Live Vicariously

I've Moved!

2010-02-03T17:59:00.001-08:00

Please refer to www.alpinealison.com from now on.

Thanks!

Lakes Lakes and more Lakes

2009-09-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Who: Krista/Roomie (now from Alaska), Andreas, me
What: Lake Tallipus/Ollalie Lake
When: Monday, Sept 27th, 2009

Krista was up visiting on her layover from Vermont to Alaska. Since this was her vacation (and she had been to Seattle before, seeing "the sites") we decided to get out into the wilderness, while staying away from anything "hardcore."

As the guidebook claims, if we went on the Lake Tallipus hike, we would dance the laid-back switchback shuffle. [They were TOTALLY right].

Andreas, anxious to test out his new 70L First Ascent pack (another buy from Rainier Festival), packed in about 40lbs. I packed water and "summit treats" (chocolate chip oatmeal peanut butter cookies--yea, that's right).

It was a perfect hike. Not too many people (ok, it was a Monday), but it was definitely a great way to have a conversation without getting out of breath. We called the hike: mellow, peaceful/tranquil (no traffic sounds!), and other synonomous words.

Krista took some photos...

Alison designating Andreas as trail leader

Mushroom. Remember, red is most likely to be poisonous.

Lake Tallipus

We were able to climb over some of the fallen trees for an extra bit of excitement.

Krista was as amazed at the 'hairy trees' as I was when I first came to Washington. Turns out, this is actually totally the norm.

Lake Ollalie

Side Note: I had done this hike before, with VTAlan. Alan likes to walk ahead of people. I like to walk to the side. So whenever I would increase speed to be beside him, he would increase speed to be ahead. Before we knew it we were basically running up the hill and were breathing hard. It was a good laugh when we realized this.

This time we took a great slow pace and were able to comfortably pick on eachother the entire way.

Mailbox Peak

2009-09-26T15:17:00.000-07:00

Who: Me, myself and I
What: Mailbox Peak!
Where: Slightly north of Mt Si
When: Sat, Sept 26th, 2009

I was feeling bad about not getting out much lately. I guess I've been busy (paragliding weekend recently, some climbing) but I haven't been hiking in awhile. I wanted to try a new hike and happened upon Mailbox Peak.

The story isn't that exciting but the people I met were interesting. Here's a picture story.

This hike is steep as crap. Wow, why don't more people do this one as a training hike? It's like an exit past Mount Si and sooo much less croweded (oh wait, I mean, it's really crowded, you probably shouldn't bother going).

The hike is also way more "natural" feeling (some might say 'unkept' but these people don't count). Apparently they're planning on fixing it for there were 'caution' signs on a few tree's.

There were also many mushrooms along the way!

I was shooting pictures of this spider web when some hikers came down the trail. I showed them what I was shooting (it was above the trail, but high enough that nobody disturbed it). The hikers responded that they were surprised it hadn't eaten anybody yet.

I got "lost" a few times on some switchbacks. I would happily be going along when I'd realize the trail (surprisingly well marked--I've never seen so many markers on a WA trail) was a little to my left or right. Fortunately, going up the trail I didn't notice any traffic sounds (sadly, at the top, you could).

I think the real reason I got "lost" was because I'd be like "oh wow, a root ladder!" hike up it, to find the real trail to the side. Opps.

Walking up the trail I was in a cloud the entire way. It was great for a cool morning on a steep hike. It was so beautiful I had to restrain myself in taking photos (I wanted to take one every few steps).

All of a sudden I was out of the trees and above the clouds!

After another super steep half mile (of alpine meadows!) I reached the summit and two mailboxes greeted me!

Inside I found a trail log (there were a TON) and randomly opened it to a page from a week before where my old roommate Chris from VT had signed the log! How exciting.

I also met an older (ish, like in their 40's) couple who were all in love. It was cute. The man, in an attempt to utterly embarass the woman called everybody on the summit ("hey Blondy, come over here") to check out what he wrote in the trail book, against the screaming wishes of the woman. It read "no sex for me tonight, she's spent." For the record, she totally beat him up the mountain and was waiting on the summit for his arrival.

All in all, this is definitely my favorite hike UP. Down was hard on the knees, even with poles (without poles it would have taken me twice as long). But, totally worth it, and my new recommended hike for you!

Granite Mountain

2009-09-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

Who: Me, Myself, And I
What: Granite Mountain
When: Sunday, Sept 23th, 2009

I had sent my parents on this hike a week earlier, but had never been on it myself. Then, Alan showed me a picture that he had just done the hike too. I felt like I was missing out (as Andreas had also told me it was an epic view).

So, on a beautifully sunny day I took a hike up Granite.

I started late, in hopes to avoid some of the mid-day crazy heat. My body does not care for warmer climates.

I don't have much to say about the hike, except, the view at the top is an excellent 360 degree view of mountains, mountains and more mountains. The hike was steep pretty the entire way, for a great workout. I was actually scared I was going to be sore after the hike since I feel/felt like I haven't been working out much lately. But, in addition to beating the estimated time by an hour, there was no sore-ness!

The downsides of this hike: you can hear the road pretty much the entire way (a major bummer in my book). 75% of this hike is not in the shade. Granted, it's a beautiful alpine meadow for a majority of the way, but I shall stay away from this hike on hotter days.

My parents picked a ton of huckleberrys on the way up, but I didn't see any easily accessable ones on my trip.

I took a couple photos, but none were worthy, I need a filter for my lens. But I do want to climb this pointy peak sometime:

Anybody know what it is?

Sorry for an almost negative post on a hike that everybody says is the "greatest thing ever." I think I'm just sad that the road follows you the entire way.

Mt Si

2009-09-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

Who: Mom, Dad, me
Where: Mt. Si
When: Sept 3rd or 4th (it wasn't a weekend, that's all I know).

My Mom wanted to climb Mt Si since she'd heard so much about it (I even own a hiking book titled "Beyond Mt Si"). Since it's a nice hike, just rather crowded, I relented.

The weather was near perfect, a little cool, some sun, but nothing devestating since most the hike is in the trees (both Mom and I don't fair that well in heat).

On the way up my parents questioned me as to why I enjoy climbing/hiking when sometimes it's scary/painful. (Earlier we had a conversation about crack climbing killing your feet and how it can also hurt your hands). Sure there may be some amount of 'pain' involved, sleeping in freezing tempatures without a proper sleeping bag or just being cold on a route, or whatever. But the thing is, after its done, you don't remember that part. You just remember the solitude or epic views or other more pleasureable moments. You don't remember (at least, not as much) how scared you were or how impossible the climb seemed. They didn't really understand.

We got to the top making pretty good time--Dad kept asking me 'how's the pace?' I think he had upped it a notch from his normal hiking pace. It's really hard to compare when you're behind somebody; I don't notice if it's slower than I would go.

After getting to the top, I decided to attempt to bring my parents up the haystack (a steep rocky scramble) on Mt Si. When we got to the base they looked at it slightly skeptical but kept positive tones and we made our way up; they were following wherever I led.

Soon we passed some girls coming down who claimed it was "too scary" and they had given up. This didn't instill confidence.

We went a bit farther up when we came upon the crux of the route. Suddenly it was a bit steaper than what we had been climbing before. This killed all confidence and the 'rents decided to turn back.

The problem was they didn't know how to get down. Mom was scared to move an inch. I demonstrated ways of downclimbing and how one should 'trust' their handholds and such, but Mom wasn't having any of that. She'd attempt to move her feet down, not trust her hands, and then freeze or go back up to her original position.

Fortunately, since it wasn't a weekend, the trail wasn't too crowded. At this point there was nobody else on the final haystack scramble.

After a lot of demonstations, encouragement, and directing, we got to the bottom of the scramble. I'll give them (my parents) credit, they did improve as we got lower and started downclimbing much faster.

By the time we reached the bottom my Mom claimed "see, if I had practice, I could have done it" and "if we went up again right now, I'd totally do it." Dad seemed skeptical and tried to remind Mom about the fear not 15 minutes ago, and vetoed any second chance on the haystack. Mom refused to remember any fear and claimed the scramble was now, totally do-able.

To the top or not, it was fun (everybody thought so). At this point I reminded my parents that this scramble to them was the equivalent of some rock climbing/alpine hiking that I do. Sometimes it's scary, and you have to weigh the calculated risk. But once you get down, you completely forget how scary it was moments ago, and are either excited for a second chance or make it a mission to come back and conquor [it] perhaps coming more prepared (training or equipment wise) the seoncd time.

Dad took some pictures of the view, black squirrels (we don't have those in VT) and slugs, but I don't have any of them.

A few days later I took my parents rock climbing at Stone Gardens (indoor rock gym). They had fun as Andreas and I belayed them. Mom once again claimed that if she had this practice she would have been able to 'fly' up Si. Once again Dad had a slight look of skeptisism. I had a big smile.

Two Blondes and a Monkey

2009-07-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

Who: Alison and Emily (with BRC BoeAlps)
What: Climbing Monkey Face in 4 pictches
Where: Smith Rock
When: (I think) July 19th, 2009

[awaiting pictures from Emily!]

On Saturday when Emily came back from her climbs with another student she asked me “Did Oscar tell you the plan?” Unaware of any plan, my curiosity was instantly peaked. “No…” I hesitated, a little excited, trying to hide my enthusiasm; any day worthy of a “plan” sounded enticing to me, especially if it was with (my new idol) Emily.

“Follow me” Emily beckoned and without hesitation I was a step behind headed to the car to unmask the elements required for the “plan” the following day.

When we got to the car Emily pulled out a pair of aiders (also called etrier’s) as she unveiled the plan of climbing Monkey Face the next day. This climb has one pitch (a section of rock that only requires one rope length) that required aiders, which I had never used. Aiders kind of look like ladders made of webbing (they ‘aid’ you up the rock face). This section of the climb is bolted, so you would hook the aider to a caribeaner and then hook that to the bolt, giving you an instant ladder. You’d have two ladders so while standing on one, you could reach the next bolt, clip in with the next ladder, shift weight onto the new ladder, and then unclip the old ladder from the lower bolt.

Emily scanned the area for a tree worthy of demonstration. The only reasonable tree happened to be in front of the crowed of classmates (this is while we were still waiting for some classmates to get back to the parking lot). Emily made two makeshift “bolts” in the tree (just caribeaners on varying lengths of cord). She showed me how to adjust the personal anchor that’s attached to the aider to assist in reaching the next bolt.

Then it was my turn to try. It was a little awkward climbing the tree, a rock face would be much wider, but I could at least get the idea of what was going on. Climb as high as you can on one ladder until you can reach the next bolt. Bolt your second ladder in, climb it until you can reach the next bolt, rinse and repeat.

Emily also mentioned the possibility of leading this pitch. The class specifically said that it did not cover leading, so I was surprised to hear of the lead potential. I told her it sounded awesome, but I’d give her a final answer the next day. At this time I’m not sure if the head instructor was aware of this part of the plan or not—it was surely his call first if it was going to be OK.

Sleeping at night was hard. I’m not sure if it was because of my excitement of the next days climb, or if it was just because it was super hot out (I’m assuming mainly the latter, but the former didn’t help). The night before had been rather cold, but this night I had my 30 degree bag unzipped and was still sweating.

While trying to sleep I went over how to use the aiders in my head and went through the calculated risk of leading this pitch. It seemed like there was basically no risk of falling. Not only would I be secured by the rope, but each aider had its own anchor to hold me on, the most that could happen is I loose my balance and swing into the wall, this is no worse than any other fall (in fact, it is probably better than falling anywhere else, because it is a completely vertical pitch so I wouldn’t be falling onto strange poking rocks). I decided if Emily/Oscar (the head instructor) said I could lead, I would love to take the opportunity to do so. Maybe they’d even let me lead a real pitch at Squamish (rock wall in BC) in a few weeks! (Don't worry Mom, leading for this part was basically the same as following).

When we got to the parking lot in the morning, after another French toast breakfast, Emily and I headed out for our destination before the other student/teacher partners were called out. We were on a mission. We talked excitedly about the climb during the 45 minute hike to the base. I went over different techniques/skills that I wanted to confirm the correct order of implementation.

Once we got to the base of the climb and were flaking out the rope (making sure there were no knots or tangles) another group of 2 came along. These boys were from Oklahoma and had just spent a month climbing all over the west. We quickly made friends and decided to climb together.

To get down there is a 60m rappel off the face, so you need two ropes. If we went by ourselves, we would have had to either carry one rope in our backpack, or lead with two ropes. Neither are fun options. We decided that we’d tie our rope with the guys’ rope to rappel down, allowing both parties to carry one rope a piece. Emily would still lead and I would follow cleaning her gear. Then one of the boys would lead the same pitch, and the second one would clean his gear.

One of the climbers had a lot of experience and led all the pitches. The other guy was a pretty good climber but he was definitely new to aiding as well.

The follower

The leader

The first pitch rated 5.8 had a tricky spot with little hands and virtually no feet. It was hard for Emily to protect the route well and a challenge for me to clean the route too. After that beginning section the rest of the pitch was pretty straightforward, going up and over flakes.

The second pitch had a nasty 5.8 chimney finger crack, by far the hardest part of the day. When I finisehd the pitch and met Emily at the belay station she told me “yea, but it had great feet” and my reply was “I couldn’t find one good foot, it was terrible.” Apparently I need a bit more practice. I was also carrying a backpack up the route (another first for me) and I think the backpack took on another added challenge level, especially in the chimney. I found some pretty good spots for my hands/fingers but with all my weight on them, I couldn’t hold the position very long.

While climbing that crack I wore out my arms quickly I asked to “take” (this means the belayer should take in all the slack on the rope) so I could rest for a moment. I was saddened as I was let down a few feet (ruining the progress on my last few moves). Emily’s new rope had a high elongation ratio and Emily moved to get in a better position to hold me, and while doing so, some more slack was necessary.

A bit disheveled, knowing the boys were watching me from below, I tried to get back to my old position a few steps higher, staring at the vertical face with no obvious feet and the small crack expected to help me progress. In retrospect, this silly finger chimney crack was actually overhanging a bit, no wonder it was hard!

Once I got to my old position I jammed my hips into the sloping chimney and held there for a moment--flailing with my feet. I felt like a newb, but eventually I got a good enough foot hold that I could move my body up. Hopefully I didn’t look too much like a wiggling worm.

Normally I’d try to squeeze my back into the chimney, but with the backpack on this wasn’t an option. I wasn’t really sure how to navigate.

Once I topped the chimney the holds for hands and feet increased exponentially and I was back to feeling good about myself. I thought ‘the next time I climb that, I’m going to do much better.’

Yes, there will be a next time.

Once I reached Emily at the belay station it was time to unpack the backpack. We pulled out the aiders and Emily once again suggested I lead. I was excited and nervous, even though leading this section was basically the same thing as following it.

I ran through the basic scheme of things, Emily approved, and encouraged me on. I started up the wall in what felt like the slowest pace ever. About 3 bolts in, I had made a small tangle with the rope and the ladders and my personal anchors. I had to ask for slack and unhook a few things to re-arrange.

I wasn’t about to let this mishap happen again. By this time it felt like the guys were already at the belay station (either they did really fast getting up that chimney, or I was really slow, or I just didn’t notice when they got there, but anybody watching makes you self-conscious).

I worked up the rest of the route as Emily shouted encouraging words and commented on my fast pace. I didn’t really believe her about the fast pace because I felt slow as a snail, but I had my routine that enabled my aiders to be clutter free and slowly made my way up the rock.

I kept hearing about how you had to “whale” yourself into the mouth of the monkey. I wasn’t really excited for this part, but soon was able to experience it. I didn’t think I had to “whale” too much, and although there were no handholds I felt like I was able to kick myself up with the aiders instead of beaching myself into the mouth.

I belayed Emily up and she was a speed daemon, I couldn’t believe it. When she got up I commented on her rocket speed and said there was no way I was fast at all. She claimed that she’s had a lot of practice and went on to tell a story of the first time a VERY experienced climber led this pitch and he was at least 2-3x slower than I was leading it. I felt like this would be a silly story to make up, so I went with it, and took the compliment, feeling a little better about myself, and less like I was holding the other dudes up. Emily said that the dude’s even commented on my speed up the wall. My conclusion: aid climbing is slow no matter what.

Soon we were ready for Emily to lead the last pitch up out of the mouth. This is the “most exposed 5.7 move in the world.” It looks like a “1500ft drop but is only 150ft.” I think I was more scared when Emily was leading then when I followed (though I’m not sure why, I was more than completely confident in her skills, maybe it was just because it was an awkward belay stance and if she did happen to fall it was going to be another adventure getting back up).

When it was my turn to get out of the mouth I stuck my head out to try and find the next hold. I wasn’t confident in where it was, and I hesitated for a what seemed like a few minutes, trying to gain confidence in just “going for it.” I went over the facts in my head: worst thing that could happen is I fall a few feet and have to prussic up the rope (due to rope stretch) to get back to the mouth. No biggie.

I felt lame for hesitating, especially when there were so many spectators watching (I swore somebody called out my name too). I felt like I wasn’t putting on a good show. For the spectators, if I fell, that’d be epic, or if I climbed it, that would be just as awesome (for them). When Emily climbed and got to the top, many of the tourists cheered and many took pictures with thier telescoping cameras.

It was really odd knowing that you were going to be in all these climbers photographs. We decided we were in at least 50 peoples shots (not to mention the guys with the super crazy telephoto lenses that you could hear constantly shooting). We should have shouted out our emails or held up a sign so they could email us the pictures!

Once we got to the top (wohoo!) we waited on the flat head (that strangely has no anchors/bolts) for over an hour while the two guys climbed the aid section and joined us at the top. When I left the mouth, the lead guy was in the mouth, but the second guy must have taken FOREVER to do the aid section. He apologized about the wait and said it was his first time using aiders (hey, it was mine too!).

