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  1. Trip: Index, Vesper, Sperry, Big 4 MadManMisAdventure - Date: 7/30/2007 Trip Report: the omens were bad to begin with - a wedding full of fat people the night before - bad booze and mind numbing conversation - a few hours of sleep, plagued by half images of Being Behind the Cue Ball again - rain on the road in the dark up to seattle and layton's place - a total lack of mind-altering medications to salve the soul woken up by a querolous layton in my red devil, parked halfway up on the curb at a non-dmv approved angle outside his swankish new abode - an hour of desperately needed sleep on a couch exactly half my height, a cigarette, a coffee, and an uncomfortable elevator ride w/ a complete stranger later we were on the road to methadonia for steep granite - the spitting rain shoulda been a warning to stay at home - good thing we went though, as quite the adventure unfolded: 1. the rock being completely cluster-fucked for free-climbing, mike and i lucked into discovering a secret project area, just a 30 second walk away from a beer n' tobaco vendor - we dreamed wistfully of the day when the weather would clear and we could take our keenly honed sick-skills back to the wall! mike near the top of our new crag - the mist enshrouded and verdant town walls beckoning us beyond SEND MOTHERFUCKER! 2. the second and greater adventure came when layton left his mithril-woven jacket and sacred cell-phone behind on a park bench - we did not discover this till returning to the traffic paradise of seattle and after hours of showing folks at the uw rock how to Get It Done - finally discovered that a hobo named charles had picked it up - only took the 30th call to the phone for him to figure out how to answer - his english was pretty poor even by 13th century standards, but eventually we got to the heart of the issue, which was he'd give us the phone back if we got him some beer, as after all "it's near the end of the month, man, you know?" - getting directions was another affair altogether, and as his last ride in a motorized carriage was probably back during the hoover administration, almost more useless than if we'd just driven in circles around index screaming his name my cornhole, worried that we might be walking into a deliverance-style situation, which i've done enough times in my life now to know better, admonished me to procure a butter-knife from a fashionable bavarian eatery before the drive out to index - niether of us had planned on what unfolded - charles had been evicted from a derilict trailer by the charming gay couple that had bought all the local land, but they'd been gracious enough to let him keep squatting in a tent in the woods, guarded by 2 ill-tempered horses, which laughed at my wannabe-bowie knife and proceeded to nip layton a couple of times - i tell you, that man has an uncanny, almost animal, allure to him! a whole caste of motley characters enabled this ultimate, and succesful, adventure - the applachian americans who assisted in decephiring our directions despite the fact that mike used the phrase "retarded redneck" within the first 3 seconds of meeting them, the meth-addled teenage redskin standing point on the corner of 2 dirt roads in the woods who, in the time honored tradition of his people, necesitated we barter his useless directions in exchange for our cigarettes, the entire household of budweiser drinking, hungry-man/pot-pie eating folks that somehow seduced mike into their hovel before descending upon him with forks and spoons intent on consuming him raw and screaming, "ger," the land-owning, cocktail-swigging gentleman who was so crestfallen at our refusal of his invitation to come on up to the a-frame for some drinks and a hot-shower, etc. a night i shall not forget until i also forget the lyrics to "karma chameleon" on the climbing end of things, and for anyone who's still reading, i recommend as a fun solo outing - linking up the n face of vesper, to a walk/scramble over to the south summit of big 4, then back to a scramble up to sperry - did this over the next 2 days, when my squamish partner went AWOL - my first trip into the monte cristo area and fun to be mostly alone in - the climbing on vesper's quite sane and enjoyable as a solo (the benefit of not taking all that heavy gear being that you can instead carry the same weight in booze and not skimp on the training while pumping-up the party-tude) - bivying in the swirling clouds of the summit while listening to brain-candy only to awake to Rage and a lumiscent moon was ethereal i'm out of creative things to say Gear Notes: Total Consciousness not required Approach Notes: many moons, paleface, many moons
  2. Trip: Gunsight range - West face-north peak Date: 7/25/2007 Trip Report: Inspired by CC.com trip reports Jens (Holsten) and I got on a boat last week and headed towards the fabled gunsight range. Though this website can sometimes be a waste of time, even a repository for spray and slander (mine own included) I feel sort of obligated to return the favor, as without the info gleaned here our trip may have never been. Anyway, enough bullshit. The trail up Agnes creek was uneventful right up to five mile camp, where the trail crew had stopped. Immediately after this we encountered the aforementioned hundreds of blow-downs and developed a cowboy like posture after so much straddling. A light cloud cover didn't do a whole lot to abate the heat, but it was better than nothing. We had hoped (foolishly) to knock off the approach in a marathon afternoon, but after reaching the spruce creek turn off decided to bivy. This was a smart decision, as darkness would have found us stranded on a 50 degree hillside suffering in the rain. Instead we camped on the river and ducked in the tent when the light showers hit. Not a whole lot to say about the next day, just some straight suffering up a hill. Blake and company humbly understated this phase of the journey, we were just glad to find the mountain. Several hours later we hopped onto the blue glacier in the afternoon heat, hoping not to get creamed by an ice fall. We walked right by what was to be our basecamp, intent on making it over to the chikamin. After some sketchy recon we discovered our mistake and settled in to one of the most amazing bivies ever. Wednesday morning we ambled over the pass above our camp and roped up for the super loose step down onto the gigantor chikamin glacier. A mellow crampon session found us at the base of the west face, I only fell into one talus hole where I nearly lost control of my bowels. The route is gained off a rad traversing ledge which beats the hell out of some ungainly moat. As almost everyone else has said the rock quality is superb, if a bit grainy the higher you get. If this wall was a little closer to the road I don't think this would be the case. Anyway, I headed up just to the right of Blake's cairn and wound my way towards the fabled crux pitch. It seems like Nelson and Dietrich (I think that's his name) veered right on the second pitch and climbed a very thin corner before moving back left to the belay which supposedly needs bolts. Again, no bolts were found in situ, leading us to conclude that Jim Nelson had a bad memory. The second belay would be more comfortable with bolts, but they certainly aren't necessary. Jens tentatively made his way upwards, made a tenuous move left of thin flakes and was still unconvinced that the pitch would succumb to our assault. However, move by move, he found unanticipated decent holds, good gear, more positive flakes (a trademark of this wild wall) and uncanny knobs, all of which took him past the crux to a well deserved victory whoop. Here he is crushing. I also managed to scrap my way up this stellar pitch, which left us exhilarated but also a little nervous about the rest of the climb, which wasn't quite over yet. The next crack system looks sort of like a hand crack off the belay, unfortunately its a shallow flaring flake. It does accept gear however, and after a little bit of pansying around I commited to the steep lieback. Another flake follows the first, and I did a little more pansying, unsure if our relatively light alpine rack would get me to the next stance. Luckily the crack finally turns into hands, where I was able to recover enough to run it out to a little knob belay where I plugged in the last of my gear, the four camalot and a blue alien. Here's Jens following. The final bit of steepness supposedly contained some crux wideness, which Jens so graciously allowed me to lead, but it ended up being a little less difficult than the third pitch, which didn't dissapoint me in the least. Jens led one more shorty to "flat ground" and we eventually found a way up onto the crazy summit blocks. The library is about to close so I'm just going to leave it at that for now. I'll give everybody some time to slander and wrap it up when I get the chance. Suffice to say, the rock is good, almost as good as Index. Maybe even better than Mt. Stuart.
  3. Trip: Forbidden - NW Face, with a near disastrous descent. Date: 7/26/2007 Trip Report: On July 25 Blake, AJScott, and I headed up to the Boston Basin with our sights set on the NW Face (really a ridge) of Forbidden. This was my third trip up to the basin, and I had been telling Aaron and Blake how easy the trail was all morning, but somehow I managed to lose the trail in the first avy path, forcing us to shwack straight up for an hour to get to the basin. We were planning on bivying at the west ridge notch, but the prospect of lounging in the sun for the rest of the day and not having to carry bivy gear any higher stopped us at the high camp. Boston and Sahale Forbidden. To get to the notch we climbed the rightmost "catscratch" just left of the couloir. The next morning Aaron and I woke up at the ungodly hour of 3:33 for coffee and tea, and got Blake up when our breakfast burritos were ready. At about 5 we were on our way up the glacier. We were told that the couloir was out (on a side note, someone left a rope sitting at the base of the couloir), so we decided to go up one of the gullies to the left. One mid 5th pitch lead to easier ground, and before long we were at the base of the west ridge. We downclimbed to skiers left for a while, then made a couple of 60m raps down to the snow. From the top of the glacier we belayed a traverse down and to skiers right to a 2 pin rap anchor that would get us over the gaping shrund. I went first, and ended up having to do a free hanging rappel down to the knots in the end of the rope, and a swing and quick axe placement to get over to other side of the shrund; I was then able to direct the other guys to a better spot to come down. From there it was an easy walk down to a ramp that put us on the ridge. Aaron rapping the huge icecliff. The ridge is pretty much amazing. The first half was class 4 with a little loose rock here and there, but fun climbing. A short simul pitch up an arete just past a neat ridge top sidewalk took us to the crux, which was a short but steep 5.8 fistcrack (could be bypassed to the left), and a pitch of fun 5.7 face climbing. From there we simul climbed 2 long low class 5 pitches on spectacularly clean and solid rock to the summit. This route deserves far more attention than I think it gets. It is like the west ridge in terms of rock quality, but a little steeper and about 3 times longer. I would say that it is the best moderate climb that I have ever done. Aaron called it a mini north ridge of Stuart. If you are up for the alpine shenanigans on the approach, seriously climb this route. After relaxing for a while on the summit we quickly downclimbed the west ridge, and once at the notch I told Aaron that we should be at the car by 8 or 9. I spoke too soon. Aaron found a reasonable way to downclimb all the way to the snow in one of the gullies and was way ahead of us, but Blake and I went a different way and decided to do a rappel because of all of the loose rock. At the base of the gully I started to pull our ropes, and a few rocks came down. Blake suggested that we get out of the line of fire, so he moved to the left of the gully, and I to the right. As I continued to pull the rope we heard the terrifying sound of a big rock coming down, and at the last moment I decided that Blake's spot looked more protected, and ran in that direction. The next few seconds happened slowly. I felt a horrible pain in my leg, saw a big rock and my shoe flying down the slope out of the corner of my eye, and gave a loud yell. I think we both knew in an instant that things had just gotten bad. I lifted my pant leg and a stream of blood squirted out a ways. I sat in shock holding pressure on the deep gash while Blake clipped me into a #2 Camalot anchor, grabbed my medical bag (which happened to be in my coat pocket because we had decided to leave my pack at camp), and went down to get my shoe. I quickly decided that my leg was not broken, which put my mind at ease because it meant that I would get to climb more this summer. I managed to stop the bleeding and bandage myself up, and somewhere along the line slid down a few inches to put my weight on the anchor. I suddenly heard a huge crack behind me. Blake yelled something and shoved me aside and in my numb state of shock I watched a several hundred pound block roll past where I had just been sitting. “Wow, things just aren't going well.” It turns out my weight on the anchor had caused the Camalot (which was destroyed in the process) to tear the flake off, just as Blake was working on setting up a better anchor. Without much discussion we decided that it was time to go. Blake found a crack to place the only nut that we had left (Aaron had the rack, and was way below us at this point) to lower me down to the glacier. Once on the glacier I glissaded and limped down to camp as Blake ran ahead to start packing up. Once I got back to camp we ate some dinner donated by our friendly neighbors (if you read this, thanks again), and Blake and Aaron packed up our packs, dividing up most of the weight between themselves as the marmots watched curiously. Under normal conditions it is reasonable to get to the trailhead in about an hour. We left a little after 8 and got down there at about 1. The walk out went pretty much as one might expect: a lot of swearing, some clenching of teeth, and a snail's pace. By 4am I was doped up in the Skagit Valley Hospital, chatting with the doctor about how great the mountains are. I got 6 stitches and can't really walk all that well for now, but things could have been a whole lot worse; in fact things went about as well as they could have in that situation. The point: Never get too comfortable or let your guard down in the mountains. Once you do, they will kick your ass just to remind you who's in charge. Rockfall has been my biggest fear for a long time, but for some reason I was not paying enough attention to it in this case. Climb with people who you think you can trust in stressful situations, and don't go out there if you aren't sure that you can keep your head on straight when the shit goes down. Aaron and Blake get two thumbs up as partners, as they really stayed calm, and were super helpful on the way out. Thanks guys. Oh, and if you climb with Blake, remind him that he might want all of that food that he may have left behind at the last minute. Gear Notes: Carry a medical kit and know how to use it. It doesn't need to be huge, you can only do so much out there, but you should be able to stop a good amount of bleeding to stabilize a person. Sure you can improvise bandages, but it is nice to not have to think about things and be creative when everything is crazy. I had a wide gauze roll, a sponge, tape, a triangle bandage, and was glad to use it all. We bootied about 4 nuts, 1 pin, 2 slings, an atc, and could have taken 2 ropes (though one was bleached white). Approach Notes: Road still closed at the Eldorado TH. This adds about 2.75 miles to the Boston Basin approach.
