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SKAGIT ALPINE November, 2002                  Newsletter of the Skagit Alpine Club    Volume 40, Issue 11 SECRETARY'S REPORT:  by Maggie Sullivan    Harold Mead opened the meeting asking for any official buisness, to which Kathleen reported that we have over $3700 in the bank.  John and Marie Erbstoezer reported on the NW Lookout Conference which took place in Winthrop at the end of September.   At the conference, Fred and Ginny Darvill were highly praised for their many years of lookout work.      Rick Rogers, Brad Monrad, and Jeff Smith volunteered to be our nominating committe.  Who out there will be our next president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer?  (And please...we need a newsletter person!)  Please contact any of the three if you have suggestions.      Rick talked about the recent Mt Baker naked ice trip.  The idea started last year with the death of an inexperienced climber who attempted Baker in icy conditions.  The plan was to practice ice skills for three days, but weather turned it into one.  Jenny, Brad, Don Jenkins, and Rick went.  Rumour has it that Mike Bechtol wants to try for another training trip soon.      Rick is still interested in the hiking (not mountaineering) class at SVC this Spring.  He¹s looking for volunteers to help with the ecology sessions.      Tim Place announcced that he is looking for anyone who has climbed the Roosevelt headwall on Baker . .  .    Joel Cronenberg then put on an awesome slide show on his travels in Pakistan, the Karakorum, and parts of China.  Thank you Joel for your humor, images, and isights on these beautiful lands. NOVEMBER 6 PROGRAM Our very own ³key master² Ryan Budnick presents Rock Climbing in Southern Mexico A reminder - The monthly meetings of the Skagit Alpine Club are now on WEDNESDAYS  at the 911 Building in Mt. Vernon, just east of Skagit College on College Ave. UPCOMING OUTINGS: November 17, Sunday. The Tenth Annual Chum Salmon Hike. Sauk River Trail and possibly Beaver Lake Trail. Three or six miles total hiking, timed to observe chum salmon spawning. This trip goes in any weather so bring warm clothing, rain gear, and a lunch. Joint trip with Bellingham Mountaineers. Limited to twenty-four participants. Call Stan Walsh 360-755-9422. Ruth Hikes - Are there any enthusiastic hikers out there who would like to help carry on the "tradition" of having a monthly hike for the club?  It would be fun to get some other people to lead hikes and help us discover new places to explore.  This month Lynn is getting her shoulder operated on and isn't sure when she'll be ready for hiking with a pack.  If interested in helping with hikes this fall or winter call Lynn and Sancho at 428-4237. GOSSIP REPORT NEW SAC MEMBER:    Congradulations to Gary Weigand and Ruth Brunner!  Aleena Jordin Wiegand was born on 10-1-02 after 26-27 hrs. of pretty intense labor.  But so well worth it.  8 lbs. 12 oz., 19.5 in long. TRIP REPORTS: EASY PASS MAINTENANCE by Lynn Postler    We had a GREAT time working with Dan Rogersagain this year!  Ryan and Craig took the easy job of moving a section of trail, while Maggie and I took a swim in the creek moving the logs and debris away from the bridge.  Craig and Sancho stirred up some bee's nests for excitement.  Sylvia and Tasha whacked the weeds until the trail looked like a Better Homes and Garden path.  The big log we moved 6" last year is now over the creek.  Dan will be adding side rails this week so everyone can now cross the creek without getting wet.  A big THANKS to Dan and everyone who helped with the trail work - Maggie, Sylvia, Ryan, Tasha, Craig, Babe and Sancho!   SNOW AND ICE CLIMBING THIS YEAR WITH RICK AND FRIENDS    I was ice-climbing with a guide in Utah several years ago. "Ice axe arrest is bull", he said. "Most any snow slope soft enough to arrest a slip on, you don't need no axe to arrest with. Stiffer snow where you need an axe to arrest is so perfect for crampons, you shouldn't be slipping and falling anyway. And on the steep, boiler-plate stuff where you very well could be falling, a falling climber likely couldn't get a pick planted without ripping his arm off."  I told him that I thought there were cases where you could be roped up on "ice axe arrestable snow" and you wouldn't be able to arrest a fall caused when your rope partner slips and starts pulling you down with him.  "Well, there's that. But I would never tie up with an idiot like that. Unless, of course, he happens to be payin' me", he said, looking at me.    At home here on snow and ice in the Cascades I think of that conversation quite often, and I always ask myself a series of questions when I'm looking at a snow slope to climb. 1.    Am I or my partner(s) likely to fall on that slope and why? 2.    What would be the consequences of a fall? 3.    If I take a roped fall, could my partner arrest my fall on this slope? 4.    Do we need intermediate protection? 5.    Can we protect it?    In February of this year, I went to climb Whitehorse Glacier with Chris Danilson, Brian Heinrich, Rob Seip, and Don Slack. It was a beautiful cold clear day and it would feel good to get some winter elevation gain. Getting out of the brush and putting on crampons, I got a chance to look up and down the route and assess the situation: 1.    