Either way, it was super sunny weather and there was a slight breeze so it was rather enjoyable (the delay was just was going to make us get back a bit later). We took the boys photo’s (after asking them to take one of us) and then we all started the rappel. There is a very short rappel to the double rope rappel station where we tied our ropes together so we’d have enough rope for the 50/60m rappel.

This was my first real free rappel (free as in you’re not going down the wall/touching any rock, you’re just hanging in midair!). At one point Emily yelled up to tell me to do a leg wrap and then let go of the rope so I’d be freely suspended in the air. I’m pretty sure she got a picture of this too.

Emily walking home

By the time we walked back to our bags (less than 20 minutes from the rappel station) it was time to race back to the meeting spot. We hadn’t brought any lunch to the summit (opps in retrospect, but it would have made the bag heavier!), so we grabbed a quick bite and then skedaddled back. We were surprised to see almost nobody on the wall (especially nobody from our group—yesterday there were many groups over 2 hours late to the meeting spot). Perhaps since today was round two and it had been so hot out everybody decided to call it quits early (and to make up for their tardiness the day before!).

We were the last to arrive and everybody wanted to know how Monkey Face was. I claimed it was “totally friggin rad.”

Before making it back onto the highway we stopped at this tiny climbers shack where our carpool enjoyed a scoop each of mtn huckleberry and blackberry ice cream. Delicious!

Bob Rocks, err, Smith Rocks

2009-07-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

Who: BRC BoeAlps (namely, Bob B, Vermon, me!)
What: Rock Climbing! (Learning how to climb cracks)
Where: Smith Rocks, OR
When: July 18th, 2009

We woke up early to ensure we had enough time to grab a bite to eat at the local diner. Filled with French toast we were off to climb at Smith Rocks.

At the parking lot we were all assigned instructors. I was stoked when I found out that Bob B. would be my instructor (Vermon’s too). Bob B. is one of the intsructors who attended 2 of our climbs for the BCC class. He was obviously one of the more experienced climbers who helps out with the BoeAlps programs. The 2 weeks before this climb he had been up having a crazy time at Yosemite doing some really big wall climbs. His stories by far beat any i've ever written. Though I’m not sure if I’m jealous or not...

It was really fun to also note the interaction between instructors. Especially the youngish but more experienced ones. There was tons of playful banter; the better you can give it back, the more respect you earn. My kind of team!

Every group was assigned a starting area as well (to space us out on the rocks). As we walked to our assigned spot, Bob asked us about our skills. We admitted to not knowing anything about cracks, but we showed a lot of enthusiasm to learn. Bob decided that our wall would not be as fun for learning (for on the second pitch is when we really get into the crack section) and brought us a bit further down for some practice crack climbing.

Before getting on the wall Bob told us of the many methods for holding on such as fist jams, hand jams, and finger jams. He noted how some people use tape gloves (tape covering your fingers/back of your hand to prevent the rock from scraping it up) but wanted us to know that he didn’t use them. He claimed he didn’t feel tougher than others, but it was just his preference not to use them.

Climbing my first crack. Bob is belaying

I personally wanted to wait to use tape. I wanted to see what the cracks felt like first, because the tape is only going to lesson your feeling (perhaps in a good way!). All in all, after a day of climbing cracks, my hands were barely marred. For now I’ll be tape free.

After practicing crack methods we crossed to the other side of the wall to the Spiderman Buttress Area. Apparently this area is always SUPER crowded, but this weekend, there were no lines. We hoped on Spiderman (a 2-pitch route) and Bob led with two ropes. This way Vermon and I could climb at the same time (well, relatively, about 15 feet apart). With a reverso (a model name) belay device Bob could belay us both from his position on a ledge above. Once we got to the ledge, the process repeated, with Bob leading and us climbing.

Bob leading Spiderman

It was a super fun climb. At the beginning of the second pitch there’s a really awkward exposed move that got my heart pumping a little. Later on up, there’s an overhang roof that we had to navigate. I just kept telling myself that this pitch is supposed to be easier than the first pitch so there’s got to be really good handholds somewhere. I just have to find them!

By the time we got down it was about noon and all the rocks were hit with the suns oppressive rays. We found an overhung section and decided to take a lunch break and we got to hear some of Bob’s ridiculous Yosemite tails. If other climbers passed by, we’d just tell them we were projecting a route (planning how to go about it). Some people joined us in our "project". Side Note: the route we were actually sitting under was rated as a 12d, once thought to be just barely under the edge of an impossible climb rating.

Once there was some shade available we made our way back to our practice wall where there were some BoaAlpers climbing. They recommended the climbs adjacent to their current spot claiming they were good routes.

Look at all those secret footholds!

So we jumped on. There was this one route, Bookworm, that is rated a 5.6 (not very hard), but I think that’s if you use the face. I tried to only use the crack, and it proved to be one of the most challenging routes of the day! But I really wanted to get a full crack experience, especially since that’s what most the routes will be when we go to Squamish, BC later in July.

Vermon starting a climb

We squeezed in another crack and when we came down from the last crack we noted that the time was right for us to head back, if we had jumped on another climb we would definitely be late. We moseyed back to the cars (and by mosey, I really mean, suffered while walking in the heat up this uncessessarily steep hill leading to the parking lot. I’m not sure if it was good ending, getting your muscles stretched, or if it was just depressing (and oppressive), because you had to use your last few ounces of energy). Either way we made it back to the cars, first.

I think Bob was a little disappointed that his reputation might suffer--if people found out he was first back, instead of being the hardcore-always-late-climber. Alas, soon a few other climbers joined us. Unfortunately, it took the final climbers 2+ hours past the deadline and we ended up being late for our dinner reservation.

It’s ok though, we were still served, and the greek hummus pita was most excellent with a glass of strawberry lemonade!

Washingtons highest checked off the list!

2009-07-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

Who: 5 previous BCC BoeAlps students and 1 previous BoeAlps BCC Instructor
What: Climb Rainier!
When: July 12- July 14th 2009

Rainier DC Route

As a quick aside: The one thing I forgot was my camera (hey, I'm glad it was the camera and not my crampons!). All these photos are from either Matt, Todd, Mark, or Ken (not sure who took what)

The original plan was to hike from the Paradise Parking lot (5,400ft) to Camp Muir (10,080ft) Sunday, summit (14,410 ft) Monday.

I was skeptical of the plan since the forecast Monday was supposed to be the worst day of the week. I suggested we reserve space at Muir for Monday night as well, so we could potentially summit Tuesday. Fortunately the group was completely willing to be lenient in the plans.

Big splashes of rain splattered on my window as I drove to the Park and Ride at 4:30am on Sunday. After meeting Matt and Ron, we drove to Rainier NP surrounded by dreary weather. We talked about how disappointing it would be to get to the Paradise parking lot and cancel our trip without setting foot on the mountain. You can’t hike in a lighting/thunder storm, there’s no place to hide. Needless to say, spirits were low as we drove. Also disappointing was knowing that when I came back from the trip I was going to have a flat tire (I found a nail, and it was leaking).

The moment we parked at Paradise we were met with smoke pouring out of Matt’s hood. When we opened it up we found a pinpoint hole in the antifreeze hose. It was spraying anti-freeze everywhere. Things weren’t looking too good for an easy return home.

We went to register our team and confirm our climbing permits with the Ranger Station while waiting for the arrival of our climbing buddies. Turns out half of them were just lollygagging in the plush hotel and enjoying a lax breakfast. Todd was a little later due to the Whidbey Island fairy schedule. During this time we were able to contact Charlie, a friend who was coming to Rainier NP the next day. We hoped he might be able to bring us a new hose and antifreeze. He said he would see what he could do.

Despite the cars, we turned to high spirits knowing that Rainier existed somewhere behind the clouds/haze/mist that denied us from any view other than the parking lot. We hoped we packed enough (and considered the fact that we may have packed too much) and were off.

The team ready to take off from the parking lot!

Walking on a mixture of pavement and snow we headed up the heavily used day trail that leads not only to Camp Muir but to a wonderful scenic view for the average day hiker. Although it was not our goal to be the first team to get to Muir, we were able to beat all the guided groups. The walk wasn’t too bad and we only took a few breaks. The sun was a little hot and once you can see Camp Muir you think its moments away when in fact its 30-45 minutes in the distance (squashing many hopes and dreams). Ken led a fantastically fast pace that Matt and I couldn’t completely keep up with. Mark and Todd decided to go with Ron’s consistent pace, slightly behind.

Since we got to Muir early, we were able to spot some great looking snow-tent-platforms. We scooped them up for our 2 tents and Ken’s bivy. Before I even gandered at the time, the tents were up and we were already making water for refills and dinner. I gave all my extra water to Todd; it was nice to know the extra weight I carried up would be going to good use.

Foxy Loxy at Muir

Muir is a very dirty place. It’s used by TONS of people each year, and has been for quite some time. We decided the safest and quickest way to make safe water was to melt it and then pump it through a filter (much faster than boiling each pot). This was a great combination. During one melting water batch Matt found a piece of rice. At the end of the melting period the bottom of the pot was covered with little black particles.

Boiling Water

We attempted bed rather early since we had decided on a midnight wake-up call. I can assure you its quite hard to fall asleep when it’s still light outside!

We all woke up a bit before the alarm, more due to the big gusts of wind and sound of hail/snow hitting our tent. I didn’t even want to get out of the tent, perfectly content with the idea of summitting the next day, since the weather was supposed to be great. Others got out of the tent and walked to the outhouse. It turns out our tent was covered from the majority of the wind; at the more exposed outhouse area, our teammates were almost blown off the hill! They agreed that perhaps it wasn’t the best time to attempt the mountain and we all went back to bed.

There was one RMI team that got the summit, but when they came back down they all talked about how it had been the most miserable experience ever (but they were stoked to have summited). I don’t think that’s how I’d like my summits to be. All the other teams gave up or didn’t make an attempt.

A crazy cloud seen from Muir

The day passed by as we ate, napped, ate, napped, hung around chatting, until the weather cleared later in the day and the sun came out. It was getting later, around 4pm, but we decided that it would be good excerise and practice to head up to the Ingraham Glacier. We were hoping to scout out the route up the cleaver and to get an idea about how our pace would be when we made our summit attempt the following day.

Activity on the Cowlitz

We roped up to cross the flats (not totally necessary, but extra safety couldn’t hurt), the biggest danger here was rockfall. We went up this sand/loose rock gully to get to Ingraham. This was a great idea for it was easy to navigate in the full sun but wouldn’t be as simple in the darkness.

Rope team one after climbing Cathedral Gap (Little Tahoma in the background)

We did about 800-1000 feet per hour, not too shabby, if we could start with that pace the next day, we’d make great time. Ron lead the first rope team since we were more confident with his navigational skills and pace setting. Matt was in the middle and I was on the end. Todd lead the second team, since he would act as the pace setter for rope 2, and Mark and Ken followed.

Route over the Cowlitz Glacier and Cathedral Gap (and Ron's tent)

When we got to the Ingraham Glacier we met up with Bruce (Ron's blind friend) and his guided group. They were spending the night at high camp (we would have liked to, but we didn’t get reservations since we didn’t want to risk moving potentially wet equipment). Their guide pointed out the route on the glacier and was really helpful. We were even more confident after the talk. The guide said that he had heard of some people making it up in 5 hours with this new, more direct route.

Ingraham Flatts Camp

Soon we were headed down, to boil more water and eat dinner-- it’d be another early night. After dinner we were in the tents before 8pm, although most of us couldn’t get to sleep since it was still so light out.

Once again we woke up before midnight. A few people tested the weather by making their way to the outhouse and checking the more accurate conditions (instead of the windblocked area our tents were in). It looked like perfect weather, a little cold (to be expected) but almost no wind and really, it wasn’t that cold.

12:20am everybody is getting ready to go

We were on the road at 1:08. We could see two teams of 3 ahead of us by the gully and we quickly caught up to them. Soon after these Frenchies got lost on the gully we were able to pass by them with our advanced route knowledge from the day before. Since the gully was mostly blocked by the wind we actually were kind of hot while climbing, it was great once we reached the top and there was a breeze to cool us back down.

We passed by another team who were strapping on their crampons and took a small 3-5 minute break to drink some water at the high camp. We had about the same pace as the day before, great!

Then it was non-stop up the glacier to the cleaver. The cleaver is this big rock formation that was half covered in snow, ice, rockfall and sand. It was mostly easy navigating although one point Ron came to a spot where he thought right or left could both be the trail. He picked right and soon our rope team was on all 4’s with the pick of our axe on the side of this ice gully, a death grip with our free hand on the other side, and we were toe-pointing with our crampons. We called back to the other rope team to take the left side and they easily came up a switchback without even debating use of their ice axe. Ron claimed he knew our team wanted a challenge so he was trying to abide by our wishes.

Right or Left (taken on the way down, a little easier to see with some light)

Around this time I noticed my headlight going dim. I hoped it would last just a little longer. The sky was pretty clear so the moon was able to light the way, but there were a few clouds that would come by and block the light. Before I knew it my headlamp was out. I called up to my team but Ron didn’t want to stop. The Cleaver is notorious for traffic jams and he didn’t want to have any part in that.

Route up the Cleaver

I figured I could go without light for a little while, especially since the moon was shining at that point. A few steps later, the moon was behind a cloud and I tripped on a rock and fell on to my knee and felt a sharp pain. I got up fast since I didn’t want to hold back the rope team and was suddenly a little dizzy. I called up to my rope and claimed I needed to stop to change my batteries. They seemed annoyed, but also had no clue that I had fallen, and I don’t think they realized how dark it was without light.

I quickly got to my other batteries and before long I had a working headlamp and we were on our way again. No other team was anywhere near us. The rest of our team was also able to use this as a break to drink water and rest, I was a little jealous I didn't have time to refersh as well.

Unfortunately, my batteries were either cold or were having some other problems for my headlight soon started flickering. Before I knew it those batteries were out too. Argh! I kept the light switched on and every now and again I would get a few pulses of light. During these times I would be so much more confident in my steps, and try to make greater strides since I was a little slower in the dark. There were a few switchbacks were I was a little slower and the rope pulled taught. I hated being the slowest one on the team, but I couldn’t do anything about it, I was trying as hard as I could to be safe. A few times when I tried to go fast I’d slip or catch my crampons on uneven ground, I didn’t want to fall completely and need to arrest, or need to rely on my team to help arrest.

Early Morning from the top of the Disappointment Cleaver

The good news is, every minutes that passed, it was getting lighter. Also, we were over the rock jumble and were just going up steep snow switchbacks. Our Rope 1 team pushed ahead and we lost sight of the other team. We took a break right before the large traverse right, at the very top of the cleaver.

Although we weren’t waiting too long, it was long enough for Matt to loan me his spare batteries and for us to start getting cold. When the second rope joined us we were more than ready to go, but knew they also needed a break.

The next part was rather easy going, a straight traverse across the mountain. Though there were many more crevasse’s to cross. At one point we paralleled a gigantic crevasse that you could look down into and not really see the bottom. Hippo’s and Rhinosori (hah) could be eaten alive!

2nd rope team sunrise

This part was great; the sun was starting to come up and was casting an orange glow everywhere. After the level traverse it was back to steep switchbacks in the snow (for the rest of the route). A few switchbacks in and the sun gained in beauty, we called down to the second rope team to glance to their right to take in the view. Todd didn’t want to listen; he was on a mission, step, step, step. He knew he was on the right path and didn’t care about anything else. His teammates kept telling him to stop but he would wave them off without looking up. Finally, after a minute of heckling, he looked up and was about to see the breathtaking view. It was a big hazy to the north, but we were able to see tons of mountains sticking up from the south. Little Tahoma also looked much more…little.

Alison and Little Tahoma

Rope one kept on steady ahead (as did rope two, but not quite as fast). An hour or so later I wasn’t feeling so good. I was a little slow on about 3 of the switchbacks and found the rope coming taught a few times (no, not again, I hate being the slow one!). I requested a break and the team agreed. By the time we reached 13000 feet there wasn’t a breeze to be found so it wasn’t a hardship to stop and take in the beauty. At this point I drank a decent amount of water and also ate a bit (for the first time since breakfast). I could tell my energy was low, and I was really hoping the food would help. I had about 1/3 a bagel (it was a little stiff and hard to chew) and let the team know I was feeling much better. We were on our way again and I immediately noticed a change.

Ron leading the way

I was no longer pulling on the rope, in fact it was quite the opposite. Before I realized what was going on I’d have a bunch of slack in the rope and have to wait or start taking much smaller steps for the rope to gain tension. I also started a new stepping routine which I think helped tremendously (as well as my new positive outlook).

Instead of looking at the ground directly in front of my feet before taking a step, I would look at the footprints in front of me and make “goals” of my next steps. I wouldn’t be mad if I didn’t make my goal step, but each step would have an initial goal. If I did reach the goal, I’d be happy, if I didn’t reach the goal I would just make a new one and hope to reach it the next time. I think this increased the size of my step and as I stepped I would utter “goal” each time, which also kept my breathing consistent.

I started feeling like a million dollars. I didn’t even notice that our pace had slowed, I figured it was just the calories I ate and my rejuvenated outlook and plan. Apparently, this is when Matt started to not feel so well (I had no idea at the time). Later that day he confessed he had actually started being the slow one and was slowing Ron down by keeping the rope taught.

For some reason, no matter how many switchbacks we seemed to do, the summit only looked like it was getting further away. At a crevasse crossing we met a team of two coming down the mountain. They told us we were less than a half an hour away. What?! It looked at least an hour away, plus Ron’s watch said we were still 800 feet under and our pace had slowed dramatically. Ron claimed this was a pile of crap lie, and we were saddened knowing that we still had an hour+.

