I'm uploading all if my images from this trip to Flickr so that everyone can have access to them in higher quality than Facebook allows. Everything from this trip should be up by tomorrow.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39789617@N02/collections/72157621935157126/
I'm in Corvallis for a week or so now taking a break and trying to let my foot heal. Justin had to go back to Portland to apply to jobs and talk to people about grad school. Hopefully he'll be meeting back up in Wyoming in a couple weeks.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Vegas and the Misadventure that was Utah
Chilling in Vegas for a few days and "recuperating" before we head to Wyoming. Utah was a mess. We finally got the roof rack key in the mail today but we haven't been able to get at any of the stuff up there for over a week now. I lost my tent. We got 2 flat tires within a week and had to blow $600 to get a new set of tires. We spent 2 entire days driving just to solve the problems listed above. We couldn't get to our trailhead in the maze because we encountered a sandstone cliff of sorts that we didn't think we would be able to get the car back up. We paid over face value for a crappy hotel on priceline and when we tried to cancel they called the hotel and told them we thought the place looked trashy and run down. Subsequently the hotel manager bitched me out when we checked in, and accosted me again in the parking lot the next morning.
We did see a ton of gorgeous areas. All 3 districts of Canyonlands NP, Arches NP, Capitol Reef NP, drove through Escalante NM, and hiked the "best 3 mile hike in the world" in Bryce Canyon NP, and climbed a 12k foot mountain.
All in all I am so tired of tourist crap, and am really excited to get back to the mountains and do hard things again. In the desert nothing is "hard", it is just too hot to do that much. And I stopped appreciating the scenery after the first 4 national parks. Which is too bad because Bryce Canyon was really spectacular, but I was completely over it at the time.
I'm going to be uploading mass quantities of photos tomorrow and hopefully getting flickr setup so I can have full quality images online (and as a backup in case anything happens to my laptop).
We did see a ton of gorgeous areas. All 3 districts of Canyonlands NP, Arches NP, Capitol Reef NP, drove through Escalante NM, and hiked the "best 3 mile hike in the world" in Bryce Canyon NP, and climbed a 12k foot mountain.
All in all I am so tired of tourist crap, and am really excited to get back to the mountains and do hard things again. In the desert nothing is "hard", it is just too hot to do that much. And I stopped appreciating the scenery after the first 4 national parks. Which is too bad because Bryce Canyon was really spectacular, but I was completely over it at the time.
I'm going to be uploading mass quantities of photos tomorrow and hopefully getting flickr setup so I can have full quality images online (and as a backup in case anything happens to my laptop).
Friday, July 17, 2009
About to head out of Moab. We spent 2 days in Arches (hiked every inch of trail in the park and camped in the backcountry one night). Yesterday we drove to the "Island in the Sky" district of Canyonlands and then drove up to the La Sal mountains. We were trying to make it to the pass in time for the sunset but got a flat on the way up. Ironically the road was 100 times nicer than the roads we had been driving on in Colorado, but I guess getting a flat is just 99% bad luck. We climbed Mt. Tukuhnikivatz today (12,480) and just got some supplies to head out for a few days. We also managed to lose both our keys to the roof rack. So all of the gear we have up there is trapped until we ca figure out how to get a new key made for it... Tragic.
Total casualties: Tent, Tire, both keys to the roof rack.
Total casualties: Tent, Tire, both keys to the roof rack.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Leaving to head to Moab right now. Successful time in colorado. Rafting, Rocky Mountain NP, and climbing six 14ers in 6 days including climbing the tallest mountain outside of California and Alaska at night. Only one casualty; we lost my tent today, we think if fell out of the car window when it was opened by some gear that got piled on the window switch. Monster trip report for Colorado is in progress.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Facebook Photo Albums
Rocky Mountain National Park:
Backpacking Trip - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201876&id=19700119&l=2333ec3984
Longs Peak - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201884&id=19700119&l=034b5ae4d2
Colorado Miscellaneous (Independence Pass, Grays Peak, Torres Peak, Alma, Paris Mine, Etc...): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201908&id=19700119&l=89fa49ecbe
Backpacking Trip - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201876&id=19700119&l=2333ec3984
Longs Peak - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201884&id=19700119&l=034b5ae4d2
Colorado Miscellaneous (Independence Pass, Grays Peak, Torres Peak, Alma, Paris Mine, Etc...): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2201908&id=19700119&l=89fa49ecbe
Friday, July 10, 2009
I have updates coming I promise. I have been in the land of no internet so I haven't had any way to hook up my laptop and put pictures online. Also, I'm going to spruce up the other trip reports with images where relevant.
We just got back from Rocky Mountain National Park, cool place. We have cancelled the other rafting trip and are going to do other stuff in utah instead. Colorado still for the next few days. I'll try to keep you posted.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Sawtooth Range
We got delayed a few extra days after graduation because I came down with a vicious sore throat/cold, making our already short trip in the Sawtooth Range even shorter. By the time we got there we had only 3 nights to spend in the area before we needed to head down to the Yampa to meet up with people for the river trip.
The Sawtooth Range in my opinion is more spectacular than many national parks. It is however largely undeveloped with no easy access to the majority of the range. This keeps it a relatively unspoiled wilderness. The area we decided to attack was the east side of the wilderness, west of the iron creek trailhead, around Sawtooth Lake.
The first night we camped on national forest land near the trailhead. We woke up in the morning to sunny skies and a comfortable temperature. We drove over to the trailhead and started unpacking our gear from the car into our backpacks. Pretty much as soon as we got everything spread out it started to pour. We quickly threw everything back in the car and tried to wait it out. The only problem was that while we were packing before we had the car open and it had filled with mosquitoes. So now we were trapped inside with them. I think Justin nearly broke the windshield a few times trying to hit them.
We finally got packed up and started hiking up. Our plans were to either stay at Alpine Lake or Sawtooth Lake and to try to climb Mt. Regan. The standard route up Regan is a class 3+/4- climb. A ways up we passed two hikers coming down who had camped at Alpine Lake for two nights and attempted Mt. Regan twice, they were turned back both times due to weather. They told us that Sawtooth Lake was still frozen solid and that Alpine Lake had patchy ice. This pretty much made up our minds for us because we were depending on the lake to filter water to drink and didn’t bring enough fuel to rely on melting snow. In hindsight it was a really good thing we stayed at Alpine Lake, beautiful scenery, more protected, lower elevation, and we found a really fun route because we were staying there.
The whole day it had been drizzling on us, getting progressively heavier and heavier. When we found a campsite we used the tent footprint to setup a mini shelter from the rain. We cooked dinner and retired to the tent around 9 pm. We woke up in the middle of the night because the sound of the rain had changed. We looked at the skylight in the tent and noticed it was covered in snow and frozen water. We opened a door and looked out into the vestibule, which was covered on the outside in snow. The tent we were using is 3+ season but not really built to withstand or shed snow. We woke up a couple more times in the night and shook off various parts of the tent.
When we got up in the morning it was sunny, just like the day before… We immediately set to dry out as much stuff as possible in the sun fearful that it would change back to snow or rain at any moment. We had maybe a half an inch at our campsite (7500 feet) and could see substantially more higher up. At this point we ditched our plan to climb Regan because we didn’t want to be doing 4th class climbing without protection in the snow. Instead we opted to climb Alpine Peak which was looming over Alpine Lake. There was a snow gully that led up the west side of the peak to a broad saddle between Alpine Peak, Merritt Peak and Mount Regan. The hiking at first was really straightforward, a basic snow climb up in mellow grade. The top of this gully culminated in a couple hundred-yard stretch of 30ish degree climbing, nothing too dangerous or particularly strenuous. We topped out on the gully around 8800 feet, 1000 feet below the summit.
At this point we began to traverse across the southeastern face of the mountain, the original plan was to climb up the southwestern face, which was a straightforward class 2 snow climb. Partway through the traverse we opted instead to climb the southeast face. This was steeper and slightly more technical than the southwest face. The pitch we climbed was approaching 50-60 degrees; there are some pictures I took from partway up where you can easily gauge the slope. This was the steepest snow climb I had ever attempted but was relatively safe because except for one rock partway up it would have been a clean fall, down soft snow, in which you could easily self-arrest. This portion of the climb was really fun and we had a great view the whole time as we got higher. This topped out on the summit ridge about 100 vertical feet below the summit.
The rest of the summit ridge was really corniced and it was hard to tell what was fresh snow and what was older soft snow. It looked like there was about 6 inches of new snow up there, more in places where it had drifted. Because snow melts in different patterns than it accumulates we were left with an awkward walk along this ridge. Trying not to be too close to the cornice, but at the same time not getting to close to the gap where the snow had melted away from the rock. The last 20 or so vertical feet was more sketchy scrambling across ice-encrusted rocks. The type of stuff you don’t want to do in crampons, but don’t want to do without crampons. I finally made it up to the summit and explored and hung out for an hour or so until Wagner got up. We chilled on top for maybe another 40 minutes taking in the mid winter view on June 21st. If I saw a picture and was asked to guess the date my guess would have been mid April, not late June.
