Monthly Archives: June 2008

Alpine Climbing Stoves

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I am in the market for a new mountaineering stove.  My climbing partner has a MSR Reactor that he really likes and to be honest I really like it too.  I am torn between a gas canister stove like the MSR Reactor and the Jetboil PCS and a liquid fuel stove like the MSR XGK or Whisperlite Intl.

I like the canister systems like the MSR Reactor and Jetboil because they are so incredibly convenient and compact.  With either of them you have a nice little system that you turn on and forget about it.  There is no priming or flair up or nasty smoke.  The major downside is that the colder it is the less they work since as it gets colder the pressure in the canister decreases.  I should mention that canister stoves work better at altitude because the air pressure at altitude is less.

Liquid fuel stoves are nice because the good ones can burn just about anything and they don’t perform worse in cold weather.  The downside is they are more complicated, can gunk up, flair up and are a little bit more difficult to work with.  But if you need a no bullshit stove that just works, then a liquid stove may be for you.

I am going to continue to do research on individual stoves and will let you know what I find.

Peekaboo at Table Rock – North Carolina

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The climbing bible of North Carolina describes PeeKaBoo as a one move wonder and without a doubt that one move lives up to the lore. That one move was also the scene of my first climbing scare which made the dangers of climbing ‘real’ instead of ‘potentials’.

There really isn’t all that much to say about the first pitch of the line except that it is long and very exposed to the beating sun. I was unfortunate enough to climb it under a searing mid-September sun without any water. After a full 60m pitch I was out of sweat and was literally baking at the bolted hanging belay.

Soon enough though my partner seconded the route and it was time for the namesake PeeKaBoo move.

The move is a full high step into a swing around. It is 100% committing and just when I made my high step, negative thoughts seeped into my head. I scrambled to find a hand hold that wasn’t there and took my first real fall. Normally a fall on second is no big deal but on this move I can can say without a doubt that it is tremendously more dangerous on second that on lead.

When I fell I had already unclipped the pre-move bolt and because of this I took a vicious pendulum swing. Still, a pendulum fall is normally not that bad but here is the kicker, on the PeeKaBoo move you pendulum around an overhang and the rope drags across the sharp edge of the ledge. So there I was freely hanging on the far side of the a bulge, below an overhang, with a rope that just took a core shot. Yes, I said it, a core shot.

I didn’t have any prussiking gear so my only option was to swing and try to wedge myself in a body width chimney that to my great dismay had no hand holds. I must have swung for ten minutes before I managed to pull an awkward heel hook and find a sloper to hold onto dear life for. With my heart racing I stemmed my way back to the belay and desperately tried to get my head straight. All I wanted to do was to get off that face but my one and only option was to top out.

When I finally got my shit straight I stepped up to the move and found a finger pocket sent from above. I committed and made the step with my Elvis legs at full bore. Cautiously, I swung around with my finger buried in that divine pocket. At the time I wouldn’t have cared if my finger broke in a fall. I was not letting go, period.

The rest of the climb went uneventfully. I didn’t notice the scrapes and bruises I took during the fall, nor did the cotton mouth phase me. The adrenalin coursing through my veins blocked all that. I was singularly focused on getting off that rock.

I know someday I will have to lead this line but right now I am perfectly content with it being at the bottom of my must climb list.

Moral of this story: Protect your second!

Zoo View on Moore’s Wall – North Carolina

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Moores Wall.jpg

I recently climbed Zoo View at Moore’s Wall, which is just north of Winston-Salem, NC.  This climb is the definition of classic.

The first pitch follows the path of least resistance along the right side of Sentinel Buttress up to the Crow’s Nest.   It really is much of anything but a nice warm up.  The second pitch is the money pitch.

The beginning of the second pitch is a thirty-foot traverse that is protected by a lone bolt halfway through.  The standard way is to stay low below the bolt but if you are a glutton for punishment and like balancy moves you can go a little bit higher and work your way around a bulging mini-roof.  Either way, you move to the left of the bulge and then start climbing upward.  Besides the bolt there isn’t any worthy pro on the traverse.

