Corn Harvest: Shuking on Shuksan

After giving ourselves a day of rest following the arduous rafting trip, Ava and I decided ski season wasn't over and pointed the car north towards Mt. Shuksan.  We hoped to find remnants of epic spring (summer?) corn snow, and that's exactly what we found.

We approached to about 4,600 feet on the Sulfide Glacier route on Saturday evening, which put us at the lower extent of the good skiing.  We had just enough time to cook dinner and make water before going to bed at 8pm.

We got a 0330 start on Sunday morning and made good time skinning up the route.  We stopped for a hearty breakfast of cheese sandwich at the site of our camp three weeks earlier.

0430 breakfast at the site of our camp on our previous attempt

 Shortly after breakfast, as we continued on our way, we were fortunate to watch a shuking awesome sunrise that seemed to last for an hour.  For once, it seemed that Earl, the God of Weather, would smile upon us.

Sulfide Glacier and the Summit Pyramid at Sunrise

 We roped up upon reaching the glacier, which hardly seemed necessary given the complete lack of visible crevasses along the west edge of the glacier.  The route, as anticipated, was very mellow allowing us to ski all the way from camp to the base of the summit pyramid.

Ava skinning up the Sulfide

The upper 400ish feet, known as the summit pyramid, is a steep block of rock and snow.  The easiest way up is via a 45 degree couloir on the south side.  By any other route on Shuksan, the summit pyramid is the last obstacle to reaching the summit.  Via the Sulfide Glacier route, it is the only one.  Staring at this couloir for a few hours while skiing toward it filled me with anticipation.

Two groups started before us, both of which camped higher on the mountain.  We passed the last of them as we reached the summit pyramid, so we were fortunate to be the first to the top that day and not have people kicking rocks and snow down on top of us as we ascended.  We were somewhat less fortunate on the way down.

Looking down, partway up the pyramid (Ava's down there somewhere below my boot and looks a little rockish)

 The final 50 feet required that we get on a rocky ridge as the snow had melted out.  This was exciting in ski boots with a complete lack of rock pro, but the several rappel anchors that we passed and a clever use of an ice axe jammed in a crack was sufficient.  We reached the 9,131 foot summit at 0830 and had it to ourselves for a few minutes.

Mt. Baker from the summit of Mt. Shuksan (the views were spectacular all the way up, but those from the top were hard to beat)

Hooray for summit shots! (not inspired by Craig W.)

We spent some time at the top and took our time down climbing the pyramid.  By the time we reached our skis at the base of it the snow had softened perfectly.  Turns out 1030 at 8,700 feet on Mt. Shuksan was equivalent to Corn O'Clock that day.

Oh, hey.  It's wild corn.

The first 1,500 vertical feet of skiing was perfect, smooth corn snow.  After that, the ride got a little bumpier as sun cups developed and the snow got softer and stickier.  Even so, the skiing was super fun!  I felt sorry for most everyone else on the mountain that day, as they did not have skis and would have to slog down several miles of perfectly good corn snow.

Weeeeee!!!

We made it back to the tent around 1300 and spent some time there eating and drinking before packing up and hiking the last few miles down to the car.

The Sulfide Glacier route has a reputation for a being a boring slog.  Without skis, I suppose this is mostly deserved.  However, the way we did it made for a fantastic ski mountaineering adventure involving a pleasant ski approach to the summit pyramid, glacier travel, 400 feet of fun and moderately technical terrain at the top, 4,000+ vertical feet of skiing, and beautiful weather all day long.  Shukcess!

Floatin' the Snake

Several months ago Jake drew a permit to raft the Snake River in Hell's Canyon.  Over the ensuing months he put together a great crew of 12 brave people willing to tackle the mild whitewater and endure the almost tropical weather while lazing around drinking beer.  The crew included many familiar faces from previous posts, including Molly and Phil, Kris and Mel, Jake and Al, and Ava and me among others.

Over the course of six days we floated about 80 miles from the Hell's Canyon Dam to Heller Bar.  With flows hovering around 20,000 cfs, the river was at its prime.

