Mt. Thielsen and Diamond Peak

On my family's trip to Crater Lake, I noticed a wicked looking mountain as we traveled. It even ended up in the background of some of our pictures. It's Mt. Thielsen and a few weeks ago, I climbed it with the Santiam Alpine Club. It's the second technical peak I've climbed and one of the most fun.

Here's a picture of the mountain showing the gnarly summit. The entire hike toward the mountain, you are just looking at the steep summit block, wondering how you could possible climb it!.

We traveled along the ridge on the right side of the picture up to the summit block.

The summit block doesn't require very difficult climbing, but we did protect the last pitch with rope because there was quite a bit of exposure. Just the week before we were on the mountain, a climber had been rescued after falling and breaking a leg and arm and injuring his head. Here's a picture of the summit block. We climbed the pitch on the left, just above where all the people are standing.


Mt. Thielsen was a lot of fun to climb and since it was such a far drive from Portland, we decided to do two mountains that weekend. On Sunday, we climbed Diamond peak, which isn't a technical mountain, but was nonetheless a lot of fun. In contrast to the clear blue skies we had Saturday, there were low, scattered clouds on Sunday. The clouds made the already pretty hike even more interesting, because we climbed up into them.

This was the view of the mountain from my tent Sunday morning.

The climb to the top of Diamond Peak was mostly a hike, with a few areas requiring two-handed scrambling.  But the view of the mountain and surrounding area were awesome and made the hike a lot of fun.

The summit is just off my left shoulder in this picture.

By the end of the weekend, I'd racked up over 20 trail miles and 7,500 vertical feet. It was a great weekend. Check out the rest of my pictures form the weekend on flickr.

Ice Climbing

After the crevasse rescue class a couple weeks earlier, I was really looking forward to the Santiam Alpine Club's ice climbing program  in the middle of September. We were again on Elliot Glacier and it was incredible to see the changes that had occurred in the snow and ice since I had been on the glacier a month before. The snowfield that we had camped on during the crevasse rescue program was now a rocky and crevassed mess.



We spent the day Saturday and Sunday on the glacier, learning and practicing techniques for climbing vertical ice walls. On Saturday, we found some small, 10-20 foot ice walls that we could walk right up to and practice climbing. I became addicted to ice climbing very quickly. We belayed each other up the ice pitches, then rappelled down them, to squeeze in as much climbing as possible. We also practiced placing ice screws for anchors, using the skills we had learned during the crevasse rescue program. Here's one of the other climbers on one of the ice ledges (I haven't gotten the pictures of me from other people, yet).


Saturday evening, we returned to the campground a couple miles below the glacier (we didn't camp up on the glacier this time) so that we could cook a big group meal. One of the couples that were in the class cooks professionally, so they prepared us an amazing fajita burrito dinner, one of the best I've ever had and the perfect meal after a long day of climbing.

We spent Sunday rappelling and lowering each other 30 feet down into a crevasse and climbing back out of it. Unfortunately, because we had gotten a late start Sunday morning, we only got to spend a few hours on the glacier. I did get some video of me rappelling into and climbing out of a crevasse. I'll post it as soon as I get a chance to edit it.

Ice climbing was a ton of fun and it's definitely something I plan on doing in the future. There's a waterfall across form the cabin in Colorado that I've had my eye on for quite a while now...

SAC Luau

Over Labor Day weekend, the Santiam Alpine Club (SAC) holds its annual luau. The luau is a always in a secret backcountry location with access to climbing. This year, the Luau was in the Three Sisters Wilderness,  a gorgeous area in central Oregon with four volcanoes. I hiked in to the secret location with a couple of other  SAC members and our adventure started earlier than we'd expected it to. Because the location is kept secret and meant to be secluded, it has a history of being hard to find. Maps and GPS coordinates are given only to SAC members attending the Luau, only a few days before the weekend.

Our camp was about a half mile off of the nearest trail, but where to leave the trail wasn't clear. Fritz, Sue, and I thought we'd found the right spot, but it turns out we left the trail a little too early, putting a series of cliff bands between us and camp. Since we are a climbing club, of course we decided to go up them, rather than around them. It took a bit longer than we'd expected, but we reached camp around dinner time Saturday evening (after leaving Portland Saturday morning). It was the sound of the donkeys that finally led us in the right direction.

Donkeys? One of the great and unique things about the club's luau is that a couple of the members own donkeys. Each year for the luau, they load a few donkeys with gear and food for the weekend so that we can live and eat luxuriously in the backcountry. Here are two of the donkeys crossing a creek on our way out  of the wilderness.


Our camp meals were comparable to the meals you receive on a guided raft trip. Here's Byron, one of the club's leaders, cooking burgers Saturday evening.


