Alpine Climbing

I had previously thought that I knew the main types of leading rock climbing. There is sport, and there is trad. Sport is what we like to do on vacation. There are predefined bolts on the wall that you clip into as you go. There is no route finding, and you do not need to worry about protection because it is there for you. Plus there is no sport climbing close to Ithaca. Then there is traditional, or trad, climbing. This is when you have all sorts of gear to put in cracks and other weaknesses in the rock, and you are responsible for making sure that you place protection well so that it will catch you if you fall. This is what we have to do when we climb at the Gunks. I enjoy them both for their own reasons. Sport is great because I can climb harder routes and enjoy it for the movement and difficulty. I am okay falling on bolts. Whereas trad climbing is scary, but I associate it with getting high up, which I also enjoy. Most multipitch routes that I have come across are trad, where sport is usually climb about 80-100' then come back down. I am yet to take a fall on my trad gear, mostly cause its really scary! and I don't climb as hard of routes if I am trad leading.

Sport climbing

Trad gear

Then on this trip for the first time I did an alpine climb. This was the Beckey Route in the North Cascades. I wrote about that in my Washington post. And it was awesome. I love getting to the highest point that I can, and getting to the top by needing to use technical skills is even more rewarding. Generally though... the approach sucks, since mountains are generally not next to roads, and so you need to hike all your climbing gear as well as other day gear up to the base of the climb, which can be many miles.

The next two places that we went to after Yellowstone both included some alpine climbing and it was sweet. In the Tetons we climbed the Guides Wall, and in the Wind River Range, we climbed Pingora. I would say that the Guides Wall was a warm up for what we were to do later, but we had no idea at the time. First off, the Tetons are a mountain range that rise up seemingly out of nowhere, and has a really meaningful profile for us. We had no idea until we got there, but it seemed to be destined:

The Tetons profile matches our rings

Anyway, after arriving at the park and getting information from the Jenny Lakes Ranger Station (which is specifically for climbers), we prepared for a full day. It was about a 3.5 mile hike up into the Cascade Canyon, where we took a turn off the trail to scramble up a scree field to the base of the climb.

The arete in the middle was our route

So since this was to be trad leading, we chose a climb that was not too hard. I feel like it allowed me to really enjoy where I was, which was a very cool place.

Looking up Cascade Canyon behind me

Amazingly Nico and I have really begun to get our systems down and are actually becoming quite efficient at climbing. This is very different from the pace that Andrew, James and I took on the way up Half Dome (granted that climbing was more difficult, there were 3 of us, and we were hauling...) For the first time ever, we passed a party that was moving slower than us. Then at the 5th pitch (of 6), we caught up to the first party that got on for the day, but unfortunately there was no good way to pass, so we just had to wait a while. The 5th and 6th pitches were some stellar climbing as well.

Top of the climb

Then it was 4 rappels to the base and another 3.75 mile hike out. It was a full and rewarding day. Although like I said before... just a warm up for what was to come. Our next destination was the Wind River Range. I had seen pictures of Cirque of the Towers before and really wanted to go there. This time it is a 10 mile hike in. Not even close to a day trip... and combining backpacking with climbing is a whole other beast. Having to pack in not only our climbing gear, but also all our backpacking gear plus 5 days of food. Heavy does not begin to describe the metal filled monster that was attached to my back...

If you cant tell, I am hunched over quite far to balance my load and stay upright.

That photo above is coming into the Cirque of the Towers; finally almost to camp for the day. Quite stellar and worth it though. After a decent pack in, we decided to not get up super early, and to climb the "K" cracks on the South Buttress route on Pingora.

Pingora is the big mountain straight ahead

It looked so close and simple to get to, although this turned out to be the crux of the day. The actual climb is only 4 pitches starting on top of the shoulder of the mountain (where it gets real steep on the left side). But in order to get to it, we needed to cross many boulder fields, then go around the backside of the shoulder where there are 3rd and 4th class scrambles to get on top of the shoulder of the mountain. It took us almost 4 hours just to get there...

Placing a tricam on pitch 2

Even though the climbing is easier on something like this (or at least we choose a route that is not beyond our abilities) it is still great. Again, this day, we came upon a party moving significantly slower than us (on the technical part at least), and we passed them by doing a different second pitch. It was exciting to look at the pitch, not know for sure, but think, "yea, I can lead that" and then go do it. Turned out to be some awesome climbing, and I would say more difficult than the normal pitch is rated.