  4. Trip: Valhallas -> Mt. Olympus --> Bailey Range --> High Divide Date: 7/5/2007-7/12/2007 Trip Report: My friend Douglas and I just completed a 77-mile, 8-day traverse through the most rugged and beautiful parts of the Olympic Mountains. We began with a 2-day bushwack up the South Fork of the Hoh River and up the steep ridge just north of Valkyrie Creek, which brought us to a range of peaks to the southwest of Mount Olympus known as the Valhallas. This area is probably only accessed by a couple parties a year. The Valhallas appear like mineature Bugaboos, although the climbing is a bit crumblier (although still plenty fun!). After a day of climbing in the Valhallas (a day of rain – our only day of poor weather the entire trip - prevented more peak-bagging), we traversed over to Olympus via the rarely travelled Hubert Glacier. We crossed over the summit, and headed for Bear Pass at the south end of the Bailey Range. Two days of traversing the Bailey Range brought us to the High Divide. On the eighth day of our adventure we hiked out the North Fork of the Hoh River (on a trail!). I posted some photos and a more detailed description on my climbing webpage: http://sabegg.googlepages.com/valhallas Enjoy! Approach Notes: prepare for a physical challenge!!
  5. 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.
  6. 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!
  7. OK folks here it is...the long awaited CC.com photo contest voting. We got a little busy with other stuff (life, work, hospital stays, etc) so sorry it took so long, but here it is. The rules are simple....just like last year you can vote for one photo in each catagory. After 10 days, we'll check out the results and award the winners. Happy voting! The voting ends April 20th at 8pm, and you'll be alble to see the results then. The voting is at the bottom and finalist pictures are below for reference when voting: Catagory: Cragging Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Picture 6: Picture 7: Picture 8: Picture 9: Picture 10: Picture 11: Picture 12: Picture 13: Picture 14: Catagory: Alpine Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Picture 6: Picture 7: Picture 8: Picture 9: Picture 10: Picture 11: Picture 12: Picture 13: Picture 14: Picture 15: Catagory: Scenic Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Picture 6: Picture 7: Picture 8: Picture 9: Picture 10: Picture 11: Picture 12: Picture 13: Picture 14: Picture 15: Picture 16: Picture 17: Picture 18: Picture 19: Catagory: Skiing/Boarding Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Picture 6: Picture 7: Picture 8: There is no picture 8. Any votes for picture 8 will be disregarded. Picture 9: Catagory: Bouldering Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Catagory: Ice Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Picture 6: Picture 7: Picture 8: Picture 9: Catagory: Humor Picture 1: Picture 2: Picture 3: Picture 4: Picture 5: Picture 6: Picture 7: Picture 8: Picture 9: Picture 10: Picture 11:
  8. There’s a sweet 5.9 granite handcrack in Renton. I saw some exposed rock near an elementary school and that tipped me off to the multi pitch crag beyond the fence. The best climb is a two pitch handcrack kind of like Classic Crack in Leavenworth. Someone had already established this and about three other similar climbs in the area. I’ve done it everyday that it’s been dry, since I live nearby, and I want to be the first to solo it. I can’t believe there’s such good granite on the Westside!
  9. Trip: Mt. Index - Index Peak Traverse Date: 2/2/2007 Trip Report: Mark Bunker and I climbed the Index Peak Traverse yesterday, leaving the car at 4:30am, and returning very worn out at 3:30am this morning. Conditions were generally excellent, and we worth both amazed by how much ice there was all along the traverse. The first pitch on the North Face of the North Peak was almost bare rock, but conditions got consistently more wintery as we went, with the North Face of the Main Peak holding the most snow and rime. On the North Face of the North Peak, we climbed one ice pitch above the bowl, and then traversed right to climb the upper North Rib. There was a second ice pitch above the bowl that looked like very nice WI3, but we didn't take it because we weren't sure where it went. In retrospect, I think it would have been a much better route - more direct and faster climbing. On the North Face of the Middle Peak we climbed a gully system about 50m to the left of the standard summer rib, which had a nice section of WI3 and was I think a much better option for winter. On the North Face of the Main Peak we roughly followed the summer route until the traverse across the gully on the NW Face. Once in the gully we decided to climb directly up it to the summit ridge rather than traverse to the W Ridge as in summer. The descent was straightforward but long and tedious. The chockstone in the gully is completely covered, so no rappels are necessary.
  10. Trip: Cerro Torre - Marsigny-Parkin-West-Face Date: 1/5/2007 Trip Report: I'm just recently back in Seattle from a three-week trip to Argentine Patagonia. Kelly Cordes and I based out of Campo Bridwell, and quickly established a gear cache up at the Niponino bivouac below El Mochito. For most the trip the weather was very bad, and we passed the time eating, drinking, bouldering, sport climbing, hiking, and sleeping. Finally, when our return flight was approaching, an excellent weather window arrived at the last moment. There were four days of almost perfect weather. The best weather window I had seen in two previous trips was about 48 hours of good weather. On the first day of the window, Jan. 4, we hiked up to the Niponino bivouac and tried to go to sleep early. We left Niponino at 2:30 am on Jan. 5 and hiked up the glacier below Cerro Torre's South Face to the base of the Marsigny-Parkin route (aka "A la Recherche Des Temps Perdues"). We started up the route at about 5:30 am, and climbed it in 8 hours, with 5 really long simul-leads, using ropeman ascenders to make the simul-climbing safer. The crux of the Marsigny-Parkin was moderate at perhaps M5, but the route was very sustained: consistently WI3-4, with almost no snow-patches on which to rest calves. We divided the climb into two massive lead blocks: Kelly led all 800m of the Marsigny-Parkin to the Col of Hope, and I led all 600m of the West Face from the Col of Hope to the summit. Just above the Col of Hope we stopped to melt snow, rest, eat, and drink. Soon above the col we reached The Helmet, which provided some tricky routefinding and steep unconsolidated snow, but we were able to surmount it on the right side. The mixed pitches beyond, in the dihedral, were moderate and went quickly. I started up the headwall pitch at 9:30pm, and finished just before dark. It was difficult considering how tired I was by then, and because of the angle (sustained vertical ice. Other parties have claimed overhanging, but I don't think it was quite that steep.), but the ice was actually very good. Above the headwall we decided that routefinding in the dark would be too tricky, so we dug/chopped ourselves a little ice-hole to get out of the wind. We spent about six hours melting snow, eating, and "homo-huddling" (we hadn't brought sleeping bags). The first pitch on Jan. 6 climbed up a natural tunnel in the ice to above the first mushroom of the summit ridge. The second pitch wormed into another tunnel to climb the second mushroom. The third pitch of the day was the crux of the route, and involved vertical and then overhanging snow climbing, followed by two aid moves off of pickets. The best peice of pro was a gigantic V-thread that I made by tunneling through the ice for about 3 meters. The final pitch climbed the summit ice mushroom (same as the Compressor Route finish), and was quite easy. We were surprised on top to not see any sign of ascents via the Compressor Route, given the beautiful weather. The view was spectacular, and it was surreal to stand on top of a mountain that I'd been dreaming of for 10 years. We descended by the Compressor Route, using a single 70m rope most of the time (for anyone attempting the Compressor Route, I would reccomend taking just one 70m rope for both the climbing and rappeling), and eventually stumbled back into Niponino at 2:30am on Jan. 7, exactly 2 days after leaving. We believe that we were the first party to succesfully link these two routes together. Also, I believe that our link-up is one of three routes on Cerro Torre that have been finished to the summit without using Maestri's headwall boltladder (the other two being the standard West Face route and Arca de los Vientos).
  11. Trip: Cerro Aconcagua (22841 ft / 6962 m) - Polish Glacier direct Date: 1/5/2007 Trip Report: Last year I got the itch to climb a big mountain. Thinking about where to go, last spring I saw Brad Marshall's post here on cc.com looking for teammates for a 2006-2007 expedition. He was offering to do all the logistics planning, from airport-airport. Not knowing Argentina or the mountain at all, I signed up. Brad's trip report is here It was also appealing that this wasn't a guided trip, so after base camp we would be on our own. And it was affordable =). The Polish Glacier direct route looked good, offering some moderate glacier climbing at altitude, with an easy descent route. So, I teamed up with Mark Hinton from Colorado. We had previously met once on a training climb of the Rio Grande Pyramid in Nov. We seemed to get along good, so what the heck? Arriving in Mendoza just before Christmas, I met my 9 teammates: Mark, Brad, Sue, Hakno, Lyle, Rob, Dana, Alan, and Jim. 4 Canadians and 6 Americans. We enjoyed the culture of Argentina while prepping for the climb. Finally, on Dec 26, we started our approach hike up the Vacas Valley: We passed many frustrated people glad to be leaving. They shared stories of high winds & shredded tents, and all were leaving without getting to the summit. My friend Erik later told me this was called "La escoba de dios", or "the broom of God". Luckily this passed before we arrived. The end of the 2nd day, we got our first views of the peak. Looking up some 12000', it was most impressive: Eventually, we turned up the narrow Relinchos Valley and made the last few miles to base camp (called Plaza Argentina), just under 14k: Here began the hard work, and after a rest day we began hauling our gear up the mountain and continued acclimatizing. The route up to camp1 was interesting, and featured multiple sections of penitentes: Finally, we were staged at camp2 and took another rest day. Although we had a small snowstorm (couple inches of snow), our first potential summit day, Jan5, had a good forecast and we were excited. Camp2 offered by far the best views we had seen: By this time, we were getting used to tent life. We used Mark's EV2, which was pretty comfortable for me, considering that I am 6'2": We scouted out the lower glacier the day before our climb: photo courtesy of Mark Hinton Finally, the day had come. After a quick breakfast, we headed out by headlamp around 0430. There were electric storms coating the valleys below us, but it was clear above 20k. By about 10am, clouds started rolling in. Luckily there was little wind, and enough breaks in visibility to occassionally spot our next landmarks for climbing the route: Most of the glacier was snow (of various conditions and quality), and so the going was pretty straighforward. We simul-climbed, placing pickets and moving pretty well. The route steepens as you progress, and the crux was the 2nd rock band. This featured the only ice on the route, and was pretty fun to climb. After this, the only obstacle is the last, steep (>50deg) snowdome to reach the summit plateau. This seemed to go on forever, but finally we topped out. Visibility was poor, so I pulled out my gps. Unfortunately, it said the summit was about 1/3 mile away and 400' higher. Turns out this was a pretty easy hike, and the summit is actually a small hill on the plateau. Amazingly, the deep snow simply disappeared as we climbed the last 200', and from the top the descent trail (normal route) was obvious. We descended back to camp2 in about 3 hours, moving pretty slow (but steady), and crashed hard. The next day another snowstorm moved through and dropped maybe 4" of snow. After a rest day at 19400', we loaded up everything (= heavy packs), and headed back to the comforts of base camp: At base camp, I celebrated my birthday and enjoyed some beer, pizza, and parilla (bbq). I ended up selling my boots, rope, ice screws, runners, and summit pack to some guides who had lost their gear in a mule accident. I got more money than I would've on ebay, and they got a good deal since climbing gear is so expensive in Argentina. Mark and I had been the first from our expedition to summit, so we waited and eventually the rest of the team descended to base camp. All in all, 5 of 10 made the summit. The other 3 climbed the Polish Traverse route that we descended. Unfortunately, 1 of our teammates was earlier flown down from base camp due to being very sick, but by the time we made it to Mendoza he had recovered and gone to Buenos Aires to party. The hike out was scenic but long! We were all pretty excited about showers, wine, and good food. Prior to the 20 hours of travel back to the US, we went wine tasting and enjoyed some of Mendoza's finest: Uno mas, por favor: Looking back, it was a great trip. Mark was a great ropemate. Brad's planning efforts gave everyone a good shot at the summit. Everyone on the team was nice and all provided their own contributions to a fun adventure. Our schedule had great weather overall, and being there over the holidays meant few people on the mountain. I recommend the Polish Glacier direct for those with experience on moderate snow & ice looking to push themselves on a bigger mountain. Gear Notes: ice axe + ice tool, 60m 1/2 rope, pickets, couple ice screws, strong tent, mules Approach Notes: Vacas Valley - Relinchos Valley - Plaza Argentina - Ameghino Col - Polish Glacier