We decided to descend via the regular route. Partially because it would be easier and partially because it would afford us great views of a different part of the wilderness we hadn’t seen before. The hike down was uneventful, we had some fun glissading down the steeper part of the regular route, and a great view as we skirted Sawtooth Lake back towards the trail to Alpine Lake. We got back to camp around 7 and tore everything down as quickly as we could. We were out of the camp by a little after 8 and headed back towards the trailhead. We got to the trailhead just after dark around 10 and drove back to our campsite from the first night. Crashed there, and headed out in the morning.
The Sawtooth Range in my opinion is more spectacular than many national parks. It is however largely undeveloped with no easy access to the majority of the range. This keeps it a relatively unspoiled wilderness. The area we decided to attack was the east side of the wilderness, west of the iron creek trailhead, around Sawtooth Lake.
The first night we camped on national forest land near the trailhead. We woke up in the morning to sunny skies and a comfortable temperature. We drove over to the trailhead and started unpacking our gear from the car into our backpacks. Pretty much as soon as we got everything spread out it started to pour. We quickly threw everything back in the car and tried to wait it out. The only problem was that while we were packing before we had the car open and it had filled with mosquitoes. So now we were trapped inside with them. I think Justin nearly broke the windshield a few times trying to hit them.
We finally got packed up and started hiking up. Our plans were to either stay at Alpine Lake or Sawtooth Lake and to try to climb Mt. Regan. The standard route up Regan is a class 3+/4- climb. A ways up we passed two hikers coming down who had camped at Alpine Lake for two nights and attempted Mt. Regan twice, they were turned back both times due to weather. They told us that Sawtooth Lake was still frozen solid and that Alpine Lake had patchy ice. This pretty much made up our minds for us because we were depending on the lake to filter water to drink and didn’t bring enough fuel to rely on melting snow. In hindsight it was a really good thing we stayed at Alpine Lake, beautiful scenery, more protected, lower elevation, and we found a really fun route because we were staying there.
The whole day it had been drizzling on us, getting progressively heavier and heavier. When we found a campsite we used the tent footprint to setup a mini shelter from the rain. We cooked dinner and retired to the tent around 9 pm. We woke up in the middle of the night because the sound of the rain had changed. We looked at the skylight in the tent and noticed it was covered in snow and frozen water. We opened a door and looked out into the vestibule, which was covered on the outside in snow. The tent we were using is 3+ season but not really built to withstand or shed snow. We woke up a couple more times in the night and shook off various parts of the tent.
When we got up in the morning it was sunny, just like the day before… We immediately set to dry out as much stuff as possible in the sun fearful that it would change back to snow or rain at any moment. We had maybe a half an inch at our campsite (7500 feet) and could see substantially more higher up. At this point we ditched our plan to climb Regan because we didn’t want to be doing 4th class climbing without protection in the snow. Instead we opted to climb Alpine Peak which was looming over Alpine Lake. There was a snow gully that led up the west side of the peak to a broad saddle between Alpine Peak, Merritt Peak and Mount Regan. The hiking at first was really straightforward, a basic snow climb up in mellow grade. The top of this gully culminated in a couple hundred-yard stretch of 30ish degree climbing, nothing too dangerous or particularly strenuous. We topped out on the gully around 8800 feet, 1000 feet below the summit.
At this point we began to traverse across the southeastern face of the mountain, the original plan was to climb up the southwestern face, which was a straightforward class 2 snow climb. Partway through the traverse we opted instead to climb the southeast face. This was steeper and slightly more technical than the southwest face. The pitch we climbed was approaching 50-60 degrees; there are some pictures I took from partway up where you can easily gauge the slope. This was the steepest snow climb I had ever attempted but was relatively safe because except for one rock partway up it would have been a clean fall, down soft snow, in which you could easily self-arrest. This portion of the climb was really fun and we had a great view the whole time as we got higher. This topped out on the summit ridge about 100 vertical feet below the summit.
The rest of the summit ridge was really corniced and it was hard to tell what was fresh snow and what was older soft snow. It looked like there was about 6 inches of new snow up there, more in places where it had drifted. Because snow melts in different patterns than it accumulates we were left with an awkward walk along this ridge. Trying not to be too close to the cornice, but at the same time not getting to close to the gap where the snow had melted away from the rock. The last 20 or so vertical feet was more sketchy scrambling across ice-encrusted rocks. The type of stuff you don’t want to do in crampons, but don’t want to do without crampons. I finally made it up to the summit and explored and hung out for an hour or so until Wagner got up. We chilled on top for maybe another 40 minutes taking in the mid winter view on June 21st. If I saw a picture and was asked to guess the date my guess would have been mid April, not late June.
We decided to descend via the regular route. Partially because it would be easier and partially because it would afford us great views of a different part of the wilderness we hadn’t seen before. The hike down was uneventful, we had some fun glissading down the steeper part of the regular route, and a great view as we skirted Sawtooth Lake back towards the trail to Alpine Lake. We got back to camp around 7 and tore everything down as quickly as we could. We were out of the camp by a little after 8 and headed back towards the trailhead. We got to the trailhead just after dark around 10 and drove back to our campsite from the first night. Crashed there, and headed out in the morning.
Mt Shasta
Justin and I stopped in Sacramento on the way back up from Yosemite for the Saturday finals at the IRA and to pick Will Gustafson (Guff) up. Our plan was to camp at the trailhead Saturday night, camp at Helen Lake Sunday night, and get back up to Corvallis Monday night in time for Guff to take a final on Tuesday morning.
We stopped in the bustling metropolis of Mount Shasta City to do some laundry, get dinner, buy some groceries, and for Justin and Guff to waste 40 dollars each renting snowshoes that wouldn’t make it more than ¼ mile from the trailhead. It should also be noted that they played around with the idea of renting avalanche beacons because there had been 4 inches of snow a few days previous. Needless to say, I am glad for their wallets sake that they forgot those.
We made our way up to the trailhead and after a few beers and some spirited intellectual discussion we setup camp. When we arrived around 10 pm we saw some guy sleeping on the ground next to his car. We think he started hiking around 1 and by the time we woke up and started to break down camp in the morning he was on his way back to his car, having hiked all the way up and skied back down before 10 am. We felt lame.
We started hiking from the Bunny Flat Trailhead (~ 7,600 feet) around noon, with the goal being to make it to Helen Lake (at 10,500 feet) in time to setup camp and make dinner before it got dark. About a quarter of a mile past the trailhead, Guff asked some people coming down if the snowshoes were necessary. They assured him that he would not need them and he ran them back down to the car while Justin and I proceeded.
We stopped at Horse Camp, a Sierra Club lodge (at 8,500 feet) momentarily to let Guff catch up. While we were there we talked to the caretaker who said that someone up higher had fallen and they were trying to get a helicopter in to airlift them out. It was super windy on Sunday and it took them four tries to get the helicopter low enough to drop a hoist that the rangers could get the injured person in. After talking to more people coming down we found out that he had been glissading with his crampons on, his crampons caught the snow, and he compound fractured his tibia and fibula (11,500 feet). The ranger had to get him down to Helen Lake where the helicopter would more easily be able to swoop in to pick him up.
We slogged up the next 2000 feet through intermittent fog. It made the hike really drag on because there was absolutely no sense of progress. Finally around 10,000 feet we broke out of the fog and could finally see where we were headed. We met the ranger who had helped the injured party earlier; he was cruising down and proclaimed it “Miller Time”. He also mentioned to be sure to anchor our tents well, explaining that the previous night several tents had been blown off the mountain.
We arrived at Helen Lake by mid afternoon and tried to find the most suitable spot to make camp. Part of the beauty of snow camping is that you can make whatever you need. In this case, the night before tons of people had dug shelters into the snow wall below Helen Lake and we were more than happy to take over an abandoned one. Of course because we had great shelter there wasn’t a breath of wind. There were four other tents up there Sunday night. Two of them were not attempting the summit the next day and two were.
We built a snow kitchen, cooked dinner, and were asleep by 9 pm. We woke at 3 am to start our summit attempt. The moon was up and we had a great view through the night down the mountain and into the nothingness that surrounds Shasta. We made good progress up for the first 1000 vertical feet without crampons. When the slope steepened we decided it was time to put crampons on. Unfortunately, Justin decided it was also time to drop a Nalgene bottle and his climbing helmet.
