Leuthold Couloir - mini TR 5/14/01

[snowleopard_x]

Although I'd been all around Mt. Hood, up it more than one way, I'd never been up this fine route. Often it's "in" from late winter until up to sometimes July 4th. Not this year. This is about the latest any sane person would climb the route. It, and the entire peak, looks like it does in late June, not mid-May.

I went with my friend Matt, who I had never climbed with before...I'm going to cut to the quick here. We were constantly pelted with bits of ice and rock. Just standing there, about to get out onto the face, and into the couloir, is like crossing a war zone with bullets and schrapnel everywhere. And you have to just gut it out and go for it. Jumping from one safe spot to the next, trying to time the "incoming". Getting hit with marble sized pieces of ice coming down that thing are painful. Imagine what would happen if you were hit right in the lower chest with a chunk of ice the size of a soccer ball coming down it! Well, that's what happened to me. It was quite, quite painful, and more than knocked the wind out of me. I was actually quite shocky (is that a word?!) for several minutes afterwards and my hands quivered. It was amazing that it didn't knock me over. It took several minutes to recover as we just sat there. Eventually, with rest, water, and GU, I was able to continue up, even leading a bit later at the top. The ice chunk also hit my thumb, which was swollen and hurts like hell, and makes it hard to type! Getting through all that really added to the accomplishment of making it to the top of a normally intermediate route.

Of note: Huge kudos to Matt and his perfect timing with humor. Just when I was starting to recover and we were about to continue, I asked him "can you lead?" as I handed him the (mostly unnecessary, small) rack. And he said, "oh yeah, and you probably want me to short rope you too, Sandy." I was like, "...huh?". But then it registered, a joke! And later, when moving, and I thought about it, it really had me laughing! And what great medicine that turned out to be.

 

[verticalturtle]

I was up ther same time 5/13 and can account for the rock and icefall. I have to ask though, since I did this, why did you choose to continue into Leuthold proper when it was raining bullets (at least one of which you caught). A variant to the right of the rock rib took us to half height in the lower fan where we saw everything fall but were well out of it's way.

Sorry if this sounds like a critique, but for the benefit of those considering the route you can limit your chances of being pelted by varying the route. Just don't go too far left unless you want a few pitches of rock. You do still take your chances as stuff is constantly falling, but it doesn't make sense to me to jump into the line of fire.

[JasonG]

What were the temperatures like?? I was thinking of heading up there this weekend if the temps continue to be low. Other than being bombarded, was the route in good condition? Thanks for any info.

[jrwclimbs]

Due to the amount of debris coming down the Leuthold, and the number of climbers attempting it, we did a variation of the main Reid Headwall route. As the previous post mentioned, you can escape some of the falling ice and rock chunks on the mini ridges but a few gullies required full frontal pelting! Our variation actually ran into some solid 5.8 rock over 10,000' but we only had slings for pro so we backed off after 12 feet. With a little ugly traversing on manky snow (the whole mountain had crap snow) we scampered lightly up a loose, down sloping gully reaching another dead end around 10,950'. From there a 30 m rap got us down to the upper Reid normal route finish. Overall there was lots of dry tooling, a little bit of water ice, a helluva lot of ice and rock fall.

The summit was very windy and the south side standard route had much less snow at the Pearly Gates than normal for May and the schrund is opening up pretty decently.

If its not a bowling alley, Leuthold looks like a nice cruise compared to our Reid variation!

[verticalturtle]

Originally posted by Heinrich:

What were the temperatures like??

For us temps went down to a wopping 9000ft!

Brrr..So cold you almost needed a sleeping bag.

seriously though it did get just cold enough to be crusty in the morning. In many places it was just a crust, in a majority of other places it wasn't very consolidated. If you do it be open to route variations that limit exposure to falling stuff, and be fast. Enjoy.

vt

 

[snowleopard_x]

VTurtle - Good questions, not taken as too high of a criticism. We went that way for several reasons. Mostly because we were getting pelted at least a little just about everywhere along the headwall, and knew the way up Leuthold, and wasn't too sure on the Reid Headwall (didn't want to end up where JRWclimbs was!). That, and as you know the little bits coming down sting, but are not a huge threat. I had the luck of Gilligan in that the largest chunk that came down the couloir the entire day was the one that hit me.

Heinrich's question: Is the route going to be good this weekend? That's another good question. My speculation, as I said in my other post, is that it's going to rain ice again, all along the headwall, though possibly worst up the couloir proper. As each week passes, depending on weather and temp, you'll get more and more coming down, especially rocks. If you feel up for it, may I suggest the Sandy Headwall? It's further, but we took a break when on the Queen's Chair and looked down and along the thing, it looked in great condition. Curious if VTurtle and JRW took a look and saw the same?

[verticalturtle]

Sorry didn't see it.

I must make a correction though; we went a bit right and onto rock not left. If you look at a good pix of the face there is rock separating the couloir proper from the headwall...that would be a portion of our route.

Kind of odd with all the ice coming off, but we expirienced no rockfall at all.

