Trout Creek - Climbing Without Holds

I headed down to Trout Creek for a few days last week in order to escape the rainstorms that had covered the region. After badly injuring my finger a couple weeks ago, I haven't been climbing much, but I was eager to get on the stone at a place where you don't need your fingers in order to climb. Trout Creek hosts plentiful hand cracks and stem boxes, the perfect routes for resting my finger tendon.

Free Food, Free Gear, Slideshow! (Sea 6/24)

Rock&Ice Magazine - July 2012 Issue

Check out an article I wrote in the July 2012 issue of Rock&Ice Magazine. All photos were taken by my friend Garrett Grove.

Easy Fix for Small Cams

Aliens are my favorite small cam, but after years of use on my trusty set , I've have several recent trigger wires break, or nearly break. Here is an easy fix for Alien cams and it also works great on Master Cams. Do this before all the wires break, otherwise you're going to get your cam stuck.

Stuart Range Linkup Failure

This past Friday, Jens Holsten and I attempted a diverse Stuart Range linkup that combined winter climbing, summer alpine rock, and a lowland cragging route, along with one of the best hikes in the United States.

May Climbing Magazine

Check out the May 2012 Climbing Magazine for a piece I wrote as a primer on packing for a big alpine trip!

And the video about their climb:

Food

Last summer I was doing the prep work (climbing, eating, stealth-camping at seldom-used trailheads) for an article to be published in Rock&Ice Magazine. My buddy Garrett Grove was the photographer for our project, and I got to climb  with Garrett, Scott Bennett, and several great Washington-based friends. Although we tried to diligently take some video footage during the course of some classic routes and first ascents, we ended up with was a bunch of snippets of meals being made and scarfed. I put together a video about the trip:




When I was down in Las Vegas this Spring, I met a guy named Brendan who is one of the new-generation of quasi-employed computer-related social media gurus. I have a hunch that folks of his ilk get away without doing a whole lot more work than I do (tweetering doesn't count), but somehow they get to make rad business cards with titles that probably still make their parents proud and sound good at swanky dinner parties. Brendan maintains something called "Semi-Rad" which is an infinitely likable phrase but unfortunately doesn't focus on awesome 18-wheelers. He also writes for the Adventure Journal, and after intensely studying my eating habits one day at a Mexican place in Las Vegas, he asked to interview me about my culinary philosophies.

 Order every component as though this will be THE final item, prompting the employee to include more of it than normal. For example, say to them, “… and then, just a bunch of the Fajita-style chicken.” (a free upgrade that includes peppers and onions). Once they add a greater-than-normal amount of said ingredient, repeat again and again.

Brendan's full story - Adventure Journal 

New Route in Red Rock!

Above all other peaks and walls in Red Rock Nevada, Mt. Wilson looms the most impressively. I'd never climbed Mt. Wilson, but after climbing The Warrior on Cactus Flower Tower, I knew what route I wanted to attempt. From atop of the spire, I'd seen a line of cracks leading up for a few pitches from the Wilson/Cactus Flower Tower col, on the NE Face of Wilson. How better to try a new route on Mt. Wilson than by heading up a new line on Cactus Flower Tower to get there?

I was easily able to entice former Washingtonian Chris Weidner into joining me, and we began with a chimney just left of The Warrior. 

P1 was wide climbing, and just mossy enough to make me feel at home.

Roughly 1000' of great 5.9 crack climbing lead us to the final anchor on The Warrior, and the easy romp to summit #1. 

 

A belayed downclimb and one rappel landed us in the windy col.

Downclimbing to the col

The route on Wilson was only 3 belayed pitches, but the middle one had long and varied crack climbing that is THE BEST crack pitch I've climbed in Red Rock. 

Perfect cracks!

This route (we named it the Cactus Connection) would be an easy way to finish after any route up Cactus Flower Tower. There are certainly other obvious new routes available there too.

Here are a few photos of the new routes.

Chris Weidner posted info here:

Cactus Connection on Mt. Wilson

Blood on the Tracks on Cactus Flower Tower

 

It amazes me that one can still walk up to a feature easily visible from the highway in one of the nation's busiest climbing spots, and establish two new routes ground-up, onsight, and boltless in a day. 

Atop Wilson amid raging winds

We found a very casual descent from Mt. Wilson into Oak Creek, past Solar Slab, and out to our car.

1. Walk straight away from the Hwy for ~25 mins, staying on the ridge crest
2. Soon after the ground changes from red sandstone to grey limestone, hang a hard right down toward Oak Creek.
3. As long as you are descending a drainage near the limestone/sandstone interface (err skier's left) you'll be easily able to walk back to the car using just a single 40' rappel from a fixed rope roughly halfway down the wash. Everything else is mellow walking.

