Two days in Vantage ..

Ian and I had planned to go to Squamish for a bunch of days. However, the forecast was not favorable for any of the "local" climbing areas. By Monday, Ian wasn't feeling well, and we decided to make it a two day trip to the Frenchman's Coulee area. Since I don't seem to enjoy climbing there, this didn't make me feel great about the trip before going, but I kept my hopes up that we'd have a good time.

When we arrived, the skies were gray, with a light wind. We headed to Sunshine Wall so I could help Ian finish his project of climbing all the sport climbs at Sunshine (and the Feathers.) Once there, I believe we "warmed up" on Throbbing Gristle(5.9). Ian led it and I followed. It was technically easy for a 5.9, but strenuous. I fell and hung at one point. I cleaned the anchor, and we moved on to the next objective: Air Guitar.

Right around the corner is Air Guitar(5.10a), a route with a little history. (Goran Kropp died from a fall on Air Guitar.) Ian sort of psyched himself out of doing this one in the past due to that reason. He climbed it, and sewed up the middle section a bit before he ended up leap frogging protection near the top, then running it out when out of gear. You should include two #3s and two #4s in a rack for this climb. (One guide book even says a #5 if you have it, but I think two #4s will do.) I had Ian leave the gear in for my climb. I cruised the lower 2/3s of the climb then the crack got to off hands for me. I didn't have a good jam to move up on, and took a fall trying to go for a higher hold. After a few attempts, Ian gave me the advice to go deep into the crack for a jam. It worked. I basically wound up jamming my forearm, and it gave me enough purchase to make the next hold. That got me up to a big ledge, where what I would call the final crux moves waited. Above the ledge the crack was wider and was either fists or off-width depending on your body size. I couldn't manage to get decent fist jams, and ended up arm barring the last section with a few falls to reach the chains. Since we had the top rope set up, Ian climbed it again, and then I gave it another lap where I struggled more on the lower 2/3s and had an easier time with the off hands section.

Ian on Air Guitar

At this point the wind was picking up, and it was trying to rain on us. Ian and I huddled down for a bit hoping it would pass and then decided to head back to the car area and possibly climb at The Feathers. We took a long scenic way back admiring the flowers on top of the mesa while hiking.

Desert Flowers

Before we got back to the car, we decided to climb at Zig Zag wall. Neither of us had before, and it was about time. So we headed over to Unfinished Business (5.8) as our first route over there. Ian then told me it was my turn to lead, so I led up the route. He wanted to see me climb at my limit, which that route technically wasn't, but was challenging for having smaller holds after we had been doing laps on Air Guitar. I on-sighted the route, and then Ian pink pointed it. He commented about the strenuousness with the small holds and congratulated me on a nice lead. We spoke with a few women about looking at their newer guidebook, then decided on a .10b route nearby. (I think it may have been called Group Therapy?) Ian led it nicely, then I thrashed up it to the chains. (Actually I wasn't that thrashy, just in one section.) We called it a day and ate dinner and hung out in the car before camping. (It had started to rain around 6pm, but we decided to stick it out to see what the next day would bring.)

We woke up at 6:15am and Ian promptly went back to sleep. I took a walk down to the Columbia on the road and just enjoyed the smell of the sage, and the desert morning. When I arrived back at the campsite, Ian was topping out from a free solo of Where the Sidewalk Ends (5.1). We got in the car to get him his morning coffee.

When we got back we headed to The Feathers in an effort to complete his project there. He wanted to start with a warm up on The Uprising (5.8), probably the nicest route at The Feathers. However, he wanted me to lead it. I was intimidated by the first bolt being 15' off the ground and backed off one move from it. Ian led it, and then I pink pointed it afterward. I told him that it was a little too stout of a lead for me to warm up on.

We headed through the notch and geared up for I'd Rather be Skiing at 49° North (5.10b). Ian stated to me that this was still not finished by him due to a somewhat scary clipping issue at the 4th and 5th bolts. (There is a potential for falling on a ledge if falling at that point.) It turns out that is the crux of the climb where it is slightly overhanging and has some awkward foot placements. Ian led it in fine fashion, and I cruised to the crux, and then thrashed a bit trying to overcome it. It mellowed out above that point and I cleaned the anchors.

