SkiSickness

I went up and did Backbone Ridge for the first time yesterday, with Aaron, my fellow junior scientist and climbing protégé of sorts. He's pretty new to trad/alpine but he'll follow me up anything, for better or worse (but decidedly better so far)

Here is just to jog your memory, since I'm pretty sure you all climbed this back in the day.

So much hiking
I'm getting too old for this.


It seems like it would have been aesthetic to start low on the ridge. I just tried to follow the N-P guidebook, but there really ought to be a clean direct line all the way up the ridge, no?

We set up a belay under the mother pitch, and I climbed in. White, tight, and up out of sight. We brought a new version #5. I left it 10-15m below me as I climbed up. Is that the way it's supposed to go? Felt pretty stellar, except I got out of breath easily.

Lead photos, my new favorite hobby


From here I was pretty determined to follow the ridgeline as suggested by N-P. This got a little weird by the secondish pitch, as I ended up climbing into another super-licheny off-width, downclimbing a bit to head even further right, and ending up back on the same off-width anyway. Definitely not feeling 5.8, or on-route. Apparently the chicken stuff starts quite soon off to the left, as not very well indicated in the N-P... I guess there is a good direct line here, but copious lichen starts to sketch me out on any supposedly popular route. Still not sure I was on the N-P route either, but whatevs.

The couch was starting to call me back already by the time we hit The Fin, but the sun and the stoke kept me going strong. I consciously avoided any crap gullies and looked for decent cracks to climb, but I was honestly confused by whether to go left, right, or up the gut. I guess I probably should have read more beta. The N-P illustration is so low-res it's kind of a joke. I followed something right up the center for a while until my thin crack kind of 5.10'ed and petered out to blank face. Downclimbed and went right onto a rail, the up into the clean dihedral crack, up some easy cracks, to finish in a short vegetated, steepening corner with difficult thin shallow fingertips under a headwall kind of feature. Maybe I climbed too 'center' again? idk. I guess most people go left up the fin and cheat around the backside now.

I don't even remember where I took this picture, but probably below the weird little fingertips.


Around to the right I ended up on what I think had to be the undercling flake, but there was so much lichen all over it that I was still WTFing. Eventually crested out on a great perch, looking down on what was apparently the chicken gully. From there we walked up to the summit for a spectacular evening view, which made me wish I'd had an excuse to bivy out under the stars after all.



There was a TON of deep and relatively soft snow up there for this time of year. Coming down the backside felt like diving into a pool of feathers, a feeling that was quickly throttled by the ever-heinous Aasgard, replete with giant kamikaze mosquitoes and lots of gravel ball bearings. We should have gone around to descend the fat Colchuck Glacier. Deproach hallucinations made the hike out partly bearable. Car-to-car was somewhere around 20 hours, with delays mostly due to me screwing around trying to figure out whether I was on-route.

Nice pics and classic alpine route, J. Your picture looks somewhat familiar. Did you get to climb the awesome .9 undercling high on the route near there?

Yeah I had to convince myself we were on-route due to all of the lichen, but I think this had to be 'the' undercling. After the fact I noticed someone describing it as such, with perfect little clean spots for feet. That sounded pretty dead on. It was easier than it looked and the second best pitch after the OW.

There's no mistaking "the" undercling and I remember plenty of lichen in the vicinity. So it sounds like you nailed it.

This looks cool too. I haven't done any climbing in the alpine yet and this stuff looks like fun.

Yeah definitely fun with the right partner(s). I remember tagging along on one of Sky/Ross' intended Pickets Hardman trips, and the three-person thing ended up causing us to bivy halfway down Inspiration Peak on a sloping ledge with a little storm coming in. Which was still pretty cool in hindsight... And you guys even still climbed with me again after that.

In my memory, our Inspiration bivy wasn't at all related to a three-body effect. I vaguely remember something about you having a close call with rapping off the end of the rope? The most entertaining aspect of that trip was probably our walk down the glacier in our tennis shoes, no crampons. Ross had his 'poons, though. And that trip and our late arrival home from it was the end of Ross's career at $tarbuck$. Memories, bud!

Ah yes, me somehow thinking that 5.10 face climbing was the right way to get closer to the next rap anchor, debates about rappel knots for dummies... I remember all too well!
I thought you guys were all pumped to go climb the Chopping Block after? Ross is too good for Starbucks anyway. Maybe the female clientèle had epic Ross withdrawals right there at the counter and wrote really bitter comment cards

backbone is such a great route. Nice work. And yeah, there's lot's of ways to get "off" route up there...but it's a big mountain with a vague line up higher, so as long as you're going up you're "on" route.
haha
for sure good times on Inspiration...and yeah that was funny as fuk watching you guys with your tennies trying to get down that glacier!
forgot we had to bivy on the decent....hahaha...too funny! what a bunch of amateurs! GOOD TIMES bro!

Few more pics:
Still snowy

Different world, having fun!

Right appealed to the purist in me... but I'm still not sure what was 'on-route' here

Fist pump!