[TR] Jo'burg- East Ridge (solo) 7/15/2005

[ivan]

Climb: Jo'burg-East Ridge (solo)

 

Date of Climb: 7/15/2005

 

Trip Report:

achtung! i wrote this more for meself than for you, so it's a tad long. the bottom line is i climbed joburg by myself over 2 days and had an edifying experience. i have a ton of pictures, but currently my laptop is beign a little bitch and wouldn't recognize my d drive, so i gotta find some other way to upload them.

 

my first trip into the n cascades, 3 summers ago, is dominated by the memory of first seeing j'berg. from the cascade pass p-lot the ne buttress and the forbidding cj coulior appear the epitome of alpine grimness - to climb them a similiarly epic act of audacity. i've wanted to do this thing ever since then.

 

so, as has been rehashed on more than a few occasions in different forums, i'm a bit of a prick - this translates into difficulties finding partners, especially in the middle of the week. the family was back in the Great Hated East though, so i wasn't about to waste those sweet hours of freedom - i hopped in the car driving north, with no firm plan in my mind. along the way i settled on the ne buttress of j'berg.

 

the problem, minus the lack of partner, was timing - i arrived at the cascade p-lot around noon, and clouds obscured more than half the lot. the half-snatches of views i caught reaffimred that notion that how we remember a climb to look over time often becomes completly different from how they are in reality - simply put, the buttress was damned frightening to contemplate going up alone.

 

still, when the weather cleared enough to evaluate the whole route, at 3 in the afternoon, i figured i'd still do it - i didn't want to leave till morning though, so i'd be able to top out and get down to a bivy all in one day. i decided to use some of the daylight left to me to walk over to the base and get a feel for the climbing. i found a good way to acess the west rib - one that didn't risk falling into the immense moat and only involved 3rd class scrambling to inject oneself into the madness - i climbed the first 100 feet of the route, then went back to the car to sleep.

 

but agian the problem had been timing. i'd iced myself by just sitting at the base, looking up at the looming massif too long. the night was a strange one, perhaps it was just sleeping in my microscopic japanese car, but i was very uneasy, and as the early dawn approached, in the cold of the parking lot, i wussed out on soloing the buttress. it goaded me at the time, but i figured i was being silly enough soloing any large cascade rock climb - more importantly, i'm loathe to let some other asshole raise my kids - i wanna be aroudn to ensure they're as big as condescending assholes as me. few people are up to the challenge.

 

so i decided i do the saner east ridge of j'berg instead. i had a map, and the descent write-up from jim's guide, but i'd not written down the new info for doug's direct. damn. well, shit, people had been getting to the mountain for years from gunsight, why shouldn't i?

 

the first part of the approach was plenty simple - endless switchbacks up to cascade pass, and each one offered an accusatory glimpse of the forsaken buttress - i never really second-guessed meself, and as fate would have it, it was one of the wiser choices i made on this outing. i made a great athletic mistake at cascade pass - i didn't know there was a higher traverse that stayed on the south side of the basin and went over to the cache glacier. instead i stuck to that side, but gradually descending as i couldn't see what i was trying to take up to hop on the other side of the ridge. eventually i ended up all the way down in the basin before taking the cache creek to the glacier.

 

i suppose i realized this was a non-standard way -still it had charm as there was no evidence of man ever being there - i alternated climbing/hiking slushy gravel, precarious boulders, aggravating scree, polished bedrock, rotten snow, blue ice covered in stones, etc. before arriving on the cache glacier itself. i worked aroudn the climbers left side, heading for the highest, widest col when i realized it was too high to fit the description for gunsight notch - so i reversed course a bit and made my way over to just below gunsight. more big moats, but easily enough i was over it and scrambled up, where i cached my crampons and a ski-pole, which subsequently dissapeared.