The next target was Hardening of the Arteries (5.10c). This was another route with a high first bolt which has caused Ian trouble. Although after climbing it, I'd say the crux was between the 2nd and 3rd bolt for sure. Ian led the route with no issues, and I climbed it well to the crux where I got pretty pumped trying to pull through the steep moves before it mellows out again near the top. We left the rope up and allowed a Canadian guy named Peter to top rope the route. Then Ian climbed it again to clean the anchors.

Peter at the Crux on Hardening of the Arteries

The wind picked up again, and we sat in the car for a bit eating lunch and hoping it would subside. Ian had only one route left to complete his task, but neither of us was feeling great about going out and tackling it. So we hiked over to it, and looked at it and proceeded to pack the car and leave for Seattle.

Overall, a great trip. I feel I need to step up the next time I climb with Ian. I usually feel content following harder stuff, but want to start leading some harder stuff too. Perhaps next time.

Just Taking it Easy...

It has been a week since my return. My timing was terrible (that's not exactly the word that went through my mind, but this is a “family friendly” blog). Somehow I had forgotten that it was Labor Day weekend, in both the U.S. and Canada (though there it was Labour Day). And I probably should also have looked a little closer at the map for a different port of entry... getting onto I-5 after crossing into the States was not a good decision on my part.

After I left Hope on Friday morning (September 3rd) there was a considerable amount of traffic on Highway One – it did, after all, go to Vancouver. It may see strange, but I was totally unprepared, psychologically, for all of the businesses and the stores and the amount of traffic on Interstate Five! It wasn't exactly culture-shock, more like sensory overload. Too much all at once. It didn't take long before my nerves were shot!

Almost on the verge of Panic, I exited onto the first highway I saw that would take me away from there – Washington State Road 20. I got through the heaviest traffic area and on past Sedro Woolley. The first State Park that I came to had a “Campground Full” sign, the second park was closed, the third one didn't have a campground. Not good. Then I got to the little town of Rockport. And they have a Municipal Park with a beautiful campground along the river. All of the RV sites were taken but there were still a few tent sites available. Lucky me! It was early afternoon but I stopped for the night anyway. No telling what, if anything, would be available on down the road. It took a while for my nerves to get settled. A nice hot shower helped immensely as did sitting down by the river and watching the water flow by.

Saturday morning, looking at the map, I realized that if I continued east on State Route 20, I'd be going through the Cascade Mountain Range and through the middle of North Cascades National Park. Neither of which would be bad, by any means, but I needed internet access and/or a cell phone signal. So it was back towards Sedro Woolley.

With my errands completed, and because the clouds had blocked out the sun, I decided to go south a short ways on I-5 to Everett and pick up U.S. Route 2, which is a scenic highway through the southern Cascades and Wenatchee Mountains. When I got over Thompson Pass, the clouds disappeared and I saw sunshine and blue skies once again. It was a beautiful drive though I took no pictures to prove it! The landscape changed as I drove east on the other side of the mountains. Fewer trees, brown hillsides, open vistas.

Near Wenatchee U.S. 2 joins up with U.S. 97 and turns north, following the Columbia River, so I did too. Highways run along both sides of the river, I stayed on the west side on the “alternate” route and stopped at the small town of Entiat where there was a municipal park and campground alongside the river. It was almost perfect. Large trees shaded the campground and dotted the riverside. Two nights I spent there, soaking up the sunshine and basking in the warm temperatures (low 70s) and light breeze, generally just taking it easy.

The view from my campsite, looking northeast.
Looking southeast.
From the north side of the park, looking toward the west. The campground was nestled amongst the trees on the western shore.

The Hayes Range Alaska...and memory lane

There are still adventures to be had!! Much of this post is from years ago. But check out the modern version of our trip in the BD video below.



My first trip to Alaska! This is a area I was lucky enough to exploreback in May of 1976 with the help of an AAC grant. Our original goal was the NW Ridge on Deborah from the north side, which we did not do. Thefirst ascent of that line was done 4 months later by Alaskans. And again in 1977 the upper NW Ridge from the south, again by Alaskans one of which was my friend Carl Tobin. Carl went back to do the 1st ascent of the East Ridge as well. Likely one (only?) of the few to ever climb the mtn twice. And two 1st ascents to boot!



NW ridge of Deborah











But we were able to make four1st ascents while we were there but saw only onesummit.3 of those I was a part of. Big adventure for us in a remote area at the time.









West face of Hess and the arrow head shaped glacier tongue we climbed and then were barely able to descend in a full on Alaskan blizzard.





