2008 December 30 - Lake Wenatchee/Nason Ridge

Octavian and I took advantage of a window between storms to dash over to the Lake Wenatchee Sno-Park and ski some of the trails up on Nason Ridge. I've been here many times in the summer, but I've never had a chance to ski here. We saw a few folks on the lower trails, but once we got a few kilometers out of the state park and away from the golf course we had the entire ridge to ourselves.

We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but there were lots of tracks in the snow - some we recognized and some we didn't. Just before lunch, we spotted some tufts of fur in the middle of the trail and then we spooked a large hawk out of tree just above us. We heard a swoosh of wings and a crash like something hit a branch and then he was gone. A bit later we stopped for lunch and spotted this interesting pattern in the snow:

Then we noticed the hawk perched on top of an old snag on the hillside above us. He watched us like, well, a hawk the entire time we ate our lunch. I think he was miffed we interrupted his.

The groomed trails are all on old logging roads, and there are lots of roads on this end of the ridge, so there are plenty of trail miles. It doesn't look like they groom very often up here, but I guess that's part of the price you pay for the solitude.

The map shows an ungroomed trail that descends directly from the top of the ridge so we decided to head down that way. It turns out it follows the Nason Ridge motorcycle trail (#1583). There had not been anybody on the upper part of the trail so it was quite a slog in the deep snow with lots of brush bent down over the trail. But I've been up here when the motos are running and this is a lot better!

Like I said, there's plenty of miles of trail here - we only covered about 3/4 of them and it still got dark before we made it back to the golf course. You'd think by now Octo would remeber to bring a headlamp when he goes out with me.

Here's a link to the trail map http://www.parks.wa.gov/winter/trails/mapdownloads/nonmoto/Nason%20Ridge.pdf

I'll post a link to the photo album shortly...

2008 December 18 - Snow Day!

UPDATE 22 December: This is getting out of hand. "Snow Day" is turning into "Snow Week" and I'm not too happy about it. It just keeps dumping on us - we even made the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/us/22snow.html Missing work is one thing, but I had to cancel my first sno-park trip today because the roads are so bad. Nothing to do but ski up to the neighborhood park again. At least I ran into this nice fellow out for a few turns himself and we had a nice chat.

Original post:

Wow, first tracks of the season and they're practically right out my front door!

We don't get a lot of snow here in the Puget Sound lowlands, so when it does hit it it's big news. Traffic is paralyzed, work comes to a standstill, schools all close and grownups everywhere start whining and complaining.

My friend and former northwesterner Ray, who moved out to the midwest many years ago, sent me an email this morning offering the loan of a snow shovel. (They're only expecting 8~10 inches tonight - I guess that's not much where he lives - and he heard we might get an another inch. He's seen enough Seattle drivers to feel sorry for us out here.) As if I would do the responsible thing and shovel the sidewalk -- not even close!

Check out Huck and Bill, the two snow dogs in our little slideshow: http://picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/SnowDay#slideshow

2008 December 12 - Pratt Mt.

In an attempt to burn off the last of our 2008 vacation days, Doug and I skipped work to hike up Pratt Mountain. After a short discussion about who had the least expired NW Forest Pass and which route would be best this time of year, we took my car up to the Talapus Lake trailhead. The snow started falling just as we arrived at the trailhead, and got heavier and heavier as we climbed up. I imagine there are some great views from the top, but by the time we got there we could only see about ten feet.

We only stayed on the summit long enough for a couple of photos and an energy snack before the storm drove us off. (I had a new overpriced OR jacket that I brought along just for this part of the trip and it was working great, but Doug didn't want to hang around long enough for me to test the theory that I could sit around comfortably in it for an hour in a howling snowstorm.)

The hike out was easy if a little damp. The only injury was suffered by my phone when we got back down to Olallie lake and I tried to take a call and the snow shorted out the LCDs. By the time we got down to the parking lot, the temperature was back above freezing and the preciptation had changed to rain. Probably 4 inches of snow fell while we were hiking, but at the trailhead elevation (2600') it was disappearing fast in the rain. Still looks like a good start on the winter snowpack though.

A quick hike like this beats work anytime. Here's a few more photos:PrattMt

2008 December 11 - Cracks all year.

The forecast says it will be snowing everywhere in Western Washington by the weekend, but Dan wanted to get one more trad lead in before we switch sports. So I took off work a little early on Thursday to go climbing. Dan swung by the office and grabbed me at about 12:30, and by 2:30 we were standing at base of some very wet cliffs in the British Aisles area on Little Si. After a little discussion and a coin toss I declined to participate in, Dan got the honor of the first (and only) lead. He went up "First Things First" putting in pro every two feet, but considering the conditions, that felt a little run out:After he got the rope up, we played a bit on the 5.6 routes and each took a shot at the 5.9 on the same wall. Not so easy when it's this wet - we'll have to try this in the summer sometime. Another thing: it sure gets dark early this time of year. We only climbed two or three times each and still ended up hiking out by headlamp. At least there weren't any crowds.