There was a good chance (>1:1000 is enough for me) that someone would fall on that slope because it was steep; in some places it was icy, some places powdery, and in some places crusty on top of powder. Not to mention hidden crevasses. 2.    Consequences of a fall? The faller would go into a crevasse if he were lucky, otherwise we'd look for him near Darrington. 3.    Nope. If I fell roped, I'd take my partners with me. Or they would take me with them. 4.    Duh, yeah! 5.    Oops. It was perfectly un-protectable snow conditions. Maybe huge pickets and major excavations would hold a fall, but probably not.    So, our choices were to either (a) turn back and go for a hike somewhere, or (b) climb solo-style, un-roped, as fast as we could go, every man for himself, while trying to stay out of the other guys' fall lines. To see what decision was made, read again the party members listed above. It was mid-March before my sphincter tightness returned to normal levels.    April saw class outings to Mt Higgins and North Twin Sister. The snow around Higgins was classic Western Cascades mid elevation spring mush. Post-hole heaven. The students' greatest challenge with the ice axe arrest drills probably was to work up a fall worth arresting, with or without an axe.    We found some slopes steep and stiff enough to make ice axes useful on the north side of North Twin Sister's west ridge and the north slope. A small party of us bailed off the west ridge to the north, rappelling down a steep snow-filled couloir. For these kinds of rappels, it's good to holster your ice axe in a gear loop and have it long-leashed and lock-binered to your climbing harness. That way, you can un-holster and anchor yourself picket-style before coming off rappel.    While I'm thinking of it, there is an ill-conceived fad I've noticed among some climbers of short-cutting the ice axe to harness connection. They forego donning their harnesses, instead threading their backpack waistbelts through their ice axe leash wrist loops before buckling their packs. If you are one of these folks, listen here: THAT'S A PLASTIC BUCKLE, KNOT-HEAD!! In the event of a good stiff fall, your plastic buckle will snap instantly, leaving you connected to your axe with nothing more than your cold, mittened hands. So, if you do manage to successfully plant your axe, it's likely to get torn from your grip. On the plus side, your ice axe will nicely mark for investigators the approximate initiation point of your fall. Your body will mark the end point.    Anyway, the north slope, as usual, offered a great glissade. I like to stop the glissade and start the traverse west kind of early, forcing the students to use their axes to control their speed and effect a stop well above the runout. And all but two of the students did use their ice axes for the task. One of the renegades, however, opted to aero-brake via the "cart-wheel descent" method to control his downward velocity, while the other took the opportunity to demonstrate to his classmates (read "pins") the "bowling ball" contact-deceleration technique. This latter demonstration was met with considerably more lively interest than appreciation.    May and June snow in the Cascades was, for the most part, more of the same. Besides post-holing and camping in mush, the mountaineering students and instructors were able to practice team arrests in mush and set dead-man anchors in mush.    Some thoughts on crossed snow picket dead-mans: You'll probably only be using them in a rescue situation, and as such, you'll be putting a lot of weight on them- so they'll need to be backed up. An advantage to working on ice or snow is that you can place your anchors almost anywhere; as opposed to working on rock, where the rock will constrain your anchor rigging possibilities. And since the loading factor applied to your equalized anchors increases exponentially in proportion to the angle between your anchors and vertex of your load point, why not make that angle as small as possible? How about zero degrees for a load factor of just one?    During failure, crossed picket dead-man anchors will blow out a volume of snow roughly wedge shaped, with the thin end of the wedge pointing at the load. The bottom boundary of the blow-out wedge is defined by the buried depth of the pickets and the sub-surface length of the connecting runners. Thus, burial depth and runner length and angle to surface are critical.    To minimize the load factor, I like to rig dead-man anchors stacked in line with the direction of pull. If you do this, be careful to place your back-up far enough away from the primary anchor so that the potential blow-out wedges do not intersect. Prussiks are convenient for equalizing the load between anchors, as well as transferring the load from an arrested team or some other emergency anchors.    Not until Fourth of July weekend, did I get a chance to use pickets the way I like to use them- by whacking on them. Brian Heinrich and Angie Vandenhaak climbed the Adams Glacier route (on Mt Adams) with me. We carried six pickets, two screws, and an oil-can sized Foster's up the route and made about dozen or so leads out of it. I'd guess about 40 or 50 placements total, mostly pickets, and a couple screw placements, while the Foster's stayed in Ang's pack till we got back to camp.    