Pinnacle and Castle Peak

We are in Raineer National Park and ready to do some climbing up a magnificent volcano. We immediately head up to the climbing and wilderness office to check conditions and permits. The ranger was extremely knowledgable on the mountain conditions and informed us that in the past 5 days not a single person summitted due to a 2ft dump of snow the mountain had received a few days previously. This makes for the possibility of a wet slab avalance to come peeling off the top down on to unfortunate people underneath. The weather is supposed to be in the 80's for the next few days so we scroung around and find a few other peaks to keep us occupied until Raineer is in condition to climb.

 

We chose two rock peaks that lay directly next to eachother making it very feasable to summit both in one day. They are Pinnacle Peak and Castle peak. The approach up to them is a quick jaunt up snow fields taking less than an hour to get to the base of our first climb. There are alot of options to chose from to get to the top and we go for a ridge that is 4th class scrambling to easy 5th class. We do most of it un-roped and then decide to pitch the last part out as it steepens up and we are in stiff mountaineering boots. After we get to the top we take some picture with Mount Raineer behind us and bask in the much needed sun that we haven't seen in a week. As we are sitting there we look over to Castle peak and see 14! people rappelling off the summit and heading over towards the peak we are on. We see that they are heading towards the 2nd class (almost a walk up) side of the mountain so we figure we'd let them come on up to the top instead of trying to pass them on our way down and knock rocks on their heads. It must have been close to an hour that we sat on top waiting for them to get off the descent route but after getting stir crazy we go to check out their situation. They had chosen to pitch out the climb and have every person clip in to the rope and climb up one by one. They were barely half way done with getting people up so we had them stop for a moment so we could quickly bypass them and downclimb to the bottom.

 

The rock on castle peak was much better than that of Pinaccle peak and within a few minutes of climbing we had reached the summit. It was a great acclimating day before we head up to Raineer in a few days. Even more excting, we get to see Sams parents tomorow! They happen to be only an hour or so away from us picking up a new kayak and are going to come spend the day with us!

 

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Oregon Coast

After Mount Shasta we headed up over the California/Oregon border to see my friend Shannon and her family in Klamath Falls. Before meeting up with them we grocery shopped like no-ones business. For the first time this trip we actually had to use a grocery cart, if you know anything about me I HATE, yes thats a powerful word but i mean it, cart people. What are cart people you ask? Essentially they are everyone who goes to the store and vigorously pushes carts at people, zig-zaggy through the aisle and whipidly throws that huge basket aimlessly around corners. I will do almost ANYTHING to not use one and become one of these awful human beings. :) But yes, we used a cart and awful it was. :)

We were able to hit up their Saturday farmers market and get some extremely fresh strawberries and tasty coffee from downtown. Two guys made a bet on whether I was a white girl or black girl..one of them walked up to me to better investigate and realized that he lost $5 thinking I was black. I guess it's time to sunscreen up some more?!

Once we got to the Currans house we were treated with the most incredible food to have hit our lips in the past couple months. Steve BBQ'd up some chicken, sausage, and steak accompanied by multitudes of salad and bread. I'm not much of a steak eater but to this day he made the most incredible flavored and perfectly cooked steak I've ever tried. I'm assuming he laced it with crack-cocaine, maybe LSD, but either way i never want another steak that isn't prepared by Mr. Steve Curran. After dinner we wandered out into their yard and admired their chickens; I even got to hold one! Once dinner was complete, and beers were consumed we made our way into movie watching zone and settled in for a most relaxing evening. The morning treated us just as well with a home cooked breakfast using freshly laid eggs with copious amounts of coffee to get us going.

Our next destination was Crater Lake National Park with ambitions to bike the 33 mile loop around the lake. The weather was horrendous and was unrelentless with downpours of rain so we spent a few moments looking at the volcanic lake and continued North to Bend, Oregon. With more rain and more rain forecasted, we spent 2 nights here hoping that the skies would clear up so we could climb at Smith Rocks. After 2 days of patiently (kind of stir-crazish) waiting and the weather not clearing up in the forseable future, we chose to continue on towards Portland. We have found that we can't spend too much time in cities because they are just tooooo much fun! Coctail bar? yes please! Imported food store? I'll take two of everything! Cute bistro on the corner? I'd spend all afternoon here!...we like being cultured and involved in the ongoings of towns but have to pull ourselves away so we don't blow a six month budget in one afternoon. We did splurge on going to the Portland Zoo. Holy Hootenanie that was awesome! One of the most interesting animals we saw was the Honey Bear AKA sugar bear. Look them up, they are odd creatures. With more rain still in the forecast we had to find something to occupy ourselves until the sun came back around, decided to head to the Oregon coast and do some swimming in the ocean. The ocean is an incredible beast to sit and watch and walk along it's beach-shores. We spent a few days meandering and jogging along the beach. I REALLY REALLY wanted to do some biking while we were here so luckily the weather finally cleared and I was able to do a 30 mile stretch down Highway 101, which runs next to the Pacific Ocean. Sam was a great support team and picked me up in the town of Tilamook where we went to the cheese factory, had samples and watched the production lines. As we check the weather once more, a heat wave had blown in and we are now on our way to Mount Raineer!