  12. Climb: Index-Davis-Holland/1st pitch of Lovin Arms Date of Climb: 6/17/2006 Trip Report: Hansel ropegunned me up Davis-Holland and the 1st pitch of Lovin Arms today. I also had a pitch of copenhagen for the first time since junior high, and the rock achieved much more clarity. Also time sped up, and i heard chanting voices. Notes: -The first pitch is indeed wet! Slimey in fact. It is slightly harder in these conditions. -There were no mosquitos, but beware of ants at the top of the first pitch! -Beware, the girl working the coffee shop in Goldbar is not as cute as I remember. -520 is closed today. Don't go there. -Sparks is a wonderful after climbing beverage. -There is a lizard living on the ledge at the top of pitch 3 of Davis-Holland. -Though it rained on the drive out, it didn't rain while we were climbing. We stopped at 1st pitch of Lovin Arms because it looked like it was gonna, but it didn't. -pictures on a disposable camera, so wait for developement. -I heart Index -Nobody dropped coils on us today. -I had a Layton pinchy experience starting on the third pitch. Even though I was following, it was intense. Thanks to Jeff for allowing me to rap first on the last rappel. -Jeff told me a story about how he once beat up this dude(it was self defense!):
  13. Climb: Baron Falls Tower – Carpal Tunnel (FA) Date of Climb: 8/19/2006 Trip Report: Summary: Baron Falls Tower – Carpal Tunnel. 5.11- A0 grade IV. John Frieh and Bryan Schmitz August 19th 2006. SW Face of Baron Falls Tower: Note:Due to foreshortening upper pitches appear to be shorter than lower pitches. All pitches with the exception of 4.5 and 6 were a full 60 meters and in most cases 70 meters. We would recommend (and used) a 70 though a 60 is adequate. Pitch 1: Start in the right of the two chimneys on the sw face. Climb to the top of the chimney and exit left into the left hand chimney. Continue to the top of the chimney until roof flakes force one right and up. Belay at a tree. Pitch 2: Aim for RF dihedral that turns into wide flake. Continue up open book. Belay when rope runs out. Pitch 3: Move up through series of roof to a slab move right into a left facing corner finger crack. Follow up to ledge. Pitch 4: Angle up and right until able to turn corner and down climb 20’ to ledge next to dyke below large chock stone. Pitch 4.5 Walk up dyke until a point where one can find a way to climb up onto the top of the chock stone. Belay here. Pitch 5: Climb onto top of chock stone. Exit chock stone on right and continue up and right. Belay when rope runs out. Pitch 6: Climb short finger crack in left facing dihedral. Top out. Gear Notes: Approach Notes:
  14. Climb: Gunsight Peaks-West Face & South Ridge Date of Climb: 7/10/2006 Trip Report: Just The facts: July 8-10 saw myself and John Frieh climb the North, middle, and South Gunsight Peaks. We did the 2nd ascent of the North Peak's W. Face (new route or variation of the 1986 route), and we believe our route on the South Peak was a new line entirely. It was a great trip to a very remote spot. The Narrative: On the morning of the 8th, we set out from the Agnes Creek trail, and climbed to the Chickamin Glacier where we set up camp for a few days in the "Patagonia of the North Cascades." We were really hot, tired, and dehydrated from the approach, but decided to give the 1986 Nelson/Dietrich route a try, on the towering West face. I led a 40m pitch of sustained 5.9 on awesome granite. I climbed past two sets of bail gear, one of which we believe belonged to Forest Murphy's attempt a few years ago. (He had previously told John that they were off-route). After stopping at a saucer-sized belay perch and bringing up John, he lead up about 20' to where a wide roof intersected our line and all cracks thinned out. I was nervously trying to balance on my one-foot belay ledge when I heard a sasquatch-like scream and saw John flying through the air. He had taken a ~20' fall and was luckily caught by a 1/2" cam he'd placed below the roof. We decided to call that our "recon" attempt and go back to the shade of our tent and re-hydrate. On the 9th we braved the 5 minute approach back to the route, climbed back up to the first day's belay spot, and John led out again. We were able to work together to ID a likely looking crack to get past our prior high spot, and some A1/A2 moves on hand-tied aiders got us past the roof and into a set of good looking flakes. The next pitch (#3) was my lead, and I started out with some free moves up to 5.10ish before resorting to A0 cam-hanging as the crack widened and flared. With a mix of aid and free moves I lead to the next belay and John got the security of a top-rope on a beautiful fist-jam flake pitch. Too much fun... For pitch four, the flake/corner system went through a couple of small roofs and continued to be fairly vertical the whole way. John was grateful for the #5 camalot as he climbed up more vertical granite to a belay at the first moderately comfy ledge on the face. I followed mostly free, but with some definite rope-tugging on sections as well. From here I grabbed, the rack, and led straight up into P.5, a dark corner straight over our heads. This was a really fun free lead for me, as I knew we were getting close, and the climbing was a good mix of stemming, face features, and crack jams. The top of the corner visible from the belay spot is the top of the route. You literally mantle up from the corner onto the flat summit terrace. From the exit move atop P.5, you could easily flick a rock out a few feet and it would free-fall to the base of the wall. We didn't see any of the three bolts used by the 1986 party, we climbed the wall in 5 pitches (as opposed to their 7) and we encountered bail gear of other climbers who felt that they were NOT on the previously established route. We don't know how much is shared between the two lines, but maybe Jim Nelson could add some input. It's rad to consider that the only other ascent of that face was done the year I was born. After looking at the old summit register and reading the autograph of some guy named Fred Beckey, we scrambled to the North/Middle peak notch, and climbed a solid pitch of low-5th class to that summit as well. On the 10th, John and I decided to try to climb the South Peak as well. From the Gunsight-Blizzard Col we climbed North along the ridge crest, before dropping off the ridge to the right. It would be best just to stay to the right of the ridge on easy snow and slab. Eventually we reached a clean right-facing corner and began the route. The corner went at 5.7, and I led up and continued to the ridge crest on cool chickenheads and face features and belayed up John. From here John took the lead on a balancy and memorable traverse pitch across a giant cannonhole, and into the last notch before the South Peak. From here, one more pitch of mid-fifth class led to the south summit. From this summit, you can rappel the last pitch, and then make one overhanging 90' rappel onto the snow down the east side. We're calling this the South Ridge - South Gunsight (Grade II, 5.7, 3 pitches) Overall this was an amazing few days in the mountains. Thanks John Scurlock for the really inspirational photos! (Scurlock's shot of the 3 summits) Gear Notes: glacier gear, full set of nuts, full set of cams, pink tricam. Approach Notes: Should have been a week or two later for ripe huckleberries.
  15. Climb: Finger of Fate – Open Book Date of Climb: 9/2/2006 Trip Report: Charades: East: rally hike climb rap hike rally: Birthday Boy: [Cartman]Eh, eh. Sweet. Check me out, I'm such a beefcake I can't even get through the Cave. Eh.[/Cartman] Cruel tricks to play on your partners #37: If climb in a group of 3 or 2 teams of 2 and you are first to follow wait for the climber behind just above the crux or any other location on the pitch where they might stall out and then drop it like it’s hot: West: Gear Notes: 3 sigma never looked so good Approach Notes: Misc: - Danielle’s first Idaho summit - McKenzie’s 30th birthday! Mac: Even though every time we have climbed on your birthday a rope has gotten stuck on rappel I’ll still climb with you on your birthday Happy Birthday d00d! - One in Six: more FoF p0rn here:
  16. Climb: Spectre Peak-Haunted Wall. FA. IV 5.9+ 2100' Date of Climb: 8/14/2006 Trip Report: Wayne and I had a big adventure and then I got home with the pre-spray all rigged up. Then I went to sleep and woke up tired and had to wait to type the real trip report until I finished eating breakfast and getting some shit done aroudn the house goddamnit
  17. Climb: Gunsight Range-Various Date of Climb: 8/7/2006 Trip Report: My good friend Martins Putelis and I spent Aug 1-8 in the fabled Gunsight Range. We spent the first couple days slogging our way up through Bachelor Creek and over to the Dome/Chickamin col with some pretty monstrous loads. We climbed Dome, and then traversed the Chickamin Glacier to an immaculate bivy on the nunatak directly beneath the W Face of the North Gunsight Pk. The Chickamin had a few thin bridges, and was gained via a sketchy downhill leap across a five-foot gap in a broken snowbridge. Near the summit of Dome: Tower of Babel Bivy: We gave the W Face of the North Pk. a shot on our first day. P1 went fine, but we had a hard time locating the line to pull the roof and access the prominent cracks above on P2. Figuring we had plenty of time we bailed off with intentions to return. With plenty of time left in the day we scoped a different line in the cirque and gave it a whirl. The first pitch lived up to everything we had heard about the range, splitter fingers on perfect, clean, well protected granite, it clocked in at about 9+. P2 was a differnt deal a loose yet fun 10a chimney we dubbed the Hall of Hollows: We rapped from the top of p2, stoked on an adventerous and fun first day in the range. Day 2 saw us traversing onto the Blue Glacier to see if this hook-em-dook-em about the top of the 1979 Skoog/Brill line on the E face of the Main pk. falling off was really true. Well, it was, its gone. Not wanting to waste the day, we looked to the right of the line onto the NE face to see if anything else would go. We spotted a few nice looking cracks that lead to a prominent flake breaking the headwall above. what the hell, lets do this. The climb couldn't have gone any better, splitter, mostly well-protected, onsight, and all free at 10c. FA: NE Face Main Gunsight Pk. III 5.10c Sol Wertkin and Martins Putelis August 7, 2006 P1: from the moat crossing at the very bottom of the face work left on ledges and ramps to the base of two prominent hand-sized cracks to the right of the 1979 line, just left of a dark corner 5.6 P2: Climb the twin hand cracks to a ledge, move just right and climb wild eroded out dyke fist crack, move left, mantle, and continue via face holds to a good belay 5.10b Martins getting ready to mantle: Looking up the twin cracks from the base: P3: Traverse right via prominent flake, mantle and continue up, look left around corner to perfect splitter, climb splitter to arete belay 5.10a. Martins seconding P3: P4. Work up thin corner on right, move left to prominent flake seen from below. Pull bulge on left-hand side of flake into mind blowing splitter in amazing position. Continue up to slab of E face and climb left via runouts to good belay on base of the SE ridge. A long pitch 5.10c Beginning of P4: Pulling into the splitter: P5: Continue up moderate and airy ridge to summit. 5.7 SE ridge with Sinister in the background: The next day we woke up late and climbed the unique and fun South Cannonhole Ridge on the S Gunsight Pk. Its a super fun ridge that besides the memorable traverse is quite easy. Martins starting the traverse: Myself contemplating the Cannonhole: Stoked, we bowed down to the Gunisight gods and thanked them for the great time. Gear Notes: NE Face: Glacier gear, double set of cams to #3,one #4. Double ropes. Cannonhole ridge: single set to #3, nuts, single rope. Approach Notes: just pm if you really want this stuff.