Our camp was just off the ridge line of one of the mountains, Broken Top, which we climbed Sunday. Because we camped only a couple of hours from the summit, we got to sleep in, eat a good breakfast and have a nice, leisurely start to our climb. Here's a picture of Broken Top from our hike in. You can see the Northwest ridge (to the right of the summit), which was our ascent route.


Broken Top was the first technical peak I've summited, having class 5 rock (vertical sections) with high exposure (it's a long was down, if you fall). We protected the really exposed portions with rope. It was a great experience and a ton of fun. Here's a panorama that has the summit of Broken Top on the right and several other volcanoes in the background. From left to right are the Three Sisters (South, Middle, North), Mt. Washington, Three Fingered Jack, and Mt. Jefferson. You'll here more about those mountains as I climb them.

There are a couple of people from my climbing group on the summit and you can see there is quite a drop from anywhere on the summit block.

The views form the summit were awesome. Check out my flickr stream for the rest of the pictures from the luau.

Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue

It's been quite a while since my last update because a lot has been going on. I can't remember the last time I spent a weekend at home! I've been packing as much as possible into my weekends before the the weather in the PNW turns south (it's been gorgeous here since June).

In the middle of August was the Santiam Alpine Club's (the club I took climb school through this spring) annual Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue class. The class was on Elliot Glacier on the north side of Mt. Hood. We climbed up to the glacier early Saturday morning and spent the day practicing traveling in rope teams on ice, snow, and rock, learning and practicing crampon and ice axe technique and rope management. We also learned and practiced installing ice screws and setting up climbing and rappelling anchors in ice. We spent the night up on the glacier. I didn't use a tent and just slept in my sleeping bag inside a bivy sack. As opposed to the last freezing night I spent on a glacier, when climbing on Mt. Hood in the spring, I was plenty warm that night. With the exception of a little bit of rain and having to cover my head with my jacket, I slept pretty well. Here's our camp. My bivy is the dark green one on the far let of the picture.


We woke up with the sun on Sunday (I have more, incredible pictures of the sunrise on flickr). Here's the view from my bivy sack.


We spent Sunday practicing using pickets to set snow anchors and learning and practicing how to setup rope and pulley systems to pull fallen climbers out of a crevasse. I got to rappel 30 feet down into a crevasse and relax as my team members pulled me out. Here's one of my teammates rappelling into the crevasse.


I have a GoPro video of me rappelling into and being pulled out of the crevasse that I'll upload as soon as I have a chance to edit it.

Check out the picture of our camp above, then take a look at where Gabe's tent (the orange and gray one) was when we returned to camp Sunday afternoon. Luckily there was no damage.


I learned a lot that weekend and had a great time. I was looking even more forward to the Ice Climbing class a couple weeks later!

Mt. Washington

The last summer climb I got in before the rain started was Mt. Washington, two weekends ago. Mt. Washington is another technical peak with a couple of good pitches to climb and pretty significant exposure. Here's a view up the ridge toward the summit.


The hike to the ridge went through a significant recent burn area. I didn't take any pictures while we were hiking through it, but this picture from the summit gives you an idea of the extent of the burn. I'd estimate that more than 60% of the trees all the way around the mountain, within a 10 mile radius were burned.

Click here for the full size. You'll see smoke on the right side of the picture from a fire that was burning in the Three Sister Wilderness while we were on the mountain.

The climb up the ridge toward the summit block was a lot of fun, and a good warm up, with a lot of scrambling and exposed rocky sections. When we finally reached the saddle beneath the summit block, Our first team already had all the ropes set up, and had already summited (SAC had a large group climbing, so we split into three smaller groups and staggered our departure times to avoid congestion on the summit. I was in the middle group).

He's a view up the most technical section of the climb.

You can see one of our climbers roped up and about to climb. The rope generally follows the route and you can see the heads of the belayers at the top of the pitch.

Here's a picture of me, just past the crux on my way up. The people below me are where the above photo was taken from.

Below and to my left, the mountain drops away for a couple thousand feet.

Here I am after summiting, rappelling off the edge of the pitch in the picture above.


I got a bunch of video climbing up and rappelling off of the summit block and I'll post it as soon as I have a chance to edit it.

We had great views of Three Fingered Jack (on the left, which we were planning on climbing this weekend, but cancelled because of the rain) and Mt. Jeffereson. They're both on my list to climb.


Here's a picture of a couple of fulgurites on the top of the highest rock on the summit. Fulgurites are glass tubes that form when lighting strikes the rock.


Even though we split into three groups, the last two groups ended up summiting and descending together. Having so many people on the top of the mountain slowed us down a bit and we ended up descending just before sunset, hustling to get off the mountain proper and back on a trail before dark. We had to hike the ~5 miles back to the car after sunset, but the full moon lit the trail well enough to hike with our headlamps off.

I did get some amazing pictures of the sunset. Here's a couple, but check out the rest on flickr.