 

the wilderness scramble over to j'berg was bitchy. anything you might think is an old climbers track is really just some fucking marmot super-hiway that's fallen out of favor. all trails universally terminate in some grubby hole in the ground, with a nice front porch of fresh dirt and some fat rodent sittign in the back, waiting to pounce. on the way back, in the pouring deluge, i developed an intense hatred for those hairy pound-steaks, so warm and dry in their subterrenean hovels...

 

in the end i finished the traverse w/ dogged determination and frequent attempts to infuse the route description w/ clarity - sticking to any altitude seems to bring the same problems. a constant side slope angle of 20 degrees or so, regularly bisected by gullies with angles more like 50 or so, most with significant exposure. soloing everything, i found my fear of falling on the big exposed ridge of j'berg to be almost non-existence - if i died there, i logically deduced, my fate would be well-know - my shitty corpse quickly found broken on some talus field near the base - but to fall on the traverse, breaking bones in a long slide down into a god-forsaken forest, would be truly worse - no instant death there, just the hell of whiling away one's last few damp hours in splendid misery, certain that even your bleached bones would be undisturbed for centuries, save by the ubiqituous alpine rock-rodents who'd line their fucking dens w/ your windshirt.

 

alpine meadows dominate the last portion of the traverse to the cj col of joberg. there must be 10,000 different kinds of alpine flowers - i know because i trampled every species, along w/ the 3 billion bees that grub amongst them (one of many small wonders on the trip - how the hell did i avoid getting stung?)

 

i enjoy the solo climbing dialectic, which is distinctly diferent from the process w/ a partner. w/ a friend, you pretty much just walk up to the route and start climbing, w/ little or no worries, certain that between the two of you, you'll be able to solve any problem and have some modicum of security no matter the situation. alone, though, every step of the way seems a small gamble, a contest of wills w/ oneself - setting small goals, decision points, getting to them, then reevaluating and making another bet ("bet you can't make it to that ramp over there, you fucking european-american honkozoid"). my first objective on j'berg was to reach the top of a prominent "white granite staircase." from a distance i'd thought it looked too insane to do alone, but once i'd gotten over to it i became very comfortable at the idea of scaling it. i coudl clearly see a rap anchor at the top which infused me with confidence. this may have been my favorite part of the whole climb. remember the endless staircase above minas morgul the 2 hobbits and gollum climbed to meet old shelob? that's exactly what this part is - immense stairs that swiftly and joyfully fly by in an ecstasy of mantling and face-climbing.

 

from the top of the staircase, the route meanders up and over rocky heather slopes to the base of a large snowfield - it was 430 at this point, and i spotted a very nice bivy site, big enough for one and well constructed walls already built, close by to trickling streams. i wanted to be higher (it was about 7200 feet - 1000 feet still to go to the top), but i was very uncertain of the ameninties higher up and didn't want to face dark w/ nowhere to sleep. i decided to stay. the magnificent view of mt formidable just across the cirque was compelling enough, and dominated my evening on the front porch where i lay in my bivy sack w/ a huge topographic map of the area, tracing every bump and icefield i could see, feeling at once huge and small - a tiny dot on a map from which the whole world could be extrapolated. maybe it was just my nightly medicine and bivy mood enhancer? shit, i was happier than any man has a right to be, and that was good enough...

 

i slept well enough w/ minimal gear - a sack and a space blanket. i had a focacia sandwhich for dinner - yum. woke up a few times in night, once to rockfall which made me hide like some sad weasel against the pathetic uphill rockwall, the other to a charley-horse in my right calf which woke me yelpign and pleading for the goddamn muscle to just chill the fuck out!

