Carlos Pessoa's Mountaineering Adventures

This coming weekend is the Mt. Baker climb with the WAC climbing class, so to make sure everything is good to go we headed out to the Nisqually Glacier in Mt. Rainier this past weekend to get as much glacier travel training as possible in a couple of days. It was a bag of good stuff - roping up, glacier walking, building z-pulley rescue systems, prusiking out of crevasses and even ice climbing!

 

  

 

More photos here. 

Over Sunday and Monday of this past long weekend I was having fun with JK and Ingunn climbing St. Helens. Our original plan was to camp somewhere near the trailhead and do the climb in a single push, but when we learned that the only place to camp was in the parking lot we tweaked the plan to have a late start on Sunday (6pm), snow camp in the flat area around 4000 feet and go for a sunrise climb on Monday. What a good idea that was! The campsite was great, dinner was tasty and the night of sleep was long and warm.

 

 

 

Next morning we got up at 4am, had a quick breakfast and started hiking at 4:45 over a nice crust of ice just thin enough to keep us from punching through. Sunrise came about 30 minutes later revealing a sea of clouds covering the valley behind us. Nice surprise!

 

         

We made it to the top at 8:45, just about the time the snow started to turn into slush. Perfect timing!

 

   

         

 

After having lunch at the top and soaking up the views we started our descent at 10am. It was gissading time! What took 4 hours on the way up became 1 hour going down. By the time we got to the tent it was 72F, and it wasn't even noon! We felt sorry for the poor hikers going up at that time. An early start really pays off on trips like this. From there it was an easy walk back to the car, followed by a great pizza and some messy ice cream half way on the drive back home. Good times! I am ready for another sunrise climb!

 

More photos here. 

Saturday I joined Denny, Liz and Annie for a relaxed and fun (and at times scary!) day of climbing at Exit 32. The relaxed part happened in the morning, when we practiced leading and placing gear on a short 5.6 route and top roped another 5.6 and a 5.9 route on the same wall. The scary part came in later, first when Liz fell while leading a 5.8 sport route and almost landed on a ledge. Then, when I followed that route and cleaned the anchor for a rappel, the end of the rope got stuck in a rock after I tossed it, and when it got pulled down from below a big rock went down with it, hitting the ground just about a feet away from Annie! Phew, that left us with our eyes wide open for the rest of the long weekend! Despite those scary parts, it was still a lot of fun, and it was the day I led my first trad route (so was it for Liz). Thanks Denny for putting together the trip.

 

Now to some photos...

 

 

 

And a movie of Liz making one of the crux moves of a fun 5.9 route that we did:

     

Yesterday I joined the WAC climbing class for another visit to the Tooth. Last week's trip had us return from the base due to too much ice and snow on the rock. This time the story was very different, as we successfully made it up and down (6 students and 5 instructors) in a super warm and clear day.

 

I had forgotten how cool the climb and the rappels are on this route. I really hope to go back there in the fall and lead it! This time I was following Fred, who led all four pitches, just like when I climbed it with Michael and Robert back in February of 2005.

 

My favorite part of the climb is the scary catwalk traverse, in the forth and last pitch. Here are some photos of the traverse, from below (first photo) and above (last two, which I took leaning over from the summit ledge):

   

 

More photos here. 

While chatting at the parking lot on Friday afternoon after the failed attempt of the Tooth, Denny and I talked about going to Leavenworth for a day or two of rock climbing. He went home, got Sketchy and Laurel on the plan, and next thing we knew we were heading early next morning for a weekend at Leavenworth!

 

On Saturday we stayed at the Tumwater wall and did about 3 climbs each from about 1 to 7pm. The two ropes and racks that we had worked great to keep us moving at the same time. Since the stuff we did was trad, I was following Denny most of the time, but I managed to lead a 5.7 that Laurel led and left the gear in for me.

 

On Sunday we went to Castle Rock and did two classics. Denny and I did the multipitch Midway, while Sketchy and Laurel did the first pitch of the scary Canary and linked it with Saber. After meeting at the top we hiked back down to the car, had lunch and headed over to the XY wall at Icicle Creek, where we did a couple of routes and I managed to mock lead my first trad climb! It was a ton of fun and I actually felt pretty safe doing it (well, I have to see what happens when the top rope is not there :)). Thanks to Denny, Sketchy and Laurel for setting this up I am now eager to do more leads on trad routes and just started working on my trad gear rack!

 

  

 

More photos here.

Last Friday I took the day off from work and joined the WAC alpine climbing class on a fun attempt to climb the Tooth. This time the snow and ice on the rock kept us from doing it, but we still had a great time hiking to the base of the mountain under warm and clear conditions (which, btw, kept creating small avalanches all day long!). Maybe we do it again next Friday and have better luck...