We had many key players with important roles.  Molly put together an amazing menu and grocery shopping list.  Al was instrumental in acquiring said food, knowing where things were packed in the boat, and generally making sure people didn't starve.  Phil manhandled the task of providing a music system as well as being our safety kayaker.  Jake performed countless necessary tasks including obtaining the permit and acquiring floating vessels and gear.  Most everyone else helped out by cooking and consuming all the edible and drinkable things we brought.  I lucked out by having my primary responsibility be to rig, row, and derig the gear boat every day.

We encountered the two biggest rapids of the trip on the first day.  After scouting the first one (Wild Sheep), our procession of vessels (kayak, 16' gear boat, kataraft, inflatable kayak (IK), and paddle boat) all went down in fine style.  Even the IK captained by Ava and Al managed to make it most of the way down before flipping.  During the scout, I picked out the biggest wave and managed to hit it straight on.  Not surprisingly, it was bigger than it looked from the bank and felt like we crashed the gear boat into a 12-foot wall of water - good fun, no carnage.

Boat ahead of us hitting the big wave in Wild Sheep Rapids

The second big rapid was more of a shitshow.  During the scout, we watched a couple of other rafts go down and it looked pretty straight forward.  Then we watched another raft go down without anyone in it.  After a triple take, I could no longer ignore the fact that it was my gear boat.  Apparently the half-assed job of tying it up was insufficient to defend against the wake created by the passing jet boats.  Phil and I ran down the trail back to our boats.  He hopped in his kayak and I on the kataraft as we raced after the gear boat which flipped upon entering Granite Rapid.  About a mile downstream we caught up with it.  Phil tied it to the kat and I struggled to drag the up-side-down beast to an eddy.  After it was all said and done, we only lost a bottle of rum and a table.

Camp life - really roughing it

Bumble Bee Ava

After that, everything went much smoother.  The remaining days were filled with floating, eating, drinking, swimming, and generally just having a grand and relaxing time, often in costume.  We saw lots of Oregon bighorn sheep, several osprey, a few deer and some turkeys.  Kris tried kayaking for the first time and discovered that learning to roll would be a good idea before he tries it again.

Thirsty Ram

This trip served only to increase my desire to own a gear boat and partake in trips like this on a regular basis. Boating is a great change of pace from the more physical nature of backpacking, climbing, and mountaineering.  I'll just have to be careful no to get fat and lazy if I start doing this more frequently.

Mel and Ava working hard to get the boat down river

Oops, I Failed Again

After failing to climb at Exfoliation Dome two weekends ago and failing to climb/ski Mt. Shuksan last weekend, I promptly failed to climb Mt. Rainier this weekend.  Oddly enough, each of these trips turned out to be quite enjoyable despite the fail trend.  I won't know what to do with myself if I actually manage to climb something one of these days.  I'll elaborate on my most recent failure since it is very fresh in my mind.

Dane and I have been planning to attempt a climb of Liberty Ridge on Mt. Rainier for a while, and we finally found a weekend where we were both free and the weather appeared like it was going to cooperate.  We left Seattle on Saturday morning with plans of approaching to Thumb Rock (10,800') about 1/3 of the way up the ridge that day and completing the climb on Sunday.  We both fully recognized the ambitious nature of this plan upon its inception.

Dane on St. Elmo's Pass

Beginning at the White River Campground at 7:45am Saturday, we made good time up to the Inter Glacier, over St. Elmo's Pass, across the Winthrop Glacier, and over to Curtis Ridge, where we arrived at 12:15pm.  From here our daily route plan entailed crossing the Carbon Glacier to the base of Liberty Ridge, and ascending Liberty Ridge for 1,800 feet to Thumb Rock.

The North Face of Mt. Rainier and the Carbon Glacier - Liberty Ridge cuts straight down the middle

From our vantage point on Curtis Ridge, a typical camping spot for a 3-day ascent, we could see that the lower part of the ridge was very melted out.  We ruled out trying to scramble up steep, rotten rock, which made the most reasonable option to ascend the snow slopes on the climber's right side of the ridge directly to Thumb Rock.  With heavy rockfall guarding the base of the ridge during the heat of the day, we decided to wait until early the following day and alter our plans to summit from lower down.