  18. Climb: Back of Beyond Buttress 2nd Ascent-Original Route Date of Climb: 8/19/2005 Trip Report: Longpause and I did the much coveted 2nd ascent of Back of Beyond Buttress last friday. She said she'd write the TR, if I posted the photos and wrote a little, so here i go. I'll be boring so she'll have to fill in the details with lies and hyperbole. After 3 years of multiple failed attempts by other parties on Jordan Peters and my route which we wholeheartedly attest to be one of the best alpine rock climbs anywhere (forest fires, road issues, lost, broken bones, as has been reported to us) Longpause and I serendipitously strolled in and out and had a wonderful time. Better than I remember actually. Here is the original TR http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/61928/page/0/fpart/all/vc/1 have fun cutting and pasting that link Anyway...what can i say. Longpause was SOLID. She fucking soared up her pitches, and ran it out a little to boot. Made me feel like a total pussy. I'd belay at the end of the 5.8 section just above the fun overlap move on the 1st pitch. 2nd pitch is long and steep with a spicy traverse. Go straight up from the belay on p.1, go up for a long time until you are bear hugging a detached flake and traverse left into the next crack on face holds. go up a few feet (10 feet?) and do an even scarier traverse left into the 3rd crack system. you'll see a white cleaned out crack that takes a blind #1 camalot. this is your belay too. save two #1's and a .75 for this belay. go straight up again on pitch 3 until a thin sharp ledge is reached just below the top of the enduracne slab. good place for a belay. the rock is whitish yellow here. there's a tree to the right (don't go there to belay, bad rock) and above are bottoming grooves you need to pinch. the 4th pitch is short. after the slab you'll see a bunch of dead snags. go left past the one directly above the slab, and into a corner system with the next dead snag. amazingly fun and steep cracks and jugs. a 5.9 pitch (finally!) 6th pitch goes up and right into a hopefully obvious thin 10b corner that is super pumpy and technical. after that it's a 5.8-4th class ridge for a while on great rock and fun exposure and cracks. walk off...go down and right hugging the edge. avoid the 1st gully, it blanks out into a cliff, go down to the 2nd in a grove of trees and you should easily see the ground. walk out. no raps. stash your crap at the base of this so you don't have to go back to he base of the climb. take a compass bearing on the hike out b/c the valley bottom gets confusing in the dark if you left the car at noon and screwed around on the summit. The Playa's Longpause on the 1st pitch. Purrrfect! Looking down atop pitch 2 on the only rest i could find. Longpause follows the most amazing of pitches Longpause 1/2 way through the traverse yup, she hogged the camera time... Longpause on top, scopin' routes. And, rounding out the exerience with some mellow squamish craggin! so any camera tilt was unintentional, i was busy belaying or climbing at the same time. i did rotate the photos as best i could, but had to crop some after doing so. it's way steeper than it looks from a distance or the base especially so before you go screaming "camera tilt" go climb it 1st. you'll never complain about tilt or soft grades or crappy rock on any inch of this climb. Gear Notes: tripple set of camalots .5 to 1, double set of cams yellow alien or metolius tcu and #2 camalot. single set blue alien, green alien, red alien (or grey tcu, blue and orange tcu), and a #3 and #3.5 camalot. small selection of nuts, 10-14 slings and draws. one rope cuz bailing isn't much of an option until the top of the slab (one rope rap off to climbs left atop the slab to bail into gully)...it's straight in hand for most of the route with few constrictions...pumpy! water year round in the talus if you want to camp, great bivy spots, lots of bouldering proj's too. lake at top of cirque. many many 1-3 pitch climbs everywhere. amazing bivy opps on summit! lots of mountains to climb everywhere. B.O.B. is about 9 pitches III 10b..should take a solid party 6-7 hours up from base. the slab is ultra sustained jamming on pure granite joy. the upper ridge is super fun. Jordans topo isn't that great. The 10b pitch on the ridge is on the crest as is the rest of the climb, not to the left. p1 5.8 1/2 rope legnth p2 sustained and long 10b, most of the rope. best single pitch in the alpine i've ever come across p3 same p4 1/2 rope 10b p5 full rope 5.9-10a var p6. 10b corner full rope p7. 5.8 steep but ledgy cracks on ridge crest full rope p8-9 sections of short steep cracks on mostly easy ridge. simul or solo if you got this far without freaking out. the summit is a ways from here, but well worth the hike. great bouldering proj's on white sierra granite. BRING BIKES JUST IN CASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hint hint hint hint hint Approach Notes: 1.5 no more to base. 45 min schwack, 45 min talus. Boston Bar on Hwy 1, left to North Bend. Cross Fraser River. Go N, left on Nahatlich (sp?) FSR for a while, Left on Kooapi creek FSR just after crossing the creek, drive a bit, right off spur road after 10-15min that crosses river and has a yellow gate, cross bridge with yellow gate and turn right (head north) road wraps around into the valley, you'll see a double summit mountain. park car. walk road across massive cross ditch (impassible) for 1/2 mile, BOB should become clear within minutes from car. Go directly across from mtn. Sorry again for the boring TR. I wanted to spray more, but it's your turn damnit! Found jordan's original TR from Bivouac.com...a bit less harrowing than the story goes... "With the summer drawing to a close I was still itching to get out and do some nice rock routes. I had some nice trips here and there but had mostly wasted my time wandering around looking for elusive stone, becoming quite proficient at bushwacking and "terrain finding" but also not doing very much climbing. I was also wearing thin the patience of my partners and my typical "bushwacks to nowhere" were beginning to earn me a bit of a reputation among my friends! So it was that I called on Mike in the hope that his ability and energy would get us up something. We had originally planned to head into a corner of the Chehalis for a poke around but weren't all that blown away with the bushwacking involved. After stopping way up a spur off the Harrison West FSR, Mike noticed that his water bladder had exploded during the rough drive and had completely drenched all his belongings in his duffel bag, clothes, guidebooks, everything. So we resigned ourselves to driving around looking at possible routes to do, one by one finding something wrong with each of them until I was starting to wonder if the trip wasn't destined to turn into one of those drinking tours of far flung southwest BC rec sites. We then decided to find some rec site for the night, check out one last area in the morning, and then likely head into the Anderson Range in the afternoon, hike up to a bivy below Springbok Arete in the evening, and then flail up it as fast as we could the next day, and since the daylight was down to about 13 hours, probably end up bivying on the summit to avoid doing the notoriously bad descent off of Les Cornes in the dark. Well when we awoke at 5:30 near the Nahatlatch River the next day, we decided that it was getting a bit cold to try to bivy without gear on the summit of Les Cornes. So without any real plan, we headed up the Kookipi Creek FSR to have a look at a modest peak which Drew had needled me about previously. It looked okay, but not spectacular. The cracks looked dirty, but since we were out of ideas, we thought we would go for it anyway. Well then we rounded the corner of the road and saw this sweeping buttress of beautiful proportions. We were blown away at the beauty of the line. We stopped short though at the blank and hard-looking slab at the base of the ridge. It looked hard, but through binoculars from the road it looked as if there might be cracks somewhere on it. We quickly packed up food and bivy gear in case we ended up spending the night and headed off down to the end of Kookipi West, passing a old guy working on the tree harvesting equipment who seemed humbly non-plussed at our plans but offered to "send some boys in" if we weren't out by the next night. We struck down to the river through open forest, crossed the river and plunged into some pretty physical bush, emerging at a boulder field after about an hour to discover blueberries and wild raspberries growing all over the place. Fearful of the "berry runs", we had to stop ourselves from gorging and promised to feast on the way back. We headed up easy boulder fields towards the base, trying not to look up because we feared we would vomit instantly if we looked directly at what we could feel in our peripheral senses to be breathtaking. Strange, guttural sounds (mountain orgasms?) soon came from our mouths as we looked up and drooled. Here was a slab, 400 feet high, that if transported to Squamish would be the centre stage. Brilliant finger and tip cracks darted out here and there, but none appeared to be continuous or go the full height of the slab to gain the buttress crest. Blank roofs blocked passage at the right end of the slab. After half an hour of sussing and "what ifing", we found the line. A perfect crack at the left end of the slab went straight up and just when it died out a second opened up to its left. The second crack died out in ten feet and a third continued for a rope length where it looked as if we would be forced right to the edge of the roofs to gain the crest. Getting across the crack systems was my greatest fear, so I quickly offered to do the first pitch to leave Mike with the traverse! I started up the Yosemite quality hand and fist crack which led out left where a small roof is passed on bomber jugs to gain the "real crack". It had been some time since I had climbed hard, probably two months since I had been on a crack this imposing, so I set off jamming as hard as I could, Mike below me yelling encouragement as I "shit" and "fuck"ed my way up, throwing cams in everywhere, just wanting to get to the belay before I died. I got to the end of the first crack, threw a cam in, yelled "take" and spent a good fifteen minutes gasping and shaking my arms out. One of the finest pitches I have ever done or seen. Seeing that the crack was the same size for the entire slab, I knew that we would need to be creative with the belays to save the gear for the leads. I banged and bent two shallow knifeblades into a seam, equalized them with the cam, tied off, and belayed Mike up. Belays on steep slabs with no ledges are always cozy affairs with elbows in teeth, farts in the face; sorta like two cats with their tails tied together strung over a clothes line! Now the crux began. Mike heads off left on a blank undercling to try the next crack over -- no gear and I'm watching my knifeblades bounce, lookin down at the air and thinking, "man, please don't fall!" The second crack bottoms and has no gear, so Mike gingerly reverses back to the belay and sets off up the main one for another twenty feet, more 10b grunting at the limit, stuffs in a cam, rests on edges, and then begins one of the hairiest looking traverses I've witnessed in the mountains. Ten feet to the second crack, shit, it's still thin and discontinuous. Ten more feet to the third crack and it's good. Mike gets fifteen feet up it, runs out of gear and dies. A short pitch, but you'd need lots of gear, long slings (falls!) and cojones grandes to go much further. I follow, crapping myself on the traverse -- good feet but no hands so you're leaning into the wall, milkin it -- to another "cat fight" belay. We feel like we're on a miniature Lotus Flower headwall but without the chickenheads to save you from jamming! By taking the first pitch, I was hoping to leave the brunt of the hard stuff for Mike, but with the short second pitch I was once again contemplating the battle ahead. I set off and my mind starts trying to shut me down, corrupting me into yelling at Mike, "shit, man, this crack's gonna end, we're screwed," and him yelling back words that were less encouragement than threats! I felt like I was some fourteen-year-old Eastern Bloc gymnast training for the Olympics, the coach constantly reminding me of the consequences if I failed! At least if I were a gymnast then I would be able to get some shady performance-enhancing drugs! I'm hanging there from slipping jams on stuff that would be my crux at a road-side crag, with nary a belt of Scotch or a pull of "special" to ease the mind. I can only go about twenty-five metres and I'm done. Arms and gear give out. Luckily the crack has eased off a bit and I can get some nuts into the belay. Mike pulls out the guns to finish the crack and is forced to head right on a nice traverse over to meet the left edge of the roof that cuts across the slab, finishing up rough and licheny flakes to belay from a boulder on the crest. Seconding from a hanging belay is always stirring: I pulled the gear and had to go straight into the jams, zero-to-sixty! Up I go, thankful that this was Mike's lead cause it's just as hard as everything before. We flop down in the sun, heads spinning and thankful to get off what we could only call "The Endurance Slab". It would look possible to retreat from this point down the shrubby east face, but you won't want to. We agreed that if the rest of the route was fourth class crap, it would still be a classic. Well, it wasn't. Crap, that is. I take what is now the fifth pitch and head up fun corners, grooves, and flakes, pulling on stuff that should by all means be death blocks, but here in candy land are completely solid. Features everywhere, I just chose the most direct and appealing line, aiming for the crest of the buttress. I set up a good, three piece anchor and admire the view. A full 50m, 5.7 with 5.9 near the end. Mike dislodges a block seconding and we watch it sail down in one swoop to the boulders below, emitting a large, thundering crack. We hoped the guy across the valley didn't hear that and send in some boys! The sixth pitch was more fun 5.7 up to a corner (right of an off-width) so imposing that Mike just had to try it. He shook and swore but made it up about thirty feet of solid 10b, too thin to get a good foot in, and then rode the exposed arete with edges to a belay. Seconding was a challenge as the pack wedged against the right wall and kept me from getting onto the arete. The seventh pitch relented to mid-fifth on nice features, with some loose stuff on ledges now, but was cut short by rope drag. But we had now gained the crest and knew that the battle was over. One last, almost trivial, obstacle remained. From the seventh belay ledge rose a mean, vertical hand crack, only about 12 feet high, but to be sporting we tried it anyway. Mike threw himself at it, fell once and then jumped for the rounded lip. Probably 10c, but it looks like you can avoid this on either side. The last two pitches were both fourth class with some minor fifth class steps, easy all the way. We unroped and scrambled up to the top of the buttress, placing a small cairn before we began the heather and dirt descent back down. We gained a notch at the top of a rock gully that in 45 minutes led back to the base where we picked up our unnecessary bivy gear, pausing to admire the purity of the line and only then noticing that in nine hours we had only eaten about two energy bars with one litre of water each! We walked back out down the boulder field, missing the berry bushes entirely and encountering some bad bush, but it didn't matter, we were too out of it to care! In fact, when we hit the Kookipi mainline, we were so disoriented that we had to get out of the truck to find the sun setting in the west to figure out where we were. This was a beautiful climb, one of the finest I can remember doing. It took us eleven hours round trip from the car and could easily be done in a day from Vancouver. A great way to end the summer; I'd been swinging for a while, it was nice to finally hit one! "
  19. Climb: Dragontail -TC ski descent Date of Climb: 4/4/2006 Trip Report: Skied the Triple Couloirs on Dragontail Peak yesterday. I had tried to get into Dragontail a few times already this year and had been turned back each time for various reasons. I had vowed not to go back until there was a more favorable forecast and potential for better conditions....well, the forecast wasn't great, but I had become somewhat obsessed so after a quick stop to grab coffee for the road and to fill my thermos with an excessive amount of caffeine I left Seattle at 11:30 on Mondy night. After a long and sleepy drive, my spirits were lifted as I got near Leavenworth as the stars began poking through the clouds. Mountaineers Creek road is still gated at the bridge so I started skinning up the road at 2:30am. Shortly I had to carry my skis because large sections of road are melted out, but soon enough there was continuous snow. I arrived at Colchuck Lake at 7 just before the sun began lighting up the upper ridges of Dragontail and Colchuck. -Object of my desire I had wanted to climb the route, but there was a considerable amount of new snow and I wanted to avoid an epic wallowfest as well as becoming a spindrift sandwich in the runnels, so I opted for skiining up to AssMaster Pass and up south side of dragontail. After endless swithchbacks I arrived at AssMaster. The sun was shining and warm and for once there was not hurricane force winds ripping through the pass, so I rested a bit and soaked up some rays. Skinning the snow creek glaciers was a bit of a chore as the sun had turned the snow to glop and an incredible amount began balling up on my skins, once on the south side of dragontail I was so tired of the snow balling that I carried my skis for the final couple hundred feet or so. -Stuart from the summit From the summit I skied back down the south side for a short bit then traversed a kind of sketchy exposed east facing slope to the top of the TC. -Looking down the upper couloir I was a bit nervous about dropping in blind, not knowing the snow conditions but these fears were alleviated in the first couple of turns as conditions were perfect. Snow was soft but not deep, just kind of chalky punchy powder. Each couloir is exposed in its own way. The fall line of the upper couloir actually funnels down to skiers left out over the north face, so stay right...I crossed a little wind lip about half way down the upper couloir and continued. -Turns in the upper couloir Between the upper and second couloirs there was an interesting rock/ice step that I negotiated somewhat gingerly before hopping the last few feet. The second couloir is dead straight and fairly steep and is perched directly above the ice runnels section. -Looking down the second couloir Again I found perfect snow conditions although I had to pay a bit more attention to the sluffs. At the edge of the runnels I anchored into a piton and made the first of three raps. I'm glad I didn't try to climb the route because the runnels were thin. Not much ice to be found, just a lot of snow over rock. -Close up of the climbers right side of the runnels Down in the hidden couloir more great turns led down to the entrance of the TC and a little exposed bit above a rock band led out to open slopes above Colchuck Lake...phew, I finally could breathe and relax. The ski down to the trail from the lake in the afternoon sun was an interesting mix of deep mushy glop, falling into holes, and generally trying just to stay on my feet. Down on the road I was suprised to see how much more snow had melted out just that day, but there is still a ton of snow on the upper 2 miles or so which will probably take a fair amount of time to melt out. Ross Gear Notes: Some pitons for rappel anchors Approach Notes: Road is an annoying mix of skiining and walking then finally continuous skinning.
