Avalanche Aware Information

Resources:

• AIARE Avalanche Awareness Site:
• Know Before You Go
• Avalanche Awareness

• AIARE Avalanche Awareness Lectures
• Part 1: Introduction to Avalanches and Unstable Snow
• Part 2: Avalanche Terrain and Mountain Weather
• Part 3: Using the Avalanche Center and Travel Techniques
• Part 4: Rescue
• Part 5: Human Factors
• CAC Online Avalanche Tutorial
• AVALANCHE PROBLEMS EXPLAINED
• Avalanche - The White Death
• Avalance.org
• Northwest Avalanche Center
• NWAC Avalanche tutorial
• REI Expert Advice:  Avalanches
• Part 1: The Basics
• Part 2: Snow Tests
• Part 3: Reducing Risk
• Part 4: Rescue Checklist
• How to Techniques for a Compression Test
• How to: Sow Profiles & Tests
• Beacon Testing with the Mount Washington Avalanche Center
• Snowshoeing: Looking at your favorite trails through a wintertime len
• Does Your Favorite Summer Trail Sport a Seasonal Avalanche Chute?
• Plan it Like a Pro: Strengthening Your Pre-Season Backcountry Brain
• Bginner to Backcountry: Snowshoe Hikes for Everyone
• Winter Safety Tips
• Route Finding in Avalanche Terrain
• Snow Sense - Avalanche Danger: Part I, Part II
• Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop talk:  
• Brody Leven 
• Bruce Tremper
• Blase Reardon
• David Brown and Mike Hales
• Story: A Dozen More Turns
• Story: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek: Disaster on the Mountain
• World's Greatest Avalanches - The Top 10
• Biggest avalanches from the world
• Devastating Avalanche accident caught on Camera

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)

• Gain: summitpost or peakbagger or from your own caltopo route
• Round Trip:  summitpost or peakbagger or from your own caltopo route
• Difficulty: the online book: 75 Scrambles in Washington: Classic Routes to the Summits or search from mountaineers.
• Season: summitpost
• Source: the online book: 75 Scrambles in Washington: Classic Routes to the Summits or search from mountaineers.
• Existing tracks: summitpost, peakbagger, nwhikers.net, WTA, and other sources (prefer the most recent one)
• Related Trip Report: summitpost, peakbagger, nwhikers.net, WTA, and other sources (the trip report related to the above track file)
• Caltopo Route: the link of the new route that you will create in caltopo based on existing tracks or trails. Please break the route into multiple sections and clearly mark each section. A good example could be found here: http://caltopo.com/m/G6N1#

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:

• Name: The Brothers
• Region:  Olympic National Forrest
• Summit Elevation: 6842 ft
• SummitPost Link: hhttp://www.summitpost.org/the-brothers/517714
• Peakbagger Link: http://www.peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid=1036
• WTA Link: http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/the-brothers

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:

• Gain: 6042 ft
• Round Trip: 16 miles
• Difficulty: Physically most difficult, technically difficult
• Season: May to October
• Source: https://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.aspx?trailid=HGW230-074
• Existing tracks: http://www.peakbagger.com/climber/GPXFile.aspx?aid=646347&sep=1
• Related Trip Report: http://www.peakbagger.com/climber/ascent.aspx?aid=646347
• Caltopo Route: http://caltopo.com/m/S07B (Imported track and haven't created a new route yet. It is not a good example without breaking the route into sections, will fix it later) 

Misc 

• Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH-Gn46UPis
• Other Links: http://www.climbersguideolympics.com/peaks/skokomish-duckabush-group/the-brothers
• Notes:
• Topo maps: will be provided

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

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.

• Know how to plan trip route and export it as a GPS file using caltopo online map
• Master off-trail navigation skills using the Gaia GPS app, compass and maps (print out using caltopo)
• Get familiar with basic climbing knots
• Master ice axe rescue and crampon techniques for snow and glacier travel
• Master rope team and crevasse rescue skills for glacier travel
• Learn basic belaying and rappelling techniques with ropes
• Master scrambling skills and be comfort with class 3 (and occasional class 4) terrains 
• Endurance and strength training to be comfortable with elevation gain up to 5000ft-6000ft    
• Learn backpacking skills
• Learn snowshoeing skills
• Learn wilderness first aid techniques
• Achieve the primary goals for this year, i.e., climb Mount Stuart and Mount Daniel. 

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:

• Oakes Peak (North Cascades)
• Ruth Mountain (North Cascades)
• Ruby mountain (NW/W ridge) (North Cascades)
• Bandera mountain (I-90)
• Sliver peak via Annette Lake Trail (I-90)
• Guye Peak via Commonwealth basin/N ridge (I-90) 
• Stegosaurus Butte (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
• Revolution Peak (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
• Dixie Peak via Mount Teneriffe trail (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
• Green Mountain (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
• Bessemer Mountain (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
• Quartz Mountain (Middle fork Snoqualmie)
• Surprise Mountain (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Mount Price (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Big Snow Mountain (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Arrowhead Mountain (Highway 2)
• Rock Mountain (Highway 2)

Scrambling

Our major scrambling targets:

• Preacher Mountain (Middle fork snoqualmie)
• Russian Butte ( Middle fork snoqualmie)
• Kaleetan Peak (I-90)
• HiBox Mountain (I-90)
• Gunn Peak (Highway 2)
• Baring Mountain (Highway 2)
• Mount Index (Highway 2)
• Dirtyface Peak (Highway 2)
• Mount Pugh (Mountain loop highway)
• Three fingers (Mountain loop highway)
• Vesper Peak (Mountain loop highway)
• Del Campo Peak (Mountain loop highway)
• The Cradle (Alpine lakes wilderness) 
• Mountain Daniel (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Chikamin Peak (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Harding Mountain (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Little Annapurna  (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• McClellan Peak (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Cashmere Mountain (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Mount Ellinor (Olympic National Park)
• The Brothers (Olympic National Park)

Traversing

Optional routes:

• Mailbox - Dirtybox - Granite Lakes (Middle fork snoqualmie)
• Dirty Harry's Peak - Web Mountain (Middle fork snoqualmie)
• Rampart ridge - Rachel Lake - Alta Mountain (I-90)
• Melakwa Pass loop (I-90)
• Enchantments Day hiking (Stuart Lake - Snow Lakes, Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Enchantments Backdoor (Crystal creek entry, Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Necklace Valley Loop (Alpine lakes wilderness)
• Enchanted Valley (Olympic National Park)
• Olympics Traverse (Olympic National Park)
• Ptarmigan Traverse (Highway 20)
• Goat Rocks Traverse (South Cascades)

 

Hiking

Trails:

• Gothic Basin trail
• Lake Ingalls
• Mount Dickerman trail
• Mount Forgotten trail 
• Blanca Lake Trail
• PCT: Kendall Katwalk Trail
• Hidden Lake Lookout Trail (Highway 20)
• Cascade Pass Trail (North Cascades)
• Sahale Arm Trail (Highway 20)
• Sourdough Mountain Trail (Highway 20)
• Goat Mountain (North Cascades)
• Lake Ann
• Navaho Peak
• Lake Constance Trail
• Mailbox Old Trail
• Camp Muir

Climbing

Mountains:

• Mount Stuart
• Mount Saint Helen
• Mount Adams