email me at bachmanjohn at gmail
Since Matt, Reggie, and I are planning on climbing Mt. Rainier (twice) in June, we decided that some preparation is in order. The routes we're planning on doing will involve moderate technical ice climbing at altitude with packs, often at night, extensive simul-climbing, complex route-finding and navigation, and multiple days of effort, exhaustion, and sleep-deprivation. In other words, proper training for this objective will require some serious shenanigans.
Matt and I had originally planned to go to Lake Willoughby this past weekend, but a last minute commitment at Matt's job ruled that out. Since avy conditions on Mt. Washington were shaping up to be fairly menacing, we would have to cobble something together in Crawford Notch. An alternative plan formed before anyone could think hard enough about it to say no. The plan was to wait until Reggie got out of class and Matt got out of work on Saturday, then head up to Crawford Notch, climb Horseshoe gully (WI 1-2) at night, and bivy at the ridge (in my BD Firstlight, a tiny 2-man tent--with three people). Then, on Sunday, descend and simul Willey's slide (WI 2), then finish by climbing Central Couloir (WI 3+) on Mt. Webster. Since Horseshoe Gully is notoriously hard to find, we figured that that would simulate glacier navigation in darkness. Willey's Slide would stand in for the pitches of ice above the Black Pyramid, and the 3+ finish of Central Couloir would suffice for the bergschrund. Somewhere along the line it also got decided that we should each chug a 22oz Bud Heavy before the final climb to simulate the effects of altitude.
PART I: NATURE COULD TOTALLY WIN IN A FIGHT
I had suggested that to simulate the effect of many days on the mountain we should be sure to WOD hard on Saturday morning. I went on a 62 mile bike ride that left me utterly exhausted; Reggie did Quadbusters for the first time; Matt got wrecked on Friday night and got three hours of sleep before spending all day at work. After some midday naps, we finally left Boston at around 8pm. As the hours passed after stopping for dinner it started to dawn on us how late into the night we would be climbing. In echoes of our Mordor Wall bivy, Matt mused, "Hey John, think we'll be in the tent before sunrise?...."
We finally got on the trail somewhere around 11:30pm. I had programmed waypoints for the start to Horseshoe into my GPS, and we followed the little arrow into the start of the gully with surprisingly little trouble. It was windy but not too cold, and to our surprise, we found ourselves actually enjoying ourselves. Eventually we found some ice, roped up, and climbed over some cute ice bulges. As we got higher, the snow in the gully got deeper and was occasionally dubious enough from an avy perspective to force us over to the edge.
Then, somewhere along the way, the gully sort of--disappeared. I mean, we were climbing along, all was well, there was a tree here and there, and then gradually, more trees started slipping up on us until they were all around us. GPS in hand, I chased a waypoint through the woods, but to no avail. The rope tangles in trees finally became too much to bear (we had been simuling) and we regrouped, unroped and had a bit of a tense exchange as we contemplated what to do and how things had gone so wrong, our first and only serious test of team unity.
From there it was just a brutal, unrelenting slog through evil trees, occasional chest deep snow, and darkness. We used the GPS for a while before putting it away for the night--it was just too depressing to see how little distance we'd traveled, and besides, with no gully to follow, the only place to go was up. Hours, literally hours, passed. The mood darkened, but I tried my best to keep it light. We took turns breaking trail. In one section where I was breaking trail I had to dig out snow with my hands at chest level before even attempting to take one step. It was amazing, and amusing, to me that this bushwhack was the only serious training challenge that this route could have presented to us, and it had really come through and done it, in spades. At one point while breaking trail Reggie declared that this was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Matt observed that "every now and then, nature reminds you that it could totally win in a fight."
Then, suddenly, and with ecstatic relief, we were on top. It was a few minutes shy of 5am. We found a nice patch of flat snow just off the trail to pitch the tent. Thus began
PART II: THE BIVY
Three people in the BD Firstlight was always something of a theoretical proposition. I mean, we had "tested" the theory by lying down in it once at Hiker's Paradise, but this !@#$ was about to get TESTED. We were sweaty and covered with snow and icy crust from swimming our way up the mountain. Matt was starving so he fired up the Jetboil while Reggie and I set up the tent; it was snowing and breezy and snow kept blowing inside. One by one we squeezed our way in, each of us still wearing all of our layers and even our puffies. Matt had the full-length thermarest so he went in the middle. It was a tight, uncomfortable fit, the kind of situation where each person is independently thinking to themselves "who is the jerk who is hogging all the space?" By the time we were all in the tent it was around 6am and starting to get light out. We set the alarm for 9am. An alarm presumes sleep; and as such it was totally unnecessary.