Ron wondering how the hell we could almost be there when we had 800 feet to climb

The switchbacks were aimed at some rocks, and within half an hour we met up with the rocks and discovered the summit!!! We couldn’t believe it. Matt actually seemed quite disappointed. I think he had prepared himself for the worst and wasn’t ready to accept the fact we were there—there wasn’t enough suffering yet. For the first 15 minutes in the summit crater he talked about nothing but how illusive the summit was and how he couldn’t believe all we had to do was round a corner and we’d be there.

Summit crater endtoend

By saying "we were at the summit," I really meant we were on one side of the summit bowl. The true summit was still a half mile walk through the crater to get to the other, higher, side. Matt and I decided to head there after getting a bit to eat. [Ron had already left to go meet his blind friend Bruce on the other side, they had started earlier in the day than we had, from high camp, and had beat us up]. Matt’s meal was my extra bagel, since I was the only one who really packed for 3 days of food, I had some to spare. Although there was virtually no wind in the crater, the side of the bowl had a bit more, so I dawned my warm weather gear, including my puffy snowpants (moreso because I carried them up versus them actually being necessary). By the time we were in the middle of the crater I was sweating. Fortunately, the summit edge was windy and cooled me down to a perfect temperature.

Alison on the summit!

The view to the north was still pretty hazy, but the view everywhere else was perfect. We could even see down to the mountain road cutting a sharp switchback on it’s way to Sunshine/Paradise parking lots. We could see rivers and mountains to the south such as Hood, Helens and Jefferson.

An hour after our summit (we made it up in almost exactly 6 hours), the second rope team made it to the bowl as well. We were waiting for them at the register and climbed back up to the summit to meet them and all share summit hugs and photos.
Right by the register there was a hot steam emitting from the bowl. Apparently it’s always there; people in desperate trouble have stayed warm during the night in it before (although they do become quite wet).

Team Saffron Summit (really, I didn't want to take my jackets off to show our team Saffron shirt I was wearing, but I took one for the team).

We spent another half hour or so in the summit bowl hanging out and decided to head down. Todd was pretty beat at this point, throughout our trip he had suffered almost every sort of altitude syndrome effect (not at the same time, but had waves of different feelings of unpleasantness). We had him lead the two rope teams on the way down, to keep our pace at his level and in case anything more drastic happened.

It was pretty slow going down but it was gorgeous weather so it wasn’t hard to handle a longer view. At one point we found a fellow sitting on the side of the trail (actually, he had been sitting on a snow bridge!!!!! But the first rope team kindly informed him of the hazards and recommended he move to the side of the trail). He had unroped about half an hour from the summit; he was being cautious and wanted to make sure he had enough energy to make it down, so he was just going to wait for his friends instead of making the final push.

Snow Bridge Two Step

The crevasse crossings were a little scarier on the way down because we knew the sun had warmed the snow and we could now see what we were crossing. At one crevasse hop Ken and Mark took photos of Matt and I jumping across. I claimed I wasn’t going to show this one to my mom, but I have included it below.

Alison jumping the Crevasse

When we got to Muir it was a scurry to pack everything up and get headed down. We still had much left to do—such as change Matt’s antifreeze pipe and I knew I was coming back to a flat tire as well. Fortunately, Mark used to be a mechanic and promised to have Matt’s jeep fixed in a jiffy. Team Saffron really is lucky!

The way down was fun, Ron was able to ski-slide down the hill with his poles, while some of us just attempted the ski-slide in a less graceful mannor, while others attempted some glissading. With so much junk hanging off my pack and such wet snow I wasn’t really in the mood to glissade since my skiing seemed to be faster anyways. Todd was overjoyed by the glissades and we were all happy to have boosted spirits.

Once we were off the glacier we met up with Charlie. He had done a dayhike to the start of the glacier and then waited for us with fresh watermelon that he had been cooling in a glacial stream. How perfect!! We took a quick rest break and relived some quick details of our experience on the mountain and then started on the mission home.

Charlie and Mark on our watermelon break!

The paved trail on the way home was perhaps the most miserable part of the journey. Our feet were already killing and were a little bit damp, and each pavement step felt so hard. We wished we were on snow again, even if it would mean slightly slower movement.

Once at the cars, Mark fixed the hose in no time flat and we were soon discussing how to get to the land of milkshakes. Sadly, the talked up milkshake shop (really a restaurant that just happens to serve them) was swamped. Since they usually have slow service we knew better than to wait.

We thought about some other options and came to the conclusion that we would eat at the restraurant in a train (name ?) instead. To my joy they also served milkshakes, and with home-aid ice cream!! I got a delicious cheesecake milkshake while most the team got burgers and fries (some with milkshakes as well). We wanted to make sure we weren’t going to be calorie deficient.

It was a fast dinner, for everybody had significant others to get home to (or mucho homework!) and we were soon on the road again. When we got to the parking lot we found my car with its flat tire. This was easily remedied with the help of Charlie, Ron, and Matt. The hardest part was a tie between finding the jack (under the drivers seat) and getting off the hubcap (you just put a screwdriver under and pull, but that plastic seemed so wimpy it was disconcerting to do this).

Welcome home to a shower and bed! I had climbed Rainier within a year of moving to Seattle, my goal before I had any idea what may be involved in doing such.

Mark showing off the climbing register!

Adventures in the Pasaytan

2009-07-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Who: Andreas & Alison
What: Backpacking
Where: Pasaytan Wilderness (super north Washington)
When: July 4th weekend

I may or may not want to climb the top 100 peaks in Washington. Six of them are located in the Pasaytan Wilderness, so it seemed like a great idea to grab a few peaks on a long weekend. We picked this weekend because I got an extra day off work and it was about a week before Andreas started his job and would most likely cease to have full weekends off. Little did I know the temps were supposed to be in the 90’s the whole time. AHHH!

Day 1 – Remmel Summit

We had gotten to the trailhead the night before (after a little under 7 hours of driving from Seattle) and had camped right next to our car.

We woke up late, around 7, and continued to take our time packing up 3 days food and all the necessary gear for a few peaks.

By the time we got moving the sun was already shining high in the sky and the mosquitoes were coming out in force. I didn’t think too much of it, and only brought a tiny (not-so-full) bottle of deet with me (hell, normally I would never even think to bring it, not to mention my hatred of using it).

The first steps on the trail leading to the Chewish Trailhead were strange. It was sandy. There were also gorgeous purple flowers all around us. Although, all the tree’s were like matchsticks with almost no branches and charcoaled bodies. I described it as “eerily beautiful.” The contrast of the black trunks with the green grass and purple flowers was amazing. It was depressing and gorgeous all at the same time.

Some trees were more charred than others, but pretty much none of them had any branches.

We walked about 2.6 miles almost entirely downhill before we met up with the Chewish Trail and River. The great news was that the next miles would all be along this great river. Although the sun was high above us, we were presented by a comforting breeze, cooled by the river.

We saw a couple different animal prints in the mud but didn’t see much wildlife, except for a grouse. We did see 4 hikers (2 groups of 2) hiking out, which seemed strange since it was the 3rd of July and the start of a weekend. Oh well, we weren’t about to complain about getting the wilderness to ourselves!

Bear Print

There were many stream crossings. For one I took my shoes off and walked through the frigid water since I didn't trust the slippery rocks (that were a bit further than a leap for me). Others had precarious trees. Some had boards.

Alison on one of the many log crossings [by andreas]

The 13 miles passed by really fast and we were at Remmel Lake before 2pm. As we were approaching the lake the mosquitoes were out in force. If we kept moving we were usually OK but if we stopped for just a moment (which was hard not to when you’re surrounded by beautiful blossoming alpine meadows) you would be attacked, and shown no mercy.

The trail was great, not too big, just right.

We walked around the lake following random trails looking for a good campsite. We found one and set up the tent. I jumped inside immediately to hide from the bugs. Andreas wondered around a bit more and came back to report a much more obvious camp site a little further up, and presumably where there would be less bugs since it was further from the lake.

We moved the tent to find out that this was really bug haven. We both stayed in the tent in fear of the outside. At one point I counted 24 bugs on the side of our mesh screen. Time was passing by faster than we realized and it was almost 4pm before we decided that summiting Remmel was an imminent next step.

It was harder for me to gather the courage to get out of the tent but I did and continued to run down the trail trying to rid myself of the bugs.

The trail we wanted was somewhere near the lake, although neither of us had seen the actual trail (in retrospect, it was right next to a big cairn that we wondered ‘why is that there’ since we couldn’t see any other options but straight to the lake—turns out the trail was over a stream, by the cairn).

We could see where we wanted to go and decided to bushwack to meet the trail. Since our elevation was already rather high (~7k ft) there weren’t many bushes to plow through and it was fast going. We must have kept getting on animal trails for we thought we found the real path a few times (the Green Trails map had warned us the trail was ‘hard to follow’). We took care to walk in these tracks and not on any alpine vegetation.

We eventually found the right trail and continued around the bend towards our peak, the 35th highest in the state. By looking at the map we decided there were 2 reasonable ways to get to the top. One, was to cut out early where it was easier to ascend the ridge, and then ridgewalk to Remmel. The other was to go further down the trail, past the bend, and head north by the waterfall. A waterfall didn’t sound like a solid trail to me so I suggested we scramble to the ridge. Green Trails did not note any trails to the summit. Andreas had copied some trail descriptions from the Becky Guide and Summit Routes but he neglected to include Remmel Peak on this copying adventure.

It took us a little while to get to the ridge, and once we got there the skies started to turn gray. It looked like a shower was coming our way. The mosquitoes, although we were at quite high of an altitude were brutal. Any stop to check the map and they would be all over you.

At this point I was getting a frustrated with the mosquitoes and Andreas was getting frustrated with the trail (err, complete lack-there-of). Remmel just kept looking further away! After rain sprinkled on us slightly we were even more annoyed. Andreas asked if we should turn back—with the clouds it seemed like it would be dark soon, and Remmel had yet to seem any closer. I claimed if we turned back now we’d be in the same place tomorrow, stuck without a trail and even more frustrated; I suggested we go to the far ridge to see if we could find/see a better trail (for today or tomorrow).

Andreas on the ridge looking for the real path.

Andreas relented and strode ahead of me. I was pretty tired and definitely needed food. Soon I head a happy shout; Andreas had stumbled upon the real trail!! We were both confused why this obviously large trail had not been noted on the GT maps. After a cookie each, we were bound for the summit.

The switchbacks up the large rocky summit were super. It was obvious a LOT of work had gone into this trail—how could it be completely unmarked on Green Trails?! For this part in particular, it was wider and more well kept that a majority of the trail we had been on all day!

The summit view was incredible. Looking south we could see a myriad of mountains with hints of white on them. All the peaks looked gorgeous and like they wanted to be climbed as well!

We signed our name in the trail log—we were the 3rd to be there this year. The other posts were from a person a month before, and somebody who had come in the winter, to presumably ski down.

Summit Shot. [by andreas]

After a summit treat of Peanut Chews we were on our way to the tent, ready to make dinner. We descended via the nice side trail and met up with the main trail right by the waterfall, our original second option for ascent. Opps. Fortunately we were back at the tents with spaghetti and pesto in our mouths by 9pm after about 17 miles and a top 100 peak down!

Day 2 – Ampitheater (or if you’re Becky, Ampitheatre) Summit

I turned off the alarm instead of hitting snooze which was a mistake. Although we were up before 7 we were disappointed in another late start (we wanted to be able to hike in the cold before the sun warmed everything up).

As we were eating breakfast in the tent (bagels and nutella—a new staple) we watched a young male deer check out our site.

We packed with fury and then raced away from the lake and the trailing mosquitoes, we were on our way to Amphitheater! It was a much shorter day, only about 8 miles to the peak. It was much hotter this day and we, sadly, had no river breeze. The mosquitoes also found us very attractive.

My body doesn’t handle heat very well and I was having a tough time with the hills. I think the mosquitoes relished in this fact. Eventually I stopped and applied deet and was happy to have a shield against the mosquitoes, even if it was poisoning my body. Today, I’d rather die of deet poison than mosquito bites!

A decomposing tree.

A decomposed tree.

After many winding switchbacks, and deciding whoever made this trail was really drunk or hallucinating (I swear we went back and forth up and down and just did circles for awhile) we somehow ended up in Switzerland! All of a sudden the entire forest opened up and we were surrounded by alpine meadows, with a large peak staring us down and the sounds of streams running by.

Andreas walking through Switzerland.

We decided to have lunch in Switzerland and discovered that one of the most addicting, high calorie snacks ever is triscuits dipped in pesto! I’m pretty sure I ate 6 hiking days worth of calories in one snack sitting. For some reason the bugs in Swizerland weren’t as bothersome, it was great! Maybe it was the nice breeze that helped out! We had a great view of Remmel from the day before.

View of Remmel from just below Ampitheater.

Andreas saw a gopher, but all I saw were gopher holes, which there were tons of.

We continued on through Switzerland on a horse trail (what we thought was a route mapped out on the Green Trails map) and came across a lone hiker. He was without his pack and about to apply first aid to himself for he had just slipped on a rock and scraped his arm.

It turns out he had lost his pack! He asked us if we had seen any sticks in the middle of the trail for he had hid his pack in a tree growth near them (seriously, you have to hide your pack in this wilderness??). He said he’d dropped it right below the summit but couldn’t find it anywhere. We hadn’t seen any sticks in the trail but told him if we did, we’d give a holler. He did tell us some useful advice—we were on the trail to the summit of Amphitheater (which we thought was strange since we knew we needed a side trail but were happy to hear the news nonetheless).

Not too long after we reached the area where the arms of Amphitheater run together. Andreas kept trying to find a hidden trail and I wondered why we didn’t just head to the right where the summit was lurking. After a bit of wandering and some bekoning back Andreas met me in the center again. He started taking compass readings and after 5 minutes of sighs and confusion asked me “do you think we could be here?” and pointed on the map. “Of course that’s where we are!” I replied. Andreas seemed to be sad with this conclusion and at first I didn’t realize what the problem was. It turns out, there were no trails listed on the map that even somewhat related to the trail we were on. So technically we were never on the trail we thought we were on.

After a bit more harassment we dropped our packs (in very plain view) and headed to the summit. It was a short scramble to the top and we were soon rewarded with some vast views. Disappointingly there was no trail register or geological marker, instead just a large cairn. We were still able to enjoy the summit for there was a great breeze and a somewhat melted package of peanut chews to be devoured.

Peanut Chews are my favorite! [by andreas]

Yum! [by andreas]

Summit Cairn.

After leaving the summit we consulted the map and our 2 guidebook printouts on the route up/down from the summit. Our two options seemed like: hike back where we came from and go around the west arm taking 5 miles to get to the lake to camp at, or go down a steep rock/snow/sand gulley and end right at the lake. I voted for the gulley and we went to check it out. There was still some snow, but it looked avoidable and the route doable. The grade was steeper than we would have preferred but we felt it was feasible; we just had to make sure we didn’t put any trust in the rocks we found (for they easily slipped in the sand).

We followed what was (in retrospect) probably a goat trail down, it zigged and zagged in what seemed like a reasonable switchback and were down by the huge boulders marking the bottom in no-time. Alas, every step down led to another mosquito attack. We rushed to find the perfect campsite (off of the alpine vegetarian and on flat grounds) and set up the tent. We decided that cooking a planned hot meal was out of the question for neither of us wanted to venture outside to use the stove. Andreas took one for the team and bravely pumped water at the lake. At one point we counted 34+ mosquitos on just one side of the mesh tent. We went to bed early since there wasn’t much else to do.

Cathedral Peak to the right and Ampitheater to the left. [by andreas]

Day 3 -- Cathedral Peak

In the morning we decided to head up to Cathedral before packing up. It looked like a simple scramble up its moderately steep sides. We tried to walk on sand as much as possible to avoid the alpine vegetarion, even though walking on sand is slower going.

We were easily able to see the notch of the cliffs which was our first waypoint on the directions. We followed the rock rib and at one point we were even able to locate a climbers trail traversing the rib. A little climbing after and we lost the trail and wasn’t sure which way the directions were leading us. We were at a cairn but that didn’t seem to tell us much. We couldn’t tell which way to go from there. We looked right and decided that didn’t look correct so we tried left. After some obvious rock climbing skills were implemented I deemed this as an incorrect route. The book described a class 5 scramble and this was obviously not such, before we got too far, making it hazardous to get down, we turned around and went back to the cairn, and tried going right. This way still implemented some rock climbing skills but they were by far easier moves and we felt confident in our abilities to get back down.

We were able to get much closer to the summit when we came across “the gap.” The book describes this as a gap that will “get your heart beating” although I think it was a bit more than that. The gap was a least 3 feet wide. You start out standing on one platform (2x3 feet), and your goal is 3 feet across (a 200 foot drop) to another platform 5+ feet above. To get across you must span your body like a bridge, to one good handhold, one crappy handhold, and one great foothold (that I’m not actually sure I could reach if my body was already spanned). Andreas flawlessly implemented this technique while I had second thoughts (after seeing how spanned my taller counterpart was).

This is the gap, although it makes it look easy. It’s not. At least, not for short people.

While waiting at the gap, a nice billygoat came by. He climbed up to the cairn and started on the path we had taken towards the summit. I joked he was going to get there before us, since we were hesitant at the gap. After Andreas passed the gap and I threw the bag to him (a surprisingly noisy procedure) the billygoat decided he had better things to do.

The BillyGoat made me happy. BillyGoat on the left, our route is to the right (BillyGoat actually came down our route to the snow, until we scared him away)

In the end I “wussed out” and didn’t go over the gap. I felt terrible about this “failure.” I could see the summit, it was about 30 yards away, and at one point the rocks I was standing on put my head above the summit (I think). I was able to watch Andreas sign the log and felt really disappointed in my abilities. I knew my parents would be happy I choose not to go across, but that didn’t help alleviate the feeling of failure, I was a disappointment to myself.

