May 30, 2010.
Dirty Sanchez (5.8 III-PG), Goose Egg Mountain, Tieton River Rocks
It was the second day of climbing at Tieton, one of my favorite areas due to its wide variety of moderate trad climbing intermixed with harder stuff and bolted routes. I was climbing with a new partner who was relatively new to the [...]
May 23, 2010.
Click here to see someone else’s photo of the route. Note the climber to the right of the big tree for scale.
It’s been a great climbing season already, and I was feeling pumped to keep pushing my limits and trying new things. With a superstar climbing partner this weekend, I tackled [...]
March 6, 2010.
Cooper Spur Ski Area to summit, then down the South Side (Old Chute variation) | 7400′ ele. gain | 12:15 hrs.
I will never climb the Cooper Spur again because there is no way I could top this climb. Matt and I joined another team of two, Forest and Nick, near the base of [...]
September 12-13, 2009.
Staircase RS –> Flapjack Lakes (camp)–> Mt. Cruiser summit, and back again
Mt. Cruiser is a relatively indistinct peak on the Sawtooth Ridge, just outside Olympic National Park in Washington. Our group got together at the Staircase Ranger Station parking lot at 10am Saturday morning, for a quick weekend trip. John led this official [...]
August 28-31, 2008.
North Cascades National Park
photos here.
Day 1
* WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM BY *
For my last hoorah of the summer, I headed out for the long drive with a small bunch of Mazamas for a climb of Austera Peak. After a hearty breakfast in Marblemount and a gear weigh-in at the trailhead, we [...]
July 23- July 26, 2009.
Boston Basin near Cascade Pass
Our plan: to climb the East Ridge Direct route on Forbidden Peak in two days, then drive to Washington Pass and do some rock climbing on the stellar routes we keep hearing about out there. Things didn’t turn out quite as we’d planned… On Thursday afternoon we [...]
In the course of four glorious days of climbing at Smith Rock, I successfully climbed several moderate routes. I would highly recommend these routes for a beginning leader. What follows are some brief descriptions, listed by order of difficulty, as well as some lessons learned, .
Left Slab Crack (5.4 Trad)
Chris and I broke this lead [...]
All the tedious lectures and meticulous preparation came down to this: three weekends of climbing at Smith Rock, a climber’s paradise. In the 6 days of climbing we were required to get three evaluations. Much to my dismay, I had to kill the first day re-testing on some of the skills that I had failed [...]
The Mazamas Advanced Rock class is designed to keep you off the rock for as long as possible. Leading rock climbs is serious business, and safety is the Mazamas’ (as well as my own) number one concern. Week after week, I would sit through lectures on topics such as: gear placement, building anchors, rock rescue, [...]
I still can’t believe it’s over. About three months ago, I walked out of my first Advanced Rock lecture filled with fear and disbelief that I was actually going to take on the task of trad leading. I had just barely begun trying some easy leads in the safety of the rock gym and I [...]