Once you start moving up the climbing is straightforward.  The crux is definitely the traverse but the entire second pitch is a consistent 5.7+

Once you work your way under the roof you have a comfortable enough stance to shake out your forearms for the intimidating roof.  This roof is flat out intense.  Bring some double length runners and drop some gear in the railing below the roof and get ready for some heroic fun.

It’s all there and you have a myriad of hand and feet options so just go for it and keep moving.

The rappel from the top is a little weird.  Once you top out, walk about 100 feet to climber’s right.  You’ll have to down climb a bit to get to a really weird fixed anchor setup.

Clove Hitch vs Girth Hitch

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On the left is a girth hitched ‘biner, the middle is a girth hitched ‘biner that has worked its way free.  On the right is the clove hitch, which can’t work its way free.  It’s an easy mistake to make so definitely check your clove hitches and stay out of Accidents in North American Mountaineering.

While we are on the topic of clove hitches, make sure that the weighted end of the clove hitch is on the spine side of the ‘biner.

Mt. Washington Winter Lions Head Part II

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Decent Material I started moving as soon as possible after the very brief rest. While struggling to put on my heavily insulated mittens I stepped out from the shelter of the refrigerator sized boulder that had been breaking the wind. As soon as I peaked my head out the 90+ mph winds decided that I would be falling instead of standing and I took a bit of a ‘controlled tumble’ down a rock slope to get down to where I needed to be. All this and I was still relatively unharmed. On the way back I learned that I could have just taken an easy step around the boulder and would be on a nice trail but hey it was a white out and I was a bit confused.

Once again I was on my way towards what I thought was the summit. I sorely missed the temporary reprieve from the wind that was mine just a few minutes prior but I felt good nonetheless because the ridge line was marked with the largest cairns I have ever seen. Every fifty odd feet was a six-foot pyramid of beautiful stones marking the way to the summit. I tried to yell to my climbing buddy that we were home free because no matter how white-out it got there was no way we could miss these. Man-o-man was I wrong.

Time became a blur following these mountain angels of cairns. I say this because it was three steps forward, brace for the wind, one step back and then repeat. I was in perfect rhythm with the foul weather until the six foot angels disappeared.

When the cairns disappeared I wasn’t worried but rather very confused on how I lost them. Somehow I managed to find myself in the middle of a forest. I call it a forest because I could see the very top of hundreds of evergreens sticking out of the snow. Figuring that the cairns had started taking a more direct route up the mountain I did what any good mountaineer would do when trying to go to the summit, I went up.

Its hard to say that the weather was deteriorating because it came in waves of varying degrees of ‘badness’. I realize that ‘badness’ is not a word but you get the idea. It was much like having the choice to be hit in the face with a brick or a rock. Either way you are definitely not happy.

I was on my way up and that was a good feeling. I knew that there were no sheer cliffs looming up ahead just waiting to drop an avalanche on me so I felt relatively safe slogging up seemingly endless snow slopes. I say seemingly endless because right about when I was mentally done with this post-holing shit I hit a steep rock outcropping that was both a good and bad.

At this point I was completely blind. My glasses had frozen over and I didn’t dare open my eyes with out them because of the microscopic shards of ice flying through the air just waiting to shred my eyeballs. The rock outcropping was good because it was an indication that I was nearing the top. On the flip side, the rocks would require delicate crampon placements that when you are next to blind becomes a little tricky.

I was off route and I knew it but up was up and getting to the summit was the only way I knew how to get down. So blindly I groped my way up icy blocks on windswept stone. I pawed at anything that look like good handhold and then screeched my crampons along the rock until I found purchase. This was not climbing but this was what I had to do so I did it.

After an enormous amount of effort I did my last dick-jam/hump move and I could stand up relatively straight and begin walking up the slopes.I was now on the summit cone and was walking on rock more often than ice.It felt good to be walking and realizing I was almost to the top.

I never did find a summit marker.After a good thirty minutes of looking in near white-out in -50 degree weather I called the weather observatory the summit and called it a day.I was cold, hungry and thirsty but satisfied that I had battled my way to the summit.A few hero shots later and I began the descent.

What a lot of non-climbers don’t realize is that the summit is only half way up. Coming down the mountain is grueling work that is almost more hazardous.One exhausted plod of a footstep on a loose rock and you are going for a long tumble.