Rocking Red Rock

I was in Red Rock for a week, climbing, teaching at the Red Rock Rendezvous, and working on some product design sessions for Outdoor Research.



I climbed a bunch of excellent routes:

• Cloud Tower
• Rainbow Wall
• Ancient Futures
• Adventure Punks
• Spring Break / Tarantula / Gotham City
• Texas Hold 'Em
• Velvet Tongue (some of)
• Cactus Flower Tower
• Mt. Wilson

In Red Rock, it seems to make the most sense to basically ignore 70% of the routes there (anything on light-colored rock, most of the single pitching) and focus on the swaths of amazing stone, where every route is good.

Black Velvet Canyon, Brownstone Wall, South Side of Juniper Canyon, South Side of Pine Creek, and a few other smaller areas seem to house the best concentrations of good routes. Almost all of the good multipitch climbing faces north, but we did spend one colder day climbing some amazing overhung trad routes (Spring Break area) in Icebox Canyon.

Ancient Futures was really really good- definitely worth a lot more traffic than it gets, which isn't much. We also rapped the route with 1 70m rope (from atop the Elephant's Trunk on Epinephrine) and I posted some beta here. 

Velvet Tongue - I'm definitely going to be back for this one. The climbing is unforgettable, the wall is shady and quickly approached, and there are lots of new bolts! Now I just need to practice uncontrolled falls into and out of a corner. 

Cloud Tower

Panhandle Crack on Texas Hold 'Em

Cloud Tower P4

Bryan Gilmore Crushes Rainbow Wall

Cruxy moves on Texas Hold 'Em - Black Velvet Wall

More Rainbow Wall

Bryan on Ancient Futures - Black Velvet Wall

Chris Weidner amid overhanging hand jams atop the Black Velvet Wall

Gilmore pre-cruxing on Ancient Futures

This surly Scottish fellow tried to feed me tinned fish.

Adventure Punks with a couple fellow PNWers and an OR employee

Dialing in our Easter Egg skills

More Ancient Futures (the last pitch) - this belays atop the Elephant's Trunk on Epinephrine

Texas Hold 'Em delivered lots of fun again - Both of the 5.10+ pitches are among the best of their grade in the park. But I really want to know the story with that wildly overhung bolted arete to the right of the final pitch on Hold 'Em.

Spring in Leavenworth

March in Leavenworth has been a great month!

My wife Allison crushing at the Tieton River

We've had some huge powder days and great backcountry skiing, yet the bouldering and cragging close to town has been idyllic. A few updates - 

• Unless you want to ski or hike your way 3000+ feet up into the mountains for a pitch or two, all water-ice cragging is done. We had a pathetic ice season this year. I never heard of Drury Falls getting climbed, but there were a few days that it would have been in, and not very avy-threatened.
• The higher-up bouldering zones (Pretty Girl, Airfield) on the south-facing hillside of Icicle Canyon dry fast and are basically snow-free. Lower areas like The Fridge, and Barney's Rubble need a bit more time after a storm, but are still getting climbed.
• Castle Rock, Midnight Rock, and Rattlesnake Rock receive sun most of the day. There's a stellar pitch on the right side of upper castle called Hangdog. It's an old-school 5.11- with decent-enough gear and really excellent climbing. The full-value version starts at the lowest point on the wall, and begins through a V1 boulder cave to some techy 5.11+ stemming and crimping - We didn't lead this version, just TRed to maximize the time climbing. I also ticked off a short-term goal by sending No Such Thing as a Free Lunge on my first lead go. This 5.11+ all-gear route on the overhanging north face of Jello Tower is seldom climbed and one of the area's best pitches.
• Vantage is almost getting TOO hot to climb at, but is still a reliable place to bask in the sun. It's unfortunate that there isn't a little more steep rock on the south-facing walls, but ticking a ton of routes at the Powerhouse, M&M, and Jigsaw walls is a fun way to get pumped silly. Thanks to the Washington Climbers Coalition for the new outhouse, and thanks to the State of WA for seemingly never enforcing the posted signs calling for a mandatory parking pass.
• I made my first visit to Tieton, specifically the Royal Columns crag. We only saw one rattle snake, so I guess it is still early season there. The bolted arete "Morning After" was definitely my favorite route there, the cracks were all covered in horizontal face holds, and I like my crack pure. 
• Comment on the BLM's Trout Creek Policy before March 30!! This is the NW's premiere crack-climbing area.
• Access Fund Comment Link
• Background
• Online Guide

I just replaced my marmot-gnoshed CanonS90 with the newest iteration in their line of world's-lightest-RAW-Compatible models - the S100. This one takes much better video, has fancy trick modes to make me think I'm improving, and features a new lens and sensor. Look for more sandwich-related videos coming soon, now in HD for your drooling pleasure.

Now I'm off to Alaska for work, then on to Red Rock and Zion to do some climbing!