  20. Chad Kellogg and I spent a few weeks in the remote Kichatna Mountains of the Alaska Range. We managed to climb Kichatna Spire by a new route. This was the eighth ascent of the mountain by its seventh route to the summit. The Black Crystal Arête is the first route to tackle the peak’s southern aspect by climbing the slender ridge that splits its south and east faces. Kichatna Spire from the Shadows Glacier. Aerial view of Kichatna Spire from the south. Paul Roderick flew us into the Shadows Glacier on the evening of July 6. Immediately upon landing we went for the route but were turned around by rain. On the third day we made a second attempt only to be stopped on pitch four by more rain. After spending 5 hours with our feet in plastic garbage bags we pulled the plug and rappelled back to the ground. A few more days of bad weather came and went as we scouted other route possibilities. Finally a splitter two day weather window arrived and we were off and running. We left in the morning of July 11 and made our way quickly to the base of the spire’s south arête. The first six pitches climbed the east wall of the feature. However, what had been dry rock before, was now drifted in with fresh snowfall from the previous day’s storm. What had been relatively straight forward pitches became quite tedious. Pitch 2 proved to be the first crux. I led a small wet roof, followed by a thin detached flake led to a super mantle-reach. Delicate moves with thin gear above a ledge finally moved into more positive terrain. Chad following up the east wall. Once on the ridge proper, a few gendarmes provided interesting route finding. The first major one we climbed in three pitches and were able to traverse around its right side just 50’ from its top. Climbing along the ridge crest. The Sunshine Glacier is in the distance. A short downclimb off the backside, led to the “Ore Chasm” – a 5-foot wide cleft that require a wide stem. The first gendarme. Chad can be seen down climbing toward the “Ore Chasm”. A few easier pitches led to another gendarme only passable by a rotten chimney on its right side. Chad led up the “Bombay’s Away” pitch – named after a huge booger of rock five times his size that flushed out of the chimney as he climbed up and stood on top of it. Unscathed, he continued aiding and climbing up huge overhanging flakes to the top. The actual ridge was pretty short lived, however, as it completely dead-ended into the upper south face. The only way to continue seemed to be a set of horizontal twin seems that led out left. Gaining instant 2,000+-foot exposure, Chad led across the thin traverse to the base of another nasty looking chimney. Chad leading the key horizontal traverse high on the route. I got the next pitch – a vertical ice-smeared chimney we dubbed “Icebox Desperado”. It might have been a brilliant M6 pitch had we had crampons and ice-tools. But with only rock shoes it proved to be an interesting mix of aid and free up disintegrating ice filled cracks. This gave way to slightly easier terrain and after a few more pitches we crested the summit ridge, just 200 horizontal feet from the true summit. We topped out on a beautiful, albeit smoky, evening, as we watched the sun make its long descent towards Mt. Foraker. On the summit looking northwest. A view to the west. Middle Triple peak is on the left. We sat on the warm and windless summit for about 45 minutes, before starting the long and dreaded descent. The 2nd rappel. We rappelled throughout the night. The crux was having to repeat a few of the key traverses with frozen fingers and toes. Repeating the key traverse just after midnight. About 20 rappels later, we returned to the Shadows glacier just in time for the sun to warm us up again. A short stroll back to camp and we were back just 25 and half hours after starting. We named our route after the most amazing black rock crystals we found on the summit ridge, some of which were upwards of 2 feet long! The next 10 days or so we spent attempting the Citadel. We spent a week in a portaledge on the peak’s east face, but were thwarted by weather and bad rock. We also made another single-push attempt on its unclimbed south ridge, but we fell short of the summit by about 800-feet (that might be considered a new route by some people. ha!) We knew our time on the glacier was drawing to an end with the rapid recession of the fern line toward our landing spot. Soon we would be camped on top of ice and after another week, we may not have been able to be picked up. So we packed it up, dialed Paul on the Sat phone and headed home.
  21. Fun when it’s done Methow Valley News Dec. 7, 2005 Adventures don’t always have to be "fun" to be fun. For example: # A few years back, three friends and I decided to attempt "The Inferno," a rarely climbed route on South Early Winters Spire. Still suffering from the previous night’s debauchery, we trudged upward toward the spire, our brains baking under the July sun like slugs on blacktop. Soon, we discovered whoever was supposed to bring the water, didn’t. We were so thirsty we simply wrung out our sweat-soaked T-shirts to get a drink. At the base of the route, we discovered whoever was supposed to bring lunch, didn’t. All we had was a pound of beef jerky which, when you are dying of thirst, is as appealing as a sand sandwich after crossing the Kalahari Desert. The first part of the route was steep and loose enough to qualify as exciting. Imagine climbing a teetering stack of refrigerators as tall as the Space Needle. Then we arrived at the hard part: a "5.10c overhanging, flaring five-inch crack." Translated into regular language, that means, "Run screaming in the other direction." There, already 500 feet off the ground, we discovered whoever was supposed to bring the big gear necessary to climb this section, didn’t. Covering oneself in bacon grease and throwing slices of Spam at a starving grizzly bear seemed like a sane idea compared to continuing upward. Fortunately, we brought along a madman – I’ll call him Mr. Peru – who volunteered to lead the pitch. Grunting like a constipated wildebeest while screaming self-motivational profanities creative enough to make the saltiest of sailors blush, Mr. Peru climbed. Although more dehydrated than our beef jerky, we survived and now laugh about the time we got singed by The Inferno. # The first couple of backhoe operators I approached to dig a waterline up the extremely steep hill behind my place looked at the job, laughed, and told me it was impossible. Finally, I found someone willing to dig the trench. But, he cautioned me, it was much too steep to backfill – I’d have to do that by hand. No problem, I thought. "Help wanted backfilling the Infinite Ditch of Woe," said the signs I posted on bulletin boards around the Methow. I figured it was truth in advertising: 500 cubic yards – or 50 dump trucks worth of dirt – would need to be moved by hand. By the next morning I had assembled a crew of seven people eager to make some money. Upon seeing the Ditch of Woe, one person quit before even picking up a shovel. By lunch, the crew had shrunk to five. The next morning, only four people showed up for work. At noon on the second day, two more workers suddenly remembered a bunch of other pressing commitments they had to attend to, and left. Some four days later, when the last shovelful of dirt was thrown into the trench, only one woman and I remained. The Infinite Ditch of Woe broke some spirits, but also created a lasting friendship. # As the rains of last January pounded down, our dreams of snowboarding powder melted faster than an ice cube in a hot tub. But we were determined to make the best of our weeklong trip to British Columbia’s Kootenay Mountains. Sure, the area has a bunch of fancy commercial hot springs – but who wants to pay 10 bucks to soak amongst a crowd of blubbery Canadians and screaming kids? We decided to hike in to a backcountry hot spring, which was why we were now lost in a forest in a heavy downpour, wallowing through chest-deep snow. After wading two waist-deep creeks, we finally found the hot spring. We shed our soaking clothes and plunged our hypothermic bodies into the hot pool. The hot sensation lasted only three seconds. A torrent of icy melt water pouring into the hot spring made the pool about as warm as the Methow River in March. The soggy, snowy trek back to the car was a character building experience. "O-o-o-one, p-p-p-please," I said. Shivering uncontrollably, I handed my 10 dollars to the cashier back at the fancy commercial hot spring. "Pretty nice, eh?" said a well-fed Canadian as I eased into the steaming hot pool amongst a crowd of shrieking children. "H-h-h-heaven," I replied. # Looking back, it’s often the worst of times that make the best of memories.