Rained out of the North Cascades in August, Brad Monrad and I accompanied Kirk the Virginia Wildman to Mt Hood. There, we wandered around and traversed the heavily crevassed Elliot Glacier to a rib that led to the summit. This rib ran out of ice about 900 feet below the summit and ran the remainder as a spectacularly loose and unstable heap of sand, pumice stones, and boulders. Weirdly enough, the other ribs on Mt Hood looked the same. Apparently, in later season Mt Hood (and possibly other volcanoes further south?) loses its snow and ice covering off the top and works down, kind of like a man growing a bald spot. In contrast, our northern volcanoes keep their ice caps and instead lose their snow coverings from the bottom up, sort of like girls raising their skirts. This is more as it should be. To summit, we had to drive around to Timberline Lodge and run up the easy side of the mountain.    Finally, on the last day of September this year, I was able to climb the Coleman Glacier route with Jenny Baker, Don Jenkins, and Brad Monrad. The original leisurely plan was to spend a couple days up there to practice whacking pickets and turning screws. The weekend weather forecast, however, made a one-day trip necessary. The glacier was in great shape, all the crevasses clearly visible, and most of the surface perfect for crampons. There were a few stretches of blue-gray boiler plate bare ice that we had to negotiate, but they took screws well. In topping the route, we were able to witness first-hand the birth and development of a lenticular cloud, and for this I'm sure we are truly thankful.     When you're climbing hard glacier ice, there's a lot of stuff attached to your person. If I'm climbing at the end of the rope, I like using two axes, one with a hammer leashed to my right wrist, and one with an adze long-leashed to a locking biner on my seat harness. Another locking biner on my harness has a prussik loop clipped into it. The climbing rope is tied directly to the harness, and routed through a locking biner clipped high on a packstrap. To make things cleaner and less confusing, I don't wear a chest harness and I hang the Texas kickers from a gear loop.    Also hanging from gear loops or pack straps will be a couple pulleys, several pickets, runners, and ice screws. (This stuff is omitted from the diagram for clarity.)    If I'm in the middle of the rope I won't wear a chest harness, nor will I biner the climbing rope to pack-straps. The middle guy's most important job is to clip through efficiently, and he can't do that with a cluttered gear setup in front of him.    It seems like a rope team of three offers the best combination of efficiency and security. I've included two more diagrams, these depicting rope team negotiating a crevasse field with and without intermediate protection. The arrows show the initial direction of fall to the climbers when the center man on the team loses purchase. Note the vulnerability of the team on the right. Also, you can see why it is so essential that the middle man is able to clip through efficiently.    Ice is a fascinating medium and for me, climbing it offers the most rewarding challenges of all climbing endeavors. There's a lot to know, and a lot of technique to develop and master and those of us working at it are having one heck of good time. You should think about joining us when the snow gets hard. -Rick Rogers BIKE PROGRESS from by Wade Bessett    Hello everyone! Already a month has passed since leaving Anacortes and I wanted to say "hi" to ya'll and tell you how it's going.  Anton and I pedaled through Washington (Anacortes - Whidbey Is - Port Townsend - Kitsap Peninsula - Westport - Long Beach - Astoria Bridge) quickly, in about 5 days.  Great weather and sparse traffic helped make the  miles go by, as well as the thought of finally getting on with the trip I'd  thought about so much.  Anton and his bicycle/gear were light compared to  myself and gear, so he would shoot up hills and I'd catch him on the  downhill.  He tried to break me of my bad habit of starting the day late,  9:30-10-30, but he failed miserably.  Some memorable moments were the bee  infested Port Townsend State Park; meeting a bicycle tourist coming from  Anchorage Ak on an old Nishiki with one speed, a backback for rear panniers,  and great jokes ("An old pirate enters a bar and a waitress notices that he  has a steering wheel down the front of his pants.  The waitress was curious  and so asked the pirate if he knew he had a steering wheel down the front of  his pants.  The old pirate replies, "Aye, it's driving me nuts!"); the  aweful, dangerous Hood Canal Bridge; cycling a few quiet side roads, pancake  breakfasts at noon, Anton sharing pints of rich Ben and Jerry's ice cream  near the end of a day's ride, and Anton's fantastic idea to take a local bus  over the Astoria Bridge.    Anton cycled a day into Oregon with me and got a ride back with his family.   We stayed at Fort Stevens State that first night in Oregon and both had  adventures on our own, walking the trails and beach without some of things like maps, flashlights, etc.  I don't recommend speed walking for 3 hours in  cheap plastic sandals with sand on your skin (think sandpaper).  