After this mishap Guff and I pressed on and Justin waited for someone else to bring his helmet back up. As we passed people going up we asked them when and where they had started, the answers got earlier and earlier with the majority of people starting from Horse Camp between 2 am and 11:30 pm. We climbed up through the Red Banks (12,500 feet) just after sunrise. There was a cloud layer covering the valley and the reflected colors as the sun rose were pretty phenomenal. On Shasta once you get past the Red Banks you change directions and proceed up “Misery Hill” over a series of false summits before you get to the final relatively flat stretch before the summit. Guff and I weren’t feeling so miserable, but other people were definitely feeling the effects of altitude.
We charged up with another small group and summited around 9 am. It was remarkably warm and calm on the summit so we took advantage of that and hung out for a half hour while we snapped some pictures and I changed into the snowboarding gear I had lugged up the hill.
On my way down a hundred feet or so from the summit I saw Justin coming up. He made really good time considering how long he had to wait for his helmet. I told him I would wait for him at the top of Misery Hill and continued snowboarding down. Now I needed to wait for the snow to soften up to be able to have a fun ride down, and I wanted to walk down the top part of Misery Hill because there was not a lot of snow cover over some sharp rocks, so I really didn’t mind waiting for Justin. In fact, I decided this would be a nice spot for a nap, so I laid out my snowboard and napped in the sun at 13,500 feet for about an hour while I waited for him. Best nap of my life.
Once he got back down to me we continued back down Misery Hill until I got to the point where I felt comfortable with the rockiness. The snow was still really firm so I powerslid (the high-speed equivalent of sideslipping) down through the rest of the sketchy parts. At this point I traversed right, over to the top of “The Heart”. I however missed the headwall by about 20 feet and really didn’t feel like hiking back up over some exposed rock ridges in snowboard boots without crampons. The only other option was to drop into one of the chutes in the Red Banks. Let’s just say I feel much more comfortable on sketchy terrain with a snowboard on, than carrying a snowboard. I bombed through the top chute in the Red Banks and flew out into the open bowl named “The Heart”. The snow was just soft enough that I could hold an edge but otherwise was very unpleasant to ride on. I sliced a few huge arching turns down through the heart, narrowly avoiding rocks several times. The bowl was pretty moderately pitched (~30 degrees) with not much in the way of danger below it so I flew down – loosing control a couple times and sliding out before I could get an edge to dig back in. As I got back down towards Helen Lake the snow started to soften up more and became reasonably fun.
I got back down to camp in about 5 minutes just in time to see Guff taking a nap in the tent, naked, with the tent doors open. Interesting. We hung out in the sauna that was Helen Lake for about an hour while we waited for Justin to get down. The clouds were rolling in and out of the basin that Helen Lake sits in and with the sun baking the clouds it was 70 or 80 degrees with 100% humidity, completely unpleasant.
When Justin got down to camp we packed up the tents and loaded as much as possible onto my backpack because I was snowboarding down and didn’t need to carry it for as long. I took off and bombed down towards Horse Camp. As I got farther down the snow quality rapidly deteriorated. By the time I got to horse camp I was exhausted from trying to shred the foot deep boot holes and suncups. But the whole trip, which took us 4 hours to get up, took 6 minutes to get down. I hung out at horse camp for a few minutes and asked the caretaker what the best route down on a snowboard was. She said there was a gully that usually held snow pretty well but she hadn’t been over there in a few weeks and had no idea how it was holding up. I traversed over there and was pleasantly surprised how much snow there was. It got progressively sketchier for the next couple miles until it was just not worth it to try and snowboard anymore. I unstrapped and made my way back to the main trail. A quarter-mile later I was back in the parking lot. I hung out in the parking lot for an hour or so until Wagner and Guff got back down. We packed up the car and headed back to Corvallis.
We stopped in the bustling metropolis of Mount Shasta City to do some laundry, get dinner, buy some groceries, and for Justin and Guff to waste 40 dollars each renting snowshoes that wouldn’t make it more than ¼ mile from the trailhead. It should also be noted that they played around with the idea of renting avalanche beacons because there had been 4 inches of snow a few days previous. Needless to say, I am glad for their wallets sake that they forgot those.
We made our way up to the trailhead and after a few beers and some spirited intellectual discussion we setup camp. When we arrived around 10 pm we saw some guy sleeping on the ground next to his car. We think he started hiking around 1 and by the time we woke up and started to break down camp in the morning he was on his way back to his car, having hiked all the way up and skied back down before 10 am. We felt lame.
We started hiking from the Bunny Flat Trailhead (~ 7,600 feet) around noon, with the goal being to make it to Helen Lake (at 10,500 feet) in time to setup camp and make dinner before it got dark. About a quarter of a mile past the trailhead, Guff asked some people coming down if the snowshoes were necessary. They assured him that he would not need them and he ran them back down to the car while Justin and I proceeded.
We stopped at Horse Camp, a Sierra Club lodge (at 8,500 feet) momentarily to let Guff catch up. While we were there we talked to the caretaker who said that someone up higher had fallen and they were trying to get a helicopter in to airlift them out. It was super windy on Sunday and it took them four tries to get the helicopter low enough to drop a hoist that the rangers could get the injured person in. After talking to more people coming down we found out that he had been glissading with his crampons on, his crampons caught the snow, and he compound fractured his tibia and fibula (11,500 feet). The ranger had to get him down to Helen Lake where the helicopter would more easily be able to swoop in to pick him up.
We slogged up the next 2000 feet through intermittent fog. It made the hike really drag on because there was absolutely no sense of progress. Finally around 10,000 feet we broke out of the fog and could finally see where we were headed. We met the ranger who had helped the injured party earlier; he was cruising down and proclaimed it “Miller Time”. He also mentioned to be sure to anchor our tents well, explaining that the previous night several tents had been blown off the mountain.
We arrived at Helen Lake by mid afternoon and tried to find the most suitable spot to make camp. Part of the beauty of snow camping is that you can make whatever you need. In this case, the night before tons of people had dug shelters into the snow wall below Helen Lake and we were more than happy to take over an abandoned one. Of course because we had great shelter there wasn’t a breath of wind. There were four other tents up there Sunday night. Two of them were not attempting the summit the next day and two were.
We built a snow kitchen, cooked dinner, and were asleep by 9 pm. We woke at 3 am to start our summit attempt. The moon was up and we had a great view through the night down the mountain and into the nothingness that surrounds Shasta. We made good progress up for the first 1000 vertical feet without crampons. When the slope steepened we decided it was time to put crampons on. Unfortunately, Justin decided it was also time to drop a Nalgene bottle and his climbing helmet.
After this mishap Guff and I pressed on and Justin waited for someone else to bring his helmet back up. As we passed people going up we asked them when and where they had started, the answers got earlier and earlier with the majority of people starting from Horse Camp between 2 am and 11:30 pm. We climbed up through the Red Banks (12,500 feet) just after sunrise. There was a cloud layer covering the valley and the reflected colors as the sun rose were pretty phenomenal. On Shasta once you get past the Red Banks you change directions and proceed up “Misery Hill” over a series of false summits before you get to the final relatively flat stretch before the summit. Guff and I weren’t feeling so miserable, but other people were definitely feeling the effects of altitude.
We charged up with another small group and summited around 9 am. It was remarkably warm and calm on the summit so we took advantage of that and hung out for a half hour while we snapped some pictures and I changed into the snowboarding gear I had lugged up the hill.
On my way down a hundred feet or so from the summit I saw Justin coming up. He made really good time considering how long he had to wait for his helmet. I told him I would wait for him at the top of Misery Hill and continued snowboarding down. Now I needed to wait for the snow to soften up to be able to have a fun ride down, and I wanted to walk down the top part of Misery Hill because there was not a lot of snow cover over some sharp rocks, so I really didn’t mind waiting for Justin. In fact, I decided this would be a nice spot for a nap, so I laid out my snowboard and napped in the sun at 13,500 feet for about an hour while I waited for him. Best nap of my life.
Once he got back down to me we continued back down Misery Hill until I got to the point where I felt comfortable with the rockiness. The snow was still really firm so I powerslid (the high-speed equivalent of sideslipping) down through the rest of the sketchy parts. At this point I traversed right, over to the top of “The Heart”. I however missed the headwall by about 20 feet and really didn’t feel like hiking back up over some exposed rock ridges in snowboard boots without crampons. The only other option was to drop into one of the chutes in the Red Banks. Let’s just say I feel much more comfortable on sketchy terrain with a snowboard on, than carrying a snowboard. I bombed through the top chute in the Red Banks and flew out into the open bowl named “The Heart”. The snow was just soft enough that I could hold an edge but otherwise was very unpleasant to ride on. I sliced a few huge arching turns down through the heart, narrowly avoiding rocks several times. The bowl was pretty moderately pitched (~30 degrees) with not much in the way of danger below it so I flew down – loosing control a couple times and sliding out before I could get an edge to dig back in. As I got back down towards Helen Lake the snow started to soften up more and became reasonably fun.