  22. Climb: South East Mox Peak-The Devil's Club, First Ascent of the East Face Date of Climb: 9/1/2005 Trip Report: THE DEVIL’S CLUB -First Ascent, East Face of "Hardest Mox", sub peak of SE Mox*. Mike Layton and Erik Wolfe 8/31-9/1, 2005. 2,400' climbing, approx 25 pitches. Grade V+ 5.9+ A2-** *According to John Roper, the E Face of SE Mox is on what is known as "Hardest Mox" and the summit still remains unclimbed. **what the heck is V+, 5.9+, A2-??? Not a clue. It took 18 hours of climbing, so a bit longer than any of the grade V’s with the extreme seriousness of the situation factored in The 5.9+ is a "conservative" free grade. The small amounts of aid we all freed by the leader or the 2nd, but due to the poor pro and funky placements, we felt it a bit harder than A1, but a bit easier than A2. We wanted to make sure there was plenty of room for squabble and speculation by giving this route our plus and minus ridden rating. Go climb it and make up your own grade if you want. The following trip report is written by both Mike and Erik, but under my screen name. Any direct quote or use of Erik’s voice will be in italics. We both enjoy writing about climbing very much, so this is going to be long. In fact, this is less a trip report and more of a short story about the grand adventure we had. If your as ADHD as I am, we included a TON of photos and maybe some bold font if you can’t read this whole thing. I know I wouldn’t be able to.. Blue is our line, red is the descent. Sunday. Pre-Trip Briefing . "Why does every alpine climb I do involve someone puking before the climb?" My question remains unanswered while Erik is in the bathroom of the Waterfront Tavern vomiting up the remains of his rotten halibut during a "logistical briefing" of our upcoming climb we had been meticulously planning for weeks. Monday. Bellingham to Perry Creek. 12 hours on the go. "Are we really epicing this early in the trip?" Yes is the answer to this question, fully realized only partway into the approach! 4am. I’ve gotten 2 hours of sleep and I’m driving through pouring sheets of rain. Erik sits in the front seat, mowing down on his Jack-in-the-Box Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich, desperately trying to tune out my crapulent vocalizations of Carly Simon’s, "Nobody Does it Better." "No, but somebody is doing it a lot worse." Boy scouts on a canoe trip ruin a perfectly good rainbow while we patiently wait in the drizzle for our water taxi to take us up from Ross Lake Dam and into the heart of darkness. Will, the ship’s captain, told us that Fred Beckey had taken a few trips on his boat, and that "he was the one who always wears polyester dress pants because they never wear out, and a backpack that looked like it had been through a war." Erik tells Will some pirate jokes I'm ready for my Tom Collins now, Buffy We had packs loaded for six days in the backcountry with every piece of technical equipment and clothing known to modern man...and 2.5 liters of Canadian whiskey to boot. The heavy packs ruined a perfectly good and flat 4.5 mile trail up Little Beaver Creek to Perry Creek. Luckily for us, huckleberries abound and we gorged ourselves to the full capacity of our stomachs. 2 hours, 4.5 miles. We were makin’ some pretty good time! ....until.... Without pause or exaggeration the Perry Creek drainage remains the worst approach we have been a part of. We were raped and sodomized by the forest. We tried to go up the steep riverbed only to by shoved around and bullied by the slippery rocks. It was drizzling on and off the whole time. One mile. Four Hours. Enough said. We made camp only 1.75 miles from leaving the main trail after 7 hours of intense slogging and stumbling on a soggy gravel bar, utterly worked over. I will need years of therapy to deal with the dehumanizing, savage, brutal beating we received. The forest seemed to mock foreward progress and took delight at fucking us over almost every slow horrid step of the way. But and evening in my betalite tarp all but dispensed our emotional trauma and physical abuse that day had ruthlessly dealt. Erik dealt in his own way: a deck of cards and game of cribbage. While we sipped our whiskey from cups and cereal bowls the evening’s activities took an intellectual nose dive when the game turned to crazy 8's and we decided to build a fire. This is when the notion of the "Devil’s Club" came into our heads. We were both initiated by cuts and splinters, and the plant seemed to rule the land. Erik played DJ on the walkman speakers as I used our machete to cut and sacrifice the plant to the gods. Things get weird...really weird Tuesday. Perry Creek to Mox Peak basin. 8.5 hours on the go. "Erik, put em on, it’s GREAT! They’re kinda like a pre-moistened towelette!" We cringe as we dawn our cold wet socks and shoes. We were immediately back in the river after a rainy night. The sky was thick with clouds and our only sun break oddly occurred at the exact same time it started to rain again. By 2pm we were hypothermic and drenched. Our path took us in and out of the ice cold river and the car wash of sopping wet slide alder, devil’s club, and blueberry bushes. We were making better time than yesterday’s 1/4 mile an hour - today we were up to a full ½ mile an hour. We stopped to build a fire, dry out, and have some hot coffee and whiskey to ease the soul. Things went from shitty to wretched in the forest. It just went on and on and on in an endless valley of tangled vegetation. Spirits we so low the trip would have probably ended if we weren’t so far back there and the easiest way now was to keep going into the unknown. We cut out of the river and headed up to a more open forest when the devil’s club finally let us through (with a little help from the machete). "It’s getting better already, and I’m going straight uphill," Erik sighed as we grabbed roots and vines to claw our way up the dirt slope. Erik voiced concern about fallen trees in the forest to which I relied, "Who cares about deadfall? I just want my dignity back!" We were able to try and keep some levity by joking and screwing around. We invented a whole new sport, Log Walkin’, and constantly exclaimed, "Oh! There’s the trail." Going under logs we exclaimed, "I hate me some underlogging," and over them, "I’ve loves me some log walking!" Finally, when an entire tree was pulled through our crotches, we’d call it "Arbor Birthing." "I love me some log walkin !!" We could finally make out the lower 1/3 of the peaks in the cirque and camp seemed just a stone’s throw away when the suffering downshifted into Dante’s 9th circle of hell. The thickest bush I’ve ever encountered (worse than a hike from Talkeetena to Denali in Alaska I’ve done) slowed us to a soul crushing crawl. I inhaled a mosquito and doubled over in a seizure of coughing spasms. My eyes ran with tears. I wasn’t sure if I was crying from the cough or from being so fully beaten down. I let the tears flow as I uttered the most violent string of expletives to ever pass my lips. I managed to curse every rock, tree, bush, tree, river, mountain, and valley in this godforsaken hole. "GOD HAS NO PLACE IN THIS VALLEY!" I was in my own personal hell. We made camp in the Alaskan bush with Mox and a dizzying array of walls, buttresses, and glaciers encircling us, but never getting a good view of anything. We went to sleep just as the rain once again began to fall. We were exhausted from the 16 hours of approaching. Never again, we both said. Never again. We were joking about route names that night, and a few good one that captured the approach were, "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and SUCK," and "Kingdom of Sodomy." Wednesday. Mox basin to 7200' bivy on East Face. 9hours on the go. The clouds were breaking up as we headed off, terrified, sore and beaten with our smaller, considerable lighter packs, ready for 2 days on the wall. We reached the base of the wall at 10:30 to clearing weather and got our first look at the immensity of our project: 1000 feet of steep slab to 1500 feet of undulating vertical gneiss. Holy Shit. The entire approach from the trail had taken roughly 16 hours of hiking. If a team went the fastest way possible, it would be hard to get to the base of the wall in under 14 hours. It could be possible to come in from the West on better trails, but it would be a big risk to get to the Mox Peaks col, and not know the condition of the glacier below. It was quite broken and descending down in heavy packs was out of the question. We put 50 feet of rope between us and stared simul-climbing from the center of the base of the wall for the 1st 400 feet of climbing up to 5.9. The rock was solid, but protection and route finding was the biggest challenge. This would prove to be a consistent element of the rest of the climb. Erik proudly led the next 600 feet and I led the next 400 feet. We passed a rap sling around a tree and a button head bolt, the final high point of the last party to attempt the wall - 37 years ago by a party from Portland, according to Harry Majors from his post on cascadeclimbers.com. We (and the Portland party) found that the best rock and easiest route finding was on the far right side of the east face. spider on the route Erik on route Thankfully there was a small ledge to bivy on. We cleared a small space, barely big enough for both of us to lay squeezed up next to each other. The wall above got drastically steeper for the final 1,500 feet, and the way looked pretty improbable. To get a head start on the next day, I led a pitch up the vertical wall, and took forever trying to get the courage to run it out on very hard terrain while fighting for gear. My placements got increasingly creative, but a solid pin halfway up the pitch eased my mind. When I rapped back down to the bivy, the pin came out with two easy whacks from my ice tool and two pieces popped from the tight rope. We sipped on our small bivy flask to wash down the sleeping pills and hunkered down to a cold and windy night. The wind didn’t let up the whole night, coming in large gusts to remove any gathered warmth from our bags and ½ bags. Thursday. 7200' back to Mox Basin camp. 17.5 hours on the go . "is it gonna go?" Instead being warmed by the sun on an east facing wall in the morning, we woke to cloudy skies and threatening rain. We had better get a move on! Pitch after pitch ate the day away, many of the pitches zig-zagging across tiny run-out ledges to find ways through overlaps and overhangs. Protection continued to be a battle of nerve and creativity, the run-out got worse, and loose rock threatened to end the climb and our lives like missiles from the wall. Mike on route "Fatigue, hard climbing, and the commitment level were taking a toll on my energy and mind set, and after a while I told Mike I couldn’t lead any more. He grabbed the rack without hesitation, and proceeded to tear up pitch after scary pitch. At one point, I poked my head over onto the belay and said, ‘Mike? Honestly. You are my Hero." Mike on route At some point during both days of climbing John Scurlock flew over us several times. I told John to look for a red emergency flare to shoot from the wall if we were in trouble. Not for a rescue, that would be impossible, but more to have John NOT see a flare and ease his mind. Thank you John. You provided me the inspiration to do this, I never would have had the psych to go do this wall unless I got a bird’s eye view from your plane with my own eyes. And thank you for flying by both days to check on us. It was a sight for sore eyes to see your familiar yellow plane circling overhead. Erik on route When Erik gave me the sharp end for my extended lead session I kept saying, "Okay. One more pitch and I’m calling it." The climbing got out of control and Erik told me later that he knew I must have really wanted this thing the way I was climbing, "So much sketchy shit, the mind boggles." My mind did boggle. We were now fully committed. Every pitch of the upper headwall felt like I was playing Russian roulette with the rack. The pressure of forcing a way up, constantly trying to dig for gear and getting very little, worrying about poor belay anchors, not knowing if I’m gonna totally blank out, and just the whole enormity of the situation almost got to me. I cried on one of my leads. I tried to seize control of my mind and calm down before Erik got to the anchor so he wouldn’t see how fucked up I was. Mike finding a way We both pushed and pushed until we were spread to the limit of our physical and mental capacity. Erik ran out of food and water hours earlier and I was hoarding the last few sips I had left to get us up and down alive. It was full on until the very last pitch. Our route stuck to the right edge of the east face and I could see the summit up ahead. Above the rock was devoid of cracks and solid rock, so we traversed over to the NE ridge to get a look at the decent. A short scramble to the summit of "Hardest Mox" led to a heartbreaking fully day’s climb over ridges and gendarmes to the summit of SE mox, an unknown amount of rappels into the extremely broken glacier. One more easy pitch to the summit would have committed us to another full day of trying to get off the peak. John Scurlock told me later that he saw this on his flight and hoped to God that we wouldn’t try going that way to get down. Mike totally committed We had to regain control of the situation and get off this mountain. We had completed the East Face and were so close to topping out, but we felt that if we summited we would have climbed past the point of no return. So we put a Joker playing card in a plastic bag to mark our ascent, shook hands, and decided to rappel the entire route! Joker on top Erik did the most amazing job of getting us off the headwall. I honestly cannot believe how he pulled out all the stops to do full rappels in the dark through overhangs and unknown gear for anchors. Of course, the ropes got stuck immediately after our 1st 200 foot vertical rappel. I tried to jug up on Tiblocs on single line and just got totally cluster fucked and was taking forever. Erik has way more experience jugging, and he proudly and courageously began the shitty jug up the 200 feet of rope, completely exhausted and dehydrated. Shadow of Mox and the Perry Creek approach "The ropes got stuck within 10 feet and I felt a twang of THE FEAR. I started to jug the line, and after about 20 feet, I looked at Mike and said, ‘I can’t do this, Mike!’ He replied, ‘You HAVE to. There is NO OTHER WAY. We will die up here.’ The seriousness of the situation really sunk in then, and with that understanding, I found the reserve to do the rest of the ascent. We were not going to die on the wall. When I got to the top, I was tripping hard from the effort, the world seemed to take on a surreal quality. When I pulled up the ropes to re-toss them, they were horribly tangled and I almost began to cry. It seemed as if the mountain was unwilling to let us descend." Erik giving it all he's got The first rappel took an hour and a half. Not a good start. Fortunately that was our only stuck rope in the 13 rappels down the east face, and tree ridden NE ridge. We had many near misses of rocks bombing down from above, and one chopped the lead rope. It was pitch black and the both ropes were tangled in a pile on a thin ledge on my rap. I saw an almost complete cut in the lead rope in the tangle, so I had no way of knowing how far into the rap the rope was cut. To make matters worse, the rope looped around a horn 30 feet above me when I wasn’t paying attention on my way down. The question was, when I pull my way up to get the rope unstuck, will the chopped section appear during my ascent? I got the rope unstuck and began my search for the core-shot. We were both so relieved when the rope was cut only 5 feet from the end. It was fortunate too, since we were now out of rappel slings, so we used the chopped end to rap off of. Future Routes I told Erik he was my hero for jugging the line when he had nothing left already, and for setting such amazing anchors so quickly with nuts and pins, and stretching the raps to the full lengths of the rope in the complete darkness. Nobody could ask for a better climbing partner. Our relief was overwhelming when the ropes made familiar "whoomp" sound when they hit the talus at the base of the mountain. We had finally finished our $200 rappel. Future Routes We were forced to bushwack through intense alder in the middle of the stream, because we could not find our tent in the darkness! We knew it was in the talus right next to the river. Cold and wet, and this time tired to the limits of our endurance, we found the tent at 3:30 am and collapsed inside. Erik and I chillin after the climb Friday. Mox Basin to Little Beaver trailhead. 