My poor 10-year old down sleeping bag wilted rapidly in the extreme dampness. Sleeping head-to-foot, somehow we had given Matt not only the warmest spot, but also the position with his head uphill. Sleeping with my head downhill and with my feet propped up on my boot shells, I started to feel my toes getting colder and colder, which made me paranoid and restless. I was clammy and chilly, especially on the side that was pressed up against the tent wall. I tried to move away from the tent wall but Matt's boots got in the way so I couldn't lie flat. Gusts of wind jerked the tent noisily, sprinkling my face with frost. I think I may have closed my eyes for a few minutes here and there, but I don't know if it was anything I would call sleep. Feeling progressively more trapped I couldn't wait for the alarm and finally sat up at 8:45 to boil some water and eat my Mountain House.
At this point Matt wakes up, having "slept like a baby," claiming that after lying down he hadn't woken up at all until I sat up (this is, of course, karmic revenge for our freezing cold night in the Dolly Copp campground a couple years ago when I slept cozily in my -20 while Matt and Pete shivered the entire night in their 20 degree bags, and I couldn't help but rub it in). Reggie, despite his toasty -20 degree bag, also had an unpleasant "night," with moments of wakeful hallucination that could only arguably be called "sleep."
I made my Mountain House with the Jetboil hanging inside the tent, not only without setting the tent on fire (an important feat, since after all, the BD Firstlight fabric is not fully fire retardant) but also without anyone passing out from carbon monoxide poisoning. Time to hike out.
We packed up and hiked down the Webster Cliff Trail, chatting with a climber who had just soloed Shoestring Gully earlier that morning. We walked along Rt. 302 back to the car, arriving a little before 11am. We debated what to do next, leading us to a bit of
PART III: IMPROVISATION
Reggie and Matt both considered the prospect of doing two more routes to be, at this point, definitively not happening. I was unconvinced at first. Nevertheless we all agreed that the first thing to do was to get some more water and eat, and though it could be considered "cheating," or at least pushing the "pause" button on the mountain simulator, we went to the AMC Highland Center. I justified this by considering all the time it would save us over brewing using the Jetboil, and hence the extra climbing it would allow.
At the Highland Center we exploded our packs all over the dining room, which was surprisingly empty, and ate. Despite the fact that he had packed and carried a plastic bowl, ramen, oatmeal, and a tupperware with not one, not two, but THREE sandwiches, since starting the night before Reggie had eaten only a single Clif bar and drunk maybe a cup of water. I stuffed my face with another Mountain House and multiple bars. The sudden influx of food made me feel woozy and I felt my resolve weakening. There had been four cars at the pullout for Willey's slide so we figured that the longer we waited the less likely we would be to have ice dropped on us by other parties (not something I wished to repeat).
We finally got our stuff back together, drove to Willey's and hiked to the base, still carrying all of our overnight gear. We simul-climbed it with myself in the lead placing gear, Reggie in the middle, and Matt following and cleaning. It went fairly smoothly. We always kept at least two pieces on the rope, and we also used a TiBloc, which seems like a really good system, as it protects the leader from a falling second at difficult sections. With 8 screws we were able to do the whole route with only one intermediate belay (from 2 screws), which was pretty cool considering the route is 5-6 pitches long. I was having a blast cruising up the easy terrain, with wind and blowing snow giving a full alpine vibe.
We topped out and hiked down. It was 3pm. Willey's had been good practice but we could see that some more mileage with the running belays would be well-spent, and Central Couloir was not the best option for practicing that anyway. We considered doing Cinema Gully, or just another lap up Willey's Slide. Reggie was feeling the cumulative fatigue of Quadbusters plus the bushwhack plus the sleep deprivation and declined a third route. Matt and I decided, hell we're here, the ice is good, and we're still feeling good, so we dropped our packs and did a quick simul-solo of Willey's for time, coming in at just under 20 minutes from bottom to top. The ice was plastic and it felt fun and totally casual, like hiking a nice wide icy trail with a view.
After a pleasant glissade back to the road, it was finally time to head home. In the car at the trailhead we shared one of the three 22oz altitude simulators that we had bought, in celebration of a weekend well spent; at Truants we debated the finer points of Type I vs. Type II vs. Type III fun.
All in all an excellent training trip, in addition to some useful technical lessons learned it was good to get out there and do something ridiculous to push the mental game in some new directions.
Reggie fired up
Some pleasant ice climbing before the bushwhack
GPS track of our route up Horseshoe Gully (click to enlarge). We were very close to the route as it appears on the map, but it looks like we were a bit too far left in the upper section.
The bivy
Matt ready to break camp
Starting up Willey's Slide
This is why we climb