I got back down to camp in about 5 minutes just in time to see Guff taking a nap in the tent, naked, with the tent doors open. Interesting. We hung out in the sauna that was Helen Lake for about an hour while we waited for Justin to get down. The clouds were rolling in and out of the basin that Helen Lake sits in and with the sun baking the clouds it was 70 or 80 degrees with 100% humidity, completely unpleasant.
When Justin got down to camp we packed up the tents and loaded as much as possible onto my backpack because I was snowboarding down and didn’t need to carry it for as long. I took off and bombed down towards Horse Camp. As I got farther down the snow quality rapidly deteriorated. By the time I got to horse camp I was exhausted from trying to shred the foot deep boot holes and suncups. But the whole trip, which took us 4 hours to get up, took 6 minutes to get down. I hung out at horse camp for a few minutes and asked the caretaker what the best route down on a snowboard was. She said there was a gully that usually held snow pretty well but she hadn’t been over there in a few weeks and had no idea how it was holding up. I traversed over there and was pleasantly surprised how much snow there was. It got progressively sketchier for the next couple miles until it was just not worth it to try and snowboard anymore. I unstrapped and made my way back to the main trail. A quarter-mile later I was back in the parking lot. I hung out in the parking lot for an hour or so until Wagner and Guff got back down. We packed up the car and headed back to Corvallis.
Yosemite
Yosemite Trip Report
There really isn’t a whole lot you can say that does justice to the scale of everything at Yosemite. Even the hundreds of pictures I posted don’t really capture the enormity of everything. So presumably if you are reading this you fall into one of two categories: you have or have not been there. If you have you understand what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you should go.
The day before I left Corvallis I got an issue of Backpacker magazine, and skimming through it quickly one article caught my eye. It described a “secret” trail at Yosemite, one that hasn’t been on maps for some 20+ years. I sort of felt guilty using a trail that was formerly only known to locals (until some guy’s trip report blew it up) on my first visit of my adult life to the park. I realized though that as far as this trail went, the cat was out of the bag (so to speak) and I wasn’t the one who published it, and even if I didn’t take advantage of it hundreds of other people would.
We got to Yosemite Monday night and did the typical tourist crap, stopping every 50 feet to take pictures and gape at the walls, cliffs, waterfalls, and other tourists. We finally got into the Valley around 7 pm and cruised over to the Visitors Center. As soon as we walked in you could see the sign with the status for all campgrounds – they all read “full” or “closed”. Lame. We spoke with the ranger at the desk and she said the closest place we would be able to camp was the town of El Portal, which was back outside the park and about 30 miles away. Fortunately for us, El Portal is the home of the “most expensive gas station in the country”, and not just the continental US. We paid our 3.35/gal because we had very few other options and moved on to our campground. The two campgrounds that the ranger told us about were both full, bear in mind this was a weekday night before the peak season. The people at the second campground mentioned that there was an overflow campground farther down the road. This “campground” was actually a day use area, but we still had the privilege of paying $20 to camp there.
It turns out that there is a backpacker campground in the valley, which is a relatively closely guarded secret. You can only camp there the day before or day after your wilderness permit. But, it is $5 per night. If we had known this, and gotten into the Valley early enough to get a wilderness permit that night, we could have saved an hour of driving, $20 of gas, and $15 in camping fees. Live and learn, and then get loves.
We got our permit and bear canister, and only sort of got laughed at for wanting to do the trail that was in Backpacker. We parked in the main trailhead parking lot and had to take a shuttle over to our trailhead. For some reason packing always seems to be a huge fiasco, and ultimately we end up with 50% more gear than we need. We took the main park shuttle, transferred to the El Capitan shuttle, and then walked the last mile to our trailhead. It isn’t so much a trailhead as finding an old abandoned road from a small network of other service roads.
The “secret” trail we were going to take was the aptly named OBOFRT (Old Big Oak Flat Road Trail). It was the original road into the Valley, no longer in use mainly because it was built directly in the path of a set of very active rockslides. The road definitely felt more like a secret trail than the parks other main trails. It was really nice to walk out of the valley on a road grade as opposed to a trail with endless switchbacks climbing straight up a wall. The views as we got slightly off the Valley floor were great, and it was kind of fun to hike on this historic, mostly long forgotten, old road, with its pavement still intact in places.
That night brought us to Cascade Creek. There were a couple prime campsites, both of which were taken. So we spent an hour or so looking for anywhere that had a few square feet of flat ground. Eventually we hiked up the trail a little farther and over another smaller stream and found a nice campsite set farther back off the main trail.
The next day we hiked farther up the north rim of the valley towards El Cap. Justin thought it might be a good idea to hike as quickly as possible for a little to “get his heart rate up”, thinking we could just cruise the rest of the day and build some semblance of fitness. Unfortunately, instead of leveling out like he was expecting, it kept up a pretty good grade for the next 3 miles. So the strategy totally backfired and he was toast after the first 30 minutes of hiking in the morning.
We finally leveled out and started to get some views as we worked closer to the rim. We stopped to have lunch near Ribbon Stream, where, while I was filtering water, another pair of hikers passed us and said there was a bear about 50 feet up the trail from where we were making lunch. That was the closest we got the entire trip to seeing a bear.
After lunch we headed across towards El Cap, making one brief excursion towards the brink of Ribbon Falls to take some pictures. An interesting decision on my part found me on the wrong side of Ribbon Stream with no easy way to get back. I walked back up the stream looking for an easy place to cross, but there was none. After maybe 20 minutes of searching I took off my shoes and socks and waded through a slower part of the stream.
We finally made it up to the top of El Cap where the views were, as was to be expected, ridiculous. You really don’t get a feeling for how huge a rock formation it is until you are standing on top of it. We snapped some pictures and headed on. The next destination was Eagle Peak.
By the time we were at the junction for the spur trail up Eagle Peak we were pretty tired and had already covered almost 10 miles so the prospect of hiking up 400 additional feet didn’t sound too appealing. When we got up there we felt immediately justified. The views from Eagle Peak were hands down the most incredible I have ever seen. Even a sixteen-picture panorama doesn’t do it justice. It is impossible to capture enough of the view in one shot for it to make sense. We had a completely unobstructed view up the valley towards Half Dome and the John Muir Wilderness, and the only thing blocking our view out of the valley was the hulking mass of El Cap to the West. The entire valley floor played out below us and we could see the other tourists lining up at the viewpoints. The most appropriate way to describe it is the way Justin phrased it: “it’s so beautiful that it hurts”.
We cruised back down to the trail and on towards our camp. The only problem was finding a camp. All we were going by for where to camp this night was “by the river” from the trip report in Backpacker. We had no idea what side, or how far up or down. I walked all the way down to the top of the Yosemite Falls trail before I realized how far I had gone and that we needed to be almost a mile upstream from there to be out of the no camping zone.
While at the top of the Yosemite Falls trail I ran into a guy in sweatpants and a t-shirt who looked a little lost. By this time it was 7:30 and he asked me if I thought he would be able to make it back to the trailhead by dark. I knew it was about 3 miles down to the Valley, but had no idea how long that would take and he had about an hour before dark. He pointed out that he didn’t have a flashlight, but he did have a glow stick… I presume he didn’t die because we didn’t hear anything about it in the news.
After more exploration we found a campsite on the West side of Yosemite Creek, on a small perch a couple hundred feet or so from the river. The spot was just big enough for our tent, and if we dropped anything it was going for a ride down the hill towards the river.
That night it started pouring on us during our water filtration/dish washing efforts after dinner. Only to clear up as soon as we got everything put away and were in the tent for the night.
The next day we ventured up to Yosemite Point, which was a relative let-down after Eagle Peak. On the way back down we stopped at the Yosemite Falls overlook and took the obligatory tourist photos. After we’d had our fill we headed back down the Yosemite Falls Trail into the valley. The funny thing we noticed was that the tourists that made it up to the top of the falls were 5:1 foreigners to US citizens. We hypothesize that this is because it is actually a hard hike up and that Americans are all too lazy to make the trek when there are so many nice places they can drive.
The hike down was not one I would want to make in the dark – the trail was obvious and well worn, but it was steep and parts of it were wet with spray from the waterfall. It took us 2+ hours – I can only imagine how dark it was when Mr. Sweatsuit made it down.
Once we got down, we hopped a shuttle back to our car and started trying to unpack. We were eligible to stay at the backpacker campground so we quickly made our way over there and set up our tents.
That night we drove up towards Glacier Point and watched the Sunset from Sentinel Dome, one of the only places in the park that has a full 360 degree view. Unfortunately, due to a timing snafu, we got there a few minutes after sunset… but still had a great view of the alpenglow on the mountains of the John Muir Wilderness. After that we drove over to Glacier Point and spent three hours trying to take some long exposures… without a tripod.
That pretty much wrapped up our trip. That night the snow level dropped to about 1000 feet above the valley floor and we had to cancel our plans to check out Toulumne Meadows because the road was closed. We made our way up to Sacramento to watch the IRA’s and then up to Shasta, but that’s a different trip report.
