Sun Ribbon Arete on Temple Crag

August 20, 2011

The Sierra had been calling me since my first foray into it with Dale about a year ago. I made the trek down to Mammoth Lakes on Friday with a flight through LA. Dale grabbed me at the airport and we immediately headed into the village to catch up over a beer and discuss climbing plans.

The selected plan was to car-to-car the Sun Ribbon Arete on Temple Crag and attempt to fire the Temple-Galey-Sill traverse if time permitted. We sorted gear in Dale's living room and got ready to go light and fast before turning in at 11pm.

2am came very soon. We piled into the car with our gear, busted out to the trailhead, and started hiking by 4am. The sun was just beginning to rise as we made it to the lake below Temple Crag. We stopped here to have some breakfast before finishing the approach across scree and a steep but short snowfield. In the interest of going light and fast, we left crampons and boots at home. I had only brought running shoes, so navigating the steep, frozen snow in my Nike Free shoes was a bit tricky. Copious ice axe use ensued.

The snowfield brought us to some 4th class scrambling up to the first pitch. We put on the harnesses at about 7am, roped up, and Dale fired the 5.7 dihedral in the sunshine. We quickly transitioned to simul-climbing for the following low-5th class pitches and made it to a sweet knife-edge and optional tyrolean traverse. Given our desire to try and fire the full Temple-Galey-Sill traverse, we opted for the faster short rappel and climb back to the knife edge. More simul-climbing brought us to another ridge, another rap, and the 5.10a crux up a mildly overhanging crack, followed by a super-exposed 5.9 face.

Much of the climbing wasn't terribly difficult, but there were always a few thought-provoking moves thrown in and enough loose rock that you had to keep your wits about you and not grab the wrong holds. We eventually made it final 4th class scramble to the summit ridge at about 4:30pm and were on the summit by 5pm. It was clear that we didn't have time to continue along the traverse to Galey, but we were pretty psyched to have successfully finished the climb. Summit shots ensued before a bout of altitude sickness had me throwing up on the ridge. We quickly started the descent.

Altitude sickness feels like a nasty hangover, complete with poor balance, so the scree-sliding descent to the single rap was a bit spicy for me. No close calls, but quite a few slips. The rap brought us to the pass just above a steep snow field. We quickly decided that things would be much faster glissading, so I tested out my new pants with a kevlar-reinforced butt and slid my way to glory down big snow cups, dodging rocks along the way.

Back at the lakes, we ran into a group of people eating dinner who insisted on feeding us in exchange for stories from our adventure. They were incredibly nice and eventually told us that we should get on our way so as not to finish our hike too late. We should have known, but the drive home after the hike out was the hardest part.

Dale was hurting behind the wheel and pulled off for a 15-minute break near Bishop. The snooze button was hit a few times and before we knew it, we'd been napping for an hour. It was well after midnight at this point, so we limped our way back to Dale's place and crashed hard. What a day! About 15 miles of hiking and a vertical mile of elevation gain/loss.

Sunshine Route on Mount Hood

July 9, 2011

7/7/12 UPDATE: Check out the successful ascent report here (http://www.jeffreyjhebert.com/adventures/sunshine-route-on-mount-hood-2).

Ever since my first visit to Mount Hood last summer, I've been thinking about heading up the North face of the mountain via the Sunshine Route. With a free weekend and awesome weather in the forecast, Jake, Bret, Kate, and I drove out of Seattle on Saturday morning, headed for glacier travel, steep snow climbing, and corn skiing.

We made the more scenic drove down via Ellensburg, Yakima, and Hood River. It was a perfect day and we started to get pretty excited when Hood came into view. We stopped in Hood River and asked around about road conditions. The report was that the road to Cloud Cap was in early April shape and that we would have to hike a ways in. Upon reaching the access road, we realized that the gate to the road was down, so we had to start at the Tilly Jane trailhead at about 3,800 ft. An older guy was just getting back from a car-to-car up Cooper Spur and told us that it was quite a slog to get to snow.

Regardless, we geared up for the hike in and donned ~70lb packs with our camping, climbing, and skiing gear. It was a solid 3+ miles and 2,000 ft up to Cloud Cap where we set up camp on the porch and enjoyed an amazing sunset. Bed time at 10pm only gave us about 5 hours of restless sleep before we woke up early for the ascent.

Thankfully, we left our camping gear at Cloud Cap, but we were still lugging a ton of gear up the mountain. It took about 2 more miles until we reached the glacier and donned our skis. Unfortunately, the early-morning spring conditions were quite icy and we quickly realized that skinning wasn't going to be the most efficient way to go. We strapped the skis back on and started back up with crampons.

It was slow-going with lots of weight and a pretty steep aspect across the glacier and up the snow dome. We reached the top of the dome at about 9,600 ft and took a breather. At this point, the Sunshine Route headed up a steep section above some crevasses, so we roped up and then continued up the face. We switch-backed up and then made a somewhat sketchy crevasse-crossing before traversing over to the ridge line. There were two options at that point for pressing on--a 60+ degree icy slope on the ridge or a thin snow-bridge spanning a crevasse and reaching the top of a large cornice. Neither one sat well with the rest of the crew, so we decided that would be our top elevation (10,300 ft).

The descent was incredibly fast and tons of fun. Things had softened up significantly and we thoroughly enjoyed our turns down the snow dome, across the glacier, and back to our gear stash. The rest of the hike out was pretty monotonous, but we cruised along at a good pace before staggering to the cars and stuffing our faces with day-old pizza and gatorade. It was a pretty big day, with 14 miles of distance and 6,900 feet of elevation change. Whew.