I’m totally bummed. [by andreas]

When Andreas came back (jumping down 5 feet to the small platform) he said his legs were shaking. I felt a little better knowing that I wasn’t the only scared one, but at the same time it didn’t really help.

As we worked our way back to camp the billygoat showed up again. He pseudo followed us down, and posed for many photos. He made me feel better. It was like making a new friend!

Posed BillyGoat

Alpine flower.

Once we backtracked to camp (and after taking some alpine meadow photos) we packed up our bags. While packing you had to dance or else the mosquitoes would attack in force. Andreas refused to dance while packing his bag, and at one point exclaimed “Alison, take a picture of this!” I looked over and gasped at 30 mosquitoes gathered on Andreas’ calf. I told him “NOOOO, move! Hit them off!” but he refused and looked for his camera as I got mine. I forgot my camera wasn’t on autofocus so I got a blurry shot, but you can clearly see what we were up against. It was 12:15pm and we were 20 miles from the car.

I shiver every time I look at this.

Andreas' Self-Portrait

We ran to the trail and after we thought we had lost them and applied the rest of the small bottle of deet on us. I’m not sure if it was the deet, or that the degrees dropped a bit and a breeze started following us, but for the next few hours we didn’t encounter any bugs, just gorgeous views.

We had no idea if we were going to get the 20 miles in but that was our goal. We stopped at Apex Pass and had a quick snack. Apex looked like a boring mountain so we were almost happy it was no longer #100 on the top #100 list (beaten out by Flora mtn 3 feet higher).

On the rush home we found a large abanded bunkhouse. It looked like it used to have running water and electricity! There was a new, very nice bunkhouse near it, but it looked occupied (saddles hanging outside) so we didn’t bother checking it out. Just down the path from the bunkhouse we found the remnants of an abandoned Tungsten mine. It was really fun looking at the old furnace and all the pipes and other various objects. There was even a steel track and a cart around.

Old Bunkhouse! [by andreas]
Broken Down Mine

We wanted to hang around longer but there were still many miles until home so we left the area and were back on the path. We were making pretty good time, and continued to make good time as the mosquitoes started to come out from hiding. As I’m writing this I’m getting chills just thinking about them lurking everywhere. We had minimal snack breaks and told stories (true and false) to pass the time. At one point we went through this very spooky section of woods. We were surrounded by a heavily wooded forest, but none of the trees had branches. In the slight breeze (that we could barely feel) they creaked and swayed, and our path seemed to darken, in addition to the overcast skies.

Fortunately that didn’t last too long, and we closed the loop and were headed back through familiar territory to the car. We saw a deer and instead of running away, after we passed it, it started walking towards the trail.

About 3 miles from home we came across a boldly green meadow that looked like an extremely comfortable place to pitch our tent. A gopher stood by a fallen log at the far end, right before the creek. It was picture perfect, but we decided to continue on, if we could make it to the car we’d feel much better about ourselves. Unfortunately the trail from here on back to the car was all uphill!

Due to the mosquitoes we took a decently fast pace, until the steepest part of the hill. Although the pace slowed dramatically, it soon quickened as the slightest hint of a lesser grade. When we were about a mile from the car the mosquitoes planned and implemented a full force attack. I’m not sure why they didn’t like Andreas, but he claimed to not be bothered but could see them constantly buzzing around me. Every time I would kill one, two more would show up. At one point my shoulder was black from mosquito guts. My ears were beat red from bites as well. I was getting quite frustrated and kept trying to pick up the pace to be rid of them. I’m pretty sure at one point I was easily putting on a 4mph pace, and the mosquitoes were still able to keep up. Impossible!

My arm was black with bug guts [by andreas]

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it back to the car I was so annoyed but we made it before 8pm (and dark!) and I hid in the car and took a baby wipe bath as Andreas braved the outside and cooked dinner. Dinner looked a little scary and I wasn’t feeling hungry, so I just had some cookies before bed. Before we went to bed we saw a deer, I think it followed us the last few miles home.

On the last few miles home I claimed, “We’re sure going to sleep well tonight!” and Andreas responded “I’d bet my life on it!” Right before bed I decided to put the rain fly up just to prevent any dew buildup. I put the fly on backwards but was too lazy to fix it because it was mainly for dew prevention.

Humorously, we could hear the deer walking around on the gravel road at night, which woke us up. But more importantly, that night there was a massive wind and rain storm. The wind shook the whole tent and even though we didn’t stake it in, it held surprisingly well (probably because we were using a crashpad as a mattress and it took up most the floor). Either way, we didn’t get much sleep. You could hear the wind coming from far away down in the valley, and then it would hit the tent with a very loud shake.

By morning the storm had cleared, and minimal water had entered the tent (even with a backwards rainfly). Some clothes at the end of the tent had conveniently soaked up any rain seepage. Andreas was thoroughly impressed with my Marmot Titan’s performance throughout the night.

We decided it would be silly to let the lactic acid in our legs sit, so we headed out for a late start to conquer Windy Peak, a mere 8 miles round trip. Turns out 4 steep miles feels like a lot after 3 days of intense hiking. We had a much slower pace than the proceeding days, but were going along fine (if you can call fine “guessing where the trail is”).

The trail was through a completely burnt out forest with grass growing everywhere. It was obvious the trail was barely used. The only way we could confirm we were on the trail was because there had been some trail maintenance done at one point—so we could see stumps of tree’s and were able to follow them up the path. The good news is we didn’t think we could get completely lost because we had a large river to our left at all times.

We could hear thunder in the distance from pretty early on. We had clearish skies so we just hoped they’d stay that way. At one point we crested a ridge and saw that the thunderstorm was quite massive. The ominous clouds weren’t that far from us, and the thunder suddenly became much louder. We went a few steps further and it started sprinkling on us. It only did this for a few moments and then stopped, along with our travels. We decided to survey the weather and decide if it was worth it to the peak. We figured we were going to get wet either way. Our pace was quite slow so we probably still had an hour and a half or so to the summit. Lightning flashed and not a few moments later thunder sounded. It was obvious the storm was coming straight for us. We didn’t really have any place to hide, all the trees were tiny and burnt; there was no coverage. We decided to book it off the hill and get lower in the valley asap.

As we were flying down the trail, the temperature dropped drastically and soon after it started to hail on us!!! We couldn’t believe it. We had to lesson our pace due to awkward terrain and all of a sudden the storm was right on top of us. We saw a flash of lightning and before it was out of the sky we were deafened by the sound of thunder. It was kind of amazing to witness though at the same time we wished we had better cover.
Hail in July?!? [by Andreas]

By the time we made it back to the car the storm had passed us, and it was even sunny out! We joked about giving Windy Pass another go but we were both to tired to even laugh at the suggestion.

We got in the car and prepared for the 7 hour drive home. The good news is we’d be getting in before 10pm and would be able to go to bed early in anticipation for work the next day.

Leavenworth -- BoeAlps

2009-06-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Leavenworth, WA
When: June 19-20th, 2009
With: BRC (Basic Rock Class, BoeAlps style)
Goal: Learn how to place and clean pro, set anchors, rescue techniques, knots etc

Trad Gear!

Andreas and I had car camped Thursday night in Leavenworth to avoid an earlier than 5am wakeup call. Andreas isn’t in the BRC class but opted to come east so he could paraglide in Cashmere.

The BRC team left the parking lot for the Playground rock area slightly after 8am. Our first steps were tying basic knots. We went over all the knots we learned in the BCC, including the waterknot, double fishermans, figure 8, bowline (on a coil and on a byte and the regular bowline), and coiling a rope. We also were introduced to the SUPER handy clove hitch and munter hitch. The clove hitch is an amazing way to set up an anchor while you’re tied into the rope (without using any additional piece of gear – just the rope you’re tied too). The munter hitch was also really cool because you could use that to belay yourself if you were found without an atc belay device.

We also practiced tying off a fallen climber. The scenario this would be used for is if you were at a hanging belay (or belaying from the top of the climb) and your climber screamed and suddenly all the weight was on the rope and it continued to be this way for quite awhile. It seems that your climber is hurt (or it could have been your lead climber who took a nasty whipper (aka: huge fall) and they are hurt). Perhaps the wind is too strong and you can’t hear anything from them when you call down to see if they’re alright. So, you need to start figuring out what’s necessary to get everybody out of harms way. First you would tie off the fallen climber! While you’re belaying the responsibility is on your brake hand to make sure the climber is safe. You need to releave your brake hand from work to be able to climb down and see what is wrong or to be able to continue on to other rescue techniques.

Although we had practiced this in the BCC and I was fairly confident in my skills, it is surely good practice to go over all rescue techniques. I can’t imagine the stress involved if there was actually a problem, so you want to make sure they’re second nature.

There was a lot of comradery and if anybody was struggling with something students and instructors would come together to help out. This experience may be heightened because everybody is working on techniques that are life dependent.

Soon we moved on to rappelling. Many of us had experience with this, but it can be scary because of the height and once again, you can never be too comfortable with a climbing skillset. We practiced basic rappels, rappelling with a backup prussic (if you’ve been climbing for 20+ hours you may not trust yourself – it never hurts to have a back-up. Rappelling is one of the only things in climbing where your life is dependent on yourself – interestingly this is also where the most climbing mistakes happen). We also practiced using a munter hitch to rappel. I enjoyed using the munter hitch; the only problem with rappellings off of it, is that it puts a lot of twists in the rope, especially the smaller diameter ropes.

After this it was time to practice climbing. Every student teamed off with another student and climbed between 3 and 6 routes. Brian and I made a great team – both of us are efficient climbers and we’re somewhat similar height and weight (basically, this means Brian isn’t a 6 foot giant). It was fun to see the difference in our techniques up the cliff face. My favorite route was touted as the hardest route. I was rather embarrassed at the end of it because when I came down from the route I received many compliments about how fast I did the route and how easy and graceful I made it look as well. I liked how it was a multi-faceted route—you had to change your balance mid-hold to be able to reach the next hold. Pretty much every route we worked on was slab (not totally vertical, but the hand holds are almost non-existent and you really have to rely on your shoes gripping the rock. The temperature was great—sunny but with a breeze and the rock shoes were able to grip well.

We ended Day 1 with a Italian dinner in downtown Leavenworth where I had a scrumptious dish of cheese tortellini with basil pesto sauce.

Day 2 started at 7:30am at the Mountaineers Dome. This is a great section to practice crack climbing.

Charlie on a crack

After the short hike to the cracks we were given a lecture on traditional protection (hereon referred to as trad climbing or placing pro). We learned the good and bad of placing cams (old name: friends), hex’s, nuts, and tricams (a real love or hate piece that is almost obsolete these days).

A cam rooted in a crack

We were then given a rack (rack = all the gear necessary to climb, so you’d have varying sizes of cams, nuts and hex’s. This gear would be at least $1000 worth) and told to build anchors. For a solid anchor you want at least 3 pieces of well-set pro. If you have an iffy piece, like a really small nut, say half the size of an acorn placed, it is recommended that you place another nut to offset this.

A solid bolt

I was done pretty early and Emily (an instructor) challenged my protection by having both of us hang off it and jump on it. Fortunately it held and none of the pieces even tried to move. She then started pretending that my pieces of pro had fallen out and would test to see that my anchor was still solid, once again, my anchor won. Then she challenged me to place the entire rack on the wall within my arms reach while we waited for all the students to be done and the next lecture from the instructors. I had placed about 12 pieces (out of 30+) before it was time to learn about the hanging belay. Then I had to take them all out... *sigh*

Vermon at the hanging belay
The hanging belay is essential! I had seen it implemented before but had never used it myself. This is what you would use if you were multi-pitch climbing. The lead climber would climb up, set up an anchor in the middle of the route, and then belay the second climber to the same spot (hopefully a nice ledge, but not always). The second climber would either continue climbing (leading the route) or you would switch spots and the original leader would continue to climb. I’m super super excited to climb multi-pitch routes.

Emily and Oscar making anchors for the hanging belay station.

After the lecture we practiced lead belaying (when you belay a person setting up a route vs regular belaying where the ropes are already set up), and also cleaning pro that the leader had set. For instructional purposes, the leader set pro about every 4 or 5 feet (normally you’d set this between 6 and 15 feet depending on your comfort level while taking into consideration what you need to put on the wall to not take a ground fall).

Emily placing pro. I had to figure out how she got those pieces in there to be able to get them out.

Cleaning pro was really fun when it was on the route. For most pieces you could just hit the trigger of the cam and it would release from the rock. Other pieces, mainly nuts, might be a little harder. Some of them would come out if you jerked it up, but others were jammed in cracks and just didn’t want to come out. This meant you might have to use your nut tool (a slender tool that can slip in the crack that you can use to jar the nut) to assist in getting the piece out. Sometimes this wouldn’t work either and you’d have to really think “how did this piece get into the wall” and reverse that process. It kind of made it like a puzzle or an investigation, both which I enjoy greatly.

Matt rapelling past a knot, looks like he's using the one-handed prussic technique!

While some students practiced cleaning pro and the hanging belay other students practiced rappelling past a knot. This is another skill that will hopefully not need to be implemented, but if you don’t know how to do it, you may be screwed.

Jet soaking in the rays.

Each of these two skills took a lot of time and there was downtime for some of the students. During this time some people made tape gloves (to protect the back of your hands when you're jamming them into the cracks). Others basked in the sun, and others would borrow pro from the instructors rack and practice placing it in the cracks or making anchors.

Deborah making a tape glove

Once this was done we got back into groups and did some top rope climbing (where the ropes are already set up; either an instructor led them, or somebody climbed an easy side of the rock to get to the top of the route and then hung the ropes down).

The day ended a little after 4pm when I met Andreas in the parking lot. We split an ice cream in celebration of the weekend (or perhaps moreso because of our denial of an ice cream stop the weekend before) and then made our way back to Seattle.

Exit 38 -- Rock Climbers!

2009-06-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Exit 38, North Bend, WA
When: Random Tues/Thurs each week
With: Varying group of climbers
Goal: To rock climb! (and improve/learn new skills!)

There is a long list of people invited to various Tues/Thurs night climbs (whoever sends out the climbing email usually picks what day is more convenient for them, and the rest of us reply with our availability).

We have 3 solid leaders (who can lead any of the 5.10 climbs and challenge themselves with 5.11’s) and there are more than 12 other rotating climbers. I think I am now the only climber to make it out to every climb! Allen and I were tied but due to his vacation in MA he missed this past Tuesday.

Allen is also currently teaching Derek and I to lead climb and lead belay (so far I’ve led a mere 5.6 and 4 5.7’s). Andreas, now back from his Montana hiatus will also join in on learning these essential skills once Allen gets back.

Here’s some photos so you can see some different climbs and some of the characters possibly mentioned above or in the future. These photos are from 3 different adventures.

Meridith climbing

Lina Belaying

Rose is one of our lead climbers, always looking good on the wall

Alison on an overhang

Schu (Chris, but there’s too many of them to call any of them Chris) on a crazy slab part of the route. If he falls, he’ll slide many feet to the right and then fall over the edge, eventually getting all the slack out of the rope

A simple ATC device is what is saving Schu (or any other climber) from falling

Adam (one of our other lead climbers) belaying. But really, do you trust this guy to belay????

Allen (the other lead climber). Though, it looks like he THINKS his hand is on the brake...but its cleary not... I'm not sure I'd trust him to belay either...

Paragliding -- Andreas

2009-06-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Cashmere/Levenworth/Chelan/Wenachee, WA
When: June 12-14th 2009
With: Andreas
Goal: Learn how to Paraglide!

This was my first full free weekend from BoeAlps when paragliding classes were open so Andreas and I decided to head to Cashmere.

We left Thurs in hope that we’d get a full weekend of paragliding in. This is after we went to see an inspiring Adventure Film Fest at the Mountaineers club and grabbed some Thai dinner with ClimbingAllen in the U-district.

We got to “The Ranch” in Cashmere well after midnight and slept in the car to avoid disturbing the other patrons in the bunkhouse. A crash pad in the back of a Subaru is surprisingly comfortable.

In the morning I met Doug and Denise (the paragliding teachers), got an overview of how dangerous the sport was (it didn’t seem too bad, especially compared to the things we saw in the Adventure Film Fest the night before). I filled out some paperwork such as my emergency contacts and watched a quick video on how to get the glider in the air.

After this was done we realized that the weather was not looking awesome. We attempted to go to one of the nearby hills but by the time we got there and I got instructors on how to make sure my gear was safe there were dirt devils forming. Read: Bit too windy for newbie Alison. So we called the day done (before 10am).

Andreas and I went to Leavenworth instead and bought a book on the local bouldering rocks. After a picnic by the river we were at the local crag. This is where I realized that I really did need to get new rock climbing shoes—I’ve known this for awhile, but getting into 5 sports at once has really been wearing me (and my credit card) down. But I made the decision that I needed to buy new shoes the moment I got back to Seattle.

Bouldering is sooo much harder outside! I love sport climbing outside (soon to love trad climbing!), but bouldering is just scary and really hard. There were some easy routes I still didn’t finish due to a total distrust of my shoes (even tho you’re only ~15 feet in the air, it feels waay higher when you’re not roped in! The crash pad doesn’t look all that comfortable to fall on!).

The day somehow passed by really fast and we ended up back at the ranch for dinner, canasta, and some chocolate dipped apples for dessert. (Andreas won at canasta—getting 3 red three’s dealt to him [he dealt] in the last hand sealed the deal).

