools are much, much easier to hold on to anyways). As for whether or not to use umbilicals: On serious alpine routes I really don't want to drop my tools, and using umbilicals is the best solution. It is absolutely true that they sometimes are annoying and snag on things - but, in my opinion they are overall less annoying than wrist leashes. Even for simple waterfall cragging I sometimes like to use umbilicals to prevent dropping a tool (This is especially the case if your pick is stuck and you are hitting your palm against the bottom of the hammer - it is easy to lose your tool when it finally comes free if it isn't attached). As for what kind of umbilicals: I think that the commercially-manufactured umbilicals that Grivel made were superior to the home-made variety because they are stronger, and the bar-tacks are lighter and less bulky than water knots. It's a shame they aren't made anymore. Just today I got a prototype of the umbilicals that BD is working on - they seem really promising, with a strong, built-in swivel and good mini carabiners to clip to the tools (it is nice if the 'biners are big enough to clip to the head of the tool, for when you are plunging the tools on lower-angled terrain). They will probably be on the retail shelves in a year, and in the meantime I think that Dave's directions are the way to go.

This Saturday, Nov. 17, my friend Freddie Wilkinson is giving a slideshow in Issaquah, at the opening of the new REI. The slideshow begins at 7pm. If you haven't heard about him already, Freddie is based out of North Conway, New Hampshire. He is, in my opinion, one of the best alpine climbers in the US these days, and, perhaps more importantly, totally hilarious. He says his show will be about the past year of climbing trips, which should include new routes in Patagonia and new routes in the Miyar Valler of India. If we get him drunk enough, his inhibitions should disappear (if there were any in the first place) and we'll be treated to full-on F-Bomb entertainment.

Roger Strong and I went and climbed the Cosely/Houston route on Tuesday. I was really impressed by how high-quality the ice was, especially so early in the season. Really nice route in general I thought - the nice waterfall curtains surrounded by amorphous choss were quite reminiscent of the Canadian Rockies. Conditions were almost identical to the photos that have been posted - Cosely/Houston in good shape, and the Polish Route not touched down. Considering how much ice was formed, with only relatively small snowfields feeding them, I have a suspicion that Colfax Peak is creating great ice routes because it has a particularly high geothermal heat flux. Just a theory...

Anyone looking for a ride down to Yosemite? I'm planning to drive down from Seattle, leaving either early Monday or Tuesday morning. I already have climbing partners lined up, and I don't know when I'll be driving back north, but it'd be nice to have company and share gas costs. I have a seat for one person, and plenty of room for your gear. colinhaley1@gmail.com 206-334-3512

Perhaps you guys have already seen this, but pretty damn cool stuff on our local volcano:

The double bag was awesome! We actually used it for 3 nights - a night at 14k on the way down. It was a bit tight with Mark's MOGness, since I was originally planning the dimensions to use with Jed, but it was still plenty roomy to sleep. And like I thought, it was really warm - definitely way warmer than we needed it to be, but that is good security for when the down gets frozen on longer routes. The specialty-cut foam pads in the bottom worked really well. Using a double bag requires you to tweak your normal bivy operations a bit, but overall it worked really well. Combined with the firstlight, our whole bivy system was really light and quite comfortable. Feathered Friends will hopefully do a full production run of the bag (the "Spoonbill," although I prefer the simpler name of "homo-huddler") if they get enough interest.

Hey Doods, Yep, it went. Weather was great while on route, and then has shut down pretty bad since then. The climbing was really high quality on excellent rock - sometimes quite hard, but never scary. We climbed the rock wall in 21 hours, and then slogged above for a couple hours, super dehydrated, until able to dig out a bivy ledge at around 16,500. We didn't leave our bivy the next day until 2pm, and eventually summited at around 9:45 I believe, making a shrund-to-summit time of I think 45:40. akicebum is correct about the number of ascents. I think it took Ian and Chris 44 hours rather than 60 though? Great you meet you and Evan, John, and thanks for lending us the nice gear. We never would have made it up if Mark had brought his lead-filled mittens on route!

At my parents' house, posting on cascadeclimbers, just out of my geochemistry final! Gotta finish packing, then off to AK in 3 hours...