 

5 a.m. seemed a cold time to be climbing, so i didn't get going till 530. the skies were moody, and portending a grim day to come. i thought i could outrace the coming weather to the top though, so i gave it my best. i crossed the snowfield to the east ridge crest, then worked my way up frequently shattered rock. at the top of the crest, it leveled somewhat and as i passed over the top of several gullies, i noted 2 more rap stations. up a final big bulge, i could look over to the massif of the false summit, seperated from me by a snowfield. i downclimbed to the snow, crossed, then hopped into the huge protected area between the wall and the snow, about 5 feet high and very secure feeling, though damp. there was a rap station immediately above me, but i circled around to it from the left, getting scared where i had to move back right on some very steep, low 5th class ground that was quite loose. up there were some huge fallen flakes, making 2 big chimneys and some relatively level ground - maybe i should have bivied there the night before, but it lacked water and ready made sleep spots. right of the chimneys things became more interested as i worked up to the false summit - a lot more snow, and sections of rock that i wanted to climb were covered in slick, wet moss. i found myself using my axe a great deal and climbing more steep snow. eventually, after a neat, wide crack up a low-angle slab, i was atop the false summit. i checked the watch.

 

i had plenty of time to make the top, descend, reverse the traverse and be back at the car before dark. but that wasn't the problem. i wasn't horrified, but i felt a great disconcertion to look over at boston basin and notice that the whole thing was dissapearing behind thick gauzes of streaming grey clouds. that morning the skies to the norht had looked like the tumoltious ocean - dark and grim, but the south had been bright and clear and i'd hoped i'd get a civil war rematch w/ the yankees losing this time. it was not to be. i figured i had less than an hour befor j'berg was in the clouds, and that would put me right at the summit when the whiteout hit, if i kept going. well, fuck it - i was less than a hundred feet below the summit - i'd waged enough battles w/ meself to get to that point that i felt the bottomless strength the wilderness can permit the penitent - i had nothing to prove and wisdom dictated an immediate descent. this was a fantastically good call, as fate would show...

 

it took 7 rappels to make it back to camp - i put in 2 new stations on a gully that i likely would have downclimbed were i with company. thick, angry clouds began wooshing through the cj col as i reached my bivy site. 5 minutes later i was rushing over to the staircase, and 3 raps later i was on the snow in the gathering rain. note, the 2nd rap on staircase is shitty - 2 nuts in a mossy crack, the outside nut slides all over hte place and could very easily fall out.

 

the character building part of my trip began here. rather than take the no-doubt far better doug's direct out of there, as i didn't know any more about it than the name - i began cutting back over to gunsight notch. the talus showing ever fattening raindrops - by the time i was in the heather the bees had gone home and every step slapped me w/ wetness till i was as sodden as a drowned man - my boots squeaking w/ every step. worse, all the bedrock portions of the traverse were now coarsing waterfalls, and required devoted attention, plus a little luck, to navigate safely. soon i was back in trees, but that was no better as the low-lying branches finished the work on my top half the alpine shrubs had missed. worse, once in the treed section, there are frequent cliffs and dead-ends, and often i stood in the pouring rain, scratching my head and feeling a little hopeless.

 

330 pm, the day after bastille day, was my lowest hour. incredibly soaked, having done 2 raps off trees to get into gullies i was narrowly able to crawl back out of, i reach a final impasse. through the mists i could see the slope leading up to gunsight, but seperating me from it was an immense gully, so large and steep it seemed more like a canyon. i remembered crossing it on the way in, delicately working down the a mossy ramp that was the only access point for thousands of vertical feet - but to get to that ramp i first had to go uphill over a large section of waterfall/bedrock with sickening exposure. i used my recent NOLSe training here when things were darkest, pulled up under a rock overhang and put on my dry windshirt and had some caffiene goo (mocha!) - revived, i reckoned inthe next few minutes i'd either make good my escape from jo'burg or be dead - either way it'd all b e over soon.

 

i don't think i've ever been so gripped. ridiciulous. a 35 degree slab, maybe, but polished and sandy and running with water, my gloves were totally soaked as i clawed at any micro-hold i could find as i carefully worked my boots onto the best places i could devine. slowly, with jerking breaths and several shitty atheist-turned-bible-thumper prayers, i got through it. i felt cheered, and not too much later i was up at the cache, recovering my cramps and setting up the rap back onto the glacier.