[willstrickland]

Wow, didn't know the West Side was that popular during that week. I simul-soled the Reid on 5/12 and encountered quite a bit of rock and icefall. Both my partner and I got beaned by baseball and larger sized ice and rock. We managed to on-sight the route with little route-finding difficulties. I wouldn't want to be up there after about 5am, rock/ice fall was insignificant until we were in the upper sections of the headwall (like 6am). At that point it was "keep your head down and climb as fast as you safely can" We summited at 7am after a 7 hour ascent. This was a great route, a blast to climb with only one tool (take two!), and the ice in and above the final narrow chutes was great (in a Cascades kind of way) We decided to solo due to time, and the fact that the rock is little more than frozen kitty litter, the ice sucks, and the snow wouldn't likely hold a fall of any distance. Took a single 8mm line with us, but never used it and didn't even put on the crampons until about 9,700. Highly recommended route, but do it in early season and get an early start. One other note, the traverse after Illumination saddle was thigh-deep postholing on a 30 degree slope...heinous! I still want to do Leutholds, maybe next year or this winter.

[Billy]

wow- you onsighted the route, you are so bad.

[jblakley]

I must say that I have never heard the term "onsight" used to describe having success on a mountaineering route. Was this a sport mountaineering route? Maybe I'm just not hip with some of the fresh sick and dope lingo of modern mountaineering.

[erik]

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000076.html

the noth face route is way SICK dude!

 

[Zenolith]

Erika the Spray Queen STILL thinks I was referring to bolts in the post he linked above. Even after I explained that I meant fixed pins (which do exist in the High Cascades). I know of a FIXED (and safe) rap station on the Jeff Park route and this on a mountain known for its rotten rock.

Erika, get over yourself already.

[erik]

zeno,

i love you man! if you even read what was above you would see the hint of sarcasm in it! but then again a well educated person like yourself probably wouldn't lower yourself to it.

i love your cross postings.....nice guy here shit talker elsewhere.

http://mtncommunity.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=226&forum=DCForumID1&omm=0

errrr.....the wacky tabacky eh!

peace out dog!

 

[Zenolith]

Erika,

I'm not trying to hide the fact that I think its STUPID to use pot to overcome fear that you can't get through mentally. I don't think it "kind" however, to respond to the thread on that subject with my opinion since that would ammount to useless spray...

You're not the only one who reads more than one board so I'm not shocked to hear that you know the contents of my posts elsewhere (like the Atomic thing). Are you going to tell us what your SN on the other site(s)is/are?

[willstrickland]

In reply to "Bad Ass Billy", hero mountaineer from cyberspace, who criticized my use of the "onsight" to describe a recent ascent of the Reid I offer the following:

1. I had never climbed the Reid, never climbed Hood, never been to Hood, did not set out to climb the Reid.

2. Originally having set out to do Leutholds, watching copious rockfall from the Yocum, I picked another line. I had never heard of the Reid, and had no route information. Only after we got down did we consult a guidebook and determine what route we had climbed.

Now pick nits if you want, call me names if you want. Personally, I couldn't give a shit. I climbed the route, it was fun. I tried to give an account that accurately represented what we did...walked up and simul-soloed an unknown line (to us) on a new (to me) mountain. Using common climbing techno-speak seemed the best way to convey that. Sorry if I offended your mountaineer's sensibilites. As I said then, go solo the route with one 65cm axe...it's a good time.

Now if you want to call me names, great...try "lazy dirtbag" always a favorite of the girfriend's parents, or "climber scum" which is poular with the rangers in Camp 4. The parents usually go with "waste of education" while roomates typically use "loud guitar playin' mutha-F#$%&"

Now back to your regularly scheduled program..

-Will

[Kyle]

Will- There will always be someone looking to split hairs on terminology (I mean look at the big argument we just had on what the true meaning of "Alpine Climbing" is), but most of us are stoked to read your TR's & glad you'll share what beta you have with us... at least you're out there doin it. Please keep em coming man...

[Fairweather]

quote:

---

Originally posted by willstrickland:

Wow, didn't know the West Side was that popular during that week. I simul-soled the Reid on 5/12 and encountered quite a bit of rock and icefall. Both my partner and I got beaned by baseball and larger sized ice and rock. We managed to on-sight the route with little route-finding difficulties. I wouldn't want to be up there after about 5am, rock/ice fall was insignificant until we were in the upper sections of the headwall (like 6am). At that point it was "keep your head down and climb as fast as you safely can" We summited at 7am after a 7 hour ascent. This was a great route, a blast to climb with only one tool (take two!), and the ice in and above the final narrow chutes was great (in a Cascades kind of way) We decided to solo due to time, and the fact that the rock is little more than frozen kitty litter, the ice sucks, and the snow wouldn't likely hold a fall of any distance. Took a single 8mm line with us, but never used it and didn't even put on the crampons until about 9,700. Highly recommended route, but do it in early season and get an early start. One other note, the traverse after Illumination saddle was thigh-deep postholing on a 30 degree slope...heinous! I still want to do Leutholds, maybe next year or this winter.

---

Will,

This route is commonly reffered to as "Castle Crags" but it is, in fact Reid Glacier Headwall. I've done Leuthold in Feb... The route you did is considered much more difficult. Nice job.

br

 

[Matt]

Will--

I like your style and spunk. Let's go climbing together!