Close up of Liberty Ridge, all 5,000 vertical feet of it

Before going to bed that night, we heard the Liberty Cap glacier calve twice.  This is essentially an 500-foot wall of ice breaking off in pieces and cascading down several thousand feet to the Carbon Glacier.  The route we would need to take to reach the snow slope leading to Thumb Rock, as we both knew all too well, would cause us to travel precariously close to the run-out zone of said ice fall.  We decided to get up early and give it a go.

We started crossing the Carbon Glacier at 12:45am.  About two hours later, aided by footprints from another party, we reached the area near the base of the snow slope we were aiming for.  As we predicted, large crevasses barred access from the glacier to the ridge.  The only option was for us to traverse far to the right, around the crevasse and over obvious debris from the glacier calving activities observed the previous night.  We were already slightly exposed to this danger and moving right would just make it worse.  The odds of the glacier calving while we were under it were low, but the consequences were of the highest degree.  Not wanting to spend time deliberating while exposed to this threat, Dane, who was in the lead at that point, made an executive to decision to initiate a hasty retreat.

At 3:30am we were back at our previous campsite, having had a nice midnight jaunt across the Carbon Glacier and back.  I don't think I've ever been on a large glacier in the middle of the night before, and found this experience quite fun/eerie/surreal.  We considered traversing back to the Emmons Glacier and summiting via this easier and less committing route, but ultimately decided that this would make for a very long day with disproportionate rewards.  So we re-set-up camp and went back to bed.  Starting about 9am we retraced our route from the previous day back to the trailhead.

Despite reaching a high point a vertical mile below the summit, we still obtained fantastic views, got lots of exercise (ascended about 5,000 vertical feet with full packs and covered about 14 miles), and came back safely.  It sure beat watching TV all weekend.  I'm excited to try this again next season, earlier in the year when the lower ridge is snow covered and the objective hazards significantly reduced.

Still in the Game

I spent the previous two weeks teaching a rock climbing course in Leavenworth, WA!  It was great being able to continue working for The NOLS even though I have a full time engineering job.  I totally felt like I was getting paid to take a vacation.  Nothing super exciting to report from the course; students were great, weather was almost perfect.  Things went so smoothly it was actually pretty uneventful.  I did get to learn the climbing out there much better, so next time I go back it won't seem like such a mystery.  A highlight for me was climbing Condorphamine Addiction, a 7-pitch 5.10b sport climb.  I highly recommend it due to it's well-bolted nature and varied climbing (steeper face, lots of slab, and even an occasional crack).  Most of the climbing is in the 5.8-5.9 range, with a couple of harder moves that are both on well-bolted slabby sections.

The weather here is finally starting to get better, so hopefully I'll have some first class adventuring to report soon!

Leavenworth Classic

Last weekend Ava held the annual spring campout for the UW Climbing Club.  She enticed me to tag along by proposing that we climb Outer Space on the Snow Creek Wall on Saturday (followed by cragging with the big group on Sunday).  After the 1.5 hour approach, we geared up and were just about ready to begin the first pitch when it started to drizzle.  We proceeded to spend the next hour in the presence of goats trying to reach a mutual decision on if we should climb or not.  Meanwhile, the overcast skies stopped drizzling but remained menacing.  We finally decided to go for it.

Snow Creek Wall in the rain: Outer Space begins near the lower right of this photo and finishes in the top center.

Goat intently watching the party in front of us

We got off to a bad start as I somehow managed to turn Pitch 1 (easy 5th class) into a 5.10+ wanderfest.  Pitch 2 (easy 5th class traverse) went much more smoothly, and then the business end of the climb began.  Pitch 3 (the traverse pitch, and my favorite pitch of the climb) involved interesting and sustained 5.8 - 5.9 moves in an exposed and well-protected environment.  Pitch 4 (the dihedral pitch) takes you left from the top of Pitch 3 over to the bottom of the famous 300' hand crack.  This was an enjoyable pitch in its own right, yet overshadowed by what lie ahead.  A tricky start to Pitch 5 (the money pitch) finds you at the beginning of a splitter hand crack on an 80 degree face littered with chicken heads.  Simply enjoyable climbing in a sporadic and light drizzle.