Climbing the "K" cracks

Another interesting thing about alpine climbing that one needs to get used to is exposure.  It is one thing to scramble up some boulder when you are a couple feet off the ground, it is a whole other thing to do the exact same movement 2000' above the ground. Fortunately for me, I am able to kind of ignore that small fact and focus on what is in front of me. There were a couple places on this climb that you need to do something relatively safe, yet scary while unroped. The last pitch is only 3rd and 4th class (scrambling) and so I set up an anchor for Nico to be belayed up and rappel down. But when it was my turn, I just had to break down the anchor and walk... Same thing after the rappels:

Walking back to our bag with the ropes coiled around my neck. A wee bit of exposure.

But really, the main reason for me as to why I love to do this is to get on top and experience the amazing views and the satisfaction of using technical skills and hard work to get somewhere that would otherwise be impossible. The summit of Pingora was certainly no let down.

Summit view

Looking back at the rest of the Cirque

Fortunately the hike back was much easier, since we knew the way down the scrambles, and even found the climbers path back down into the valley. Being that neither of us had ever been to the area, one thing to know for next time is that it is probably a very good idea to scope out the climb beforehand. After this day, it would be so much easier to get to the base of the climb. Fortunately we had great weather this day, and so even at 7:00 when we were back at our bag, no thunderstorms had rolled in. This is definitely not always the case in this area.

Sun getting low while we are still on the mountain

We made it back to camp by 9 and fortunately it was still light. That slower group that we passed... we saw their headlights coming down the climbers trail while we were having dinner in camp.

The next day was Nico's birthday, and we had a way more relaxed day with some hiking and wandering around the area. Amazingly beautiful, and this is definitely a place that I would love to come back to.

View on the other side of Texas Pass (hiked here)

Hiking out. Packs still huge. Want this to remain beautiful for future generations --> yes that is a bag of shit on the outside of her pack :)

Steamy Holes and Bear Jams

The title of this post basically sums up Yellowstone National Park.

Steamy Hole

No, its not hot lava... only thermophile (heat loving) bacteria.

After going hard on the backcountry and intense activities for quite a while, it was time to chill out a little bit. This was the plan for Yellowstone; to do the tourist thing and drive around and take pictures of cool stuff. At one point we had considered doing some backpacking here too, but then we heard that a couple weeks before a whole herd of Bison fled the park. Why? They may know something we do not. Then a couple days before arriving, one of the roads melted... So in lieu of all this, we did our thing and drove right into the caldera of one of the worlds largest volcanoes. Historically it blew 2 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and 640,000 years ago. So I figured we are right on schedule +/- 100,000 years. These odds were good enough for me.

Terraces

We spent one day driving around, fighting the tour buses (this place is almost as crowded as Yosemite, but fortunately taken down one notch of crazy people), doing all sorts of short walks to interesting geothermal sites. Yellowstone is full of bubbling pits of mud, geysers, interestingly colored pools and terraces and of course, Old Faithful. I think my favorite sign of the trip was at one mud pit that the boardwalk takes you fairly close to, "Caution: Hot Flying Mud". And the walkway in fact did have mud on it.

That night we wandered to the National Forest just north of the park where it was way easier to find open cheap camping. The following day, we drove down the other side of the park where there is less geothermal activity. This part of the park was very beautiful in its own way, and would probably be best characterized by the term "bear jam".

A righteous bear jam (we certainly added to the problem...)

There were many bison around.

It generally starts with one car noticing some wildlife on the side of the road (and being that this is a national park and they are all protected, there is quite a bit). Then other people driving by sees a couple people actually OUT of their car in a random spot, so they slow down or stop to see what the other people see. Then before you know it, people are parked all over the place and there is a huge line of traffic. It is quite comical. But at least you do get to see quite a bit of wildlife. Here we saw many bison (they look docile, but are HUGE), elk, moose and bears.

The non-geothermal part of Yellowstone. Always more wildflowers!

City of Rocks

As we were walking out of Glacier, we actually didn't know whether we were going to be heading North into Canada, or South to Selway-Bitterroot, or the Crazies, or to City of Rocks. I am not totally sure why, but we decided on City of Rocks.  I liked this because Idaho is the last Western state that I was to do something in and spend a night there (more than just drive through).

City of Rocks is located in southern Idaho very close to the boarder with both Utah and Nevada. It is this area that full of these very interesting blobby rock formations.