 

again, i made the stupid mistake of not traversing that side of the basin back to cascade pass - who cared? i was as happy as a clam when i did finally make it down to the bottom - the rain was letting up somewhat, i was on a brain-dead trail, and i'd lived to fuck another day. i motored up to the pass, and descended w/ orgasmic joy - naturally high enough that i eschewed my usual rites at the pass (my dampness and the wind helped make the decision - i doubt my lighter woulda worked anyway...)

 

so in the end, a very fun climb. sad though, perhaps - in the end i felt a tremendous strength and confidence in myself that i could never effectively communicate to another person - but that strength is like acclimitization - as quickly as it's gained, it seeps away into the ether. now, 3 days and about 30 beers later, all i get are the echoes of memory. bruises and muscles waste away. the experience turns into cariacture, and the only way to become an alpine hardman is to just go out and do it all over again , and maybe next time just stay out there...

 

Gear Notes:

60 meter 8 mm rap rope

handfulanutz to bail off

dozen feet of webbing for raps

cramps (useful on cache - might could skip 'em)

axe (very useful all the way to the summit)

 

Approach Notes:

don't be a dickhead like me - learn doug's direct and use it - i can't imagine anythign being more annoying than the approach from gunsight. better yet, sack up and just climb the ne buttress or the cj coulior!

Edited July 18, 2005 by ivan

[chucK]

best report in a while! Sounds like a great adventure, and a pleasure to read. Thanks.

[Juan]

Hey Ivan -- good going. That peak is a real mind fuck.

 

Want to try in a long day from the car using Doug's Direct? Do you think we could do it?

 

I'm trying to get out Thurs.

 

Sharp

[layton]

shit dude! nice!

[OlegV]

Glad you made it alive, Eric! People's saying, the North Western climbers are made of steal is true. Congratulations!!!

[JoshK]

Hahahha! Awesome man. A typically awesome TR. Don't worry, we'll hook up some equally stupid shit when we get together in August!

[catbirdseat]

Good grief, man! I've done that approach and it's hard enough even if you stay on route. You are one tough mofo.

[Hal_Burton]

How does it look up to the col from the north now?

[Chriznitch]

a fun way to celebrate bastille day!!

[thelawgoddess]

f'ing awesome tr!

[spicoli11]

brutally delicious shzit.......gotta love the burg

[catbirdseat]

How does it look up to the col from the north now?

The couloir? It's all melted out like I've never seen before. Huge gaps.

[mvs]

i was gripped reading it, thanks for the long TR. That sounds like an awesome bivy up high and alone.

[ivan]

How does it look up to the col from the north now?

yeah, the cj coulior looks very intimidating - there are big patches of rock, and i have no idea what that rock would be like. if i was gonna descend that route i'd want to ascend it first, to check it out, and i'd want the full on ice-get-up too

 

shit, i HATE my computer - why won't it see the disk w/ my pictures on it? for chrissakes, it's right THERE!

[ivan]

finally some shots...

 

gunsight notch, day uno

looking back at the slopes underneath gunsight on the traverse to jberg - i wish it'd looked this sunny on the way out!

the first glimpse of joberg on the traverse

the route up the east ridge with bivy marked, the "white granite staircase" is the first bit up to the bivy

the "white granite staircase" up close - not scary at all, it has 3 rap stations to comfort the solo climber

looking back at the traverse from gunsight from the bivy at 7200 feet

unbeatable view of formidable from the front porch of the bivy

a little tease for anyone contemplating the torment-forbidden traverse

mandatory shot of parking lot from joburg - shit, it's only a mile away!

my top out at the false summit, looking over to true summit oh-so close; note the deeply shitty clouds threatening to swallow the whole world

my moment of truth - the last picture i took - the "desolation slab" - low angle, thick w/ running water, bone-crackling wilderness exposure - had to be crossed to get to gunsight. excellent time for some mocha caffeinated goo.

[b-rock]

Nice TR!