I am recently back from a 14 day mountaineering course run for the Outward Bound School. For those of you not familiar with this year's snowpack, it was massive. And remains massive. This is normally a pretty fun course that goes out of the Courtright Resevoir area on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and receives a mid-point horse-packed resupply, but with 4 to 5 feet of snow on the ground even at our 7,500ft trailhead, we ended up having to do a 12 day unsupported carry, and depart from a lower and farther trailhead. Pretty burly for 10 students who had not done much if any backpacking before, 3 of whom had never walked on snow! It was a steep learning curve to say the least. The objective of the trip was to climb the Northwest Couloir (1,200ft. 45-50 degree snow) on Blackcap Mountain, which is waaaay out there. With a crew any less strong, this would have been a bit of an overly ambitious goal, but our students rallied, and put down some serious off-trail, suncupped snow, sun-battered miles to get up to the McGuire Lakes basecamp.
My instructors, Rafi and Coop, did a great job of moving the students quickly over technical snow and rock, putting up six full fixed pitches as they gunned for the summit. With a camp to camp time of just over 9 hours, our group was worked, but very satisfied.
A lightening fast glissade back through the West Bowl got us back to camp and we hiked out in record time to the 4th of July crazyness at the Wishon resevoir. Special thanks to Dan and Stefan for the unbelievable pistachio encrusted rainbow trout at Woodchuck Lake!
My climbing partner Josh Garrison made this video/slideshow last year, which chronicaled his long and tumultuous love affair with the Evolution Traverse. Cycling through 3 partners over 3 attempts before finally completing it with me (it was my second go at the thing as well...), he ended his Sierra season last year by putting that thing behind him.Now we are looking forward to the summer, towards a bigger and burlier traverse...Disfruta! http://vimeo.com/15555114
Lyle Haugsven on belay duty.After more than 20 days of pulling down and shedding my fingertips on the sharp welded tuff of Smith Rock, Oregon, I can finally take a couple well-deserved rest days. The last 10 days I have been attending an AMGA (American Mountain Guides Association) Rock Instructor course, and have been spent absorbing lots of new industry standard guiding techniques and applying those in multi-pitch terrain. This will lead me down the path of certification in the Rock discipline, over the next year and a half.
Snowstorm!
Coils got a little too short during the Kiwi Coil Races! i was lucky to fit this over my head!
Super classic Cinnamon Crack
Blurry shot of our team on Lost in Space on the Smith Rock Group.We were able to climb every day of the course, and climbed some of the most classic traditional pitches in the park, including the mega-cool Zebra to Zion on the Morning Glory Wall. After "school", we continued climbing, often until dusk, which was touch since class went from 8am to 4:30pm daily!The weather has been fair to extremely hot, and on some of the days we had to resort to some Advanced Crowd Avoidance Techniques (ACATs)...
Super Slabbin'!
The MoonDog Himself.But now I have to say goodbye to Smith and make the annual pilgrimage in the morning back to Yosemite where I will begin work in late May, starting with instructing an Alpine Skills Training for the Outward Bound School.
Here you go, a full length video from our recent trip into the Turbio Valley. Yes, it is long, but just grab a beer, sit back and relax, and enjoy the show. Best to click through and watch it right on the Vimeo site...
