Washington is AWESOME!!! Just got to Montana, which means I finally have access to a computer and a bit of free time to write about my trip. So far we have done some alpine climbing, some traditional rock smoking as well as some sport climbing and a bit of plastic muckling. Overall we have gotten a wide array of activities in including eating a ton of fried fish at Pike Place Market in Seattle, which is definitely a hotspot if you haven't been to Seattle before.
For the first week I stayed at a family friends house, the Sterns, waiting for my climbing partners to arrive for some cliff crunching adventures. The Sterns are amazing people and great hosts and treated me like I was one of their own. Rafi (one of the Sterns) and I frequently walked the rainy alleyways of Seattle's U-district drinking coffee and smoking hashish with the local Rabbis, just kidding! But I did go to my first Shabbat in many years. I also got to meet up with my Aunt and Uncle, who showed me around many of the beautiful places in and around Seattle. It is always good to see them because living on opposite sides of the country makes it difficult to stay in contact. I admire them a lot because they live a very different life than most people. They have a giant garden, which is close to a small farm, and they built their own house on this sweet plot of land in the mountains north of Seattle. I also got to meet up with an old climbing friend from Kentucky, that showed me around one of the local climbing gyms. This guy Michal is one of the best climbers Ive ever seen and he's only been climbing for 3 years. One day I know he'll becomes pro.
After many days of roaming around the city and spending way too much money my buddies Christian, Trevor and Charles showed up in town. These guys were planning on doing Rainier but due to bad weather we decided to bail and go rock climbing in Index and Leavenworth for a few days. I was happy because due to a recent finding I found out I have flat feet and climbing a big mountain would have been pretty difficult for me. So now I was able to hang with these guys and check out the cool climbs outside of Seattle. We got to Index late in the day and got in a few climbs before the rain started to hit.
But what really caught our eyes was not the rock climbing in Index but the epic alpine climbing across the stream at Mt Index.
Mt Index is only 5000ft but has some epic alpine routes on it. The following day Christian and Charles went and scouted it out but we were told not to climb it unless the weather was at least freezing. As these guys were hiking up there, Trevor and I rocked some trad routes at the Index town walls, climbing some nice 5.9 and 5.10 multipitch cracks. That night we drove to the Bavarian themed village of Leavenworth, which was hella cool.
(not us but a good picture I found online that shows the bollard.)
After the rappel we pulled the rope and headed to the top of a route called Gib Chute, which is supposed to be a good ski run in the summer. In the summer! We got on our skis and boards and stared to head down. But the snow was so hard and steep you could not get your edges in. I started slipping down the slope and desperatley put my mountaineering axe into the snow, but it got stuck and fell out of my hands. (should have tied a leash on it). I finally stopped a good 50 ft below my axe. The other two guys were below me at this point so I rode down to them and figured I would go back up and get my axe. It was a $100 plus dollars and I didnt want to leave it behind. So I borrow Trevor's axe and his mountaineering crampons that fit my snowboard boots and cruised up the slope to get my axe. As soon as I got back with my axe we put back on our skis and boards and stared down. Trevor went first and was down a 100ft or so. Then Christian started to ski down and lost his footing. He started tumbling down the mountain. Both skiis popped off and all you could see was a big ball of snow the pink ducktaped wands on the back of Christians pack. We yelled for him to self-arrest. (When falling down a slope you must use your axe to stop yourself from falling the technique to do this is called self-arresting.) He was not stopping and both me and Trevor looked in horror as our friend was tumbling uncontrollable down a 1000ft chute with rocks and a giant crevasse at the bottom. The crevasse at the bottom was the Bergschrund of the Nisqually Glacier, which was about 20ft wide a few 100ft long and a 100ft deep (rough estimates). [A bergschrund tends to be the largest crevasse on a glacier. They form between the edge of the moving glacier and stagnant ice.] After many attempts Christian finally self-arrested about 400ft down the slope. Amazingly he hadnt hurt himself. We switched to crampons for a bit, pretty sure that skiing down would be too difficult. After passing much of the Nisqually Glacier on a rope team and in crampons. Then we got to the best powder of all time. We switched to snowboards and skiis but stayed on a rope team. Skiing on a rope team is harder than you'd think. If one person falls or slows down a bit they pull the other people down with them. We must have looked like the 3stooges cause we fell a dozen times trying to ski down this perfect slope of powder. After we unroped we skied one at a time down the rest of the glacier. We grabbed the rest of the stuff we had from Camp Muir and rode down the 5000ft ski run the rest of the way. So tired when we got down that we rented a cheap motel room and crashed for the night. Overall Washington was awesome. Hope to come back, see all the good people and climb some more sweet mountains. Peace Washington, hello Montana!