There really isn’t a whole lot you can say that does justice to the scale of everything at Yosemite. Even the hundreds of pictures I posted don’t really capture the enormity of everything. So presumably if you are reading this you fall into one of two categories: you have or have not been there. If you have you understand what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you should go.
The day before I left Corvallis I got an issue of Backpacker magazine, and skimming through it quickly one article caught my eye. It described a “secret” trail at Yosemite, one that hasn’t been on maps for some 20+ years. I sort of felt guilty using a trail that was formerly only known to locals (until some guy’s trip report blew it up) on my first visit of my adult life to the park. I realized though that as far as this trail went, the cat was out of the bag (so to speak) and I wasn’t the one who published it, and even if I didn’t take advantage of it hundreds of other people would.
We got to Yosemite Monday night and did the typical tourist crap, stopping every 50 feet to take pictures and gape at the walls, cliffs, waterfalls, and other tourists. We finally got into the Valley around 7 pm and cruised over to the Visitors Center. As soon as we walked in you could see the sign with the status for all campgrounds – they all read “full” or “closed”. Lame. We spoke with the ranger at the desk and she said the closest place we would be able to camp was the town of El Portal, which was back outside the park and about 30 miles away. Fortunately for us, El Portal is the home of the “most expensive gas station in the country”, and not just the continental US. We paid our 3.35/gal because we had very few other options and moved on to our campground. The two campgrounds that the ranger told us about were both full, bear in mind this was a weekday night before the peak season. The people at the second campground mentioned that there was an overflow campground farther down the road. This “campground” was actually a day use area, but we still had the privilege of paying $20 to camp there.
It turns out that there is a backpacker campground in the valley, which is a relatively closely guarded secret. You can only camp there the day before or day after your wilderness permit. But, it is $5 per night. If we had known this, and gotten into the Valley early enough to get a wilderness permit that night, we could have saved an hour of driving, $20 of gas, and $15 in camping fees. Live and learn, and then get loves.
We got our permit and bear canister, and only sort of got laughed at for wanting to do the trail that was in Backpacker. We parked in the main trailhead parking lot and had to take a shuttle over to our trailhead. For some reason packing always seems to be a huge fiasco, and ultimately we end up with 50% more gear than we need. We took the main park shuttle, transferred to the El Capitan shuttle, and then walked the last mile to our trailhead. It isn’t so much a trailhead as finding an old abandoned road from a small network of other service roads.
The “secret” trail we were going to take was the aptly named OBOFRT (Old Big Oak Flat Road Trail). It was the original road into the Valley, no longer in use mainly because it was built directly in the path of a set of very active rockslides. The road definitely felt more like a secret trail than the parks other main trails. It was really nice to walk out of the valley on a road grade as opposed to a trail with endless switchbacks climbing straight up a wall. The views as we got slightly off the Valley floor were great, and it was kind of fun to hike on this historic, mostly long forgotten, old road, with its pavement still intact in places.
That night brought us to Cascade Creek. There were a couple prime campsites, both of which were taken. So we spent an hour or so looking for anywhere that had a few square feet of flat ground. Eventually we hiked up the trail a little farther and over another smaller stream and found a nice campsite set farther back off the main trail.
The next day we hiked farther up the north rim of the valley towards El Cap. Justin thought it might be a good idea to hike as quickly as possible for a little to “get his heart rate up”, thinking we could just cruise the rest of the day and build some semblance of fitness. Unfortunately, instead of leveling out like he was expecting, it kept up a pretty good grade for the next 3 miles. So the strategy totally backfired and he was toast after the first 30 minutes of hiking in the morning.
We finally leveled out and started to get some views as we worked closer to the rim. We stopped to have lunch near Ribbon Stream, where, while I was filtering water, another pair of hikers passed us and said there was a bear about 50 feet up the trail from where we were making lunch. That was the closest we got the entire trip to seeing a bear.
After lunch we headed across towards El Cap, making one brief excursion towards the brink of Ribbon Falls to take some pictures. An interesting decision on my part found me on the wrong side of Ribbon Stream with no easy way to get back. I walked back up the stream looking for an easy place to cross, but there was none. After maybe 20 minutes of searching I took off my shoes and socks and waded through a slower part of the stream.
We finally made it up to the top of El Cap where the views were, as was to be expected, ridiculous. You really don’t get a feeling for how huge a rock formation it is until you are standing on top of it. We snapped some pictures and headed on. The next destination was Eagle Peak.
By the time we were at the junction for the spur trail up Eagle Peak we were pretty tired and had already covered almost 10 miles so the prospect of hiking up 400 additional feet didn’t sound too appealing. When we got up there we felt immediately justified. The views from Eagle Peak were hands down the most incredible I have ever seen. Even a sixteen-picture panorama doesn’t do it justice. It is impossible to capture enough of the view in one shot for it to make sense. We had a completely unobstructed view up the valley towards Half Dome and the John Muir Wilderness, and the only thing blocking our view out of the valley was the hulking mass of El Cap to the West. The entire valley floor played out below us and we could see the other tourists lining up at the viewpoints. The most appropriate way to describe it is the way Justin phrased it: “it’s so beautiful that it hurts”.
We cruised back down to the trail and on towards our camp. The only problem was finding a camp. All we were going by for where to camp this night was “by the river” from the trip report in Backpacker. We had no idea what side, or how far up or down. I walked all the way down to the top of the Yosemite Falls trail before I realized how far I had gone and that we needed to be almost a mile upstream from there to be out of the no camping zone.
While at the top of the Yosemite Falls trail I ran into a guy in sweatpants and a t-shirt who looked a little lost. By this time it was 7:30 and he asked me if I thought he would be able to make it back to the trailhead by dark. I knew it was about 3 miles down to the Valley, but had no idea how long that would take and he had about an hour before dark. He pointed out that he didn’t have a flashlight, but he did have a glow stick… I presume he didn’t die because we didn’t hear anything about it in the news.
After more exploration we found a campsite on the West side of Yosemite Creek, on a small perch a couple hundred feet or so from the river. The spot was just big enough for our tent, and if we dropped anything it was going for a ride down the hill towards the river.
That night it started pouring on us during our water filtration/dish washing efforts after dinner. Only to clear up as soon as we got everything put away and were in the tent for the night.
The next day we ventured up to Yosemite Point, which was a relative let-down after Eagle Peak. On the way back down we stopped at the Yosemite Falls overlook and took the obligatory tourist photos. After we’d had our fill we headed back down the Yosemite Falls Trail into the valley. The funny thing we noticed was that the tourists that made it up to the top of the falls were 5:1 foreigners to US citizens. We hypothesize that this is because it is actually a hard hike up and that Americans are all too lazy to make the trek when there are so many nice places they can drive.
The hike down was not one I would want to make in the dark – the trail was obvious and well worn, but it was steep and parts of it were wet with spray from the waterfall. It took us 2+ hours – I can only imagine how dark it was when Mr. Sweatsuit made it down.
Once we got down, we hopped a shuttle back to our car and started trying to unpack. We were eligible to stay at the backpacker campground so we quickly made our way over there and set up our tents.
That night we drove up towards Glacier Point and watched the Sunset from Sentinel Dome, one of the only places in the park that has a full 360 degree view. Unfortunately, due to a timing snafu, we got there a few minutes after sunset… but still had a great view of the alpenglow on the mountains of the John Muir Wilderness. After that we drove over to Glacier Point and spent three hours trying to take some long exposures… without a tripod.
That pretty much wrapped up our trip. That night the snow level dropped to about 1000 feet above the valley floor and we had to cancel our plans to check out Toulumne Meadows because the road was closed. We made our way up to Sacramento to watch the IRA’s and then up to Shasta, but that’s a different trip report.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Yampa River Trip Pictures
Here is the link to the Yampa Trip pictures. I am going to be signing up for a Flickr account soon so I will have them all in full quality.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199713&id=19700119&l=13f0111415
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199713&id=19700119&l=13f0111415
Colorado Update
We got back from the Yampa trip a few days ago. Spent a day in Carbondale at my aunts house, and two night at my grandpas outside Golden. We're leaving at 6 am tomorrow to go over to Rocky Mountain National Park for five nights. We're going to do a 3 day backpack, a single day assault of a more technical peak, and then a 2 day climb of Longs Peak. We'll be back here next Thursday. Val should be posting the Yosemite and Shasta trip reports soon. Yampa pictures coming soon (read: immediately)
Thursday, June 25, 2009
We had quite the adventure yesterday trying to drive to the campground. The directions google gave us lead us down a county road and then onto an unimproved/unmaintained road down Calico Draw... We got stuck 4 times and had to do some fancy pushing/digging/praying to get out. When we finally got to the end it was gated and we had to take the gate off its hinges to get by. All in all it took us an extra hour and a half but was an awesome adventure. Were launching today and will be on the river for 5 days. I may have service and may update from there, we'll see.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Sawtooth Photo Album
Here's a link to the Facebook album as per usual: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2198312&id=19700119&l=1e71323b84
Panos and trip report will be up in a week after we get back from rafting.
