Saturday, December 31, 2016

Avalanche Aware Information

Resources:

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Thursday, December 29, 2016

2017 Homework One: Collect Route Information

Purpose

  • Collect route information from summitpost, peakbagger, nwhikers.net, WTA, and other sources (google is your best friend) so that we could plan the trip accordingly
  • Search for route GPS track files from summitpost, peakbagger, and other places
  • Learn how to create a new route based on existing GPS tracks or existing trails using caltopo.
  • Learn how to export the route in caltopo into a GPS file and import it to a GPS app such as Gaia GPS or alltrails for GPS navigation.
  • Print  topo maps  from caltopo so that we could use them together with compass to practice navigation. You could overlap multiple small maps into a big one. Make sure that you could find at least three neighboring peaks on the big map to locate a position on the route by triangulation.

 Target Mounatins

  1. Revolution Peak (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
  2. Green Mountain (Middle fork Snoqualmie) (Assigned)
  3. Bessemer Mountain (Middle fork Snoqualmie) (Assigned)
  4. Quartz Mountain (Middle fork Snoqualmie) (Assigned)
  5. Preacher Mountain (Middle fork snoqualmie)
  6. Surprise Mountain (Alpine lakes wilderness) (Assigned)
  7. Mount Price (Alpine lakes wilderness) (Assigned)
  8. Big Snow Mountain (Alpine lakes wilderness)
  9. Dirtyface Peak (Highway 2) (Assigned)
  10. Arrowhead Mountain (Highway 2)
  11. Rock Mountain (Highway 2)  (Assigned)
  12. Oakes Peak (North Cascades) (Assigned)
  13. Ruth Mountain (North Cascades)
  14. Ruby mountain (NW/W ridge) (North Cascades)

Template

Mountain Information:

  • Name: Mountain Name
  • Region:  Olympic National Forrest, North Cascades, Central Cascades, South Cascades
  • Summit Elevation: search summitpost
  • SummitPost Link: search summitpost
  • Peakbagger Link: search peakbagger
  • WTA Link:(if any) search WTA

Driving Directions:

  • Trailhead: trailhead name from summitpost or WTA
  • Co-ordinates: try to find from WTA site or google map if possible
  • Address:  search trailhead name on google map to find out
  • Elevation:   summitpost or WTA
  • Pass:  summitpost or WTA
  • Directions: summitpost or WTA

Route Information: (Choose the easiest one or the winter route if there are multiple routes)

Misc 

  • Videos: youtube or vim
  • Other Links: other related links from Google.
  • Notes: special notes that you want team to be aware of
  • Topo maps: (print out from caltopo if you could)

Example

Mountain Information:

Driving Directions:

  • Trailhead:  Lena Lake Trailhead
  • Co-ordinates: 47.5997, -123.1512
  • Address:  N Hamma Hamma Rd, Hoodsport, WA 98548
  • Elevation:  685 ft
  • Pass:  Northwest Forest Pass
  • Directions: (From WTA) "From Hoodsport, drive travel north on Hwy 101 for 14 miles. Make a left onto Hamma Hamma River Road at milepost 318. Continue for 7.5 paved miles to the trailhead. A privy is available at the large trailhead, that can accomodate 30 cars. Keep in mind that the parking flanks an active road, so if you must park across the road from the trailhead, look both ways before crossing!"

Route Information:

Misc 

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Saturday, December 24, 2016

2017 Team Training

Technical Training

  • Gaia GPS navigation
  • Compass and map navigation
  • Climbing knots
  • Rope coiling and rope team
  • Ice axe techniques
  • Crampon techniques
  • Rope belaying
  • Rope rappelling 
  • Crevasse rescue
  • Make snowshoes from tree branches
  • Scrambling foot work
  • Backpacking 
  • Snowshoeing
  • first aid
  • Avalanche awareness 

Physical Training

  •  Fitness training

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2017 Team Goals and Plans

Goals

 

2017 will be an important year for the growth of our team. We want to achieve the following goals by training to prepare us for climbing more challenging mountains.

Plans


To achieve the above goals, we will have a series of skill training and more practice in hiking, scrambling, and climbing.