Sulphide Glacier on Mount Shuksan

May 13, 2011

With the promise of good weather and sufficient snow-cover, Redwood, Cameron, and I extricated ourselves from the office around 4pm on Thursday and made our way towards Shuksan in Redwood's orange VW Bus. We made a requisite stop at the Co-Op in Mt. Vernon for some snacks and, with our late start, we finished driving as far as we could up the access road around 7pm. We geared up with skis, ice axes, harnesses, crampons, helmets, crevasse and camping gear and started off on the trail.

We had parked about a half-mile from the turn-off from road 1152 to the 014 branch at 2,200', so we skinned and hiked bare spots about 2 miles to the trailhead at 2,500'. From there, a few stream crossings and more bare spots brought us to consistent snow around 3,000'. We kept chugging along, with much of the trail lit by the half-full moon. The trail brought us to a clearing at about 3,500'. The trail kicked steeply up at this point and we switch-backed our way up, slipping often on the steep, frozen slope with heavy packs not helping matters.

The slope eased somewhat as we moved from the clearing to a wooded area and we continued to make good progress. It was nearing 11pm at this point and we decided that the next good flat spot would be our home for the night. The dense woods eventually yielded to an open ridge with sparse trees and an amazing view of Mount Baker, lit by the moon. We all had huge grins on despite being quite tired.

The ridge continued along for a little ways and we decided to set up camp just below a steep headwall that we would take in the morning to gain a pass. We worked pretty efficiently to set up the tent and cook dinner, but by the time we had each eaten two rounds of pesto pasta, it was after 2am. The three of us packed into the tent and agreed on a 4:15am alarm...it was hard to get much sleep knowing that we would wake up so early, but I quickly passed out in my new 0-degree down bag.

The alarm sounded and each of us lay silent for a few moments, not wanting to exit the glorious comfort of our sleeping bags. Cam sat up and that was enough motivation for Redwood and I to follow suit, put our boots on, and pack up. Having eaten dinner only a couple of hours before, none of us were very hungry, so we made a very quick exit from camp and started up the headwall.

Cam stopped to put on his ski-crampons, which I soon learned were an amazing idea. The slope was completely frozen, with just a little bit of powder on top of it. I kept switch-backing up the face, getting more and more comfortable with switching directions (I'd never done that before while skinning) and we eventually got up near the top of a gully. There were a bunch of snow chunks in the way to make things difficult and the angle was steep enough that we boot-packed the last bit.

Just over the ridge, we ran into a large group of tents from a guided snowshoe trip. A few of them were awake and greeted us, joking and asking if we had brought them coffee. Just past their camp at about 5400', we stopped to take a few pictures as the sun was just coming up and also figure out where our route went. Looking at the GPS and reading the route description, we agreed that we needed to traverse a pretty steep, frozen slope under some rocky cliffs. We took the skis off, strapped them to our packs, took out the ice axes, and boot-packed across the traverse. It wasn't all that steep, but the frozen crust made things a bit tricky.

Once we were past the traverse, we skinned though a large field of avalanche debris in the form of huge snow chunks, and then began going straight up the Sulphide Glacier. The angle to straight up was about all our skins could take, but Cam set a very efficient course. It was at this point that we could see the summit pyramid. From that angle, it looked incredibly steep and technical. We all muttered that it looked a bit sketchy and kept moving.

By the time we were on the glacier section, the sun was rising up higher and illuminated the whole open face. The route took us over some small ribs and then left us on a massive expanse of snow that led all the way to the summit pyramid. We got into a rhythm and kept pushing one ski in front of the other. Mount Baker was visible on our left for much of this section and we passed a secondary peak. The last pitch toward the summit was pretty steep again and we were all feeling the altitude. Cam and I topped out a little shy of the summit ridge at about 8,800'.

The wind was howling and we were wearing every layer we had at that point, so we quickly took the skins off and began our descent. I hadn't spent much time on skis at all recently, so it took me a few turns to get it back, but I was soon really enjoying the skiing. Recent snowfall and warming temperatures (it was about 10am when we began descending) made for some awesome ski conditions. We kept moving down the open expanse of snow-covered glacier and couldn't stop talking about how great it was.

Redwood, showing us what style looks like

The avalanche debris section was a bit tricky, but coming back across the ridge was a breeze now that the snow had softened. Even the very steep section down from the pass was not terribly difficult. Once back at camp, we immediately took our boots off and basked in the sun. It was a perfect day, with an amazing view of Baker and no need to move any faster on the descent, so we ate lunch and took naps. The climbing and skiing had thrashed my legs, so I was glad to take a little time to recover.

In our early-morning daze and quick start, we had neglected to anchor our tent and, despite it's protected location under a tree and dug into the snow, the wind must have picked up and pushed it a ways down the hillside while we were climbing. After lunch and naps, we rigged up a pull-rope and post-holed down to the tent to get our gear back. Redwood was able to pull everything up with our rope and Cam and I slowly made our way back up in the deep, now quite soft snow.

The rest of the descent was fast and without incident, though I did find the super-steep tree section a little above my head, so I boot-packed about 100' of it. The lower elevations were much warmer and we had to take the skis off constantly to cross bare spots on the trail. The last few miles were pretty brutal with wet feet and tired legs, but we made it back to the bus and celebrated with a PBR, followed by dinner at a brew-pub in Mount Vernon. Such an awesome adventure. We had covered close to 30 kilometers and about 6,600 feet of elevation.