It’s Been a Long Three Months

Up high on North Sister with Middle and South behind.

For anyone who cares (does anyone care?) I know it’s been a while. It feels like it’s been a while. Three months almost to the day. It’s been a busy summer. Where to start? Well, first I came back from Alaska. I left in brilliant weather and came back to June-uary. After Denali (we summitted, woo-hoo! – it was cold and your pack is heavy but man is it beautiful [pics here]), I remember sitting outside at the AMS offices and drifting off during a conversation with my girlfriend, just staring at a fuzzy yellow bee crawling on a new green leaf and just being taken aback by the audacity of the natural world after three weeks on a glacier populated by only humans in their synthetic skins, living in their heads, and the occasional lost bird or oblivious raven. Sitting in my shorts and bare feet, I was enamored with how warm and verdant the world outside of rock and ice could be and my sense of wonder lasted just about until I got off the plane in Portland to a cold rain falling through the gloomy halflight of a northwestern pre-dawn.

South Side climber expressions typical of the 2010 season. Shock. Awe. Confusion.

I had hoped, and half expected, to walk back into the loving arms of an Oregon summer, but it wasn’t to be. As anyone who climbed in the Northwest in June knows, it was one of the snowiest on record, a month that saw twelve foot snows up high on Rainier, avalanche conditions on a hair-trigger all over the region, frostbite and war stories on a scale more suited to the Himalaya than the Cascades, and more turned-around trips than ever. Often on Mt. Hood we’ll ride the snowcat to the top of the ski resort and climb from there, and I had always heard stories of groups that stepped out of the cat only to step back in, but I’d never done it myself until this year, and when it happened, to me only once and to others many times, there was no question that it was the thing to do. We had new guides who had been working on the mountain for weeks without having seen it emerge from the clouds once. We had one guide whose high point after six or seven trips was a few hundred feet above the cat track. Foolishly, I got welcomed into the summer by having my Alaskan softshell kit soaked through within five minutes of stepping off the cat on my first trip up the South Side. By the time we were hiking back down, the pools of water that had accumulated in my boots felt like they were starting to freeze, as were the soaking wet layers that were starting to crunch as we trudged down the ski hill in a whiteout. This general trend persisted through the month of June. Our intern, out from sunny Colorado and not used to living in a world of rime ice and storm, broke down and quit near the end of the month after having his soul crushed by a month of sleeping in the truck while the elements tried their best to convince him he was in a cold, wet and windy version of hell.

Naime tries to remain an upbeat rime sculpture on another South Side morning.

By July it decided to be reasonable and climbs actually went, albeit at a reduced rate owing to the abundance of said rime ice and lingering instabilities from the snowy months before. We had a great trip into Middle and North sister, although weather and snow conditions prevented us from actually summitting either of them. I got to do a bit of recreational rock climbing with some friends. We climbed a chossy tour-de-force at Smith called European Vacation. It’s seven pitches and goes at 5.11R, and despite being composed of awful rock, it’s still a pretty fun outing. Here TMG guide and buddy Marc Ripperger sends 5.11 on the worst rock I’ve ever seen anybody climb hard on. July went on on its normal course and at the end of the month I bailed on Oregon.

Vacationing in Chossland.

With an AMGA Alpine Guide Exam coming up in September, I decided my time would be best spent running around the North Cascades and I relocated to a cabin in Mazama. With the Unibomber Shack no more (see last year’s Mazama experience), I’ve got my own cabin this year and while it’s not necessarily quite as charming, it does have perks like running water, a shower, three rooms and electricity, which are charming enough. Which brings us pretty much to now. Or at least a month ago. I feel like that’s an adequate recap, especially since I doubt anyone really cares. Onward to the North Cascading!

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