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