Trip: Mt. Robson - Emperor Face, House-Haley (FA) Date: 5/25/2007 Trip Report: Excited by a good forecast, Steve House drove north from Bend on Wednesday afternoon for his 7th attempt on Robson's Emperor Face. Fortunately all of the more talented climbers he approached could not go, so we met up in Seattle and hit the road up to Robson on Thursday morning. On Thursday afternoon we flew with Yellowhead Helicopters to the Helmet-Robson col, and left the col at 4:30am on Friday to approach the Emperor Face by descending the ramped ice-fall above the Mist Glacier. We climbed the face in two long lead blocks, both seven pitches long. My block had longer pitches (about 80m on average) and moderate climbing, then Steve's block had normal-length pitches (about 55m on average) and much more difficult climbing. Our route roughly followed the gully system immediately left of the Stump-Logan, but on the last pitch we suddenly encountered 3 fixed pitons. Presumably Stump and Logan finished a little bit to the left of the arete that is shown in most photos. Our route shared at least the last pitch with theirs, and perhaps the last two pitches. I reached Steve's belay at the top of the headwall at 11:30pm, and we spent the short night sitting on a small ledge chopped from the ice. In the morning Steve led two easy mixed pitches up to the crest of the Emperor Ridge, which we then crossed onto the upper SW Face. We traversed across the South Face, me now feeling very sick for some reason (I think a bug that I have had ever since Patagonia), and joined the Wishbone Arete in deteriorating weather. The upper Wishbone Arete included some funky gargoyle climbing, and we topped out in a whiteout at 1:00pm. We descended the Kain Route and then Steve hiked up to retrieve our camp at the Helmet-Robson col while I sat and contemplated vomiting. Our camp-to-camp time was approximately 36 hours. On Sunday we descended the Robson Glacier (sometimes stressfully off route due to the whiteout), and then hiked down to Kinney Lake, leaving the last 7km of walking for Monday morning. I probably won't have time to post pictures until July, unfortunately.

I climbed the route a few years ago, and we did it in a push, which is very reasonable. Even if you were planning to bivy you absolutely would not want to bring a ledge or a haulbag - there are plenty of bivy ledges and the hauling would be horrendous. We free climbed most of the route, and fully aided the 5-6 pitches in the big dihedral. If I were to do it again, now that I'm a slightly better rock climber, I think I would french-free most of the dihedral pitches, and only bust out the aiders for the A2/5.12- pitch. We placed one pin, but you can probably get by with none. We approached down the gully from the col to the N of N Howser, which was a lot of loose 3rd class, but went pretty well. We brought no crampons on route, but one ice tool each. The approach from the opposite direction (rap in from near the base of the Beckey-Chouinard) is supposedly much better now, because I heard that the rappel stations were fixed with bolts, which would probably make it the way to go. Might want to verify that info from another source though. You can certainly fly into East Creek, but I don't think it'd really be worth your money, since the approach is pretty short by BC/WA standards. Also, since the descent is down the east side of the towers, it doesn't really save you that much to be based on the west side. We took 28 hours on route, including getting off route in the dark. For a comparison, I climbed the NW Face of Half Dome in 9 hours (but, I was definitely climbing faster at that time). I think you should expect Watchtower to take about twice as long as Half Dome. If it were in Yosemite, it would get climbed way, way, faster, but having no established belays, route-finding difficulties, and carrying a bit of snow/ice gear will definitely make things slower.

Yeah, Ross, when we were on those snowfields I was thinking about your idea of skiing the NE Face. If it were skied for real (hucking the cliff bands), I think it would be the most extreme ski descent ever accomplished. If it were semi-skied (rapping the cliff bands), it would still be really scary!

Trip: Mt. Stuart - Lara Kellogg Memorial Route (FA) Date: 4/29/2007 Trip Report: Yesterday Dylan Johnson and I climbed a route on the NE Face of Stuart that I believe is a new variation. We had made an attempt last Saturday but bailed up the Ice Cliff Couloir after realizing we weren't prepared for the difficulties. The succesful ascent yesterday took about 19.5 hours car-to-car, using bikes for Mountaineers Creek Road. The route we took ascended various bits of previous routes, with what I believe were two new ice pitches. The lower portion of the face is comprised of horizontal bands of vertical to overhanging rock seperated by snow ledges. The first rock band we climbed via a short pitch of WI4. The second rock band had a spectacular free-standing ice pillar, but it looked very difficult (probably WI6) and at risk of collapsing, so we traversed right to join the original route (Mahre-Prater, August 1959) for one pitch. This had a move of aid, and there were 3 old pitons. From the top of the aid pitch we traversed back left to the ice line, and climbed the last rock band by a difficult waterfall pitch that I felt was WI6. It was not very long, but steep, narrow, and very chandeliered. Perhaps in some years it is nonexistant, and perhaps in some years it is WI4. Above the rock bands we joined the Nelson-Klewin May 1978 route for the middle snowfield and a short step of ice. We diverged from the 1978 route to the right for several hundred feet, and then joined back up with it for the finishing bowls and gullies to the ridge crest (this finish also established by Mahre-Prater, 1958). Although I think our route is only a new variation and not an independent route, it is an aesthetic line with challenging ice climbing on Stuart's cleanest face. We wanted to name it in honor of a wonderful friend and excellent climber who Dylan and I both were fortunate enough to know. Following the tradition from Mt. Index, we would like to call this route the Lara Kellogg Memorial Route in the hope that the name will help carry Lara's memory to future climbers in the Cascades.