2008 November 15 - Smith Rock Road Trip (Real!)

The Central Oregon high desert never has more than three rainy weekends in the fall each year. This year they soaked our plans for a road trip three times in a row. Finally, family, work and weather schedules coincided for a magnificent three day weekend at Smith Rock. We hit the road "after work" on Friday and spent Saturday through Monday climbing in fantastic weather. The place was mobbed but generally friendly on the Saturday and Sunday and blissfully peaceful on Monday. Here's the detailed itinerary, courtesy of Mike:

Friday:

Left at 3:45 pm, just in time for all the traffic

Saturday:

• McDonald's (Dan's Egg McMuffins missing the eggs)
• The Dihedrals
  • Lichen It *** 5.7, bolted: Dan led; Bill, Mike top-roped
  • Easy Rider *** 5.6, bolted: Bill led; Dan, Mike top-roped
  • Night Flight *** 5.5, bolted: Bill led
  • Left Side Crack * 5.4, gear: Dan led; Mike led; Bill led
  • Right Side Crack ** 5.5, gear: Mike led; Dan, Bill top-roped
• Mexican food, with a nice garden… (and beer

Sunday:

• McDonald's (Dan's biscuits burned)
• The Dihedrals
  • Cinnamon Slab **** 1st pitch: 5.6, gear: Bill led; Dan, Mike followed (after Bill talked us out of the big cams and hexes)
  • 2nd pitch: 5.5, gear: Dan led (without the big cams or hexes…); Bill, Mike followed Bill and Mike took pictures (and Bill wandered off…) 2 rappels
  • Bunny Face **** (1st pitch only) 5.7, bolted: Dan led; Mike, Bill top-roped
  • Rabbit Stew *** 5.7, gear: Mike mock-led (and spewed blood); Dan, Bill top-roped
  • Lycopodophyta *** 5.7, gear: Dan, Mike, Bill top-roped
• Mountains of chinese food: Bill and Mike summited, Dan only did the 1st pitch

Monday:

• Shari's (we screwed up, Dan's breakfast looked fine)
• Zion Area
  • 5 Gallon Buckets **** 5.8, bolted: 1st bolt - Mike stole a 10' stick clip, for the 20' high 1st bolt - Dan climbed up 6' to use the stick clip… - Mike returned the stick clip… 2nd thru Nth bolts - Dan did them on lead Bill top-roped (he's such a "poser") Mike top-roped Bill top-roped (again; he's such a climb hog…)
  • Lion's Jaw *** 5.8, gear/corner climb: (our new friends hung the rope while they were up there) Mike, Dan, Bill top-roped
• The Dihedrals (again)
  • Bunny Face **** 1st pitch: 5.7, bolted: Bill led; Dan, Mike followed
  • 2nd pitch: 5.6-5.7, bolted: Dan led (with cam for traverse); Bill, Mike followed; 2 rappels
  • Ancylostoma ** (translated: hookworm) 5.9, bolted: Dan top-roped, Mike thrashed, and then went on to…
  • Bookworm **** 5.7, gear: Mike stopped thrashing, and grunted up on fist-jams, on top-rope; Bill danced up on hand- and fist-jams, on top-rope
• Took the virtual tour of Monkey Face
• Departed right on schedule (5:00 pm)
• Pizza and pasta at that red-neck place (Paolo's)
• Made it home around midnight Monday

Tuesday:

Slept at work all day...

We spent the drive home listing to the classics on the FM and arguing over the greatest song of all time (since there were three of us in the van it had to be a three way tie: China Grove, the Doobie Brothers; Breakdown, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; Born to Be Wild, Steppenwolf).

Check out our album on Picasa here: http://picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/SmithRock# It's mostly my photos from the trip, but there's a few from Mike's collection to document the routes I didn't capture - got to remember the extra camera battery next time! Leave a comment or drop me a note if you want to find out how to see the all the photos.

2008 November 1 - Smith Rock Road Trip (NOT!)

Big plans for the weekend - we were all going to skip a day of work for a three day road trip to Smith Rock. By the time Friday came around though the forecast for central Oregon wasn’t looking good, and we couldn’t face that much driving with such a slim chance of decent weather. But nobody wanted to go back to work just because a little rain storm was covering the five western states, so we made a climbing road trip of sorts anyway: Friday we hopped the ferry and went to Bremerton to check out a different Vertical World gym and Saturday we popped over to the Feathers to catch a few hours on the crags between rain squalls.

The gym was pretty cool, as far as gyms go – it’s a purpose built facility so it’s taller and outfitted with a higher density and greater variety of routes than the Seattle and Redmond gyms. We would recommend it any time you find yourself on the wrong side of Puget Sound on a rainy day.




We didn’t have too much time at Vantage, but we did accomplish one major group goal – we made Karen do her first outdoor sport lead climb. Now that we have a new rope gun, the rest of us can slack off and let her put up all the hard routes!

Check out the rest of the photos on my Picasa album
here.