Beth joined  me for the second week, cycling through Oregon and a day into California  (Crescent City).  The cycling changed from generally flat with long mild hills in WA to lot's of long hills along the coastline of OR.  Also, we  began seeing many more bicycle tourists in OR, perhaps a dozen riders  compared to just 4 in WA.  Warm, dry weather and blue skies were the norm  for Almost all of OR, enhancing the beautiful views of cliffs, ocean, and  sandy beaches.  The state parks were inexpensive ($4.25 each at hiker-biker  sites, including showers!) and scenic.  Dinners with a beach sunset were  common.  Saw friends from Anacortes (Rob Seip and Kari...) on the streeet at  a small beach town after a great bakery stop.  Oh, how I wish there were bakeries every 30 miles on the trip!  Pastries, cookies, bagels, donuts, sugary bars - we would stop to get one item each and end up getting two or three and maybe a bag for the road.  Lighthouses became commonplace and we wrote just a couple of postcards.    After a farewell feast of seafood salad, clam chowder, and fish'n'chips in Crescent City, Beth and I cycled off in opposite directions.  The next 6 days in CA on Hwy 101 and 1 were again scenic and the weather was excellent.  Several times I took short walks into the huge Redwood forests, each time feeling more relaxed.  The first day in the Redwoods I could only cycle 11 miles without stopping for the day to wander around and read under the giant trees.  I began seeing several cyclists over and over again, both on the road and at campgrounds.  Two were know simply as the "German girls", who I'd seen many times along the OR coast and 4-5 more times in CA.  They were sisters and although traveling slowly throughout the day they often would go the same distance I would (45-70 miles most of the time).    On August 4th, the 19th day of cycling, I pedaled inland at the Russian River just north of San Francisco to meet up with my friends Charles and Jennifer in Fairfield.  It was nice to be off of the shoulderless and heavily-trafficked Hwy 1.  The stay at Charles/Jennifer's home was much longer than I'd expected, lasting 8 days, but it was much needed.  I don't think I'd lost much weight getting there, but I just kept eating and eating.  The conveniences of having a home were wonderful; showers with adjustable temperatures that did not require quarters, laundry machines, unlimited telephone and internet access, old friends, refrigeration, sinks, electric lights, and blankets instead of a mummy-sleeping bag!  The bicycle needed some minor repairs (wheel trueing, derailler adjustments, wheel hub "cone" replacement, and new tires, mostly done at a shop during a tune up.  I visited San Francisco for two days and loved the simple/efficient transit system (buses, BART, trollies).    Yesterday, October 12, I cycled 70 flat miles to Sacramento to visit with my sister and new brother-in-law Heidi and Jim.  Today I'm resting tired legs again and getting ready for the next 2000 miles over the Sierra Nevadas (Tuolumne Pass in Yosemite Nat. Pk), across Nevada, along southern Utah up to Moab, to the 4-corners region, south through New Mexico, and southeast in Texas to San Antonio.    There's a lot more to say, but I need to get moving again.  I'm not certain when the next time I'll have access to email again, perhaps not until San Antonio in early December.  Have a fun Halloween and Thanksgiving - I'll be thinking about all that candy and rich/fatty food while pedaling along. ps~ For those at SCHD who get this, thanks for the wonderful going-away party, gifts, kind words, and encouragement.  I have used the calling cards, read the books, used the compass, kept the "mosquito" card, bought food with the Safeway gift card, used the booties, and thought about you a lot.  I hope you all retire or at least take a very long vacation soon - it's GREAT!  Take care, Wade Skagit Alpine Club Membership Form $15 / year Name Address City                                        State                 Zip Phone                                       Email I would like to receive the newsletter by       ___ mail       ____Email       _____both Mail to :         Skagit Alpine Club,    Kathleen Grimbly - Treasurer    4658 Blank Rd,    Sedro-Wooley, WA 98 Skagit Alpine Club, PO Box 513, Mt Vernon, WA 98273 www.skagitalpineclub.com Oficers: President        Harold Mead                299-8196   hmead@fidalgo.net Vice President:    Kathy Monrad        853-8901     Secretary:        Leigh Agler                299-9079 Treasurer:        Kathleen Grimbly        856-5622 Directors:        Keith Kraft                428-8568                       Eric Sandbo                755-0746 Committees:         Conservation:     Fred Darvill                424-5854 Lookout:        Fred Darvill                424-5854 Programs:        Maggie Sullivan        724-3158 Outings:        Ruth Brunner                428-6813 Social:            Beth Rogers                856-4517 Website:        Allen Grenz              422-7593  ryan@neffis.com Newsletter:        Leigh Agler                299-9079          lagler@fidalgo.net                            4324 Ginnett Rd.,                 Anacortes, WA 98221

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