Until then here's a video preview:
Nighty night,
George
Panos and trip report will be up in a week after we get back from rafting.
Until then here's a video preview:
Nighty night,
George
Updates
Hey All,
Just finished writing the Yosemite trip report, it's a doozy. Val is kind enough to edit it for me and save you from reading 2000 words of unintelligible garbage. The Shasta trip report will be shorter... Anyways we are about to take off for a week to raft the Yampa river and unfortunately I won't be able to get anything online until after then. However, look for a million updates right after that. Here's my IOU: 4 trip reports (Yosemite, Shasta, Sawtooths, Yampa), 2 sets of images and panos (Yampa, and the Sawtooths which are actually coming up right after this post!)
In other notes: I got a new camera and it takes magnificent pictures. So get excited...
Love,
George
Just finished writing the Yosemite trip report, it's a doozy. Val is kind enough to edit it for me and save you from reading 2000 words of unintelligible garbage. The Shasta trip report will be shorter... Anyways we are about to take off for a week to raft the Yampa river and unfortunately I won't be able to get anything online until after then. However, look for a million updates right after that. Here's my IOU: 4 trip reports (Yosemite, Shasta, Sawtooths, Yampa), 2 sets of images and panos (Yampa, and the Sawtooths which are actually coming up right after this post!)
In other notes: I got a new camera and it takes magnificent pictures. So get excited...
Love,
George
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Shasta Album and Panos
Shasta Photo Album here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2195613&id=19700119&l=0dd06d36f6
Red Bluffs and The Heart from Helen Lake
Casaval Ridge from Helen Lake
View from Helen Lake
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2195613&id=19700119&l=0dd06d36f6
Red Bluffs and The Heart from Helen Lake
Casaval Ridge from Helen Lake
View from Helen LakeTuesday, June 9, 2009
Mount Hood Trip Report
Let’s try this again… Trying to plan this trip presented two distinct obstacles: timing it appropriately so that we have safe conditions on the hike up and good conditions to snowboard down. Since my first experience on Hood had been during the icefall disaster weekend I was expecting the conditions to be along those lines and thought that we would need to primarily plan around safety and then just somehow figure out how to time the descent for the best conditions. My immediate thought: four-hour summit nap.
The more I read and the more I talked to people however, the more it became apparent that the conditions two weeks ago were the exception and not the norm. From various people’s accounts those were as bad icefall conditions as they had ever seen. I asked about timing for a ski or snowboard descent, and how to time it to be safe on the way up and fun on the way down and the response was overwhelmingly, plan it completely around the descent and the conditions will be fine.
Now the “standard” thinking on Hood, is that to have a “safe” ascent you start around 1 am, summit at sunrise, and descend through the crater by the time the sun has started to hit it and soften things up. Now I am all about safety, and more importantly not getting killed, but one thing I have noticed from my time interacting with the climbing community is that a lot of people (or at least a very vocal minority) are overly insistent about safety measures. In this case about the fact that you must start hiking by 1 am to have a safe ascent of Mt. Hood. However, the most important thing on Hood, and - really almost everywhere - is to accurately judge the conditions on your own or from others’ reports and be smart about what you are doing. With this in mind we decided to make a summit attempt about 6 hours after conventional wisdom would dictate.
We left Corvallis around 3 am, about 45 minutes later than we had planned. Our original plan had been to start hiking around 5 am, summit by 9, and to be back at the lodge by noon. If this went according to plan I was going to snowboard for the afternoon and then head back to Portland to have Val switch the car with James and meet up with my mom for the afternoon in Portland with my cousin.
We arrived at the mountain at 5:30 just as the sun was starting to rise. I did a quick count of the people up on the hill already and lost track between 50 and 60. We started to pack our stuff and quickly decided on a new plan. I had a season pass to Timberline and at 8:00 the lifts would open and save me 2 hours of hiking. James had no desire however to pay $52 dollars for a lift ticket just to ride the lift up once. After a brief nap, at 7:00 am, James started hiking up the traditional route. We had decided to consolidate our stuff into one backpack, which I would take up the lift with me at 8:00 and then carry with my snowboard attached to the Summit.
The plan worked beautifully and I met James at the top of the Palmer lift (8600 feet) at 8:40 am. James was feeling good from being able to hike with no pack, and I was feeling good from an extra few hours of sleep and not hiking for 2 hours. While we were on track to be at the summit a few hours late the snow was still firm enough that hiking was easy, and as we talked to people coming down almost everyone said there was no appreciable rock or icefall.
We moved pretty quickly up to the hogsback where we took a break to have some food and reapply sunscreen. There were a few parties on their way back down and a few more hanging out on the hogsback waiting to go up. Most of the people headed up at this point in the day were either skinning up or had skis on their packs. There was a dad with two kids, decked out with bike helmets, jeans, and old school leather strap crampons. The kids were a strange mix of excited and terrified, mostly terrified.
We traversed across the bottom of the crater, as has been the popular route since the crazy icefall a few weeks ago. This new route takes you right up and over some really active volcanic vents, pumping sulfur filled air into your already oxygen deprived lungs. Once you get back on snow it is a moderate snow climb up to the summit ridge. The most popular route heading left through the widest area of the Old Chute, avoids the looming seracs as much as possible. The top few hundred vertical feet of this route is literally a set of stairs kicked into the snow, evenly spaced, about a foot deep and a foot tall and 5 feet wide. We found this kind of curious and sprinted up the last couple hundred feet of these stairs singing the rocky theme song. Only to be gasping for air at 11,000 feet once we got to the ridge.
The Old Chute presents a much more exposed traverse than the Pearly Gates route did. The Pearly Gates route essentially dropped you off right below the summit with only a mellow snow climb between you and the top. The Old Chute tops out a couple tenths of a mile from the summit with one stretch where the ridge is maybe two feet wide where a fall to either side would end very poorly.
We cruised over to the summit and snapped some awesome mandatory summit pictures. We had the summit to ourselves for a few minutes (one of the benefits of climbing later in the day) before a couple other people got up there. There was a pair of guys, one of whom had just summited for the 107th time. (He is actually writing a book about all of the ski lines on Mount Hood.) We talked with them for a while and they said I could tag along with them over to where they were going to ski down. As you can imagine skiing down a staircase wouldn’t be much fun, so they were going to traverse farther west before dropping into a different headwall.
We hung out for about 30 minutes on top before we headed back down. James via the route we came up, and I via the West Crater headwall. I was the first of our group of four skiers to drop in and swept a handful of a adrenalin filled turns before traversing over to the hogsback and making a giant surf slash right above some cute German girls and meeting back up with James.
The snow everywhere had softened up well at this point. I cruised back down to Palmer spraying everyone I could get near, including a helpless James who was flying down the glissade chutes on his pool float. The only real excitement was sinking in, catching my front edge and slicing my finger on some ice once partway down.
By the time we got back down to Palmer, James was beat. And justifiably so, he had hiked 2500 extra vertical feet, and had to down climb much of what I had been able to snowboard, all this on top of being slightly sick and not sleeping at all the night before. He asked the ski patrol guys if he could download on Palmer and he explained that he felt ill and might have mild altitude sickness. They replied that he would have to be really sick to get a ride down.
Our next genius plan was for me to snowboard down giving James a piggyback ride. This was mildly effective… We could go for a couple hundred feet before I couldn’t hold him anymore and had to take a break. We did this 5 or 6 times, the last time culminating in me catching my front edge and face planting with James riding on my back. Shortly after that we abandoned the idea, it was actually a miracle that we didn’t get hurt from that fall. Although it would have been ironic for the ski patrol to tell James he couldn’t ride down only to have to rescue two people later because they wouldn’t let him ride down.
We made it down to the top of the Magic Mile lift, where James asked again if he could ride down and he was greeted with the same reply, even though they do allow downloading on the Magic Mile... At this point I took the backpack back from James and cruised down to the lodge and tried to get some water and food for James because he was feeling really bad at this point. Only to have all of the food service in the lodge closed for the day, and only able to afford one $2.75 16 ounce PowerAde from a machine.
James made it down a few minutes later and collapsed into the car. We headed back down to the Portland area and met up with my mom, cousin, and Val.