For the first week I stayed at a family friends house, the Sterns, waiting for my climbing partners to arrive for some cliff crunching adventures. The Sterns are amazing people and great hosts and treated me like I was one of their own. Rafi (one of the Sterns) and I frequently walked the rainy alleyways of Seattle's U-district drinking coffee and smoking hashish with the local Rabbis, just kidding! But I did go to my first Shabbat in many years. I also got to meet up with my Aunt and Uncle, who showed me around many of the beautiful places in and around Seattle. It is always good to see them because living on opposite sides of the country makes it difficult to stay in contact. I admire them a lot because they live a very different life than most people. They have a giant garden, which is close to a small farm, and they built their own house on this sweet plot of land in the mountains north of Seattle. I also got to meet up with an old climbing friend from Kentucky, that showed me around one of the local climbing gyms. This guy Michal is one of the best climbers Ive ever seen and he's only been climbing for 3 years. One day I know he'll becomes pro.
After many days of roaming around the city and spending way too much money my buddies Christian, Trevor and Charles showed up in town. These guys were planning on doing Rainier but due to bad weather we decided to bail and go rock climbing in Index and Leavenworth for a few days. I was happy because due to a recent finding I found out I have flat feet and climbing a big mountain would have been pretty difficult for me. So now I was able to hang with these guys and check out the cool climbs outside of Seattle. We got to Index late in the day and got in a few climbs before the rain started to hit.
Charles (Christian's brah) on Japanese Gardens 5.9 in Index, Washington.
Christian on the same climb a bit higher up...climbing in his brand new onesie!
But what really caught our eyes was not the rock climbing in Index but the epic alpine climbing across the stream at Mt Index.
Mt Index from afar.
Charles taking a peek of Mt Index up close. [Photo cred Christian Rathkopf]
Mt Index is only 5000ft but has some epic alpine routes on it. The following day Christian and Charles went and scouted it out but we were told not to climb it unless the weather was at least freezing. As these guys were hiking up there, Trevor and I rocked some trad routes at the Index town walls, climbing some nice 5.9 and 5.10 multipitch cracks. That night we drove to the Bavarian themed village of Leavenworth, which was hella cool.
Leavenworth, Washington (looks like Germany...right?)
Trevor and I started to climb this route called Canary 5.8 on Castle Rock as Christian and Charles climbed a nearby climb called Midway. It started raining/hailing/snowing midclimb so Christian and Charles bailed but me and Trevor stayed in for the long hall. Really scary climb, not that it was hard but because the rock was soaking wet and freeeeezing! I turned the last two pitches into one and ran it out. Running out placements 30ft between wet rock is always a fun and exciting experience. Me and Trevor made the best of it and told ourselves that it was training for high alpine climbing.
On our way back from Leavenworth we noticed that there was gonna be good weather in Rainer. Though I've been having foot problems for the past month or so the more we talking about how beautiful it would be up on the mountain the more and more I wanted to climb. I decided I would bring a dozen ibuprophen and go for it! Trevor and I rented splitboards and Christian got skiis and we drove to a Walmart to get our final supplies. One of the necessary supplies was tire chains because you cant get up the road without them...supposedly. Problem #1 Walmart had no tire chains. Problem #2 the only store that did closed and would open at 7:30am the next morning. So we were stuck in some random town outside of Seattle and we figured the best option would be to sleep in the Walmart parkinglot. We set up a tent and organized gear late into the night and then woke up at 6:30 to get the day started.
Packing in the Walmart parkinglot.
We made it to the park right as it opened at 9am.
We made it to the park right as it opened at 9am.
Morning view of the mountain. Our route ascended up the right side just below that big rock face.
We got our stuff together and started off for Camp Muir (10,080 ft). After a long and brutal yet amazingly beautiful hike we made it to Muir. More tired than ever and preparing for a 3am wake up we collapsed soon after dinner, which happened to be right around 7pm. Its been a while since I've had to do that. Some essentials needed for such an early bed time were earplugs and whiskey. Considering Camp Muir can fit 20 or 30 climbers all going to bed and waking up at random hours you want to be able to get the right amount of beauty sleep you need for the next days adventures. The Saki given to us by some Korean climbers also helped with the early bedtime.
Camp Muir in the evening.
An wierd snag happened before we even went to bed. The random kid, Nick, who was all by himself and also camping at Muir asked us if he could follow our tracks up the mountain. He told us he had been up to Muir before but he wanted to try and make the summit tomorrow. We were kind of hesitent due to the fact that we didnt know this kid. Whether or not he was a good person or not doesnt really matter in the mountains. We could already tell he was not prepared for what was a head. On the approach to Muir he had zoomed past us with a tiny day pack in a full down and wearing ice crampons and holding two ice axes. That was kinda wierd because there was not too much technical ice up on the mountain, especially technical ice that you would want to solo. We found out at camp Muir he didnt even bring a sleeping bag and used one that was left at Camp Muir for emergencies. We slowly realized this kid had no idea what route he was going to take up the mountain. Unless you are very experienced climber you dont climb solo. This kid was clearly not ready to climb the mountain.
