High Sierra

June 30, 2012

Dale had the foresight to lock up permits for a trip we dubbed \"Occupy Iceberg\" way back near the beginning of the year. Our plan was to bring a big group of friends up to Iceberg Lake just below Mount Whitney and crush alpine routes every day, having a grand old time every night. I picked up some tickets well in advance and planned to head down for the festivities.

Dale called before the trip to mention that a monsoon weather system had parked itself over the Sierra and that things weren't looking good. We decided to try and make lemonade from the lemons, so I jumped on the flight regardless. SEA to LAX was no big deal. LAX to Mammoth Lakes was another story--we circled the airport, trying to land for a while, and eventually had to return to LA. Bummer. Luckily, I found two other guys who wanted to rent a car together and we made the 6-hour drive together into the wee hours of the night, meeting Dale at the airport near 1:30am.

Mendenhall Couloir on Laurel Mountain

Dale wisely parked us at the Convict Lake trailhead where we awakened the next morning ready to head up the Mendenhall Couloir on Laurel Mountain. It was a great, low 5th class scramble up about 4,000 vert to a summit with some great views. Solid. Beer and happy hour ensued.

Waiting for better weather up high, day two hit up Cardinal Pinnacle, a picturesque crag not too far from Mammoth. We hit some classic multi-pitch routes there and had some fun throwing ourselves at V8 Crack--a classic, fun 5.10d. More beers, hot tub crashing, and general merriment followed, along with a decision that we'd give it a try up at Whitney the next day.

We provisioned, geared up, and busted down to the Whitney Portal where we packed up our 4 days worth of gear and started the hike pretty well loaded down. Despite the weight, we made it to Iceberg Lake in about 3.5 hours, sweat-soaked, but smiling since we'd beaten the sunset. And we were glad that we did. The sky turned from blue to orange, to red, to purple, all contrasted against the skyline of Keeler Needle and Mount Whitney. Not too shabby. It was worth a sip or two of scotch (Vitamin G--Glenfiddich, to be exact).

Star Trekkin, Whitney's East Face, and Mithral Dihedral

Our climbing from camp at Iceberg spanned three days. We hit Russell's Star Trekkin' on Day 1, Whitney's East Face and East Buttress on Day 2, and the Mithral Dihedral on Day 3. Weather on our first day was a bit chilly, but otherwise calm. The other two days were not quite so nice. Our East Face endeavor was completely fine and there was little indication from the summit that weather was rolling in, but by the time we had descended the Mountaineer's Route and were half-way up the East Buttress, things turned ugly. Some sleet and rain started coming down and thunder was booming. I saw some flashes and heard booms closer together than I'd like. We waited it out briefly and then finished up in slightly damp conditions. Our last day was more of the same--a perfect morning followed by nasty electrical storms right around summit time. We started hearing our gear buzzing as we packed up on the summit of Russell, after climbing Mithral, and immediately started booking it for the 4th class descent gully. It was a little touch-and-go, but the storm moved over pretty quickly and we hunkered down behind a boulder near the Whitney Russell Col until things cleared up. Whew.

Despite the crazy weather, we had a blast on the routes. Everything lived up to the hype, especially Mithral. I put a few leads in and we did a fair amount of simuling and soloing on the really easy terrain to keep things quick.

With the weather likely to deteriorate further, we canned our last night and hiked out after climbing Mithral, reaching the Portal and our chilled beers after about 2.5 hours of cruising down. We lucked out in a big way and knew it. Sleeping in the next morning after eating baby-sized burritos in Bishop was a beautiful thing. I could get used to this yearly pilgrimage to the Sierra. Thanks, Dale.

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.