Ava working her way up the money pitch

Pitch 6 (the final pitch) again starts with some tricky moves.  It's supposedly 5.9, but I found this to be the most difficult part of the climb and I'm not ashamed to admit that I pulled on a piece of gear to get through an obnoxiously thin section 15 feet up from the belay.  After that it was a crack and chicken head romp for 65 meters to the top.  As I was belaying Ava up the final pitch, the drizzle returned and intensified.  As she reached the top, the drizzle turned to rain.  Perfect timing?  I'd say it could have been worse, but the fact that we now had to descend the 4th class descent route in the rain was less than desirable.  The following video summarizes the difficulties of our descent.

We eventually made it down safely and had a fantastic day rock climbing in the rain.  We did some cragging at Playground Point the following day before heading back to the cluster of traffic known as Seattle.

Mountains and Skiers and Bears (oh my)

Last week we had spring for a couple days and Ava and I managed to capitalize on it.  (Side Note: the forecast for this Wednesday calls for another foot of snow in the mountains). We took Thursday off and left Wednesday night to go camp as far up as we could drive on the Cascade River Road.  On the drive up, we saw a black bear wandering across the road, the first I'd ever seen in Washington.

The next day we got up early in attempt to climb and ski Sahale Peak.  We encountered numerous obstacles on our way up the road to where you can normally park this time of year.  The first obstacle was the second bear of the trip.  Then there was ample avalanche carnage.

Road covered in avy debris from a heinous avy cycle this winter

It took us far longer to walk up the last three miles of road than we expected, then we were yet again bogged down in avalanche chunder as we ascended to Cascade Pass.

Cascade Pass

We managed to gain about 4,000 of the 6,000 ambitious feet we hoped to gain to reach Sahale's summit.  We had fantastic weather and views and a great ski down!

J-Burg and the beautiful North Cascades

Sahale Peak

As we were retracing our route back down the road, over and under the multitude of trees, we saw yet another bear!  Apparently they're just out of hibernation and, hence, very active right now.

Bear #3

Fish

Last weekend Molly, Phil, Ava, and I went down to Portland to visit our dad and try our luck at fishing for spring Chinook salmon.  Between the ages of about 8 and 15 I did this a lot, but it had now been years since I had been fishing with my dad and I decided this was too long.

Molly, Ava, and I went out on Saturday with a medium early start (fishing by about 6:45).  We met up with Dad's fishing buddy, Jared, so we had five of us in two boats.  Ten minutes after getting our lines in the water, we had doubles on.  Ava and I each reeled one in.  Half way through the process, the reel separated from the rod that Ava was using, which happened to be Jared's.  The end result was that Jared took over after the kerfuffle and we got the fish.  We didn't see any more action for a couple hours, until we hooked another fish, which Molly reeled in.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a native salmon so we couldn't eat it and had to let it go.  After a few more hours we hooked another one, and it was Ava's turn to reel it in.  After a minute of reeling, it spit the hook so we didn't get to eat that one either.

Ava wasn't planning to go out the next day, so I really wanted her to have a chance to reel in and land a salmon.  As the day was coming to an end, we hooked one last fish.  We experienced no equipment malfunctions and Ava landed the biggest fish of the day.

Saturday's Loot

The following day, after a salmon dinner and a night spent in Portland at a Joe Pug show, we traded Ava for Phil and went out to get some more.  The weather was positively nasty, with cool temperatures joining forces with a stiff breeze and steady rain for the entire morning.  We fished from 7am to 11am and didn't get a bite.  At this point, Phil (who didn't bring any rain pants and was wearing jeans) and Molly rationalized that the misery was not being matched with reward, so we dropped them off at shore.  Dad and I were determined to get something to show for our efforts, so we decided to keep at it for another hour.  By noon, we still hadn't gotten a bite.  We began packing things up and getting ready to pull the anchor, with the last part of this process being to reel our lines in.  As Dad worked his way to the front of the boat to deal with the anchor rope, my rod bent down in that unmistakable, "fish on" kind of way.  I lifted it out of the rod holder with a gentle tug to set the hook.  At this point, Dad was facing into the rain (coming down at about a 45 degree angle) and working his way to the the bow of the boat, so he didn't even see what was going on 2.5 feet away.  Using an artfully combined tone of casualness and surprise, I said, "I got one!", at which point Dad turned around to see me fighting what turned out to be the biggest fish we landed that weekend.