Winter Hiking/Scrambling


The selected winter routes:

Scrambling


Our major scrambling targets:

Traversing


Optional routes:

 

Hiking


Trails:

Climbing


Mountains:

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Sunday, October 16, 2016

Hiking and Scrambling


 2017

  • Mount Dickerman: 12/10/2017
  • Moolock Mountain: 12/31/2017
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Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Trip planning and preparation

Mount Stuart is a famous mountain in Washington state among climbers (Smoot's "Climbing Washington's Mountains" 100 Peaks). Our plan is to climb Mount Stuart from the standard Cascadian Couloir route. The route is described in summitpost as follows.

Cascadian Couloir: Class 2 & 3 when snow free. Cascadian Couloir has become the standard route from the south and is probably the most climbed route on the peak. It is also the standard descent route from the mountain. There is some class 2 & 3 scrambling between the false and true summits when snow free. In the early season, this section includes some steep snow and is normally heavily corniced.

We plan to start from the Esmerelda Basin Trailhead and then take the Longs pass to Ingalls creek and camp there for one night. We will start to climb the next morning.

This will be a very strenuous climb and we need to train ourselves for this adventure.
  • Scramble skills: start from easy ones to tougher ones to improve our skills. The scramble classes are described by this video. Some tips and hints could be found here.
  • Snow travel: there might be some snow fields to cross in the couloir. Need to know how to use ice axe and crampon.
  • Basic rope techniques: such as belaying and rappelling in an emergent situation that we might run into some difficult terrain. This is not expected, but better to be prepared for it.
  • Route-finding/navigation: there is no official trail, but a climber boot path, which could keep changing over year after the snow melts. Need to try more off-trail hikes to improve our skills.
  • First aid: have some knowledge of first aid. Could watch some videos for this if we don't have a chance to take a class.
For scramble, we could pick some mountains from 75 Scrambles in Washington: Classic Routes to the Summits Guide Book. For example, Red Mountain, Snoqualmie Mountain, and Kaleetan Peak along the I-90 corridor. A little further, we could climb HiBox Mountain, Chikamin Peak, Ruby Mountain, Three Fingers, Baring Mountain, Vesper Peak, Mount Pugh, Sloan Peak, and Mount Daniel. Mount Daniel is our middle term target. 

For snow walking, we could try some mountains with less avalanche risk during winter. To learn some mountaineer knowledge, we could watch the open seminars provided by SIERRA MOUNTAINEERING CLUB. 

 For trail/mountain information and GPS navigation, there are couple iPhone applications: alltrails, Trailblazer(wta), peakbagger, Cairn, N.America 3D (GPS), and Gaia GPS.

Gear list: hiking shoe/boot, ice axe, crampon, helmet, trekking pole, headlamp, (optional harness), camping equipment, and 10 essentials.

 Mount Stuart related information:
  • Map:   
Cascadian Couloir Route
  •  Mount Stuart Weather Forecast
http://www.mountain-forecast.com/peaks/Mount-Stuart/forecasts/2869
  • WTA: 
http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/mount-stuart
  • SummitPost:    
Mount Stuart
Cascadian Couloir

Mount Stuart - Cascadian Couloir (detailed description)

  • Peakbagger: 
http://www.peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid=2182
  • Mountaineers: 

Mount Stuart/Cascadian Couloir

  • Youtube: 
Mt Stuart Cascadian Couloir
Climbing Mt. Stuart Sep. 2012 - Cascadian Couloir
Climbing Mount Stuart (July 24-26 2012)
Mount Stuart: West Ridge, July 23-24, 2010
Mt. Stuart Mountain Goat Climb-Off

Virtual Mount Stuart climb

Mount Stuart GoPro Climb Video
Mt Stuart Drone Video
  • Blogs
    Mount Stuart via CasCadian Couloir (September 28, 2016)
    Alpine Lakes Wilderness, WA: Mount Stuart via Cascadian Couloir
    Mount Stuart via Cascadian Couloir
    Jebs Journeys: Mount Stuart 7-27-2013
    Mount Stuart, Ulrich's Couloir
    MT. STUART, Stuart Glacier Couloir
    • Flickr photos:
    2016.08.13 Mount Stuart (Cascadian Couloir)
    • NWHikers (search the forum for more):
    trip report July 13, 2014  
    trip report July 08, 2014
    • CascadeClimbers (search for more):
    Mount Stuart - Cascadian Coulour 9/10/2016
    Mount Stuart - North Ridge Complete  8/2/2015
    Other Resources:
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