City of Rocks

We got there at about midnight, and the next day took the first true rest day of the entire trip. As in we spent 24 hours just hanging out in our nice shady campsite reading, talking, and sleeping. We thought about climbing as there was a few routes literally a 15 second walk from our site, but it rained or was threatening to rain for most of the afternoon. This was totally fine since we were not doing anything much anyway, and it made for some really nice evening lighting for photos.

Evening rainbow from our campsite

We spent the next couple days exploring the area trying out the climbing at some of the more popular rocks. If you read Nico's post on this, you will find that she was not impressed. It is a very different style that we are used to and I enjoyed the challenge. It was certainly a bit scary though since the protection on the sport routes were barely adequate. A 5.9 route was generally bolted as if you were a 5.11 climber.

Doing some trad climbing since that felt safer than the sport...

Overall I enjoyed the climbing even if it is not my favorite, and it was a good place to see and spend a few days.

Really cool rock formations though

Glacier Backpacking

We left the Cascades in Washington and head East for the first time to get to the Northern Rockies and Glacier National Park. This was almost 3 weeks ago.... whoops. Nico and I both think that if we were to do this again, we would try to slow down a little bit, as in those three weeks I had just a bit of internet time to only unload some photos (previous post) and not nearly enough time to actually write. So here goes.

Based on how things were going with snow this year, we were thinking that we would not be able to do a whole lot at Glacier. In typical Dave and Nico style, we showed up at the backcountry office and asked, “What's good?” An hour later we had a 4 day itinerary and a permit beginning the following morning.

Glacier National Park

We were not able to be in the heart of the mountains, but we did find a couple of valleys that we could walk up to be in and among some mountains. We started about 200' from the US-Canada boarder and head into the Belly River Valley.

Hiking into the Belly River valley on Day 1

The short version of our itinerary:

Day 1 – Hike 10.3 miles up one fork of the valley to Glens Lake.

Tons of wilflowers

Day 2 – Hike up to the end of the valley, above the waterfalls, to Margaret Lake. Then back to camp and move camp 2 miles back the way we came to Cosley Lake.

Margaret Lake

Day 3 – Ford a river, and then hike over to the other fork of the valley to Elizabeth Lake, then wander around that area.

Fording the river

Day 4 – Hike back to the car.

Elizabeth Lake

Highlights – Hiking up past Mokowanis Lake to Margaret Lake.  This was a place that way fewer people make it out to and had awesome views of the head of the valley, and we gained a bit of elevation and the best views of this 4 day trip. Also there was a herd of bighorn sheep there that were just an interested in us as we were of them. Also, I am very proud of Nico for fording that river, since she is so afraid of the water and also a weenie when it comes to cold water :)

Bighorn sheep staring us down

Other interesting things to note of varying quality...

1. Because so many people use this backcountry, you have to specify the exact campsites that you will use each night on your permit. Each campsite has a shared area for cooking, and so it is a surprisingly social atmosphere for a backcountry experience.  I quite enjoyed this, as Nico is an awesome travel partner, but it was nice to meet some new and interesting people.

Amazing that the bears cannot get this food.

2. Wildlife, cool. Bears... interesting. Being a national park with all wildlife protected, it means that there is a whole lot of wildlife there. There are lots of Grizzly bears in the area, and so we had to be loud constantly so that we did not surprise a bear which is the best way to get attacked. Being loud in the backcountry constantly is totally not our thing, and is actually tiring for someone who does not normally talk constantly.  Also kinda funny was the camp deer that hung around each campsite, occasionally stealing people's clothing (for the salt) and just hanging out within 15' of us.

3. Lots of mosquitoes... On the bright side, I have a feeling that the Adirondacks will seem very tame in comparison.

More Glacier NP photos can be found here.

Breif Update

We are finally spending a little bit of time on the computer... I've got photos uploaded from Glacier, City of Rocks, and Yellowstone. More to come soon from the Tetons, and later today we are headed to get information and plan our trip in the Wind River Range.

Glacier National Park Photos
City of Rocks Photos
Yellowstone National Park Photos

Nico also just got a blog post up about Glacier and City of Rocks, so check out her blog here.

Interesting how the longer I've been away, the less I want to spend time on the computer... Break time, maybe we'll be back at it after lunch.

Washington is Awesome

If I were to move anywhere else in this country, it would be to Washington state. From the moment that we got there, it started to feel a little bit more like home, probably mostly because everything was green again. No more of this high desert. Also we have just gotten good vibes from most people we ran into. And there are mountains like no other.

Green! With Mt. St. Helens in the background.