10 hours on the go . Since our boat pick-up was on Saturday, we had no time to rest. We were pretty sure it wasn’t going to take us the 14 hours it had coming in, but we didn’t want to risk missing the boat. That day was agonizing, as was every day, but we were so numb to misery by this point, we just kept plodding away. Final Goodbye to Mox...maybe? As we were traversing a ridge, I crushed a bee’s nest in the ground, and Erik, being right behind me, took 3 stings. The descent out took only 10 hours, with better weather, drier less slippery rocks, 20-20 hindsight of the best way to go, lighter packs, and going downhill. As well, we had stashed a 6-pack of Rainier Ale at the launch, with some salmon and crackers. We just kept thinking about the beer. We put batteries into the mini-speakers, and the Beastie Boys brought us back a little, setting a good rhythm. Erik’s foot and hand were swelling considerably, as well as the "sting in the tail." The descent had a sting in the tail as well, two actually. The last mile to the launch crosses up a 500' switchback, and the word "suck" came up a lot. Time slowed to a crawl on the last two hours. It's tiring being a supermodel We finally reached camp at 7:30 to much celebration, put off only a little by the absence of one of our beers. We still had ourselves an fine Irish drunk, finishing the remaining whiskey as well. Mike somehow found the energy to "house-party" dance on the bear box and grill. An unbelievable amount of shit was talked from climbing to the low quality of Bellingham radio stations before we both passed out. Psycho Dance Party 8:00AM Saturday. The Last Mile. The inevitable hangover was supposed to be tempered by a swim in the lake, but the clouds were rolling in fast and heavy and it was too cold, so we nursed our coffees and packed leisurely. The boat ride dumped us off to a crowded launch of people out-bound. We totally forgot it was the start of Labor Day weekend. Erik bummed some ibuprofen from a hiker for the swelling and hangover. When it kicked in he exclaimed, "Now I be profen!" The final sting in the tail awaited us, as the last mile to the highway was another 500' grind. Constant calls of "take!" and threats of bivying just before the car, or setting of the red flare were uttered during the final bit. We popped some music in the stereo, and ignored the disdainful looks from passing hikers. At 11:00, The General 2000 was a sight for sore eyes. Erik looked at me with tired eyes and summed it all up by saying, "Mike, if you ever do this to me again, I’ll fucking kill you!" Our Serious Moment For Pause and Reflection (b.s.) Not so dashing on the ride out Final Thoughts. As for the climb, there are numerous walls and buttresses in the Perry Creek basin. Adventure awaits on these, and on the left and middle sections of the East face of our peak. Our packs weighed about 65 pounds for six days worth of food, and a free rack with two ropes. The other parts of the East face have way less cracks and more bulging sections, and substantial aid climbing far exceeding our ability await. It would be a monestrous task getting extra aid gear and the inevitable extra amount of food for a much longer stay on the wall. There are few, if any, ledges to bivy on. I want to take a moment to thank Erik Wolfe for being such an outstanding and competent partner. There were hundreds of times our hearts sank and we should have given in, but he remained determined to finish the job...regardless of the fact that he knew nothing about the approach or true magnitude of climb. I only provided him with enough detail to fuel his imagination and get him excited about the trip. And even though the suffering scale peaked into the red zone many a time, he never blew up at me, instead he stoically took the abuse, or yelled at the ropes and trees instead of me. I am amazed at his skills as a climber, and he absolutely knocked my socks off with his amazing job on the descent. We would have spent another night out for sure if he didn’t did deeper than he ever had before and pull off such an amazing job. Thank you so much Erik! I also want to thank John Scurlock for taking time to send me photos on his slow connection, asking me to fly with him even though I had never met the guy or annoyed him with requests for photos. Thanks for believing in me John. Darin Berdinka was one of the few people that said, "I bet you guys pull it off" when everyone else I told about my plan scoffed or said it wouldn’t go. Thanks to Justin Thibault for letting me borrow your crampons and pins when I was too broke to buy any gear for this. And thanks to Pete Herst for letting me borrow your haul bag in case my 3500cu pack couldn’t manage 6 days worth of crap. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten anyone who actualized this long term goal of mine. Wonder what’s next? (note. erik's quote got cut off at a very bad point. i re-included it. sorry erik) "I have to start off by saying I shouldn’t have done this off the couch. Too much work and not enough climbing this summer have left me heavy and out of shape. It seems that more our unwillingness to accept defeat, and our inexhaustible positive attitude were what got us up this approach and wall. Mike is an amazing partner. He seems, like Shackelton, to know when to stare fear in the face and smile back at his troops. His patience about my slower pace was inexhaustible, and route-finding ability sterling. I would have brought about a 100 lb pack if Mike hadn’t walked me through the essentials. This was my first multi-day back-country trip, you see. Also: Thank you Darin Berdinka for having faith in our abilities, John Scurlock for making us feel not so quite alone. Thanks, Justin, for the pins: they were invaluable. This was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure that will not soon be forgotten. I’ll never do it again. One’s life expectancy become severely foreshortened by too much of this foolishness. Oh, and to all of you that said I was a sport-climber, go get the second ascent, Fools." Gear Notes: Alpenglock for possible partner bailure, or for taking the easy way out. Deadly nightshade berries are growing on the approach just in case you forget the alpenglock. Approach Notes: Dante's tour of nine circles of hell I took this from John's Plane Last Month. Can you name all the peaks? I knew you could.
  23. Climb: Northern Picket Range-Surviving the Fence (N Picket full ridge traverse) Date of Climb: 7/16/2005 Trip Report: FOR IMMEDIATE AND PREMATURE RELEASE Seattle, WA - On July 16, 2005 Wayne Wallace and Josh Kaplan completed the Northern Picket Range summit ridge traverse, also known as the "Cascade Nonfecta." Sponsering and recording the event was their chief sponsor, "Uncage the Bowels." UTB coordinated the timing effort, hiring experts from Mountaineering Inc. to make sure the effort was "official." The final time came in shortly less than 6 days. In the highest standard of UTB productions and mountainspeedclimbing.org records it must be disclosed that the two elite alpine mountain endurance speed climbers did not operate the speedboat used to travel ross lake. For additional information please contact Uncage the Bowels productions. Summits: Luna -> E Fury -> W Fury -> Swiss -> Spectre -> Phantom -> Ghost -> Crooked Thumb -> Challenger Gear Notes: Used: 60m 8.1mm half rope 50m 7mm perlon rap line BD firstlight tent ghetto-rigged with skipoles instead of real poles super light bivy gear 1 akpine hammer each medium alpine rack Should have had: I should have had rain gear like Wayne did. Approach Notes: Used Access Creek for approach and Eiely-Wiley Ridge for the deproach.
  24. Climb: Northern Pickets-Old Guys On Vacation Date of Climb: 8/3-10/2005 Trip Report: This TR got a bit long (hey, it was a long trip), so here's the short version for those that aren't interested in the novel below. An old climbing partner and I just got back from 8 days in the Northern Pickets. We went up Little Beaver trail to Whatcom Pass, over Whatcom Peak to Perfect Pass, across the Challenger Glacier and up Challenger, down around into Luna Cirque, up the North Buttress of Fury, down and across to Luna Col, up Luna, and finally down Access Creek to Big Beaver and to Ross Lake. Awesome trip in every respect! We just couldn't have had a better time. Details, nostalgic ramblings and photos follow. My longtime partner Mike and I did our first climb together, the NR of Stuart, back in '77, when we were 29 and 27, respectively. I'd been climbing for several years by then. It was Mike's first climb. Since then, we've done a ton of alpine climbs together, but somehow never got into the Pickets. In particular, we never got to Fury. I've had the North Buttress on my list for (literally) decades. And even though I plan on climbing for many more years, once you're well into your fifties you have to start to realize that there are some climbs on that tick list that you better get to soon if you're going to get to them at all. Something like the NB of Fury is going to eventually become not only too difficult as a climb, but also just too damn hard to get to! For various reasons, Mike hadn't done much climbing at all since 1999, but he always stays in shape, his rock skills have stayed intact, and he was up for a big trip into an area he'd never been. We actually went in to do Fury's NB last year, but I took care of that attempt by busting up my ankle on the second day (some details here). The trip immediately got put onto the schedule for this year. We were all set to go in on July 6. I was packed and had driven up to Seattle the day before. But the deteriorating weather forecast finally hit rock bottom, so we bailed. A good thing, since the forecast held and it rained a lot that week. We would have been miserable. Mike's next window was August 3-10, so we rescheduled for then. My original thinking was to schedule 8 days for a trip that should take us about 6 solid climbing days, giving ourselves 2 days to either sit out weather or tackle some extra objectives. Maybe Crooked Thumb, and maybe a traverse to Fury's west summit. Or, we could blow through it in 6 days and come out early. As departure day arrived, though, it was apparent that we would probably not have any bad weather days. We were definitely in shape to make this a 6-day trip but, as Mike reminded me a few times, we were Old Guys on Vacation and should concentrate less on trying to accomplish everything in sight and more on enjoying the adventure. So we decided to ease up our pace, drop any thoughts of adding other peaks, and just take all 8 days to do Whatcom, Challenger, Fury and Luna. Definitely a big enough job in itself. So that's exactly what we did and it turned out to be the right choice. Every day was completely manageable, we never got beat up, we typically started our days late and finished early, slept 8 or 9 hours every night, stayed well hydrated, and had plenty of time to relax and read and just enjoy where we were. We paid the extra bucks for the boat ride to Little Beaver trail, both to save a few trail miles and because we'd never hiked that trail. We both started the 8 days with packs at just over 40 pounds w/o water. We spent our first night 14 miles in at Twin Rocks camp. The next day started with the grind up to Whatcom Pass, where we headed up the north side of Whatcom. We were only headed as far as Perfect Pass, so we spent an hour or so on top of Whatcom before running the 15 minutes down the snow to the pass. Challenger Glacier from summit of Whatcom Peak Baker and Shuksan from our camp at Perfect Pass The next morning we decided to head up the ridge a ways before getting onto the Challenger Glacier. I was curious about what was up there for future camping possibilities (plenty of flat ground and great views if you can find water) and, while dropping directly onto the glacier from the pass would still go, the lower glacier is getting pretty broken up. We eventually got onto the glacier near 7000' and made a more or less level traverse, with no crevasse issues, to Challenger Arm. We dropped our packs there and ran up to the top, again spending an hour or so on the summit. We eventually headed back down, grabbed our gear, and moved down the eastern end of the glacier and just around the corner to a knoll at 6000' overlooking Luna Cirque. Great camping, water nearby, and wonderful views of Fury. A great place to obsess about the North Buttress and worry about just how bad the lower section would be. The North Buttress of Fury from the summit of Challenger The North Buttress of Fury from campsite at 6000' knoll below Challenger Glacier Day 4 was by far our easiest. Even though I'd read that dropping into the cirque from here was pretty straightforward, you almost have to do it to believe it since it looks incredibly imposing from across the way at Luna Col. It was, in fact, no problem at all, and in under 3 hours at an easy pace we were down at a huge flat sandy area that makes a great campsite. I took a hike over onto the rock-covered glacier and up to the base of the North Buttress, just to get a better idea of what we were up against the next day. Mike found water about 10 minutes away. It was very early in the day, so we headed over to the stream with water containers, books, and all of our sweaty, dirty clothes. We had a very relaxing afternoon, reading, rehydrating, and rinsing out all of our clothes and drying them on the rocks in the sun. Oddly, our shirts still smelled really bad afterwards. Go figure. The next day was really why we were here. Last year we came in via Access Creek and, before I trashed my ankle, our plan was to do the NB as a day trip from a camp at Luna Lake, then continue across to do Challenger before heading out Wiley Ridge. This year we decided to come in from the north and do the climb with full packs. I was really inspired by the trip last year done by the trio of mvs, Der_Wanderer and highclimb. Definitely one of the most impressive trips I've seen written up on this board (TR here). I had a copy of their photo of their right (west) side approach to the buttress (found here on mvs's website) and we totally adopted their very apt terminology of key points on the route. The Ramp, the Swan, the Mudslide, etc. (my mantra for the scary lower section was that everything will be just fine once we reach New Zealand). Their experience on that approach was very helpful for our routefinding. Thanks guys! [While I'm at it, I know I've PM'd iain, wayne w, colin, mvs and I think a few others for info on this route. Thanks to all for the beta!] The morning of the Fury climb was the only time we even pretended to get an early start. Although we'd be carrying full packs and were planning on camping on Fury's summit, we still wanted to get underway fairly early. We slept fairly well, even though we were hearing lots of stuff coming down the walls of the cirque. Kinda disconcerting when you're heading up one of those walls the next day. We were up by 5:15 and moving in just under an hour. After grabbing water along the way (we started with 3 liters each and, of course, found we could have tanked up much higher on the route) and gearing up at the base of the route, we were climbing by a bit after 7. We were well rested, well fed, well hydrated, and had that spring in our step that only comes from sporting freshly laundered underwear. With clean clothes, we were lookin' damn spiffy and we knew it! I just re-read The Trio's TR thread and we clearly had very similar feelings about the lower section