Saturday we got up early again and met Doug at 8am. The weather seemed nice so we went out immediately (knowing that worse weather was coming). Doug and I did two runs on this mini-hill, where I’d get maybe 10-12 feet in the air and was able to practice braking and landing (a mere two runs worth).

This picture (not mine) shows the two takeoff spots. The low part is where I had two mini-flights off and the higher spot is where all of us (experienced or not!) took off from

Then the other experienced kids showed up. Including Andreas there were 4 people (not including instructors) with 3+ years of experience, and we were all headed to the same hill. I watched them all take off with the ‘reverse’ method (you start backwards and have to turn to run off the hill) and was instructed to do the same (my first reverse takeoff!). I botched it a few times, either putting on too much break, or not turning fast enough, but before I could get too embarrassed, I got it right and floated down the hill.

This picture (not mine) shows a person who is doing the exact same flight that I did

I was probably 40 feet in the air (same as all the other people) and had Doug and Denise on the radio telling me if I should be breaking with the right or left hand and reminding me to breath (I was!) and to keep looking straight ahead.

The scariest part was when I finally got turned around and flying I realized that everybody had moved from the landing zone (LZ) to the other side of the road (apparently they were scared of my crash landing that could take them all out). It was more than daunting having all these experienced pilots watching me land. Nonethless I tried super hard to concentrate on the task at hand and Denise in my ear. I landed perfectly (ok, it’s possible it could have been slightly smoother, but I didn’t see a problem with it, I landed on my feet, it was soft, the wing came down nicely behind me).

This picture (not mine) shows a typical paragliding setup

As soon as I landed I was told to gather my gear for we were headed up for round two! As we were launching take II the bad weather continued to close in on us. Every person who went off had varying flights. I was almost the last person to go and I (and the last guy) probably got the worst of it.

This launch was similar in some respects to the first one, about 40 feet in the air, and between a quarter mile and half mile down. The ride however was quite different. I kinda felt like I was on a rollercoaster! Which would be more exciting if that’s actually how it was supposed to feel. I think it was a combination of the bumpy weather and my lack of knowing the proper times to brake that led me to have a bouncing motion down the hill.

My landing this time was a bit harder and as I hit the ground I feel to my knees, and my wing went over my head. I was rather embarrassed until everybody else assured me their landings sucked too… just not as bad as mine.

We had to call it a day (about 11am) and then Andreas and I met up with his family, had a quick lunch at the bakery and then went climbing with his bro, sister-in-law and aunt. I let his Aunt use my harness since I was going to be climbing during the week and all next weekend (and the fact that I didn’t trust my shoes on slab).

Andreas’ Aunt Chris climbing the mountain

There’s a prize at the top!

She won!

After, we went to Andreas’ parents house on the lake where some family friends came over and we had a bbq (complete with a salad from Andreas’ Dad’s garden). My only photos from this weekend are pretty much of this event.

Some of us went swimming in the lake before dinner

Day 3 was terrible for flying again so Andreas and I went to Chelan. At the top of Chelan Butte (where Andreas decided he wasn’t going to fly from) we watched a bunch of hang gliders take off. That looked like fun too, but definitely way more work. I don’t think I’ll be taking that sport on soon (even though I am excited about the idea that you’re actually in a “flying position” versus sailing through the air in a seat harness). Soon enough it was time to head home to Seattle.

Unfortunately I’m not sure when I’ll be able to paraglide next. My next two weekends are filled with rock climbing and the weekend after that is the 4th of July when Andreas and I are going to attempt to bag 6 8,000ft peaks in 4 days in the Pasayten Wilderness. Then it’s another climbing weekend! Perhaps the weekend after can be paragliding...I’ve never had the summer booked so far ahead of time!

Trail Maintenance -- BoeAlps

2009-06-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Mt Pugh, Around Darrington, WA
When: Sunday, June 7th, 2009
With: BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goal: Give back, with Trail Maintenance

Evelyne posing with the WTA supplied hard had

As part of the BCC class we needed to complete a day of trail maintenance. Although there are trails all over Washington, some trails less than an hour away, we were chosen to help out with a trail 2.5+ hours north, Mt Pugh.

Ken with a Polaski and loppers on his pack

We were told that they gave us the “hard” mountain, that involved us walking up a few thousand feet with our shovels, polaski’s, grub tool, and loppers. Most of these tools were old fire-fighter tools, particularly the polaski—with one side as an axe and the other side having an adze for grubbing. While chopping through routes 4” thick it was quite obvious some polaski’s were sharper than others.

The evil root I had to chop for it was invading the trail

The hike up was at a fast pace, much faster than any of our Alpine climbs! Soon enough we reached the top of the switchbacks and were then divied into groups of WTA members and BoeAlpers as we headed back down the trail to all the nasty spots. For the most part we were doing trail redirection. To avoid an ugly patch, fallen tree’s, etc, many hikers deviate from the real trail. It was amazing how much this changes the trail!

Moving a large rock from the trail

Unfortunately I didn’t really take any before/after photos, I was too excited at each spot to get working that I didn’t think to get out my camera.

Redirecting the trail

With so many volunteers we quickly cleared the mountain. At noon we stopped for a half hour lunch break and were given some candy by the WTA. Refueled, we continued to hack roots, make new trails, rebuild other areas, and get a good workout. I was hoping I’d finally feel sore after an outing (since my arms don’t get as much exercise normally) but I was sadly denied of any muscle pain the next day.

Trail Marker telling us what to fix

We couldn’t believe how much work we accomplished in a day. We fixed every single problem with the trail!

When we returned to the trailhead we were greeted by the sun peaking out of the clouds and a cooler full of soda’s and juice while we chatted about the day’s work and our ridiculously awesome weather luck. The day started out almost a little rainy, cool and with an overcast (low 60’s). The temperature only warmed up somewhat (to mid 60’s); while working we were completely content with the temperature but if you stopped working you’d become a little chilled, perfect!

Other than waking up at the crack of dawn, this trip was another fun experience. We got a free NW Forest Day Pass, and if we come back for another trail maintenance day (and get an additional NW Forest Day Pass) we could trade in the two day passes for a full year pass (retail $30). Still sounds like a deal to me considering this is volunteer maintenance. Alas, since I have the National Parks Pass, my membership to the NW forests is covered with that and I'm able to hike the state of Washington freely.

Mt Shuksan -- BoeAlps

2009-06-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Mt Shuksan in the North Cascades NP
When: Sat/Sun May 30-31st 2009
With: BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goal: Implement prior learnings and successfully summit!

Even though the alarm went off at 5:30am it felt much later. I was excited for our grad climb and fully awake (which I give most the credit to the fact that the sun was already up making me think it was later in the day). I made my usual oatmeal breakfast and was soon headed out the door to meet the team up north.

At 8:30am we gave our registration to the Sedro Woolley Ranger Station (and loaded up on free fancy blue bags!).

After dawning all the gear that the BCC requires to leave the trailhead (helmet, gaitors, etc) we took off on the Shannon Creek Trailhead at 9:30am. SpeedDeamon Ken has been practicing his backpacking stride for years and showed us no mercy. I prayed for snow to slow him down.

About the first 2 miles had little to no snow and much of it was exposed. It didn’t take long for the entire team to really start feeling the heat. Clothes began peeling off (I braved a tank top and turned my pants into shorts), all the brain buckets were removed and gaiters were lowered. I even whipped out my bandanna and soaked it in a stream to help cool down.

Todd taking a break with ice on his head and some mean steak strips

We took more breaks than usual for our elevation gain, but the sun was sure brutal. We made it to low camp (5570ft) around 2pm and decided it was far too early to stop. We also wanted to secure our summit bid, and wanted to sleep as much as possible so we opted for the high camp at 6500ft. By the time we got there, around 3:30pm a few members of the team passed out in comfortable looking positions.

Ron with his sleeping pad umbrella

After a bit of rest most of us started to set up camp. All the instructors had brought bivy’s and dug themselves holes to block the wind (though we thought the holes seemed more like graves).

Once the sleeping quarters were set up we went to man the stoves for their was a feast on the horizon. Since it was our graduation climb we went all out and brought TONS of food to make some incredible burritos (it’s ok, the next day we’d be roped up, spacing us out about 20 feet) so we didn’t have to worry about the bean factor).

My veggie buritto!

We had flour and corn tortilla’s, rice, beans, pork, chicken, guacamole, mushrooms, salsa, sour cream, tomatoes, avocado’s (which nobody chopped up, so I don’t think we actually ate them), lettuce, and lots of cheese. It made for an epic meal.

Some of the team even went for the 3 burrito challenge and the next day were able to blast themselves to the summit.

We did have an excess of food that we brought over to another team camped nearby. The climbers were happy to take our delicious climbing food and claimed they had never had such a good meal.

Everybody is smiling, probably because they had just tried to make me blow out a survival match

After dinner I was presented with a large treat with a survival match-candle and the team attempted to sing happy birthday. I cut them off claiming that if we didn’t sing for Matt’s birthday, there would be no singing for mine. The team seemed fine with this decision, although they still really wanted me to blow the match-candle out. I’m glad they picked the one impervious to wind, rain, and hurricanes. Fortunately, the survival match didn’t last too long (not because of my 3 [failed] attempts to blow it out; it burned itself out).

When we first arrived at camp there were about 10 polish climbers that we watched come down the trail and start to break up camp. It took them far over 1.5 hours to break camp and during this time we wandered over to talk about their climb. They had left camp at 2:30am and somehow didn’t get back to basecamp until 5:30pm. We have no clue how they spent 15 hours getting to/back from the summit (for comparison: it took almost exactly 12 hours from the time we started walking from basecamp to the time we stepped foot in the parking lot).

The initial plan was to summit and get back to camp within 8 hours (2.5 hrs to get to the pyramid, 4 hours to climb, 1.5 back to camp). We had set up all of the ropes before going to bed at about 9pm, right after catching some marvelous views of the setting sun.

We woke up at 3am and the first team was off at 3:30am. This team was our fastest and strongest and consisted of Ryan, Bob, and Kyle (roped in that order). Following shortly after was rope 2, Matt, Team Lead Stefan, and me.

The first obstacle from camp was a very steep hill. That sure woke us up! I was surprised how slow we went up the hill, but I learned after that Matt thought there was a lot of tension on the rope so he assumed we couldn’t go as fast. Once Matt and Stefan summitted the hill, they were able to gain speed on the flats. This pulled my rope, and not wanting to hold the team back, I raced up the hill. There were definitely spots where I was jumping to the next footprint and leaping over some steps to keep up with the pace. In just a few minutes we had gained over 3 rope lengths from Rope 3 (Ken, Stephan, Ron).

We used our headlamps for about half an hour and then it was bright enough to see where you were going for the most part (I'm all about conserving batteries).

As a side note: I was secretly super stoked to be picked to be rope 2, the second “strongest” rope team.

Rope 1 right before they reached the bottom of the pyramid

It took the first two rope teams 2 hours to get to the bottom of the pyramid and immediately put on our crampons. Then rope 1 set up pickets in the gulley and summitted at 7:05. Rope 2 did not pass the horridly slow group on the pyramid (I was in the lead, and felt it was super sketchy to pass, and their pace had been improving once they started using our pickets), but were still up shortly after. This slow group had one experienced climber and 2 scardy-cats. When we left camp they were already more than halfway to the pyramid, and when we got to the pyramid they were about 1/3 the way up it.

Mount Baker early in the morning, right before Rope 2 climbed the pyramid

It was actually quite helpful to stage the 4 BoeAlps rope teams because it meant there was minimal bottlenecks on the gulley. The other two rope teams made it up a little over an hour later. By the time our team went down (first in last out), we had been on the summit over 1.5 hours. Good thing we didn’t have the 35mph winds that the teams on Mount Baker were experiencing!).

The decent was fast—our first rope team made it down the pyramid at 9:30am and the last team at 10am (including cleaning up!).

In addition to the slow 3-person team, there was another 2-man team who came up right behind Rope 2. This was a guide and a client, but they were pretty efficient, they had skied up from basecamp. As we were leaving the summit, a 3rd other team, of 3 people were coming up. This was obviously a guide and 2 clients. The clients had NO clue what they were doing, and as the guide rappelled them down (because the clients were too inexperienced to walk down the very steep gulley I guess), and they stepped all over our ropes with their crampons on!!!! We couldn’t believe it. Not only did they get tangled in our ropes, but as they were rappelling they were kicking chunks of ice on us. Good thing we had our helmets on—not for the mountain, but for the other climbers!

The route back to camp, you can even see our tents!

We all got back to camp by 11:30am and were at the cars by 3:30pm. Half the team was extremely wiped out at this point. Nonetheless most of us made it to the Mt Vernon brewery for food and assorted beverages.

This graduation climb was a perfect ending to our BoeAlps experience (oh wait, we have trail maintenance duty next weekend… and an exam on Wednesday…dammit, so close!). Not only did we have amazing weather on this trip, but on every previous SUNday trip as well. I’m sure we now all have skewed perceptions on how fun mountaineering ALWAYS is! I can’t wait for that first pelting hail storm as I try for the summit!

This trip was also a perfect birthday present and a great way to the start of being 23! Not only did we have a perfect blue sky all the way up but I was able to camp surrounded by some of the most beautiful mountains knowing that I would wake up the next day to a great mountaineering adventure.

There are already some plans in the future for our team to continue climbing with eachother. I believe the rumors are currently the top two highest peaks in Washington, Rainier and Adams. Our team worked so well together that we’d all be happy to climb with eachother at any chance we get.

Summit photo, with our awesome team

As a random aside, one of my birthday gifts from home were the Fred Becky guidebooks. I can’t wait until they are torn, tattered, and smeared with love. Look out mountains, here I come!

Finally, more Shuksan photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7372593@N02/sets/72157619128495086/

Silver Peak II -- Andreas

2009-05-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Silver Peak, Snoqualmie, WA
When: Sunday May 24th, 2009
With: Andreas
Goal: Summit the peak we missed with BoeAlps

Silver Peak Summit

I had a weekend off from BoeAlps so Andreas and I decided to use this as an opportunity to re-climb Silver Peak (well, a re-climb for me, a first for Andreas). When our BoeAlps team attempted the summit, we only made it to the ridge because many of our steps where through 3 feet of new powder! No BoeAlps teams made it to their true summit that weekend.

We got a late start, not getting to the trailhead until after 9am (probably closer to 10am!). When we got to the official parking lot I couldn’t believe my eyes—there was no snow! When the BoeAlps team did this trip we couldn’t even get to the parking lot, and there were between 2 and 4 feet of snow covering the lot (2 feet in the sunny spots).

We were also surprised to find many cars at the trailhead. The car that pulled up next to us, a few (overweight) men got out, donned their fanny packs and were on their way in jeans.

Rather confused we still continued to strap our snowshoes onto the back of our packs. We were weary and thought that they were ill-prepared or we were drastically over-prepared. This led us to leave some snow gear in the car that we later regretted (such as my snowpants). Fortunately, we survived.

We started on the Annette Trail and headed towards Annette Lake. It took many switchbacks before we actually got to the snow. We think the jean-hikers must have gone a different route because we were packing a solid pace and never caught up to them. We passed quite a few gully’s before deciding to go straight up one. (In retrospect, we should have gone to the Lake, and then come back to the closest gulley to the Lake). Also in retrospect, Ron tells me from the "right gulley" you can see the ridge/summit and it opens up at the top. Ours didn't.

Going through the trees

The gulley we choose closed up before the top and we made our way through some rocks and trees, trying to avoid significant rock cliffs. We knew we were close to the ridge but we had to keep winding our way for the terrain was rather steep. Also, we didn't want to hit a rock cliff by the ridge making it so we wouldn't be able to top out on it. Fortunately we were able to find a good spot, and scramble up some rocks to make it to one end of the ridge--the end furthest from the summit.

The ridge leading to the summit

We made it to pretty much the same spot as my BoeAlps team had before, and deemed it lunch time. We were tempted to walk the ridge to get to the summit but decided it would be safer to traverse into the bowl and walk back up to the ridge when we were much closer to the summit.

The bowl and the summit in the distance

We downstepped from the ridge and once we got to the bowl we adorned our snowshoes (kicking steps with just two people and post-holing was not on our agenda). Andreas couldn’t stop wishing (and complaining) that we should have come from the other side of the mountain and brought skis to skin up the trail instead. (I don’t have skis/skins [skins being kinda like sandpaper that you attach to the bottom of your skies so you can go straight up the mountain without slipping/sliding back down], so I thought it was a terrible idea).

Andreas on the ridge

Once we traversed the bowl Andreas led the steps back up the steep ridge. Moments before I topped out, I slipped and fell about 15 feet down, I was just thankful I didn’t fall more. The sun made it quite hot out, so it was kinda relieving falling through the cold snow, but at the same time, I would have been quite content if it never happened.

We were glad we didn’t traverse the ridge because we saw a lot of cornices.

On our way to the summit we went on/off of what we presume is the summer trail to the summit. I think this trail starts from Annette Lake.

I’m wondering “Where is the rest of my BoeAlps team?!”

The summit provided some great views and we enjoyed the sun’s heating rays and slight breeze. Although I was really sad when Andreas pointed out the clearcutting on the neighboring peaks.

This mountain reminds me of those bald cats/dogs that you think are totally gross but you can’t stop staring at.

Not long after we got to the summit the hills rang with the devilish motor sounds of snowmobilers. We were totally bummed out – our solitude was ruined. Fortuantely we couldn’t see these snowmobilers from our spot on the summit, but I did not-so-secretly wish they’d fall in Annette Lake.

The view from the summit after the snowmbilers had full “high walling” the ridge. (Enlarge the photo to really see how high on the wall they got)

On the way down we decided to avoid the ridge, bowl, gulley, ridge route and went down the other side of the mountain towards Annette Lake. We figured we’d hit the summer time trail eventually. This was a slight mistake on our part—we should have either gone back the way we came, or traversed further to the right instead of heading more straight towards the lake. Further to the right would have given us some nice downsteps but we also would have avoided any runouts to the Lake and ended up in a gulley which would have guaranteed our safe arrival back to the main trail.