Sunday's hard-earned catch

Phase Next

I started a new job yesterday!  After a few months of searching, I finally found an engineering company to take me in.  I'm working as a Senior Staff Engineer for Icicle Creek Engineers.  It's a small company (less than 10 employees) and is owned and run by a married couple.  My office is currently in the basement of their house in Carnation, WA, so it's a bit of a commute but seems manageable so far.  The work we do is centered around geology, geologic engineering, hydrogeology, and geotechnical engineering.  The projects I will be working on are much smaller than I'm used to and have nothing to do with mining!  Okay, some projects might be mining reclamation related, but that's cleaning up the mess rather than making it.  I'm still hoping to teach the occasional NOLS course, and my new employers seem like they'll be willing to work with on that when the time comes.

Lots of Little Stuffs

Nothing crazy or super fun to report, but I've decided that several slightly important things have happened that cumulatively warrant a blog post.

I sold Quatra, my 4-Runner, over a month ago.  I'm now trying to bike as much as possible and share Ava's car only when it's absolutely necessary.  It's going well so far.  Time will tell how long I can last without a vehicle, but it really doesn't make sense for us to have two cars when we seldom use one.

I went on another mission with Seattle Mountain Rescue to help two skiers down the mountain who were injured in an avalanche.  http://www.komonews.com/news/local/119359894.html?tab=video  This mission was more technical in nature than the previous one and, consequently, more fun.

A few days later, when avalanche conditions were lower, I went up to the same area with Dane as he passed through town on his way to Conway, WA.  At about the same elevation the skiers triggered the avalanche, we encountered increasingly unstable conditions.  We turned around here and got some decent powder turns in.

I went climbing with a bunch of friends at Vantage on Saturday.  I'll be teaching a weekend climbing course there for The Overlake School in about a month, so it was good for me to learn the area a bit since I'd never climbed there before.  A few weeks ago I taught my first course for Overlake, taking six students snow camping for a weekend up on Stevens Pass with one other instructor.  This was my first non-NOLS outdoor education experience, and although quite different, it was equally fun and fantastically short.

I'm still in the job market for an engineering job, but in the meantime I will be an employee at Recreational Equipment, Inc., selling gear to people out of the Alderwood Mall location.  I start training on Saturday.
 It's 15.5 miles each way, mostly on the Interurban Trail, so it's a pretty good ride considering it's through the city.  So, starting on Saturday, I'll technically have three employers: NOLS, The Overlake School, and REI.  We'll see how the juggling act goes.

Seattle Mountain Rescue

About a year ago I joined Seattle Mountain Rescue (SMR), the King County search and rescue organization specializing in high angle and other technical rescues.  Until last weekend, I had been quite inactive in SMR.  This was largely due to the fact that I didn't live in Washington for most of that time as well as having some motivational challenges.

I spent last weekend (Friday night, all day Saturday and all day Sunday) participating in SMR's rigging for rescue training.  It seems that most SMR training is focused on technical rigging systems for high angle rescue, yet most missions that we respond to are of a non-technical nature.  On Sunday, after training in the field from 0730 to 1700, we were notified of a mission nearby.  Someone had reportedly sustained a knee injury on top of Mt. Si, the trailhead for which was only about a mile away from where about 30 SMR members had just finished training.

We regrouped, shuttled over to the trailhead, and began heading up the trail in groups of 3-5 as soon as rescuers were ready.  A few minutes after getting the initial call, I found myself hiking up the Mt. Si tail in the second group of SMR responders on my first mission.  An hour and a half after that, we had hiked 4 miles and gained almost 4,000 vertical feet to our patient.  The first group arrived at the subject's location a few minutes earlier and was well on their way to getting the patient packaged in the litter we had carried up.

After the subject was packaged, the real work began.  We started by sledding the litter down the snowy/icy trail with a series of belays.  Once we got below the snow, we added a wheel to the litter and continued down the trail with four people attending to the litter and about as many tending to the tag line (break) attached to the uphill side of the litter.  As we descended, additional groups (some from SMR, and some from other King County search and rescue organizations) joined us.  Eventually we had upwards of 35 rescuers switching out regularly as we transported the subject back to the trailhead, which we eventually reached at 2315.

I was super impressed with the SMR response as well as the blistering pace at which most of them walk, especially considering the long day we had already put in!  I'm looking forward to joining more missions as the summer and "mission season" approaches.