StraightChuter.com - Backcountry Skiing & Beyond » climbing

Skating & Scambling in the Sierra

Andrew — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:51:02 +0000

After long hiatus, I made a trip back to the east side of the Sierra range last weekend for the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center fund raising party. This area is one of those places that after visiting it once, you swear you are going to return for annual skiing trips as it is incredibly beautiful and has fantastic terrain. But, in a perverse case of misery love company, the Sierra is having an even worse year than the Wasatch, which is currently on track to being one of the worse years on record. Given the choice between skiing a 12″ base of rotten snow over rocks in the Wasatch or going alpine ice skating, hiking and rock climbing in the snowless Sierra, California wins hands down.

The aptly named “Lake District” around Mammoth Lakes has an endless supply of beautiful alpine lakes which are now all frozen over and snow free, which makes for perfect skating. I hadn’t skated for years, but the $40 investment in a pair of used hockey skates was instantly worthwhile as the setting is so sublime and the access is so easy.

It was also nice to get a break from Utah, where we hardly ever see anarchy like this.

We also had a chance to head down to the Owen Gorge for some climbing. There wasn’t any water flow in the gorge last time I was there, but nowadays there’s a steady creek running through it with trees, wildlife (aside from snakes) and fauna, as well as fantastic climbing.

Owens now has over 1,200 climbs in it and a high proportion of them are in the 3-5 star range. It’s a blast!

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Cold Fusion and Warm Limestone

Andrew — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:57:04 +0000

Memorial Day in Utah goes a long ways toward easing the pain of triple digit temps here in Ahhhgust. I can’t remember a Memorial Day with bad weather, but then again my memory is so bad that that’s not saying much. In any case, you can ski, climb, bike, hike, fish or mix & match just about anything this time of year.

Geoff Tabin took a break from saving entire countries from blindness and along with Huckleberry, invited me out for a lap on the Cold Fusion Couloir off of Mt. Timpanogos. Cold Fusion is a beauty of a line off of the NE side of Timp that holds snow well into the Spring. It’s fun in many regards, but especially cool as you are skiing on a ribbon of snow surrounded by the rocks of American Fork Canyon along with big vista views of the Salt Lake Valley below.

Three miles into the four-mile approach with the object of desire looming in the background.

PB&J Tabin Style. I hope his patient's eyeballs look better than his sandwiches.

By chance, we met Chad and Rob near the summit. Chad dropping the first turn with 3,000' to go.

Huck on the edge of the Utah Universe.

The line was originally known as “The Forked Tongue Couloir” but was later renamed (at least by some people) to memorialize the theory of cold fusion which has strong ties to the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

Since the road leading to Cold Fusion goes right through American Fork Canyon, it’s fun to catch a quick route on the way out. After the four-mile approach to go skiing, the four-meter approach to go climbing is much appreciated.

GT gettin' it on at the Division Wall.

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Indian Creek – Photo TR

Andrew — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:00:49 +0000

Continuing an almost full week of trip reports, I went down to Indian Creek on Wednesday with my long time skiing and climbing buddy, Brad Barlage. Brad is a sales rep for Black Diamond, which means he has the full-on pimp daddy ride (Ford Van), tons of gear, plenty of dogs and knows The Creek inside and out. If he ever disappears from society, this would be the first place I’d think of to start looking for him.

Even though they have almost nothing physically in common, once you get the hang of hand/finger jamming, the sensation of climbing a perfect splitter crack is akin to center-punching a virgin field of thigh-deep powder. Neither one is truly effortless, or always safe, but the purity of the line and movement over beautiful terrain brings the same type of smile to your face.

A dog, a crack and some gear on your back. B-Rad doing the brutal ten-minute approach to one of many walls.

Spring Loaded Camming Devices (SLCD's) made climbing parallel sided cracks like this one much safer, and thus more popular.

FEEL THE POWER! The more cams you own, the more cracks you can climb. Arnie (the Golden Retriever) is actually a fierce guard dog.

Starting up Double Trouble. The clock is ticking...

About halfway up Double Trouble. B-Rad doing a fine job leading.

Pumped to the gills - just what we came for.

With literally 1,000's of cracks to choose from, it is easy to get confused. Fortunately, some of them have "tiles" like this at their base.

Super Crack, aka Super Crack in the Desert, aka Luxury Liner. The first ascent of this crack opened peoples eyes to the possibility of safely climbing smooth, parallel sided cracks and marked the beginning of the sandstone crack climbing boom which continues to this day.

The Incredible Hand Crack. The bulk of this climb is "perfect hands" which is why it is so popular. The white marks on either side of the crack are from climbing traffic.