Mount Hood Photo Album and Panoramas
Check out the Facebook photo album here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2194682&id=19700119&l=179e66a19e
And the full quality panoramas here (as always click for full size image):
Crater Rock and the lower Hogsback from farther west in the crater
East of the Hogsback in the crater
Mount Saint Helens, Mount Rainier, and Mount Adams (left to right)
Climbing up the Old Chute
More expansive, but worse quality, picture of Crater Rock and the Hogsback
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2194682&id=19700119&l=179e66a19e
And the full quality panoramas here (as always click for full size image):
Crater Rock and the lower Hogsback from farther west in the craterEast of the Hogsback in the crater
Mount Saint Helens, Mount Rainier, and Mount Adams (left to right)
Climbing up the Old Chute
More expansive, but worse quality, picture of Crater Rock and the HogsbackTuesday, June 2, 2009
Were in Yosemite right now. About to take off on a three day 31 mile backpacking trip along the north rim of Yosemite Valley.
I have a trip report written for the Mount Hood trip but haven't had internet access and haven't been able to post it. Ill get that out when were in Sacramento for a couple days this weekend.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Mount Hood Part Deux
James and I will be attempting to climb the South Side/Old Chute route on Mount Hood again this Friday night/Saturday morning.
Then, Sunday, Justin and I are leaving for a 9 day trip down to California to Yosemite, IRA's, and Shasta.
In other news... www.conquerthewest.com go there. It's here. Awesome!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Middle Sister Trip Report
The plan for this trip has varied quite a bit from the beginning, and never really was super set in stone. That said, I don't think this was what we really anticipated...The original plan was to go up to the Olympics and spend a week making a 60 mile loop essentially expanding upon the trip we would take if we were just going to climb Olympus. We opted not to do that because the Olympics receive an outrageous amount of snow/rain and we decided to tack that section onto the end of our trip instead of trying to force it into the beginning. In hindsight not doing that was the smartest decision I have made in a while. Not because of weather, it likely would have been really nice up there, but because it turns out we are in no physical condition to embark on a 60 mile week long backpacking trip.
The most recent plan for this trip was tentatively to climb some combination of Middle Sister, North Sister, and Broken Top depending on the snow/weather conditions, our pace, and general comfort level with North Sister and Broken Top once we got up there. The only mountain we ended up even making an attempt on was Middle Sister.
We left Corvallis Wednesday afternoon and after a couple quick stops ended up at the Pole Creek Trailhead at around 11 pm. We set up Justin's tent and passed out. We ended up sleeping until 9 am, by my normal standards that is still the middle of the night, but usually camping or backpacking everything is shifted forward 3-5 hours. Getting packed took an insanely long time and we were ready to go at noon.Originally I wanted to make a snowboard descent of at least Middle Sister (and if we climbed it Broken Top), but there was no way I was going to carry boots and a board up in addition to everything else I had shoved in my pack. As the first trip that Justin and I took together we were bringing all kinds of redundant stuff to get a feel for what gear we liked, what we used, and what we hated. In addition to that I was carrying a rope and some pickets, hoping to review glacier travel and rope team basics with Justin at some point. Needless to say, in hindsight the snowboard would have been much more beneficial than the rope ended up being.
We took off on the trail into the Three Sisters Wilderness. There was very little snow at the trailhead and we really had no idea how long it was going to be until we got to consistent snow. I had neglected to bring any other footwear (in the car) besides snowboard boots, mountaineering boots, and flip flops so I opted for the flip flops to start the hike. I made it about two tenths of a mile and 7 snow patches before I gave up and switched to mountaineering boots. The trail was a total mess. The first mile or so was a maze of downed trees. The subsequent miles the trail was really indistinguishable because it was covered in snow and it was early enough in the season that there wasn't really a bootpack yet. We lost the trail a couple miles in and headed in what we believed to be the right direction. We were generally right about where we should be headed (towards the mountain), but didn't realize that going this way would actually take longer because it was a longer walk through the trees where we couldn't really be sure about where we were going without stopping and breaking out the map and GPS or compass. Our alternate route forced us to practically traverse to where the trail would have taken us to avoid ending up on the South ridge of North Sister.
Lesson 1: Trails exists where they are for a reason.
Justin was struggling with some combination of lack of fitness, lack of sleep, and abundance of altitude. This slowed our progress and we ended up camping at around 7250 feet on the Northern flank of the Hayden Glacier. We originally planned on climbing Middle Sister that afternoon and camping in the saddle between Middle and North Sister at around 9250 feet, that pretty much went out the window when we started hiking at noon. The tentative backup plan was to camp in that saddle but not summit anything until Friday. Obviously we were still a ways from even making that goal.
I can't complain about our campsite though. It ended up being much nicer than where we would have stayed if we had tried to get up to the saddle. We found a nice strip of bare ground mostly protected by a large boulder with perfect views of everything from Broken Top to North Sister. We setup camp, made dinner, and were asleep by 8:30 (before it was dark).
Lesson 2: Quesadillas are the quintessential backcountry food.
Friday morning we, again, slept way too late. We got up, ate a quick breakfast and packed our bags for a day trip up Middle Sister leaving the camp set up. 
We made a little better time than we had been making the previous day because the snow was still firm pretty much the entire way up. We traversed the ridge to the North of the Hayden Glacier all the way up to the saddle. Justin, still wasn't feeling great and we stopped at the saddle to make lunch and melt more snow for water before climbing the last pitch up the North ridge to the summit.
We made a little better time than we had been making the previous day because the snow was still firm pretty much the entire way up. We traversed the ridge to the North of the Hayden Glacier all the way up to the saddle. Justin, still wasn't feeling great and we stopped at the saddle to make lunch and melt more snow for water before climbing the last pitch up the North ridge to the summit.Lunch consisted, much like dinner last night, of quesadillas and the rare American variation of the quesadilla, the cheese and tortilla wrap. We melted enough water for me to refill my bottle and Diesel and I took off towards the summit. Justin opted for a nap in the sun.
The hike up the summit ridge wasn't so much technical or difficult as it was unwieldy. The slope was fairly steep, approaching 50+ degrees in places. But more importantly, it was a horrendous mix of snow types and consistencies. Within 5 feet you could run into softer new snow, hard wind-packed ice, soft spring snow, hard spring snow, and rhyme (ice). Even with 2 ice axes I felt off balance and uncertain exactly how the next step or plant of the ice axe would take.
By this point in my relationship with Diesel I have pretty much concluded that anything that I can climb (aside from technical rock) he can climb better. He is, however, very good at knowing what he can and can't do. Once we got off of the original slope onto the steeper portion of the ridge he found a warm rock to lie on and decided he had had enough. It took me 15 or so minutes to climb the steeper pitch while he waited at the bottom. Less than 30 seconds after I had crested the steeper part of the ridge and was out of his sight I saw him in a dead sprint up the hardest part of the climb towards me. It took him about 30 seconds to climb what had taken me 15 minutes.Lesson 3: Don't worry about Diesel so much
We climbed the rest of the way to the top past several false summits and were on top by 2:30 pm. Hung out on top for a little, took a few pictures, and headed back down. The climb down was fairly straightforward except for the one steeper section I mentioned earlier. Diesel seemed to enjoy sliding partway down, and definitely enjoyed chasing me as I glissaded down parts. We got back to the saddle by 3:00 and were pretty wiped out. While I was climbing Justin had been stockpiling water so we refilled the water bottles and packed back up to head down to the camp.At this point the heat and sun had really softened the snow. We were able to glissade about halfway down to the camp before it became impossibly soft. 
We got to camp and deliberated between staying there until the morning when the snow was firmer to hike out, and packing up and heading down now in the knee deep slush.
We got to camp and deliberated between staying there until the morning when the snow was firmer to hike out, and packing up and heading down now in the knee deep slush.Ultimately we decided to press on and we packed up our camp and headed out. Between our camp and the trees we were sinking in almost to our knees every step we took. Diesel, who is usually light on his feet, was even sinking up to his stomach. We didn't really have a great plan for descending, we knew we wanted to try and meet back up with the trail farther out than where we had left it, but we knew it would be hard to find the trail in its current state.
We cruised down to about 6500 feet and met up with a pair of ski tracks that were headed back in the general direction of the trail and ultimately the trailhead. We presumed these were from the pair that left right before us on Thursday with skis on their packs. Turns out those guys had climbed and skied down both Middle and South Sister, total trip mileage and elevation gain roughly doubling ours.
We were glad to have the ski tracks to follow, even though they took a slightly meandering path, simply because it took the thinking out of it, all we had to do was follow the ski tracks all the way back. And fresh ski tracks are a lot easier to follow than faint boot tracks from several freeze thaw cycles ago. Ultimately the ski tracks joined up with the climbers trail to North Sister and then back to the main trail. We did pass a party of 3 skinning up as we were coming down; looked like skis were the way to go this weekend...We got back to the parking lot around 9 pm after losing the trail a couple more times once we got out of the snow and couldn't follow ski tracks or bootpack. Once back at the trailhead we haphazardly threw everything in the car and took off towards the nearest supermarket in Sisters. Justin was not feeling good at all at this point so we made a pit stop for him at a pizza place in "downtown" Sisters. We had planned on going to climb Broken Top on Saturday but neither of us were really feeling up to it at this point and we headed back towards Corvallis. Unsure of how we were going to feel in the morning we stopped at the Snowpark by Hoodoo Ski Area and stayed the night there. Justin sleeping in the tent and Diesel and I opting for the car. We got up in the morning and neither of us really felt like having another big adventure (this coupled with the fact that Justin looked like he was wearing red mittens from neglecting to apply sunscreen to the backs of his hands, killed any remaining enthusiasm) so we headed back toward Corvallis.