Here's another trip report, courtesy of gizoogle.com: http://sites.gizoogle.com/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cascadeclimbers.com%2Ftrip-reports%2Falpine%2Fdragontail-triple-couloir-4-19-2007-2573%2F

Nice job on a fun climb! Yes, it sounds like you guys basically climbed the August '71 line. I've done it a couple times, and I think it is one of the highest quality ice climbs in the Cascades. Rarely more technically difficult than TC, but with 8 times more technical terrain. Also, it seems to come into condition almost every year, about equally consistent as TC. If you look at a topo map, the entire "north" face of Dragontail definitely faces to the northwest. However, what is commonly referred to as the "Northwest Face", as per Beckey, is either the terrain between Backbone and Serpentine or the terrain to the right of Serpentine. I think maybe Dylan and I ran into you guys while you were hiking in and us hiking out, at the Colchuck-Lake/Stuart-Lake junction? I was in the middle of fucking reptile zoo, and someone was giving booze to these goddamn animals! It won't be long now 'till they tear us to shreds...

Nice job Eric! I believe he also climbed it with a partner a couple weeks earlier. I don't know of anyone specifically, but I would imagine it has seen other Yankee solo ascents. Nope, I never got on Supercouloir last year. In fact, I didn't get nearly as much climbing done in Chamonix last year as I would've hoped; partly due to poor climbing conditions (but good skiing conditions), partly due to not finding a good partner, and mostly due to spending too much time getting drunk with Scandinavian girls... Ah, c'est la vie. As for Wayne's question about difficulty, I think that it is usually something like M5, WI4, although there are a lot of factors that affect how hard an ascent is. Last year there was a fixed rope on the first pitch, and so even though no ice was formed people would jug the fixed rope to start their "climb" of Supercouloir. More significant is the question of whether you finished the route, or simply rapped off from part way up. It might be surprising that the vast, vast majority of "ascents" of the Supercouloir end in an arbitrary place where people decide they've had enough and rap off (in fact, this is the case for many of the ice climbs around Chamonix). Finishing the original route to the summit of Mt. Blanc du Tacul is a much greater challenge that few climbers actually attempt these days.

Anyone know how close one can drive to the Heliotrope Ridge Trailhead right now? Thanks.

Trip: Mt. Huntington - Nettle-Quirk Date: 3/12/2007 Trip Report: On March 10th, Jed Brown (Fairbanks, Alaska) and I flew from Talkeetna to the Tokositna Glacier below Mt. Huntington. On March 12th we climbed to the summit of Mt. Huntington via the West Face Couloir (Nettle-Quirk), and descended via the same route, in just under 15 hours roundtrip. We believe this might have been the first ascent of Huntington during the winter season. Although many teams descend from the top of the ice ramp, we found it to only be half-way to the summit, in terms of time and effort. Conditions and weather were excellent, although the temperatures were quite cold; we both frostnipped a few digits. After a few days contemplating other objectives, we gave in to the cold nights and flew out of the range on March 16th. A few lessons learned: -bring two pee bottles instead of one -bring mittens that you can actually do technical climbing in -bring a face mask that covers your nose -bring a sleeping bag rated to -30F instead of -10F -bring a larger than 2-person tent to basecamp -bring a thermarest to basecamp -muffins are very difficult to bite at -20F -bring basecamp down booties -don't go to Alaska before April!

Thanks for clearing that up, Jason! Also, for those that haven't hear yet, the AAJ is finally online and searchable: http://climbing.com/news/press/aajo/ I think this is an amazing resource, and I think it is very generous of the AAC to make it free to everyone, not just members. Go AAC! Oh, and the ACC is cool too, Dru!