SkiSickness

Aaron and I one dayed the 1984 variation of the NE Ridge on saturday. Early start, late finish, unusual drive times, freaking cold weather, terrifyingly loose rock, and an extremely conscientious drive thru teller/Barista at Mcdonald's made for a grand first adventure with Aaron. The guy has climbed a ton in Washington and it showed- despite the many opportunities to kill me with rockfall he managed to limit damage to a direct hit to my shin on the descent. Thanks dude- I owe you.

Some pictutres. Here's a shot of the upper half of the ridge that I took a few winters ago. Looks pretty sweet here: The route starts in the lower right of the above picture. Beckey says the route is less continuously steep than Serpentine. He may be right. But I thought the first 4 pitches were steeper than anything Serpentine has to offer. Unfortunately they were much more rotten as well. I can't remember ever being on anything as loose. Bomber hand holds would disintegrate upon touch, and footholds would disappear with weight. At least we were in the shade. The start:
First pitch:
Aaron looking down from the second pitch:
Third pitch:
Fourth Pitch: the climbing started to get much better here. Aaron led a nice hand crack that put us in the much sought after sun:
From here and for the next few hours the climbing was quite fun. A few pitches of pick-your-crack lead to the crest proper and classic Dragontail simul climbing:
A little ways up we found the fun knife edge arete drawn in Beckey's topo. One of the more fun pitches on the route, in my opinion:
Beckey describes a 200 foot rappel onto a ledge system after this, but Aaron and I avoided the rappel by traversing into the ledges after the arete pitch. We may have sacrificed a pitch or two of low fifth, but the going had been slow and the opportunity to enjoy fast travel in the sun was too appealing:
At some point in our enjoyment I apparently decided to make our lives miserable. Aaron suggested that we climb upwards towards the crest for about 40' so that we could continue on solid rock towards a notch we were aiming for . I, apparently, wanted to climb shitty rock. In the shade. In the middle of a monstrous wind tunnel. I say apparently because at the time I thought I was leading us towards an easy pitch directly beneath the notch that would offer some enjoyable climbing. Aaron rightly noted that the "fun pitch" I had my eye was in fact a gully, and that gullies tend to have crappy rock. I ignored him. Like I said, Aaron has some useful experience under his belt. Whereas I apparently just have experience. Long story slightly less long- I found myself traversing on a thin ledge with minimal gear on rotten rock. Once I realized that we needed to belay the final pitch, I set one up by equalizing a pink tricam that I managed to carve into a moldable crack with a #3 gray DMMM set between two detached flakes, all of which I found within arm's distance of the several inch wide seam I had found myself perched upon. When Aaron got to me he and I were already shivering. He had most of the gear on him so he quickly set off for the crest. I offered encouragement in the form of "don't fall. our belay sucks." About 10 feet up he set a #2 and I heard some unusual noises. I was later informed that the noises I heard were Aaron hyperventilating. For the next half hour or so Aaron worked his way up vertical kitty litter, several times knocking fuck-please-don't-hit-me-sized rocks over my head. Now, I don't ordinarily get cold, and I don't usually wear many layers. But this time was different. I had 5 layers on along with a hood and wool hat. By the time I started to follow I was whimpering uncontrollably and could feel neither my gloved fingers nor my feet, and tears were streaming down my face. I'll take a cue from Casey here and make a mental note of the lessons learned: (1) avoid climbing gullies when possible; (2) avoid NE ridges in September when the forecast calls for temps in the mid thirties. For obvious reasons I didn't shoot any pics of this pitch.

At the notch we decided to forgo the summit in favor of potentially reaching the lake before nightfall. A single rappel, along with some down climbing and shin bashing had us scampering down to Asgaard as weather began to move in. All in all, and despite the belly aching, it was a good time. Not sure if I'd recommend this route though. The first few pitches are hard to overlook, especially with so many other good routes nearby.

I had to fetch my Brown Fred. I had forgotten all about the Boving Route; now I vaguely want to go climb that.

Casey put his lessons in bold text and all caps. Maybe that would help, too.

Glad you got to play. What about this person at McDonald's?

I always get cold, I would have been furcked.

Yes, please elaborate McD´s reference.

It was good work not killing each other on this one, thanks for hooking us up with the place to stay Ryan.

We pulled into Mickey D's drive-thru looking for some late-night fare and after about three seconds the cashier says "sorry about the wait, can I take your order?" After ordering I asked Ryan what he was talking about, had we fallen asleep and a lot more time had passed than I thought? Yeah, give us the coffee and fries, just don't let it happen again. Seemed really funny at the time, we were tired.

In retrospect we could have simul-climbed everything after the first three ropelengths and avoided the shithouse gully at the end and had a more comfortable climb.

The best part: Pull into gas station to fill up the tank, Ryan asks about gas money, bends down and picks up 11 bucks that are laying on the ground, problem solved.

That NE Ridge always looks so cool from afar. Sounds like it should stay that way. Nice one nonetheless!

I forgot about the $11 find. That was a definite highlight. John, i think there are ways to make that ridge much more enjoyable, especially if you tackle some of the harder but clean stuff down low. Some of those cracks looked rad. Didn't $ climb something in that area a few years back?

Yeah, Pedro called that "Puff the Inflatable Sex Dragon" before he thought twice and called it something else.

But speaking of radness isn't this in the neighborhood?
http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthr ... ber=815774

This TR is now fully awesome after Z-Man gave us "the rest of the story."

nice work staying alive in the subduction crud.