Annette Lake from the summit

Either way we were able to get really fun lofty steps down, and seemed to be down the hill in no time. And by in no time I really mean, once we got most the way down, we had to walk precariously through the steep woods, avoiding streams that were only covered in inches of snow/ice, and navigating through a lot of brush, hoping we didn’t find any runouts to strong for us to cross.

Holy crap we were just up there?!

It was getting late (since we had spent at the very least an hour, probably closer to two, on the summit) so we didn’t stop much at Annette Lake, we were still a few miles from the car.

On the way back I couldn’t help but comment, multiple times, how insane it was that 4 feet of snow had melted in the month since I had visited with BoeAlps.

When we crossed this bridge the first time (with BoeAlps) we could see the top of the railing a few inches below the snow we were walking on.

We were about to the car when we met a family who asked us “how much further to the lake?” We hated to tell them to turn around, but we assured them there was no way they’d make it to the Lake and back before dark. They didn’t seem to have any water or food on them (not to mention head lamps!) and we highly discouraged them from continuing. Fortunately they heeded our warning. We saw their car in the lot, they were from California.

We had a few lessons learned this trip, such as bringing more gear than you see your peers have (especially if those peers are in jeans) is totally reasonable. We also learned that it’s always OK to turn back to try a new path. There were a few points where although it would have lost us time, it would have been much safer had we gone back to our original path, held our heads in shame, and tried a new route. We vowed not to be “those guys” again.

Summit panorama! (click the photo to enlarge it)

You can view more photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7372593@N02/sets/72157619126691136/

Mt Si -- ChrisGaye and Kate

2009-05-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Mount Si, North Bend, WA
When: Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
With: ChrisGaye + Kate
Goal: Hike!

An intense staredown between Kate and Chris

Chris and Kate just made their way from the East Coast and after many days in a car wanted to stretch their legs. I suggested the slightly rugged (steep, not really hard otherwise) Mount Si as our destination for the day. I warned them that it was a steep hike and they were excited for a challenge. Mount Si is a 4,167ft climb in 4 miles (3,900ft without the haystack).

Chris led a very fast pace the entire first half, and I took over a slightly slower pace for the second half (with a heed that the next section would be steeper and to help keep a constant pace).

Overall our pace led us to pass at least 11 other groups mid-walk (usually 1-3 hikers per group) and countless others who were resting on the sidelines as we passed by. This total did not include people we passed multiple times. There was one guy and his dog (a chocolate lab!) who passed us on the way up but that was it. Anybody else that passed us, we passed again before the summit.

We made it to the top in exactly 2 hours. Well, the top of Mt Si not including its infamous haystack which is a short but steep scramble. We had lunch and enjoyed the view. Chris is my new roommate (also from Vermont!) and the (albeit hazy) view made him confirm that Seattle was a great move—just one full day in.

We could see Rainier and could faintly see the sound but we couldn’t see the Olympics nor could we see the city (Bellevue or Seattle).

After lunch we walked to the far side of the haystack—it being the only accessible side unless you’re planning on rock climbing and placing your own protection.

The scramble can look daunting, more daunting than this picture leads on

About halfway up the scramble Chris decided the top view wasn’t worth the potential dangers and went back down. Kate and I continued to the top. This was my third time at Mt Si but only the first time I hit the true summit. All the other times it was covered in snow and since I didn’t know what terrain was under the snow I didn’t want to continue. That and the fact that there were no tracks leading to the top and I was alone; it would have been a dangerous idea to continue.

We saw an eagle while we were on the summit!

Kate enjoying the summit view

After some summit photos we climbed down—which proved to be a little harder than the climb up but neither proved too problematic, even with Kate’s Converse sneakers.

The walk down was, as always, a little rough on the knees but passed by quick enough. Before we knew it we were back in the cars and headed back home. Well, Chris who was astounded seeing the Twin Peaks diner requested a stop. Kate ordered the infamous Cherry Pie, I had a Vanilla Shake and Chris went with the safe vegan option of an Italian Soda.

Wilderness Peak -- Solo

2009-05-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Wilderness Peak, RT900, WA
When: Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
With: Solo
Goal: Beat personal record of time it takes to summit

Wilderness Peak is the closest hike to my Boeing Job in Renton. It’s a short hike, about 4 miles roundtrip, but it has a pretty nice elevation gain (that I am unsure of at the moment).

After slugging on my new Black Diamond pack, within it a ample water and summit raspberries (that I forgot about), and grabbing my trekking poles from their permanent home in the back of my car I was off on the trail.

Not king slug, but another slug seen on the way down

At the beginning of the trail I saw a king slug (not official name, but what I’ve named him). He was at least 5” large and his coloring reminded me of a leopard. I really wanted to take his picture but that would have slowed my time down! [I was super bummed on the way down when he was gone from the trail]. After leaving the slug I thought that he would probably make an entire meal! [If you were desperate].

I kept a solid pace the entire way; breathing hard and working hard was the motto of the hike.

I reached the peak in 36 minutes and met an older couple who were working on identifying the bird calls of the surrounding birds. I am always disappointed at this Peak because there is NO VIEW whatsoever. A log book + no view = unacceptable.

I flipped through the logbook, looking for older entires to see how much I had beat my old time by but it had been recently updated and I couldn’t find any previous times. BUT I did find an entry from “Alison” who has the exact same handwriting as I do. I honestly did a double take, and had to re-read the entry to make sure it wasn’t really mine. I don’t know where one of the references she made was (which means it can't be me!), but she had exactly my same vernacular too (using “stoked” to talk about beating her personal record up the hill), and the handwriting was uncanny.

Who knew these guys didn't just live on the beach

The way down was uneventful other than my realization that there can be 2” snails on the trail! I had no idea snails this large could live on trails (in VT we have super small snails, smaller than your fingernail but that's it). Also, there were a ton of other slugs. Mostly this black slug that just reminded me of a bloated leech and this other brown slug that had a really weird texture to half of his body (crappy photo above... the camera on my phone was not being nice).

After the hike I ran home to grab a quick bite to eat (including some strawberry rhubarb pie!) and then went to Alpine Class.

Crevasse Rescue -- BoeAlps

2009-05-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Nisqually Glacier, Rainier NP
When: Sunday, May 17th, 2009
With: BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goal: Practice Crevasse Rescue

Click to make the photo larger, this was taken while I had "fallen" into the crevasse

5:30 rang in the ears of Team 7 holding up in Whittaker’s Bunkhouse. Side Note: warmer nights may not be the best time to book an attic room!

Most of us grabbed breakfast as we slipped on different base layers. It was already pretty warm outside forecasting a brutally hot day on the reflective glacier.

We arrived at Paradise (the main Rainier are with the Ranger station, and start to many of the trails going around the park and the most popular routes to the summit of Rainier.

Shortly after starting the trail towards Muir (Rainier basecamp) we were instructed to put on our crampons. They weren’t necessary for this specific part of the trail but it would act as a practice to prepare for our graduation climb coming up shortly—where crampons would most likely be needed.

There were over 80 students and instructors on the Nisqually Glacier; to others it probably looked like a rouge army taking over. Our destination was a large open crevasse. We turned off the beaten Muir path and soon enough we were able to take off the crampons and trade it in for being tied onto a rope with another student and instructor.

When you’re roped up, there’s about 20m between each climber. It makes everything take longer. You can also see a bunch of crevasses on the right.

Unfortunately, before we were able to rid ourselves of the crampons Todd gashed his gaiters, a $50 bumout. We tied into the rope in case a member fell through a snowbridge and into a crevasse or in case one of us found a new crevasse in general. The hope is that only one person would fall and the other two people tied to the same rope would be able to arrest, and a) stop the fall b) prevent more people from falling into the crevasse and c) enable the rest of the team to assist in getting the fallen climber out.

Fortunately, none of us fell into any unknown crevasse, on accident. The goal of the day was not only to practice crampon and rope travel but also to perform a crevasse rescue. Each of us played a key role in simulating a rescue. For safety we added a belayer who would have an extra rope tied to the person in the crevasse in case the rescue team was unable to perform the rescue properly.

This is what the fallen climber see’s. The ropes wear away at the lip of the creavase which make getting out harder. Also, normally there would only be one rope—the one attached to your other partners.

A student would be lowered into the crevasse with 2 ropes on them. One being the safety belay (not present in “real life” rescue) and the other rope would be the glacier travel rope. The student could try to prussic up the rope (climbing up the rope with the aid of smaller ropes which would be attached to the harness). This would be the ‘best case’ scenario—the team was able to arrest and the fallen climber would be able to get themselves out of the crevasse without additional help.

The sides of the crevasse wall were covered just solid ice. It would be impossible to try and claw your way up.

Since the ‘best case’ scenario is not guaranteed we did not allow the climber to get to the top.

Ken is in the middle of the rope and has arrested to hold the fallen climber.

Initially, the two other climbers on the rope would arrest with their ice axes. After this was done, the climber the furthest away would come down to start setting up the pulley system (once they confirmed that the middle climber was able to keep the arrest with the weight of the fallen climber).

Ryan is on the top of the rope, he’ll arrest too, and then come down to the middle arrested climber to help set up the pulley system. Eveleyn is the safety belayer (and would not be present in a real rescue).

The top climber would then set up two anchors to take the weight of the fallen climber and to ensure the arrested climber did not slip.

Todd has “fallen” into the crevasse! You can see on the bottom of his rope there are some prussic knots tied. This rope is attached to his waist and feet. In a combination of sitting and standing, and moving your prussic knots up, you can slowly get yourself out of the crevasse.

Then, as a team, the two climbers would continue the rescue, setting up the pulley system. Even with a z-pulley system (a mechanical rescue using 2 pulleys) the fallen climber was still hard to pick up.

Even though you may think you're at the bottom of a crevasse, you probably aren't. The bottom could break away at any moment!

Before we knew it we had our rescue down to 20 minutes (up from about an hour). Sadly, this is not a real statistic for our subsequent rescues all had the anchors placed. One would probably be lucky to set up the z-pulley system in under an hour in real life. The group can just hope that if a member is unfortunate enough to fall into a crevasse, the fallen climber is not hurt so badly that they are unable to prussic back up.

Click the photo for a fullscreen size

Overall, the crevasse rescue outing made taking the BCC class completely worth it. The real-life experience of being lowered into a crevasse and performing rescue really makes you appreciate the dangers that are out there. I hope I never have to perform such, but if I must, I feel I’ll be much more prepared.

In terms of the hike itself, I actually felt the worst on this outing and was slower than ever before (ALMOST becoming the slowest in the group). I am positive it was because of the beating sun (and maybe a tiny bit from the 32 mile bike ride the day before). My body doesn’t regulate heat very well and I was sweating moments after leaving the parking lot, when I was only in my base layer. At the end of the day, when the sun wasn’t as intense my energy picked up, and I even led the team home up the steepest hill.

Bakery Bike -- Andreas

2009-05-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: West Seattle to Magnolia and back
When: Saturday May 16th, 2009
With: Andreas
Goal: Bike to Magnolia and celebrate with cinnamon buns

We rode A to B to C to B, almost 32 miles

Since I haven’t biked in awhile I decided the gorgeous-weather-predicted-Saturday would be a prime time to get out and ride.

I like goals. I decided the biking goal would be a bakery that my co-worker Phil sometimes brings in decadent treats from. I didn’t really look at the miles, but I’m in Seattle, it’s in Seattle, so it seemed like a reasonable ride.

When I first mentioned the outing to Andreas he seemed to think it was a lame ride in that it would surely be under 50 miles, and who knows if there would even be many hills in between. I told him that I am a newbie biker, so I needed an easy first ride and he conceded to the plan.

As you can see in the picture above, a round-about way was taken. We started at my house, stopped at Andreas’ (though in retrospect I’m not sure why), and then took the scenic Alki Beach tour, and peddled up the “coast” to Magnolia (subsidiary of Seattle) where the bakery was located.

By mile 15 (it was 18 miles to the bakery) our back-ends were in constant reminder that we had not been bike riding in quite awhile.

Less than a quarter of a mile left to the bakery and we were met with some pretty intense uphill. It was nice knowing that we’d be making the cinnamon bun worth it! Andreas sped ahead and killed the uphill while I took a water break at a crossroad—but made it without having to walk my bike and feeling totally inadequate.

The bakery was out of cinnamon buns (we’ll have to get up and biking a decent hour next time), but we enjoyed some quiche (lunch) and a sticky bun (dessert) instead.

The ride back was pleasant, other than a constant dodging of people, and we were home (at Andreas’) in what seemed like no time. After speeding back home (in the car, to my house) and in less than 30 minutes I packed all the gear necessary for my Crevasse Rescue outing and was out the door to meet the team, to once again stay at Whittaker’s Bunkhouse to avoid a 3am wake-up call.

All in all, I didn’t expect the ride to the bakery to be 31.9 miles, but it was a really fun ride nonetheless. Hopefully this will inspire me to ride my bike more often!

Little Si -- Andreas

2009-05-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Little Si, North Bend, WA
When: Friday May 15th, 2009
With: Andreas
Goal: Get a small hike in so we still had time to work

[Andreas has photos, I didn’t bring my camera, although I did bring my brand new Black Diamond backpack—an early birthday present!]

It was a prime Friday with the sun beckoning one outdoors. I’ve found you get much less work accomplished when you’re staring out the window drooling about the outdoors, versus working later at night when its dark and you forget the wilderness (slightly).

Andreas and I are also a bad influence on eachother when it comes to being outdoors.

I suggested a small hike, so we’d have plenty of time to get back to work. We settled on Little Si since it was close to Seattle and neither of us had done it. We knew Mt Si was a good workout and we figured Little Si would be similar.

Little Si is a 5 mile hike. As www.mountsi.com says (reading in retrospect): Hard-core hikers might think of Little Si as a desperation hike for the rare occasions …. They were right.

We quickly summitted and were left wanting more. We were rather confused. We had heard Little Si was a nice hike. Instead we felt cheated, a nice hike for your grandmother maybe. We wished there was a bridge to Mount Si so we could summit that. It was decided that going to the bottom of Little Si to then climb Mount Si would be a little excessive, and that it would ruin our idea of a short hike and we wouldn't be able to get back to work.

We collected our sad hearts and stopped at an ice cream joint on the way home. Sadly, we didn’t even feel justified in our ice cream earnings. Fortunately, the ice cream tasted satisfying nonetheless.

Tatoosh Wilderness -- BoeAlps

2009-05-11T20:00:00.001-07:00

Where: Tatoosh Wilderness
When: Sunday May 10th, 2009
With: BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goals: Peak-Bagging in a safe manor
Peaks: The Castle (6640'), Pinnacle (6562'), Plummer (6370'), Denman (6006')

Our route--the dotted line is the Saffron-Direct route taken.

The team arrived at the Longmire parking lot in the Rainier National Park at 6:30am. After a bit of waiting for our last team member to show up we headed to the second parking lot, sans team member, to the Narada Falls lot at about 4600ft. Once our shoes, gators, helmets and essential gear was dawned we headed to an extremely steep pitch to a different switchback of the road. Note: The road is closed for vehicles, so we climbed straight up the switchback. As we were walking to this “trail head” our last team member showed up.

After the straight up steps we walked along the road for about 1.5 miles before stepping up a large bank heading to our destination. Team Double Black had kicked some great steps that we followed all the way to Castle (another 1-1.5 miles). We were thankful of the great steps—the last time we tried to use their steps they had ruined them by downstepping in their up steps and they were basically worthless.

By 10:45 we were at Castle, coming from the south east face. We really pulled out some efficiency in setting up the ropes. I attribute that to help from Mike Z (a guest instructor) who set up the ropes and rappel station while Stefan manned the climbing belay section. The way up was a low class 5 rock but for safety and experience we had a belay for this section.

Mike climbing the route and placeing pro

Everybody climbed the peak with speed and we had rappelled down and were done with the peak in record time.

By the time we were all down the first peak, another BoeAlps team had just gotten to Pinnacle Peak. We circled around Castle and approached Pinnacle from the south side, up an easy gully.

View of The Castle

View of Pinaccle

Since the other team was working on Pinnacle we decided to move on and tag Plummer Peak. It is a little less than a mile away from Castle and was a pretty simple ridge walk to get there. We approached the western portion of the south face and used another teams traversal steps until we got to the steep section. Then we made our own steps to the summit with Mike and Kyle in the lead. As we approached Plummer we saw an epic cornice. We made sure to stay far away from the edge on that summit!

Watch out for the cornice! This is the summit of Plummer

When we summited we once again pulled out the ample summit treats. It was Matt’s birthday so I stuck my emergency candle in my group of peanutbutter/chocolate bars so we could truly celebrate his birthday.

Emergency candle birthday!

At the summit of Plummer we pulled a quick debate of going back to Pinnacle or heading to Denman. Denman was downhill, which meant we’d have to go back up to get to Pinnacle, and we didn’t want to kill ourselves. Alas, before we could talk it through, some of the group was already on their way to Denman. By 1:08 we were at Denman, after Ryan kicked our steps to the summit.

Summit of Denman

We only stayed at Denman enough for another cookie (or two!) and then were headed back to Pinnacle. No team had gone this way, so Leanard, myself, and Matt kicked steps up the traverse back. Right after I stepped out and Matt took over, there was a slight discussion of taking the high road or the low road. Matt started taking the high road but the low road was much more direct and less work, so some of the team started in that direction. Moments later, the high roaders kicked some snow and soon enough our team had created an avalanche!