We woke up at 3am made a quick Oatmeal breakfast and patched up our blisters. The random kid Nick woke up as well but didnt make food or anything. When we finally got out of camp it was dark and the mountain looked beautiful. All three of us got on a rope team and after a few hundred feet of skinning we realized the snow was too hard so we switched to mountaineering crampons. With our skis and boards on our backs our packs weighted close to 40lbs where as Nick didnt have a backpack at all, not even a bottle of water. What was this kid thinking!!! All three of us looked at each other like "what the fuck is this kid doing! there are enough challenges head of us alone to reach the summit and now we might have to care for this random kid who had no idea what he is doing and might get himself killed!" But we kept going ascending up this ridgeline with Trevor in front breaking trail, Christian in the middle and me on the rear. I have the least experience in big mountain environments so it felt good letting the other two guys go first. We eventually got to this steep section of the ridgeline where it dropped off into a cliff. Luckly people before us had left a static line anchor to rappell off of. We figured this would deter Nick from following us any further. So we yelled back to him "There is a rapell, you might want to go back to Muir!" We rapped down and he shows up at the top of the rappell and asks us if he can rappell on our line. We asked him "Do you have a harness? do you have a belay device?" He answered yes and yes. No one had the courage to tell this kid NO, but he was making it harder and harder for us to move fast and safely through climb. We said "Fine but hurry up." Then something happened that we never would have expected. He tells me "Ive never used one of these, is this right?" He was up 11,000ft on a glaciated mountain and had never used a belay device. Finally Trevor said what we are were thinking, though it was more like a father yelling at his infant. In short he pretty much told Nick to get off the mountain, he should not be up here and we did not want to have to pull him out of a crevasse or rescue him if he got injured. He told him to go home and hire a guide. Nick finally realized that he had bitten off more than he could chew. Leaving Nick to descend back to Muir, we made a push past the crux of the route. A long catwalk that traversed between two ledges. If you fell you would go a long way down.
Gib Ledges traverse.
After getting past the traverse we ascended up some steep 45degree slope with various sized crevasses that we had to manouvre. From here on we placed bamboo wands in the snow with bright pink ducktape on them to mark our trail back just in case bad weather came in. And from the looks of it that was a major possibility. Getting to about 12,800 ft we all collapsed due to tiredness. The altitude was getting to us and the weather was not looking good. We were about 1,600ft from the summit and it was around 1pm. We discussed whether the summit push was worth it and figured that it would be pretty risky considering our tiredness and what we had left of day light. So we turned back. We rappelled off a bollard past the steep crevase section we had passed earlier. For all you folks that dont know what a bollard is look below. You cut a tear drop type shape about a foot in the snow and lay your rope around it and rappell of it. As long as the snow is good and compact and the width of the tear drop is wide enough the bollard is extremely strong. Regardless I was still pretty scared rappelling of this into the steep terrain below.
After the rappel we pulled the rope and headed to the top of a route called Gib Chute, which is supposed to be a good ski run in the summer. In the summer! We got on our skis and boards and stared to head down. But the snow was so hard and steep you could not get your edges in. I started slipping down the slope and desperatley put my mountaineering axe into the snow, but it got stuck and fell out of my hands. (should have tied a leash on it). I finally stopped a good 50 ft below my axe. The other two guys were below me at this point so I rode down to them and figured I would go back up and get my axe. It was a $100 plus dollars and I didnt want to leave it behind. So I borrow Trevor's axe and his mountaineering crampons that fit my snowboard boots and cruised up the slope to get my axe. As soon as I got back with my axe we put back on our skis and boards and stared down. Trevor went first and was down a 100ft or so. Then Christian started to ski down and lost his footing. He started tumbling down the mountain. Both skiis popped off and all you could see was a big ball of snow the pink ducktaped wands on the back of Christians pack. We yelled for him to self-arrest. (When falling down a slope you must use your axe to stop yourself from falling the technique to do this is called self-arresting.) He was not stopping and both me and Trevor looked in horror as our friend was tumbling uncontrollable down a 1000ft chute with rocks and a giant crevasse at the bottom. The crevasse at the bottom was the Bergschrund of the Nisqually Glacier, which was about 20ft wide a few 100ft long and a 100ft deep (rough estimates). [A bergschrund tends to be the largest crevasse on a glacier. They form between the edge of the moving glacier and stagnant ice.] After many attempts Christian finally self-arrested about 400ft down the slope. Amazingly he hadnt hurt himself. We switched to crampons for a bit, pretty sure that skiing down would be too difficult. After passing much of the Nisqually Glacier on a rope team and in crampons. Then we got to the best powder of all time. We switched to snowboards and skiis but stayed on a rope team. Skiing on a rope team is harder than you'd think. If one person falls or slows down a bit they pull the other people down with them. We must have looked like the 3stooges cause we fell a dozen times trying to ski down this perfect slope of powder. After we unroped we skied one at a time down the rest of the glacier. We grabbed the rest of the stuff we had from Camp Muir and rode down the 5000ft ski run the rest of the way. So tired when we got down that we rented a cheap motel room and crashed for the night. Overall Washington was awesome. Hope to come back, see all the good people and climb some more sweet mountains. Peace Washington, hello Montana!