Hard to believe this day turned into a howling blizzard a few hrs later. It turned into a 46hr push.







Sub-peak of Deborah, west face of "Sally", and how we accessed the NW Ridge of Deborah to by pass the objective dangers under the North face of Deborah. This was our only summit we saw and which we bivied on.





This north ridge we climbed just to get the radio to work, line of sight, to Fairbanks. No sat phones back in '76. But heck, it was afun (for once) 1st ascent.

Photo credits above to Ray Brooks and Gwain Oka





First ascent of the West Face of Hayes in by Samuel Johnson andRyan Hokanson



Photo credit JeffBenowitz









Modern day adventure!

Samuel Johnson teamed up with Ryan Hokanson and did some impressive climbs in the samearea in the summer of . Take the risk and make your own adventure!



BD grassroots athlete Samuel Johnson's expedition to Alaska's Hayes Range from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

Beauty and the Beast

Two recent visitors:

A Great Egret (Ardea alba)







and two Black Vultures (Coragyps atratus)




The Black Vulture isn't really a beast of course. He's just got an image problem.

"Hey, compared to the Turkey Vulture, I'm a beauty queen!"

Actually I think they're both beauties. We see Turkey Vultures a lot more than Black Vultures, so I was tickled to see these guys perched in a dead tree last week on a foggy morning.

The Great Egret has decided that he likes our fishing hole and has been hanging around for the past week, getting used to us. The Great Blue Heron is the only one not happy about that.

He seems to think he's got exclusive fishing rights, and intimidates the Great Egret with lots of squawking and flapping. "Heron fight! Heron fight!"

Sunset from Diablo

Sunset from Diablo, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

With clouds in the western sky, yesterday's sunset was beautiful. I was hiking in Diablo Foothills Regional Park when the sky lit up with beautiful shades of orange and pink. This area is home to the amazing China Wall rock formation, which stretches across two large hills. Rock outcroppings such as the one in this photo are common in the park.

Frozen Fog

3 mornings this week we woke to find a strange world of frozen fog. We couldn't see any farther than our own yard. It was as if the world didn't exist anymore beyond our place. It gave a odd, fantasy-like feel to everything. I took some photos but they don't have the true feel that I was getting as I wondered about. Within a few hours the fog was mostly gone but it was still dark, dreary days. It made me want to hybernate instead of getting out to finish my Christmas shopping.

Sunset Arch

When we were done hiking Coyote Gulch we headed for our next planned adventure of the day, which was a sunset hike to Sunset Arch! We had read about and seen photos of Sunset Arch in the guide book that we had and knew it was something we didn't want to miss. The hike was described as easy but without any marked trail so we were hoping this would mean we might have it to ourselves. Sure enough, we did! We ended up not see a single other soul in our time to and fromthe arch. It was wonderful!


As we left the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch trailhead we turned left and continued down Hole in the Rock road until we reached 40 Mile Ridge Road, then we followed this road about 4 miles to a marked trailhead on the left. This trailhead was for a different hike, and our book recommended hiking from there to Sunset Arch, which was in the opposite direction from the trailhead. We instead opted to backtrack along 40 Mile Ridge Road to a spot we had seen on the way in that looked like it would make a good campsite (you can camp pretty much anywhere as long as it is an area that has already been disturbed by humans). We found our spot and it was indeed a terrific place to camp. After setting up our camp and relaxing for a few minutes we got our gear ready, plugged the coordinates for the arch into our GPS unit (the coordinates were provided in our guide book), and off we went across the open desert right from our campsite.







We couldn't see the arch from our campsite, but we knew which way to go thanks to the GPS. After walking about 3/4 of a mile across the desert we got our first glimpse of the arch, still over a quarter of a mile away. It was fascinating to see from a distance, and we wondered just how big it would be once we got up close to it. We kept walking towards the arch and reached the base of it a few minutes later, 1.15 miles from our campsite. Indeed, it was much bigger than we thought it would be when viewing it from a quarter mile away! The arch was mind-boggling, just standing there all by itself surrounded by nothing but relatively flat desert. We spent about an hour admiring and photographing the arch, then just after sunset we headed back to our campsite, arriving just as it was starting to get really dark. Jessica prepared a delicious meal over the camp stove then we washed up and crawled into the tent to get some much-needed rest before the next adventure which awaited us the following morning: Willow Gulch and Broken Bow Arch!