Avalanche from afar...that we created

All day we had seen huge pinwheels where the snow had started out as a tiny ball on the top of the mountain, but had turned to tractor tires in no time.

When we got to Pinnacle, the other team had barely cleared out—it was good that we had done the extra two peaks! Once again we initiated a Saffron-Direct approach and all started scrambling up the low 5 pitch. Our line of scramblers was much faster than the other team, who climbed it one at a time and used a prussic to go up the rope. There’s always a trade-off of time and safety. Our team is pretty confident in our climbing abilities so we didn’t feel it was necessary to be tied to a rope.

Once we got to the summit we noticed the clouds were getting even darker (since we left Plummer they were trying to take over, unsuccessfully). Scared of rain we scooted off the summit, practiced an arm rappel down a small section of rope and then half of us rappelled down a vertical spot of rock and the other half did a longer arm rappel down the up-hill route.

Ken doing an arm rappel

The other team was nearing the Castle summit at this point, using the ropes we had set up. (We had just used the ropes they set up).

On the way home we were able to use our favorite downhill technique—glissading. Glissading is where you do a controlled slide down the mountain, and save tons of time and energy! Evelyne is by far our fastest glissader, she knows exactly how to balance her weight to create the least drag, and flies down the mountain. We made our way back towards Reflection Lake (and the road we came on), following a north-east heading.

Ken Glissading

We got to the parking lot at exactly 5pm (the goal time) and not 2 minutes after our arrival it started to rain. Fortunately, it was only a light, intermittent rain, so the other team still on the mountain didn’t get drenched. They came down about an hour later. Then we were off to a great restaurant whose name I have forgotten, but it’s in a red building, and was located a few miles outside of the park, and there were tons of cars parked on the side of the road by it! The homemade blackberry vinaigrette dressing and blackberry butter for the bread is absolutely fantastic and definitely recommended.

Overall the Tatoosh Wilderness was a ton of fun. I think I want to go back in the summer and do all 12 peaks as a long weekend camping trip!

Summit of The Castle

Exit 38 / Gun Show -- BoeAlps (makeup!)

2009-05-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Where: North Bend / Exit 38 / Gun Show Area
When: Saturday May 9th, 2009
With: Half of BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goals: Have fun climbing! And for me to make up Levenworth Skillset.

Photo of the 40m pitch we climbed at the end of the day.

We met at one of the many trailheads off Exit 38 at 9am (yes, we got to sleep in!). We stocked up on rope and protection (in the end I think we only used quickdraws) and headed down the trail to the official rock climbing areas with instructors Stefan and Charlie.

The parking lot wasn’t full yet, even though the day was already super sunny; we were stoked. It was about a 25 minute hike to the first rocks. Apparently climbers are a lazy bunch for we only passed 3 other people climbing.

I was able to practice some key skills such as, belaying without a belay device, tying off a fallen climber and rappelling past a knot in the rope (that I was currently rappelling on).

While I practiced these skills Matt and Ryan (who came along for fun) went up a 5.7 pitch that Stefan lead. I joined them after my skillset and climbed the fun juggy route as well, as Lingyung went over some key skills with the instructors.

A key skill is knowing how to take care of the rope.

Then we headed to the Gun Show area to a route called Endless Bliss. Stefan led the route as Ryan belayed. The route is a 40m 1.5 pitch 5.10a route (although the rating is questionable since there were some added hand holds…not sure if that was before/after the rating was stated).

Stefan set up the top of the route so it was simple sport climbing for the rest of us. Ryan went first, and was belayed by Stefan from the hanging belay at the top of the first pitch. Ryan raced up the route and stayed at the hanging belay, and belayed Matt up.

Matt found the route a little tricky. It’s an odd route, for there are barely any hand holds and it really forces you to trust your feet. This trust is in your foot sticking to an edge maybe half an inch big.

Matt stretched out on the route while Stefan and Ryan are at the hanging belay station.

Matt switched places with Ryan, and Ryan was able to belay down. Then it was my turn to climb the pitch. I was really excited to be climbing outdoors. It’s a ton different than gym climbing, and I like it a lot more. You’re doing all the work, finding out where each handhold is (versus following a color-coded route) and you really have to use your body imaginatively (while still staying in balance!) to reach the next hold or just to rely on your current footing.

The hardest part of the route for me was actually trying to get my feet in different resting positions. Since I’m shorter than the average person, I am always on my tip toes trying to reach the next hold. I think I’ll have to look into some calf and foot stretches to do before/after climbing and maybe some exercises to improve the muscles in this area!

The top of the route!

Once we all got back down (for times sake, I went up then down, without getting my shot at the hanging belay, and then Stefan belayed Matt down, and then came down himself), we decided to head home.

The rope that was about to belay me down to the solid ground.

When we got to the parking lot we were shocked not only to see an overfilled lot, but also cars lining the road. We didn’t actually see that many more climbers ourselves, but we did go to the “far” climbing area. There are some areas closer to the road (less than a 20 minute walk) that are much more popular.

Matt, Ryan, and I drove south to Whittaker’s bunkhouse where we spent the night to avoid a 3am wakeup call and a 2+ hour drive in the next morning for our Tatoosh adventure.

We also ate at the Higherlander bar next door to the lodge, and vowed never to eat there again. Worst service ever and typical sub-par bar food.

Red Mountain -- BoeAlps

2009-04-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Red Mtn through Commonwealth Basin
When: April 26th, 2009
With: BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goals: Navigate through the basin to get to the peak (focus on map/compass)

We parked at the Snoqualmie West parking lot and had our gear on heading to the trailhead by 7am. The above picture is a view of Red Peak from the parking lot (photo taken when we got back to the cars because the morning was pretty foggy and we couldn't actually see the peak).

The start of our trail was part of the PCT and there was a decent amount of foot traffic and some snowshoe tracks as well. We crossed two tributaries stemming from the Commonwealth Creek and noted their possible (lack of) stability if the sun was to shine on them all day. Soon after, the sun became encrusted by clouds and we were left to hike in a gray haze. Fortunately, the clouds weren’t ominous.

Soon we were done with our hike across the basin and were climbing the ridge towards Red Peak. At this point there were almost no tracks; the only tracks from a lone skinner (a skier who has sandpaper type material on the bottom of his skies so he can ski straight up). Even this skinner was doing switchbacking a bit—but we went straight up the ridge. I led this section for quite awhile until the team took another break; as I was filling up my waterbottle with snow Kyle and Ryan passed me out.

I was feeling the effects of snowboarding and rock climbing the day before. I don't think it was really slowing me down, but my body definitely noticed the difference in effort it took to move, especially early in the morning.

The obvious ridge ended soon after and we landed on a very steep face of Red Mountain. Since the sun had left us for awhile, all the snow had hardened and was rather crusty. Even once you broke the top crust all the underlying snow was still quite hard. We started doing French steps up the mountain. This means the first person would hit the side of their foot against the steep slope and hope it went in enough to stand on. You’d then cross your lower foot over the top foot to do the same process of side stepping into the mountain. The first person tries to make the step as deep as possible, but won’t really notice if the step isn’t too deep. The 2nd-5th people will still find it quite challenging to step in the leads steps. At most there is an inch or two of a step to work with.

This is John Alley (an instructor) who is on our uphill steps. [He’s actually coming down our steps in this photo, but it shows you the steep hill and our side steps].

If we didn’t have our ice ax this would have been a ridiculous and unsafe attempt. Later in the day we saw 3 people attempting to go up the mountain and it was obvious they had little experience mountaineering. Near the base of the mountain they were already on all 4’s trying to crawl up the mountain.

The interesting part is by the 6th-8th people the steps actually become quite nice! By this time there is about 5” of hole for you to step in—I had no idea!

After climbing 1000+feet of elevation in these side steps we made it to the top! Although our pace had been moderately slow, it was almost straight up, so the first of our team summited at about 10:45am. The rest of the team was to the top by 11:15am.

We got a team summit photo, but not on my camera. For now you’ll get to see the shadows of the team summit in Todd’s helmet!

As the last folks were nearing the summit the sun started to poke its head out. Before we knew it we were amidst blue skies and bright white clouds. As we passed out many different types of summit treats (apple bread, 2 types of cookies, and my peanut butter chocolate covered bars) we basked in the glory of the sun. Since we made it to the summit so early, we decided to dawdle a bit to let the snow soften up for our decent.

I had actually been dreading the decent as we were coming up. I was wondering if we might even rope up for the decent. This would mean we would tie the rope to a tree, and then attach a prussic to our harness and the rope and slowly step down.

Fortunately, a mere 45 minutes of the sun bathing the mountain and the snow softened up enough for us to traverse down safely. Before heading off the summit we did dawn out harnesses, mainly because if we got halfway down and realized we needed to rope up, you sure didn’t want to attempt putting your harness on with the steep slope (not to mention taking your pack off to find the harness and such).

Ron and Bob (a guest instructor) showed us all how to down step this steep area. Basically, point your feet straight down the mountain, jam your heel in as you step down, and repeat with the other leg. Sounds easy enough, right? At first I could only aim one foot down the mountain, the other foot preferred to be perpendicular to the mountain, it felt much safer. The snow was softer, but it wasn’t that soft!

Most of us took a pretty slow pace getting started. We were in awe of the instructors; it looked like Bob was just running down the mountain! I believe he called his steps ‘controlled chaos.’ Mark was also really good at this downstepping although he claimed it was more because he had to use the outdoor facilities and was trying to get to a tree covered area.

Below is a picture of Matt stepping. The instructors told us crouching like an old man was helpful because then you were able to get your weight over your feet.

[Later] Matt and I found that standing up a little straighter but still keeping your weight balanced over your feet, gave us more control.

At one point or another, almost all of us had to arrest with our ice axes. Matt had the longest slip by far. Apparently his waterbottle (attached on the side to his pack), flipped up and kept getting in the way of the ax getting a good grip in the snow. He said his fall was quite a scare. Below you can see how far Matt slid compared to the photo above. [He was quite a bit above the main group, and by the time he stopped he was a little below them]. I think he was just trying to get down the mountain quicker!!

I arrested twice (I think I gained too much confidence and started to speed up my steps and slipped); both times I only slid about 2 feet before coming to a stop.

It’s unfortunate that the image is flattened, but this is 1000ft+ of elevation gain that we just came down.

After we got down the steep pitch we realized it was still pretty early, so we had time to practice some other skills. We simulated two different types of belays, the boot-ax belay and a carabineer-ax belay. Below is pictures of Ron demonstrating footing of the boot-ax and how you stop with the rope.

We also did a Rutschblock test. This is a “sliding block” test that shows how much force is needed to make the snow slide on a given slope. Basically, you dig out a box of snow and you can analyze all the layers of the snow, and also, you can jump on this block to see how sturdy the snow is.

Practicing these techniques took about an hour and then we were headed back down to the cars. On the way down we created a few glissade shoots! And we slid down these slides on our butts (like you would a playground slide) and flew by the last few steep sections. The walk back on the flats was still enjoyable although it was slightly harder going than our walk to the base of the mountain. Since the sun was warming up the snow we were all sinking in a bit on these snow steps (even when we were using parts of our old trail).

We got to the cars at about 3pm—our earliest time ever! We had a quick group meeting and then were off to the North Bend Bar and Grill to make up for the lost calories.

Another great SUN day completed!

This last photo is a view from near the summit. You can see the Snowqualmie Ski Resort (where I have a seasons pass), our old friend Silver Peak (the bowl looking thing above it), and Rainier is sticking out behind Silver from the clouds.

What do I do to prepare for all this?

2009-04-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Basically I just try to stay active.

Here's an example of last weeks schedule:

Sat/Sun: Alpine Adventure
Mon: Climbed Tiger Mtn
Tues: Yoga, Rock Climbing
Wed: Kickboxing, Music Concert
Thurs: Yoga, Music Concert
Fri: Day off - I cleaned the house a bit
Sat: Snowboarding, Rock Climbing
Sun: Alpine Adventure

Music Concerts aren't necessarily workouts, but they also prevent me from doing other things like dancing or climbing so that's why they're listed.

Devil’s Peak & Devil’s Thumb –- Boealps

2009-04-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Devils Peak & Devils Thumb, near Granite Falls
When: April 18th/19th, 2009
With: BoeAlps BCC Team 7
Goals: Survive winter camping, climb/rappel with harness/ropes

I woke up at 4:00am (for some reason this no longer freaks me out like it used to) to put the final touches on getting my stuff together for our trip and eating a hearty bowl of oatmeal.

We got to the meeting spot of the Verlot Ranger Station before 6:30am and were at the trailhead before 7 and were on the trail by 7:10 (about half an hour earlier than the scheduled time, and previous years). The other team (here on referred to as: Team Black / Commandos / Frat Boys) got on the route slightly before our team but we were all headed to the same camping spot.

There is a bunch of team gear and it was (perhaps unevenly!) split up. I carried my 2-person tent (to share with Evelyn), pot/stove (Evelyn carried the fuel), and team rope. This was in addition to my extra few pounds of summit treats and camera. Otherwise all our gear should have been about the same weight. Because of aforementioned weight I think my pack weighed more than 75% of the other people’s packs—and I’m the smallest!! I wish we figured out pack weight to human weight ratios. Although I found the extra weight to be a challenge (bruising my hips for sure!), I didn’t really think it was a total burden or crippling. I just kept telling myself it was only a few miles to camp! Once we got moving, about a mile in, I hardly noticed the backbreaking weight!

The beginning of the trail was just an unplowed road. Not very steep, but we were pretty much all carrying the most weight we’ve ever carried before, and our steady pace soon proved a little too fast for we were all breathing quite hard on this relatively flat trail.

After we got off the unplowed road, the trail opened up to a very green section. It was really easy walking with the fact that there was no snow on the ground, but the amount of downed trees and streams to cross added to the challenge level.

A few hundred feet in elevation later we were back to snowpack. The Commando’s had already created a bootpack through this area (not too challenging, the steps only sunk in about 6” or so) so we just followed in their steps. At a switchback we traded first place and our team made steps through a much deeper area. The snow was still far more pleasant than the last BoeAlps trip—sinking to your waist is so discouraging. Right before we got off the main switchback trail to go straight up the mtn our two BoeAlps groups combined in a single line and we worked as a large team to go up the steepest section. This meant after you kicked your steps, you got quite a long break, for you waited for about 35 people to pass you!!

I thought we made great time up the mountain. We got into camp around noon and while our team set up our tents the Commando’s decided to go to head to Devil’s Thumb. We were about done setting up the tents by the time the Commando’s had pulled out all their gear of the bags to head up to the Thumb. The Thumb is the further of the two peaks and Team Black thought the only chance of summit was if they did it the first day. We left about an hour after they did (very happy that we had time to take a break, eat some food, and set up all our gear) and continued on to Devil’s Peak.

As an aside: Evelyn and I set up our tent the fastest—by far.

I dropped at least 30 pounds from my pack before continuing (tent/stove/extra food and Matt felt bad about not taking rope up the original pass so he offered to take that from me as well). It made me feel so light I just wanted to frolic up the trail! We were only going to kick about 30 steps a piece, but I felt so good I kicked 70 steps my first 3 turns—and they weren’t slow steps either. I claimed I was just trying to compete with Leonard—our instructor who seems to be able to kick steep steps forever! My 4th turn I kicked 150 steps! It was an epic journey. I got to 90 steps and was like “well, I’m pretty close to 100, I might as well continue.” I was still feeling really good at 100 so I figured I could get to 125, when I got there I thought ‘I’m not breathing too hard, I could double my last steps if I got to 140” and then 150 steps just sounded like an epic number. At that point I knew I could continue but it would be with a cost of slower steps—and the point is not to get the most steps, but to be most efficient, so I stepped out.

The last 100 yards of our trip really felt like we were breaking trail straight up. Even with a few switchbacks it was still like you were walking up a ladder. When we got to the top of the ridge (minus the rock face actual summit) we were told to set up a platform for we’d be waiting a little while. We ended up waiting over 1.5 hours for the instructors to set up the ropes for us to safely climb to the summit and then repel down.

Fortunately the summit view was worth the wait (good thing there was basically no wind!!). We could see Rainier, Baker, Puget Sound, what we thought was Whidbey Island, and tons of other peaks such as Glacier.

The rappel wasn’t as exciting as we had built it up to be. We had two rappel stations and one of them was a free rappel and the other one was a rappel down a steep rock face. For the sake of time (since the free repel wasn’t set up yet) Matt, Ken, and I went down the first repel station. We were a little disappointed that we didn’t get the free repel, but the free repel was also with thicker and older ropes, so all the people who rappelled off of the cliff said that their belay devices kept sticking so it wasn’t the anticipated smooth ride down.

By the time everybody got down from the rocky peak it was just about dark. I handed out peanut butter fudge for a sugar high on our way down (aka our summit treat) and we donned our headlamps before traveling a direct route home. While plunge stepping we were extremely careful to stay away from our route up so the other team could use our perfectly preserved steps the next day.

The interesting part of plunge stepping is the faster you do it, the easier it is. It may seem like it’s taking more energy to frolic or prance down the hill, but the constant momentum helps keep your motion of traversing down. The unfortunate part is it sometimes feels like way more work to be constantly moving. So, sadly, as you loose energy, you’re more apt to slow down, and this slowed pace uses even more energy! I can only imagine how depressing it is when you’re only getting more tired, and the lead people only seem to be gaining more energy in their decent.

The other team made it to the false summit and then decided to turn back. Because of this they ended up getting home first. When we were still near the top our Peak we could see that they were setting up their tents, and starting their dinners. For quite awhile it seemed that these lights weren’t getting any closer until all of a sudden we could see full sized people and headlamps!