Lesson 4: Sunscreen on the back of your hands
The trip was a success from a planning standpoint, we pinpointed a handful of things that we did and didn't really need to be carrying and have a better idea of how to pack for the rest of the summer. Our next trip down to California for 10 days will hopefully serve the same purpose as a lower scale testing trip for spending the entire summer living out of the car.
Follow (read: stalk) us on Loopt
I have added a Loopt widget to the bottom of the blog for your stalking pleasure. I'm not really sure how I feel about it right now because it doesn't really integrate with blogger well. I wish it could integrate into the sidebar because placing it in the top is too obstructive and at the bottom it is too obscure. I also reduced the number of posts per page to 3 (from 7) to keep the page size down and hopefully keep the Loopt widget more accessable at the bottom of the page.
Next Adventure: Mount Hood this Friday or Saturday night if I can find someone to go with me... After that Yosemite, IRA's, and Mount Shasta.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Middle Sister Images
Check out more pictures from the trip here:
And a few full quality panoramas (click the images for full quality version):
Broken Top, South Sister, and Middle Sister from our campsite
Broken Top and South Sister from 8500 feetNorth Sister from 9500 feet on Middle Sister
Broken Top and South Sister at sunsetThursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Middle Sister and Broken Top
We're leaving Corvallis tonight to head up to the Three Sisters Wilderness for a quick backpacking trip as a warm up for the rest of our trip.
Were driving (hopefully) to the Pole Creek Trailhead and camping there tonight. Climbing Middle Sister tomorrow and setting up camp in the saddle between North and Middle Sister. Attempting North Sister on Friday and heading back to the car. Driving to the trailhead for Broken Top and making another attempt at broken top on Saturday before heading back to Corvallis.
I'm going to be carrying a snowboard and hopefully make snowboard descents of Broken Top and Middle Sister. We'll update you with a full report once we get back Saturday night.
Were driving (hopefully) to the Pole Creek Trailhead and camping there tonight. Climbing Middle Sister tomorrow and setting up camp in the saddle between North and Middle Sister. Attempting North Sister on Friday and heading back to the car. Driving to the trailhead for Broken Top and making another attempt at broken top on Saturday before heading back to Corvallis.
I'm going to be carrying a snowboard and hopefully make snowboard descents of Broken Top and Middle Sister. We'll update you with a full report once we get back Saturday night.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Red Sox to Mount Hood - May 16-17
One of the longest 24 hour periods of my life. Woke up in Corvallis Saturday and drove up to Seattle with Evan to watch the Red Sox game at Safeco with him and James. Left right after the game and drove down to Timberline to climb Mt. Hood. Climbed all night/morning and drove back to Corvallis.
Totals:
10 hours of driving - we survived
4 hours of baseball - Red Sox victory
8 hours of hiking - no summit
2 out of 3 ain't bad.
We got up to Mount Hood later than we would have liked. Pulled into the parking lot around 2:30 am. Ideally we would have been hiking by 1 am or so but the game and drive back down took a little longer than we planned.
Packed our bags, put our gear on, filled out a permit, and started hiking by 3:15 am. It never got below freezing at the lodge and the snow all the way up to the lower portion of Palmer was pretty soft. Timberline grooms a hiker trail up the East side of the resort, which is helpful, and the snow was actually a pretty good consistency for hiking especially considering how warm it was.
The day before (Saturday) it had been in the low 70's at the mountain and even though it wasn't that cold most of the snow above the Palmer mid station had firmed up pretty well. The forecast was for similar temperatures on Sunday which, combined with the recent snow over the previous week was why it was so important to get an early start to avoid ice fall in the crater.
There were probably 50-60 other people already on the mountain by the time we started hiking at 3:15, you could see a small army of headlamps leading up the whole route.
The hike up to the top of Palmer was uneventful, just a long snow slog up a semi groomed track. The groomers were working full time to get the summer park built, which is conveniently located right next to the climbers trail, so we were bombarded with the pleasant aroma of diesel exhaust for the first hour or so. The other thing we found interesting/frustrating was being passed by a snow cat going full bore up the mountain with a couple of people with skis inside. It took what was a 2 hour hike for us and turned it into a 10 minute cruise for the lucky (read: lazy) people inside.We got to the top of Palmer right at Sunrise and took a couple minutes to rest and snap a few pictures. From there the route is more free form up towards Crater Rock. We passed a number of tents between the top of Palmer and Crater Rock, probably 6 groups of people had setup camps between 9,000 and 10,000 feet. We stopped around 9,500 feet to put crampons on and switch from poles to ice axes. This whole time we had been avoiding the suns advances and hiking into the diminishing shadows. We never actually saw the sun until we were almost to the hogsback, and it was almost perpetually sunny a few hundred feet below us.
After putting crampons on we passed several groups of people descending. Some had summited, probably a little more than half hadn't. At this point we started hearing stories of someone who had taken a fall on the traverse from the hogsback to the Old Chute and was being attended to by a doctor who happened to be up there at the right time.
The exact details are still unclear but I believe this man had either slipped, misstepped, or been hit by ice fall around 6 am while he was traversing over to the Old Chute. At this point the snow was very firm and he slid several hundred feet down into the "Devils Kitchen" section of the Crater. Most people believe that this route poses little danger aside from ice/rock fall because it isn't overwhelmingly steep and a fall is typically of little consequence. However at 6 am the snow was hard enough that this man was unable to self arrest and he actually suffered several broken bones and some damage to his face. The people who were trying to rescue/evacuate this climber were under constant barrage from ice fall because of the location where his fall took place was essentially a funnel for ice as it melted off the cliffs above.
We got to the bottom of the hogsback around 7 am. At this point it was pretty much out of the question to take the standard route up the hogsback and across the traverse to the Old Chute. This was for both courtesy and safety reasons. If people were traversing above the injured climber they ran the risk of either falling in the same place or generating ice fall above and taking out both the injured climber and his rescuers.The other option that some people were taking, was to traverse across the lower portion of the "Devils Kitchen" and then head straight up the Old Chute from the bottom of the crater. Hopefully staying low enough on the traverse to avoid ice fall and then heading up the center of the chute to avoid ice falling from the cliffs on either side. We even saw a pair of climbers ascending the western most face in the crater, a much steeper wall (approaching 50 degrees) but much wider and therefore less prone to ice fall.
We hung out at the bottom of the hogsback for about an hour and watched a few parties descend and several other parties weigh their options for ascending the Old Chute. While we were there several other groups decided against making a summit attempt and after watching ice fall increase dramatically as things warmed up with no end in site we decided to head back down.
I had carried a snowboard up, but had conveniently forgotten my snowboard boots in Corvalls, so I tried riding down in my mountaineering boots. Since we didn't summit, and were then ahead of schedule the snow down to the top of Palmer was still very very firm. Which, combined with the wrong boots made for some very uncomfortable snowboarding, and an almost complete inability to hold my heelside edge, or to initiate a turn in either direction. Most of the snow between Crater Rock and the top of Palmer was frozen post holes from people coming down in the heat of the day yesterday. Quite possibly the worst conditions I have ever snowboarded in.Once we got down to the ski area and the groomed area below Palmer it went much smoother. James had brought a inflatable pool toy and flew down from about 9000 feet to within a mile of the parking lot. Once it got too soft for him to keep any speed I tried pulling him for stretches, which was ultimately a lot funnier than it was successful.
We got back to the parking lot around 10:45 am and took off back towards Corvallis.
An eventful start to our summer activities for sure and hopefully not an omen of things to come.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Tentative Trip Itinerary
I have put together a couple ways to see our tentative trip itinerary. If you have any suggestions, or would
like to offer us a place to stay anywhere please let me know. We are still pretty flexible as to the specific
places we go, and if anyone has suggestions we would love to hear them.
Google Maps: http://bit.ly/jsnpV
Because google doesn't understand that I can drive over the pass in North Cascades National Park I had to
start and end my trip there instead of in Corvallis, which makes things less clear on the map. The trip
starts at Q and works backwards through the alphabet with each destination on the map being a place we
are spending time. Ultimately making a giant, disfigured, figure 8.
Google Calendar: http://bit.ly/aazz6
Each event in the calendar, from June 16 on, corresponds to a destination on the map. The dates for everything except the rafting trips and the rest of May are still tentative.
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