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Speedy Bowline Tie-in Trick

Andrew — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:50:01 +0000

I took a skiing time-out yesterday to go crack climbing at Indian Creek, Utah with Brad Barlage. While we were roping up, Brad showed me this cool little trick for tying a Bowline knot around your harness.

Bowlines are the King-of-Knots as they strong, simple and easy to untie after they have been loaded. Because of this, they are the knot of choice for sailing, but for climbing the “easy to untie” part can be problematic if it happens when you don’t want it to. For this reason, many climbers back them up with a securing overhand knot.

Bowline connoisseurs might notice that in this demo the tail is outside the legs, instead of inside. This can be fixed by feeding the tail through the hole in the other direction.

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Grand Teton – Skiing Topo

Andrew — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:00:47 +0000

It took me three attempt to finally ski the Grand Teton, but it was well worth it. Part of the beauty of skiing this peak is that there is no one particular crux to it, but it is more a sum of all of its parts. There is some great skiing on it (as well as some crap-skiing), but more than anything it is a grand adventure. It gets skied quite a bit nowadays (5-10 times per year?), but don’t let that fool you – it is still a burly line with lots of exposed skiing and objective hazards like rock fall, avalanches, ice climbing and possibly some rock climbing. Ski it at your own considerable risk!

: The Ford/Stettner ski route on The Grand Teton.

View 1.6mb High Res pdf version here.

The most common line is the Ford Couloir to the Stettner Couloir, also known as the Ford/Stettner, or the “Chevy Couloir” as it is near the Ford. One of the main reasons it took me three attempts to finally ski this line is because it is hard to find if you are not familiar with the mountain. For safety-sake, most ascents start in the dark, which makes it easy to get lost. I drew this topo from memory a few months after finally skiing the Grand, so take it with a grain of salt.

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Lone Peak Cirque – Rock Climbing

Andrew — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:00:16 +0000

Lone Peak Cirque in the Wasatch Mountains is Utah’s version of the Grand Teton. It is a long approach to get there (5,000′ of uphill on loose dirt), it tops out at around 11,300′ and it has some of the best, cleanest granite in all of the state. As if the multi-hour approach wasn’t hard enough, over the last three to five years, new housing developments have continually wiped out the trailheads, so just finding a way up there has been a challenge.

: Heading into Lone Peak Cirque from the Corner Canyon/Draper City approach.

I hadn’t been up there this season, and was completely thrilled to see that not only has the City of Draper opened the Corner Canyon road, they have put up burly fences and outlawed motorized vehicles in the area. Yippy! In the past, the entire area had been trashed with illegal roads, campfires and tons of litter. Now it looks much better, and while they were at it, they even cut in a nice new hiking trail.

We hiked up/back in a day, which is fairly common, although camping overnight in the Cirque is a treat as well. My partner for the day was Dr. Geoff Tabin who moved to Utah about three years ago. Geoff was the third or forth person to complete all Seven Summits and he runs the Himalayan Cataract Project, as well as squeezing in lots of climbing and skiing.

We ended up doing the Center Thumb Route (five pitches, 5.9) as many of the other classic routes had people on them, and the Center Thumb is a beautiful line.

: Geoff collecting gear while following the second pitch.

The weather was perfect and we weren’t in a hurry, so the entire car-to-car trip took about twelve hours.

: The Center Thumb route is directly above Geoff’s head. We’ll be back!

Geoff Tabin floating through the crux of the Center Thumb.

The only downside of the entire day was showing up at “The Cotton Bottom” bar and grill fully anticipating a beer & burger…. and finding them closed. Sigh – Sunday in Utah. A small price to pay.
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Sunday Photo – Lost Arrow Spire

Andrew — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:00:16 +0000

Setting up a Tyrolean Traverse (as pictured below) is often logistically harder than the actual climbing involved to get there.

In this case, Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite Valley, Rick Lovelace and I hiked to the valley’s rim, rappelled from the fixed anchors on the right-hand side of the photo down into the notch between the wall and the spire, then climbed the spire while trailing a rope which was still fixed to the anchors. Once we got to the top of the spire (5.9 A2) we pulled the rope tight, anchored it off, then Rick used rope ascenders to climb back over to the rim while trailing a second rope. Once he got there, we rerigged the ropes so I could follow and then we could pull the ropes clean. It is a convoluted process, but well worth it in this case as it puts you in a spectacular location thousands of feet above the valley floor.

The group pictured above did the traverse after us, and just about when this photo was taken I called over to the guy in the middle of the rope and said “Hey, you might try to go easy on your rope – it looks like it is fraying.” He totally stopped and put his head down for a while until I realized that he didn’t know I was joking, so I called over again “Just kidding!” to which he called back “Don’t f*ck with me right now. I’m feeling very fragile.”

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