Washington is also good at dealing out the misery, just like the Adirondacks. For the first couple days here that we drove by Mt. St. Helens and then went to Mt. Rainier (Rainyer?) We could barely see anything because it just rained and we were up in the clouds...

On the slopes of Mt. Rainier...

The puddle our tent was in...

From Mt. Rainier we went to the Olympic Peninsula where it continued to rain the whole time we were there. We may have slightly forgotten how to deal with rain, when we set up our tent in a spot that looked nice the night before, and then ended up in 3 inches of water after it rained all night....

We went to the Hoh Rainforest, which is a coniferous rain forest. Kinda neat with everything covered in moss. It was nice to slow down a bit and do a couple short walks really taking our time.  Since it was cloudy out all the time, there was no where to go to get good views.

The next day (the forecast was for it to finally clear up) we went for a hike to Marmot pass. Well, it rained some more, but fortunately there were tons of wildflowers out, and a very cool river to walk by.

The Olympics were a great place to chill out and spend a few rainy days. We even got a day of library time in to catch up on blogging (somewhat) and do a little bit of planning for the next month.  From the Olympics, we took the ferry over to Seattle, thought about stopping... but then decided cities are not our thing so we drove on to the North Cascades National park. Here, we were hoping to get a good backpacking trip in, but unfortunately found that summer does not really start until about August here. We were confined to a couple day hikes, which we made our peace with. Cascade Pass was actually quite cool.

This is in the beginning of July!

We did another day hike to 4th of July Pass. This one was cool, but not nearly as cool as Cascade Pass, so have another photo of Cascade Pass.

Looking back in the direction that we came from

The Liberty Bell

After our two day hikes in the Cascades we decided to move on to lower elevations and do some sport climbing at Mazama, which is on the way to Glacier National Park in Montana. On the way, we randomly decided to stop at this Washington Pass overlook... and were amazed! We had no idea that this existed...

View from the Washington Pass Overlook

We camped at a campground just a little bit past this. I wander over to the site next to ours to see if they have change... and it turns out that Dave and Melda are some very nice people and hardcore climbers/skiers/mountaineers. They started raving about the climbing in this area and told us of the best and most classic climbs.  The Liberty Bell is a super classic.

The next day was our Mazama climbing day, and we decided to wander down into town to see what information we could get both about Mazama and also the Washington Pass climbing. We left the store with two climbing guides :)  Mazama was great vacation climbing, and after 3 days in a row of moderate hikes and  lots of travel, we were ready for a rest day. By rest, I mean walk in 5 minutes to the climbs and do a bunch of single pitch sport climbing. The climbing was pretty nice, although not something to draw you in from too far away.

Leading a climb at Mazama

We finished climbing that day early enough to prepare for a climb up the Liberty Bell the following day.  We planned to climb Becky's route, which is a super popular 4 pitch 5.7- route that gets you to the top of the mountain. So this meant having everything packed up the night before and being at the trailhead by about 7am.

Up the gulley

Hiking in and up to the start of the route was no small feat. It was about 1.5 miles on a maintained trail, then the climbers trail turns off and just goes right up a loose slope, which still has some snow on it. Then you go up a gulley for a while which is full of loose rocks. Fortunately we were the first party up that for the day, otherwise you need to be aware of possible rock fall from the people above you.

Can barely see the Liberty Bell, right in the middle behind the more prominent towers here.

Fortunately we had brought the climbing guide to the area, because the start of the climb was not exactly easy to find. Another party got to the base of the climb at the same time as us, but we let them go ahead since we did not want to rush and they were in a hurry.

Belayer at the start of the route

Nico following on pitch 1

The climbing was pretty nice, especially the chimney system on pitch 2. Fortunately the chimneys here were way easier and less scary than those on Half Dome, and it was quite a bit of fun going through it. The climbing went smooth all the way to the top.

Doing some route finding before heading up pitch 3.

Once at the top, the views were totally amazing! This is actually a tick box for me for this trip. One thing that I really wanted to do was to rock climb up a mountain. The North Cascades are cool in that in order to actually see the mountains, you need to get up in them. There are no places that you can drive to that would give you views like this.

Panorama from the top

I was this excited:

It was really amazing to have seen this mountain two days before, think: "wow that looks amazing, it would be so cool to climb something like that", then meet the right people, find the book, and make it happen.

I've posted quite a few pictures from the Cascades, and they are certainly worth checking out here.
Photos from once we got to Washington to the Olympic Peninsula are here.

Now we are almost to Glacier National Park... and the adventure continues.