And yes, this blog will get around to skiing eventually – all we need is snow!

2008 October 25 - Dock Butte

Huck and I took a little hike up Dock Butte hoping to take in the scenery and see how close we are to winter.

Dock Butte is on the south side of Mt. Baker and later in the year the forest road from Baker Lake to the trailhead is a good snow route if you can avoid the snowmobiles. The dog and I tried snowshoeing to Dock Butte in May 2004, when the road was still closed to wheeled vehicles and there wasn’t enough snow for the snow machines but the heavy spring snow slowed us down so much we didn’t make it. (I did manage to destroy an old pair of snowshoes trying). We made it this time though:
The view wasn’t great when we got there, but we stuck around until it cleared up and got some nice shots of Baker and Shuksan at the end of the day.

The rest of the pictures are over here at picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/20081025DockButte#

2008 October 18 Vantage

Farzan, Bill, Dan, Mike, Evy, Jim, Chad, Jacob and Brad chillin' at Frenchman Coulee. Not shown: Tim & Kat - they headed out before we took this sunset picture.

I'm still working on the other photos, I'll post a link when I get them uploaded. Watch this space...

September 27 2008, WAC class fini

Last field trip for the climbing class this weekend at the Royal Columns on the Tieton River. This was a chance to climb some of the hardest 5.4 routes in the state, work on our suntans and annoy the rattlesnakes.



The previous weekend was at Leavenworth for more practice on the rock; in this case for the self-rescue module -- two days of tying off climbers, prussiking up and down the wall and rappelling with an incapacitated partner. The practice sessions were on the slabs at Rotowall, with a side trip to remove some skin on the classic crack.

Bottom line: For rescuing climbers, the Munter/Mule knot solves all your problems.

The weekend before that was the Ice Climbing field trip where we got to spend some quality time on frozen H2O. Still no skis, but plenty of time on crampons. The class was up on the Coleman glacier at Mt Baker. We ended up with three days of nearly perfect weather and covered everything from French Technique for low-angle ice to figure-4's on the overhanging seracs (Well nobody actually made a figure-4 move, but we did talk about them and a couple of folks tried it -- turns out they're not easy to pull on the first ice climbing trip of the season for anybody.)

If you're really interested, I posted a complete trip report for the ice weekend on the WAC site. (It had to be anonymous because we still had two more field trips)

And you can find a good reference to the techniques used here.

My friend Ben posted some great shots from the ice weekend here ...http://picasaweb.google.com/bengadbaw/ColemanGlacierSeptember2008#

You can see my photos from the other weekends here http://picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/WashingtonAlpineClubIntermediateClimbingClass2008#

2008 September 08 - WAC Climbing Class

I've got a little distraction going through the month of September that'll keep me pretty busy. I was going to use a weekend or two this month to scope out some of the sites that I haven't been to yet. Most of the sno-parks are located in the wild lands so there's good hiking and scrambling nearby, but I signed up for the Washingtion Alpine Club's intermediate climbing class and that takes up all the weekends this month. Loads of fun (typical assignment: spend 1/2 hour climbing a 40' 5.3 pitch placing a dozen or more pieces of pro, then rap down with an instructor getting a 20 minute lecture for each piece on how you would die if you ever fell on it, but how bomber it could be if you just move it down 1/16 of an inch; climb it again putting all the pieces back exactly how you had them the first time and rap down with another instructor to find out how great the placements are as long as they don't move down more than 1/32 of an inch.)




So I'm constantly terrified and I may never climb trad again, but at least after this class all my gear will look well used.

2008 September 02 Park Butte/Railroad Grade Hike

So I didn't get to ski over the labor day weekend, but I did manage to get snowed on. Hiked up to Park Butte lookout on the south side of Mt. Baker. Ran into a friendly bunch of hikers in the lookout and they assured me the view is fantastic but all we saw this weekend was white: fog, snow, hail...

insert some photos...

Not much of a view from the lookout, so I ran up the railroad grade trail to check out the glacier. The grapual that landed on the ground mostly melted off but it stuck on the snow patches. I'm afraid it's going to take more than a quarter inch of fresh before the Easton is ready to ski...

insert photo of glacier

Shortly after turnaround time the thunder and lightning fired up, and since I was the tallest thing standing on the railroad grade, I hustled down the trail. The hail was stinging pretty good, and the ground was still white as I got back to the parking lot.

insert photo of trail

Genesis

Is the end of August too early to start planning? It's not like I need to buy any new gear (ski gear anyway, that's been safe in the garage all summer long; climbing gear is another story - thieves helped me retire all my sport climbing gear last month and my bank account hasn't recovered yet).

No, what I need is snow. Last winter we had tons, and it's been a cool summer, so maybe there's even a little bit left somewhere? How about a Labor Day trip on Baker or Adams?

(By the way that's not me in the picture. I dropped the camera and it snapped a shot just as Karen was striking a pose on the Viking course at Cabin Creek a couple of years ago.)