you have to climb before reaching the ridge crest. It's scary and has some real objective danger. You just have to hope you aren't in the wrong place when the peak decides to unload a random fusillade of rock or ice. It's enough of a crapshoot to have you asking what level of objective danger you're willing to accept. I'm sure it's safer at other times in other conditions. On our day it wasn't necessarily an easy call, but the risk level seemed acceptable and we felt we could stay out of the firing line most of the way. We followed pretty much the same line The Trio did, with a few changes. There was less snow, so we exited the lower Ramp earlier and climbed more directly up to the base of the next Snowfinger. We climbed easy rock on the left side of the Snowfinger, both because the snow was discontinuous, and because staying farther left kept us farther away from any rockfall from above. It was between the Ramp and the Snowfinger that we witnessed our only bad rockfall, as several volleyball-size missiles sailed past us on the right at a velocity that was absolutely chilling. It was one of those times you realize that, if you're in the wrong place, it wouldn't matter in the slightest that you were wearing a helmet. We moved up in relative safety, hugging the left side as much as possible, until we were at a last protected nook and had to move out right, much more into the danger zone, and deal with the Mudslide. Again, there was less snow for us than in mvs's photo, so we had to more or less climb a couple hundred feet of the Mudslide itself. The Mudslide is a lovely streak of hard remnant ice that is totally infused with black coarse sand. Maybe 35-40 degrees. Very hard and very dirty and very much exposed to rock and ice from above. After very carefully discussing and analyzing all the variables of rockfall, icefall, temperature, slope gradient, snowcover, etc., we decided that our best option would be to use the next few hundred feet as an opportunity to get a feel for our VO2 Max and probe the limits of our anaerobic threshold. In other words, we felt we should run like hell. So off we went at top speed onto the black grit highway. I could just feel my aluminum pons dulling with every step. We moved as fast as we could and soon arrived, gasping, at a slightly protected spot just left of the top of the highest snow. We just seemed to have black wet sand all over us. We took off our filthy crampons with our filthy hands and stowed our filthy axes. Did I mention we had rinsed out all of our clothes the day before? We weren't looking so spiffy anymore. We quickly moved up and left on fairly easy rock, moving further out of danger, and were soon at New Zealand. As I had been assuring myself, everything was indeed just fine now that we were here. New Zealand is a pair of snow patches that kinda mark the place where you are out of serious danger, above the Mudslide, and ready to actually get on with climbing the buttress proper. I liked New Zealand a lot. This is on our last clean snow. That dark streak ahead is The Mudslide. Mike de-cramponing after the sprint up the Mudslide We kept moving up and left through a fair amount of loose rock and soon arrived at the crest. This was probably exactly where The Trio hit the crest. They reported a 5.8 pitch here. I'd almost be tempted to bump it up to 5.9, but maybe that's my pack and boots talking (we didn't bring rock shoes). Above that we simulclimbed at a pretty good clip until we arrived at a comfortable, sunny flat spot at about 7000', just before you either do a short rap or downclimb to a notch. At this point we were clearly looking great for time and would summit fairly early in the day, so we quit trying to hurry at all. We took a long break here, eating and enjoying the sun and the views. Mike took the lead for a couple pitches, we did a lot more simulclimbing, and we eventually found ourselves at the final snow arete to the summit ridge. What a great way to finish this climb! Mike coming around a very cool and exposed blind corner pitch about mid-buttress. I remember this same pic from The Trio's slide show. Mike on the final snow arete below summit of Fury. Pure fun climbing this with the summit now so close. We arrived at the summit at about 3:30, 9 1/2 hours after leaving camp and about 8 1/2 hours from the bottom of the buttress. Carrying full packs up a big route like this is definitely a chore, but it was great to arrive at such a cool summit, after all that work, and not have to think at all about leaving. A few clouds were moving in and it was definitely cooler than it had been. Nothing threatening. Just some marine stuff moving through to enhance the view a bit. We set up our tent on the highest snow, just a few feet from the summit rocks, melted snow, had dinner and enjoyed a great sunset. Our camp on Fury's summit. Any middle-of-the-night excursions were done carefully. The fall to the left is a couple hundred feet to rocks. The fall to the right is about 4000 feet down the NE Face to the base of the buttress. Sunset from Fury with clouds rolling over the Luna Cirque crest. Slesse in the distance. The next day we got an aggressive alpine start of 11:15 AM and started the trek across to Luna Col, our destination for the day. I had done the SE route before and we had no descent issues. We took our time, as usual drinking tons of water at every opportunity. We found far less snow at Luna Col itself than the last 2 years, but water was only 2 minutes down the west side. We spent the rest of yet another lazy afternoon and evening reading and relaxing and enjoying looking back into the cirque. The next morning we actually got up early enough to start hiking up Luna at about 6:30 AM. We settled for the false summit, since we had a ways to go today, and since we wanted to continue our very rewarding habit of just doing nothing on the summit for about an hour. We eventually headed back down, packed up, and were headed down by about 10. We had a permit for 39 Mile camp, which gave us about 5 miles of trail to cover once down Access Creek. We again weren't in a big hurry. We'd both been down Access Creek before. All I can say about the trip down is that the upper basin was a nice place to stop and soak our feet before the brushfest, and the huckleberries are great right now. At Big Beaver we didn't take even a second to look for a log, being quite happy to grab another opportunity to get our feet wet. We traded boots for Aquasocks and easily forded the stream. Four miles later we were setting up for our last night at 39 Mile camp. This day was actually a pretty long one, and we were asleep pretty quickly. The next morning we had only 5 miles to the boat dock and it was a really pleasant cruise with what were by now very light packs. I arrived at the dock with not one ounce of food left and a pack down to 33 pounds. When I was thinking about how this trip would go if everything fell into place, there were 4 moments in particular I was looking forward to and that I knew would be especially satisfying. One was sitting on top of Fury with the NB a done deal and not having to go anywhere right away. Then there was sitting at Luna Col, the Fury descent out of the way, on our last night up high, looking back at most of our recent few days of travel. Third was the pleasure of hitting the Big Beaver trail after getting down Access Creek. And, the last moment I was really looking forward to was this: Our boat was scheduled for 11:30. We arrived at just after 10 to find 4 hikers from Hannegan trailhead waiting for a boat they said was on its way. We'd been thinking about swimming for too long to miss it, so off went the boots and in went we. We probably only lost the slightest fraction of the accumulated sweat and bug juice and sunscreen, but it felt great and allowed us to drive home feeling something less than totally gross. The boat was there within 10 minutes, had room for us, and since we had prepaid, the other party gave us $15 cash to cover half the fare. The trip was wrapping up just great! We hit the store at Newhalem positively craving some instant ramen and Clif Bars, but somehow walked out with beer and potato chips instead. Signed out at the ranger station, grabbed burgers at Good Food, and hit the road for home. We felt incredibly lucky to have an 8 day trip into the Pickets turn out so well. The weather was perfect. Every day went just as planned. We accomplished everything we were after. It was hard to not smile all the way from the top of Fury (well, okay, the smile went away for a while coming down Access Creek). It was our first serious climbing adventure together in several years, but all the alpine teamwork clicked like it always had. Taking the extra time allowed us to stay energetic the whole time and to really avoid ever feeling trashed. We covered lots of new terrain for both of us, managed to do a long sought after route on Fury, and simply had fun every day. I didn't even break my ankle this time. It was a really gratifying trip with a great partner and old friend. Good times! Old guys on vacation. Gear Notes: Rack of 11 pieces - A few pieces more than enough. Kinda depends on how often you want to stop and rerack. No ice or snow pro and none needed. 30m single rope - This worked really well for us. I had a 50m that I just wasn't using, so I chopped it to save weight on this trip. Fine for glacier travel, and long enough by at least 20' for the Challenger rappel. On Fury it was fine for the 2-3 short sections that we pitched out, and better than a longer rope for all of the simulclimbing. Betalight with betabug - Just bringing groundsheets for under the Betalite would have been at least a pound lighter, but bringing the bug insert was worth the extra weight. We spent most nights with just the bug net up, and there were enough flies and mosquitoes that it made it far easier for us to get in our critical 9 hours of slumber each night. Boots - i.e. no rock shoes. There was only the one 5.8ish pitch early on the crest of Fury where it would have been nice to have rock shoes. For everything else on the route, I was much happier in boots. Ice Axe - no second tool needed Crampons - Aluminums worked great for me. Fuel - We took 2 large MSR canisters for my GigaPower. We boiled about 4 cups each of 7 evenings, and about 3-4 cups for 5 mornings, and melted about 5-6 liters worth on top of Fury. We came out with about 1/2 ounce left in one of the canisters. Cell phone - I tossed this in after reading about others getting cell reception up high in the Pickets, and I got a good signal a week before from West MacMillan Spire. We checked and got a signal on Challenger, Fury and a great signal on Luna. If we had this last year, Mike would have had to only hike from Luna Lake to Luna summit instead of all the way out to Ross Lake when I got injured. We did use ours to change our boat pickup and to make sure we'd find room at 39 Mile camp. Ibuprofen - The staff of life. Approach Notes: Little Beaver trail had a few easy to follow detours and some minor brush. No complaints at all. The whole area is very dry up there. Water was always somewhere, but I'm sure less available than in normal years. The SE Glacier route on Fury is far drier than it was in late August 2 years ago, as is Luna Col and the route down to Access Creek. The stream at 39 Mile camp which was raging at the end of July last year is now dry. We saw no one at all from just below Whatcom Pass on the Little Beaver Trail the morning of day 2, until we reached Luna Camp on the Big Beaver Trail the afternoon of day 7.
  25. During my misdirected youth I was so entirely focused on climbing the hardest routes I could, and putting up first ascents or first free ascents, that I often relegated the choice of partner to whoever was willing or able to work on the projects I wanted to work on. This was often to the detriment of enjoying friendships. In 1982 I made a climb that impacted me more than any other, for it really brought home to me the total enjoyment of climbing with someone that brings an element of joy and energy to the sport. I speak of Russell Erickson, aka Russell Machine. Those of you who climbed during that time will know Russell. He was a gifted climber, totally excited about the sport and very humble and unassuming. A perfect day for Russell was to hang out and work on difficult top rope problems or belay for those of us who were working on hard single pitch climbs. As a belayer he was like a personal psychology coach, constantly giving encouragement, "You can do it! Go for it! You got it!". He was unconditionally supportive and I can never recall a hint of upset or anger in him. Like many of us, he spent a month or two in Yosemite each spring. In 1982 I had it in my head to free climb the West Face of El Capitan. Wayne Kamera and I trained on several multipitch free climbs to prepare for our attempt. Russell helped us haul our gear to the base of the West Face and departed to leave Wayne and I to free climb the first 4 pitches and fix ropes for a fast start the next morning. Unfortunately the next day Wayne develop a viral flu as he was attempting one of the 5.11 pitches about 8 or 9 pitches up the climb and we had to abort. We were both very disappointed. Wayne was out of commission and I had no partner to do the West Face. I immediately asked Russell, but he declined because he had never done a multi pitch route before!? In all the time I had known him I never understood the fact that he had only done short climbs. Wow! After letting this sink in I realized that his entire joyful being was happy to hang out and do the most ridiculous problems of the day. But he always tried to shun attention to his accomplishments. Earlier that Spring someone came up to me and told me that he had just fired off A Separate Reality on sight! When I asked Russell about it he was embarrassed, "Oh I just did a little climbing today". That was his character. In desparation I started asking anyone I knew or met in the Valley to do the West Face with me, even if they couldn't climb at that level I just needed a belayer! Each evening I would share with Russell my frustrations and ask him again to do it with me. Finally, after about a week of trying to find someone Russell came up to me and said he would do it on one condition, that I could not tell anybody that he was going to do the climb! We snuck out of Camp IV (Sunnyside) early one morning and hiked to the base of the West Face with a new plan. This time we went very light, with one small daypack. We fixed the first 4 pitches (meandering and giving you two full ropes to jug) and settled in for a bivouac at the base. In those days, before Fire's or other ultra sticky soles, and before RP's, the opening pitches had some dicey 5.11 runouts over old aid terrain. The next morning we started jugging at first light, and were underway with climbing by 7:00 am. The rest of the day was a flow of beautiful climbing, very efficient leader changes, and a no fall no aid point free climb of the West Face. We finished at about 5:00 pm. The extra liters of cool aid and snacks in case of a forced bivy were consumed to gluttony as we watched the evening grow in the valley. The memories I have of that climb are centered around the pure joy I felt, the privelege to be able to share this outstanding climb with Russell. I also remember with laughter the intensity of his desire to climb FAST so we wouldn't be forced to bivy, and how he would look at the smallest cloud in a perfect sky with great concern for a gathering storm. There was also the most amazing 20' tall band of pure quartz crystals that stretched across the wall as far as I could see, crystals so big that I tied one off for protection as a joke. Mostly I felt pride to be able to share with Russell the first big wall he had ever done. After this climb I determined that I would never again allow my ambitions to get in the way of making sure that the climb was an extension of friendship. The reward is so much greater than the climb itself. If any of you know Russell, please have him get in touch with me.
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