On our way home, Matt, Stephan (team lead) and I picked out our course. We wanted to get home in the most direct route possible while not stepping in our old steps and not falling off any cliffs (although that does sound fastest). As we were moments away from stumbling into camp we were blocked by a huge wall. It would have taken extra time to go around (using our previous steps up to camp) so we went straight up the wall since we still had ample energy. Matt kicked steps until we hit a completely vertical wall of snow. We ended up traversing along a super sketchy ridge (held up by trees, so if you didn’t walk on a tree branch (invisible under the snow) you would fall in super deep. We finally were able to scale the vertical snow wall and as we did, we found ourselves directly in our backyard (we knew we were close, we didn’t realize we were about to walk into one of our tents).

Ken and I quickly stomped out a kitchen area, and Matt kindly shoveled us some feet holes. Soon enough we had 3 stoves going and dinner was ready in no time. While feasting on dinner we melted snow to refill out bottles. Nobody needed a ton of water because it had been such a great melting day. The temp was above freezing and most of our walk was in the sun, so once you drank a little water you could fill your bottle up with snow and by the time you were ready for your next sip all the snow was already melted! How perfect! Ken also had brought some double stuff Oreos for dessert.

We went to bed after dinner and woke up around 6:30am. The other team was already packed to head to the summit of Devil’s Peak. We decided we didn’t care about the summit of Devil’s Thumb, especially if the Commando’s didn’t get it. We did walk up most the route, and got right below the false summit (to continue we would have had to rope up, which is a cumbersome process) so we went down shortly after.

It’s worth noting that the Commando team did NOT preserve their route up. Not only did they plunge down the same route up (making it so the route was now incredibly deep steps since the weight of walking down crushed the steps) but they also glissaded down their tracks!!! (Glissading is when you do a controlled slide down the mtn—so they left us a snowslide where their tracks once were). We felt gypped.

On the way down from the thumb, we also had a fun glissade (NOT on the uphill route tracks!). We packed up camp efficiently *cough Evelyn and I once again getting our tent down the fastest cough* and were soon on our way to the parking lot. The way down was going kind of slow, you’re only as fast as the slowest person on the team, so we unloaded one of the members pack and split up the heaviest items. Stephen got rope and I got the tent poles from the 4-person 4-season tent.

We made it to the parking lot slightly before 5pm—the earliest of any trip yet! It was more than a blessing to get out of my sopping shoes. (Interesting side note: if it wasn’t for my wet shoes I would have been super comfortable the entire trip, at times the wet boots were completely miserable—but, while writing this trip report a day/two after the trip, I almost forgot about the wet shoes altogether!). The main reason my shoes were wet was because I had the side zips on my snowpants open, and a few steep kicksteps let some snow down my pants that melted into my shoes).

We ended the trip at a Mexican joint and we all talked about how much we love our team. Our team is like a quirky family. Mostly we’re quiet, although we all interject with witty comments, and we’re all really laid back. For us it’s not about summits, but about having fun, enjoying the solitude, and company of our team. Granted we all really like summits, we’re not going to destroy ourselves or our morale if we don’t make one. We’re all happy to be outside and enjoying the outside air. [The Commando Frat Boys seem to have a different agenda, and especially in comparison, we love our team even more. They’re super loud, it seems that everything they say is in a screaming manor, and they have this holier-than-thou attitude. I feel bad for the one girl on their team.]

Hurricane Hill (Olympic Range) -- Andreas

2009-04-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

Where: Hurricane Ridge – Olympics
When: Easter weekend (April 11/12)
With: Andreas
Goals: Build and sleep in a snow igloo!

I had a weekend off from BoeAlps so Andreas and I decided to take advantage of this by doing a weekend camping trip. At first we weren’t sure where to go because the weather looked bad and it seemed wherever we went we would be pretty cold. We quickly got past these thoughts and moved on to the thought of snow-camping and got the idea stuck in our heads of building a snow igloo!

We woke up at 6am to eat a hot bowl of oatmeal before heading north to Port Angeles. We got to the Kirkland ferry in time to for the 7:50am departure after stopping at the store for some bagels and nutella for our lunches.

When we got to the Olympics National Park Visitor center (actually the WIC – Wilderness Information Center) we grabbed a detailed map of the area. We neglected to go inside and talk to the Rangers. We continued up the pass 17 miles to the main parking lot for hiking Hurricane Hill. We noticed a few “NO OVERNIGHT PARKING” signs on the way up and were weary of our next steps, so we stopped in the second Visitors Center, conveniently at the top of the pass, to chat to a ranger about where we should park if we want to do an overnight trip. He said we needed an overnight permit, which can be retained at the WIC. He saw our sad faces and suggested we call down to them and see if he could issue a pass, saving us the trip down and back. Apparently the WIC are the only ones able to issue the passes.

After a bit of phone time, we had confirmed our overnight permit and Andreas went down the hill 3 miles to park the car—with a maintenance guy who brought him back up to the parking lot. Andreas was also told that we may get 6-12” of new snow overnight and that the pass may be closed in the morning (currently it’s only open on the weekends anyway). They said that we’d just have to call down to the WIC and somebody would come up to open the gates for us.

Excited for new snow, we were soon following the trail to Hurricane Hill. We were super surprised how accessible the area was in general. From the parking lot, the summit was only about a mile and a half away (although it was also rated as one of the ‘most difficult’ trails from the area). The first part of the trail was actually a road, presumably open in the summer. We saw (what we assumed to be) many camping areas for summer visitors as well. We started out with no snowshoes, but this changed soon after we got off the road area.

Going across the ridge we only saw two other female snowshoers. Perfect solitude with mountains surrounding us on all sides. The weather was also really beautiful. For the most part there were bright white clouds and the sun would keep poking its head out. It was really crazy how warm it got when the sun was showing. On the final summit push, I put up the lift bars on my snowshoes. I couldn’t believe the difference it made. Suddenly the hill was much more manageable. The hill wasn’t too bad on the calves before, but once I had the lift bars up it became quite pleasurable.

At the summit we ate apples and enjoyed the view. At one point the clouds departed once again and the sun came out and we had a spectacular view of the surrounding ridges. It was really strange to see some really lush green areas that looked as high as their neighbor snow-covered mountains. I can’t wait to explore the Olympics even more—their different types of eco-systems are really intriguing.

The ranger told me that at the northernmost point of the Olympic Wilderness area you can see puffins, seals, and sometimes even whales. I would be really excited to do a beach tour. Apparently it’s a pretty tough trail and you have to make sure to match it with the tide otherwise you can easily get stuck on the trail/in an inopportune area.

We had scoped out some camping areas on the way up and decided it was time to re-find them to make sure we had enough time to set up camp. Our goal was to set up my tent (so I could make sure it was worthy of camping next weekend with BoeAlps) and also build a snow igloo (for fun) to sleep in. We also had lunch of bagels and nutella – as Doug says, it’s like a high carb donut!

As I set up the tent and snow stakes Andreas starting sawing blocks for our igloo. Once I was done with the tent I realized that the circumference of our snow igloo was large enough to fit a large family and their pets. After a bit of re-arranging, we got a reasonable circumference and started building up. We built a tunnel into the igloo and soon realized the height of our igloo was going to be much higher than our original anticipation. We started creating a much greater angle with the snow blocks but by the time we were done Andreas could almost stand up in the middle—didn’t need to worry about claustrophobia! It took around 3 hours to build it. By the end we had a pretty good system down of packing in the blocks and sizing them correctly.

We cooked a dinner of rice and cheese tortilla’s accompanied with a bottle of hot apple cider. The wind was minimal and we were able to eat outside without getting cold. By the time we finished dinner it was dark enough that we were able to spy a few stars. We were also pretty tired so we decided to retire to the igloo. Let me just say that having a blow up mattress pad (Big Anges), with a closed cell mattress pad (Thermarest Z-rest) on top made for a comfort level that was easily comparable to a real bed (if not better). I highly recommend this combination for luxurious sleeping conditions.

It probably would have been a good idea to put a tarp down below these things to ensure no melting; the next day the bottom of the mattress pad was damp but not soaking. The temp in the igloo stayed above freezing the entire night (based on the observation that a water bottle left outside the sleeping bag did not freeze). Even though it was warm at night, we still think the idea of boiling water to put at our feet would be fun next time. Instant happiness. Also, a great bonus was that we had borrowed some down booties that made for an absolutely enjoyable experience.

The next morning we woke up and assumed no new snow had fallen since nothing had come through the vent holes. Alas, we had at least 4” of new snow on the ground! The tent had collapsed in the night and had more than 6” of snow on it. Had we been sleeping in the tent, we would have woken up to shake it off.

Breaking down camp seemed to take forever because taking down the igloo was quite a job. It was completely frozen. Just as tedious was getting the snow stakes out of the ground too!

We were very glad we brought snowshoes on the trip. Going back on the ridge we went through some huge drifts. It was also pretty windy, but still felt safer than trying to traverse the side of the ridge where it was much more slippery with the new powder.

Fortunately it didn’t take too long to get back into the wooded area, free of the gusting wind. Once we came upon the visitor center we were not surprised to find that the road had been closed. Fortunately, the visitor center had an indoor shelter area with a phone and rest room where we had lunch and phoned down to the WIC to ask how we should get to our car/ get our car past the closed gate. They told us to walk down the hill and a ranger would open the gate for us.

As we walked across the parking lot we walked through some drifts that were about 6 feet high and a moment later we’d be down to ½” of snow. It was very strange. We couldn’t believe this happened overnight. We got less than a mile down the road and saw a ranger truck. The ranger offered to drive us to our car and then open the gate for us to cross. We took her up on the offer and by the time we got to the car, there was no snow on the road, and it was slightly raining.

Overall, iIt was such a pleasant experience – all the help we got with getting to our car (before and after the trip), storing it at the correct lot, and making sure we got home safely was executed so well by the rangers. Although I missed out on the annual easter candy hunt at home in Vermont, I was super excited about the weekend. Such amazing weather the first day, and a really fun adventure overall.

On the way home we stopped at an Easter party and stuffed ourselves making up for all the calories we burned on the weekend.

Silver Peak -- BoeAlps

2009-04-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Silver Peak– Snowqualmie Wilderness
When: Sunday April 5th, 2009
With: BoeAlps
Goals: Navigate to the summit

Already our 4th BoeAlps outing!

I was out of bed by 4:30am. All my gear had been packed the night before; I just needed to eat breakfast and prepare lunch. After a hearty bowl of oatmeal and preparation of my banana-peanut butter-chocolate chip-tortilla, and gathering snacks, I was pretty much set.

I was 5 minutes early to meet the group at the park and ride and there was only one other person there, I couldn't believe it. This person was Mike, an instructor who also helps out with the basic rock class and intermediate climbing class. Soon others showed up and all was well. Before carpooling to the trailhead we verbally checked that everybody had their 10 essentials.

We carpooled to the tiny trail head and after putting on our gators and helmets and going over the possible routes to the summit, we were on our way. The first part of the trail had been conveniently packed down by the Saturday summit crew. We left the trailhead at 7:20am with high spirits on a gorgeously sunny day with a 45 degree starting temperature.

The team is only as fast as the slowest person, so we had them lead. About a mile in, Ken and I took over the lead and the navigation. Admittedly, we were still following the Saturday crews bootpack, but we were still taking bearings!

At one point, when the packed trail merged, we followed the trail that went straight up the mtn. Very soon after we realized that this trail seemed very odd, for it had very steep steps, I also noticed that the footprints seemed to be leading down the mountain. After informing Ken, the current leader, we took a bearing and realized we were probably on the Sat teams decent trail. We backtracked slightly to a trail that a lone snowshoer had made (instead of backtracking slightly more to the Saturdays teams bootpack). We followed this for awhile, keeping in mind our current traverse should be increasing about 6 degrees in elevation.

We crossed a few bridges that were piled up with about 4 feet of snow. One bridge had a railing; the snow was so high that you could have walked evenly on the snow and railing.

Fortunately there were no epic falls, only slightly concerning ones.

Soon we came to an impassible gully. The snowshoer had walked across a tree we deamed unstable. So, we decided to traverse up, in an attempt to go around it. This “up” meant going up a 35 degree pitch, all while we were making our own trail.

It was hard going. When you're breaking trail, you break about 30 steps and then let the next person do the same. It is surprising how hard breaking 30 steps is when you sink in snow up to your waist. We never did find a spot to cross the gully, and continued upwards, at a very slow pace.

Some of our team are amazing steppers. Ryan and Matt in particular (the youngest, most in shape guys). Mike, one of the instructors, would actually walk along side of us, breaking his own trail, and somehow still always end up in front of us, even though he never got a break (other than waiting for us to catch up). He's super tall, so I feel when I sank up to my hip, he was only sinking up to his knees.

With such slow going it was obvious the summit was not attainable. Instead, we hoped to reach the ridge and get a nice view. Slowly but surely we succeeded in this feat, and at the top, three of us whipped out “ridge treats” (aka “instructor treats”). Last hike, we neglected to bring treats for all to share and sure heard about it. This time we were trippley prepared. Ken brought chocolate chip cookies, Evelyn brought carrot cake (that is edible for those with siliacs) and I brought decadent bars (condensed milk, plus tons of nuts, chocolate chips, graham cracker base, and oatmeal) and some no-bake cookies with peanut M&M's. Every single person that had a bar said they were the most amazing things ever. I agreed. Mmm!

After some photos and a snack break, and an explaination from Ron of all the surrounding peaks, we left the summit, going north (a different way than we came up). The traverse down was much harder than last Sundays.

The snow was everchanging. Most times it would be packy snow, but sometimes there would be lots of powder, other times there would be a combination, sometimes there was a crust. You never knew what you were going to get. Either way, the packy snow meant for really hard going. We still beat our uphill time by about 3x, but we should have been able to sail down!

Every trip many of us lament that we do not have our snowboards. Perhaps after this basic class is over we'll have to organize some snowboarding trips with our new crew. Near the top of the slope the trees were so perfectly spaced for a fun ride down the mountain (especially when you hit powder!).

The other teams (Sat and Sun) had similar problems sumitting. One team climbed Guy Peak, which in good conditions will have the team summiting in about 2.5 hours. It took them over 6 hours to get to the false summit. The team climbing Red Peak had to turn back because of extreme avalanche danger (going through a big bowl). Every team really struggled with this new snow.

Our entire trip was about 2500 ft in elevation.

At the restaurant afterwards we cheered to summit treats.

Stevens Pass -- BoeAlps

2009-03-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

Where: Stevens Pass
When: Sunday, March 29, 2009
With: BoeAlps
Goals: Practice Ice Ax Arrests, Setting up Anchors, Walking while Roped in

We got to the Stevens Pass parking lot; all the teams were lined up with their ice axes out, gators on, and were ready to march up the pass, ready to go by 7am (meaning we left Seattle around 4:45am).

Our pseudo-lead, Ron, gave us some instruction on how to use our ice ax's and we were off to our destination, the ridge/summit, heading due east the entire time.

We all took turns making kick steps up the steep terrain. Sometimes the snow got to be super powdery making for a step that seemed to sink lower than the previous step. Overall it wasn’t too tough though. Our group is either pretty young (5 of us in the range of 22-27) or a bit older (3 guys 45+). Not including our various instructors.

The whole trip was a super positive experience. We were told that you always thank the leading stepper as they rest on the side waiting for the end of the line. Everybody graciously thanked the lead stepper and it led for such a great feeling. Even if the leaders steps weren’t awesome, its nice to know that your efforts were appreciated.

Our group seems really upbeat in general. Everybody is always smiling, laughing, joking around, and just having fun in general. Perhaps it's because our group went for the summit on Sunday, appropriately named SUN day. The clouds rolled by really fast if they were present at all and we had to reapply sunscreen multiple times to ensure we didn’t get burned.

Once we reached the ridgeline (the second group out of four to do this), we made some gullies on the side of the ridge where we soon began to practice ice ax arrests! We flew down the hill in every orientation possible, head first, feat first, stomach up, stomach down, and whatever orientation you happened to get in while trying to stop yourself.

On one strange orientation, head first, back up, the guys in the group graciously proclaimed “girls first.” Evelyn and I took one for the team and performed perfect arrests. Another time, I was headed to my water bottle when another ‘first’ person was needed, my movement caught the eye of the instructors and I was beckoned to the gully to attempt a 'head first stomach up' arrest. The first arrest in this orientation was a little scary, but the second arrest felt a lot cleaner. I actually think head first, stomach down is a little more challenging.

We also practiced making snow anchors. It was really surprising to find out how much weight one snow picket could hold in some packy snow. Once you stomped down a flat area the snow was really surprisingly grippy to the metal. We repeated this anchor process by filling a bag full of snow (to use as the ‘snow picket’) and were amazed how much weight a garbage bag of snow could hold.

After the anchors were tied we all roped up (3 people per rope) and walked to the summit. It’s unbelievable how slow walking tied into rope can be. You have to keep the same length on the rope the whole time and so there is a lot of waiting (and wondering why you’re waiting when you can’t see your other rope partners). At one point instructor Leonard told me to jump off the ridge and yell “falling” in hope that the rest of the team would arrest and stop my plummet (and their possible plummet). Fortunately the team held tough and I was able to scramble back up to the ridgeline and we continued on our way to the summit.

The overall trip wasn’t too much of an elevation gain, about 1000 feet, but it was still a workout.

On the way down the mountain we took huge steps and would sink to our knees and sometimes up to our waists. Many of us lamented not having our snowboards. Taking such deep steps down made me feel like I was tele skiing down the mountain.

Now that we have some basic ice ax skills, I can't wait for the next adventure!

Live Vicariously

2009-03-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

Mostly this blog will be about hiking, mountaineering, climbing.

It may be updated with other randomness.

Let me know what you want to read and I'll attempt to post those details. (i.e. Do you really want to know if I'm sore after a trip? What details do you really care about? Either comment here, or email alpinealison@gmail.com).