 

 

 

 

 

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Mount Shasta

As we sit at the Shasta trailhead the weather started movin in rapidly. Starting with rain, and turning into hail, the evening temps brought on snow. We burrowed deep into the van and read our books for many hours hoping that the predicted forecast would come through as planned. We were to begin our trek to the base of Mount Shasta the next morning and it appeared that it was going to be a chilly start. The forecast was still supposed to greet us with a fair chance of precipitation the next day but after we pushed the van up a grueling 8 mile rock filled road we were going in regardless. Earlier in the evening when we were preparing food for our trip in, we were humorously reflecting on our diet the past few weeks and tallied that we have eaten somewhere between 5 & 6 jars of peanut butter (14lbs!), 80 tortilla shells(maybe more) enough chips and salsa to turn us into permi-mexicans and probably more than 15lbs of various kinds of sausage. Also mixed in is a variety of other starches such as potatoes, pasta and rice...lots and lots of rice. We've eating delicious home cooked meals nightly and indulging in tasty beers. You'd think with all these heavy caloried foods we'd be bulking up nicely for climbing. Infact quite the opposite is taking place. Sam's pants are barely hanging onto his hips so I'm secretley adding an extra dose of olive oil to our dinners ;)

 

Waking up the next morning, I peek out of the window to find a fresh 2 inches of snow. Yuck! It's june and I thought we left all that cold white stuff back in Montana. We stay hibernated in the van for the morning drinking copious amounts of coffee and eating fried bagels with peanut butter and nutella. It talste almost like a S'more flavored donut! YUM. We contemplate what we should do by either spending one more day couped up in the van or braving the ugly cold weather that doesn't seem to be clearing up and just hike in. Deciding to for-go the warmth and comfort of the van, we pack up and put our brave faces on. Just as our packs were ready to go we up and changed our minds, tomorows forecast looked much better and we'd be silly to endure the ugly-ness for no reason.

 

The next morning greeted us with near perfect blue skies and not an ounce of precipitation in the air. High mountain peaks tend to create their own weather systems so as we got closer to the base of the mountain we could see the ominous clouds blowing violently from Shasta's summit. We continued towards the bottom of the mountain and selected a camp site nesteled on a rock band between two snowfields. Camp was set at about 10,500 feet and my lord was it cold. It was going to be a cold night and we'd be wearing all clothing layers plus down jackets and three sleeping bags. That ought to do the trick...hopefully :)

 

 

 

 

 

The chilly wake up came far too early, it always does. I'm typically very cranky at this point in the adventure. It's not necassaricly that it's 4AM but that i have to come out of the warmt of my sleeping bag, change clothes, attempt to pack my climbing gear with brittle cold fingers, and most painfully put on ice cold boots onto my already frozen feet. This all takes me quite a long time not only because of the cold but because I'm throwing minor temper fits in detest of doing anything but crawl back into bed. all this time Sam is happily waiting and ready to rock.

 

 

 

 

Immediately after stepping away from camp we need to put crampons on to climb the glaciers and will continue to use them for the next 4,000 feet. We NEVER hike/climb in our down jackets. Usually once we start moving the blood gets pumping a long sleeve shirt will do just fine. Today though, we are both in our big puffys for a good portion of the morning. The first 1,500 feet of the climb takes us forever. I'll admit it was mostly my fault as i was moving slower than a snail going backwards. It's merely a mental game at this point. I know that I'm strong enough and very capable of a forward motion by my mind is telling me that this sucks. (and it kinda does) Sam was very very patient with me (and mighty speedy!) and lended me some kind words of encouragement...well ok maybe it wasn't a so gentle "get it into gear". Realizing that it was getting late I either needed to committ and trudge on QUICKLY or start making the descent back to camp. Failure is not fun so onward we went. We were finally begining to have some fun! The sun was out and below us we could look down at some pretty impressive crevasses in the glacier. We were on the norther side of the mountain doing a route called the Hotlum-Bolum ridge and ended up being the only part on route. As we pushed our way to the summit crest we were able to get a view of the popular standard route on the other side. There certainly was not a lack of people doing this route. We probably counted 20 other people either going up or down over there. Made us very happy that on a California volcano that gets attempted 15,000 times per year we had one entire side to ourselves. We briefly stood on the summit to get a picture and then took shelter from the ferocious wind and had a snack. During the descent we looked back ant the sun and saw one of the most amazing things happen. A sundog or ice halo had formed around the sun. This happens when ice crystals in the air deflect light at a 22 degree angle and forms a perfect rainbow around the sun. We couldn't decide if this was a good or bad omen but finally settled on it bringing good fortune. Made an attempt at snapping a picture but it doesn't do much justice for how beautiful it was. Once back at the tent we took a much needed couple hour nap before packing up and hiking the 3 miles back to the van. This will be our last trip in California and a great one to end on before heading up to Oregon!

 

 

 

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Phantom Spires and Lovers Leap

On our way up North through California towards Lake Tahoe I had decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to hit up a few Wineries since this is something we can't do at home. I had been researching all day while we were driving and found some that looked intriguing. We pulled off into the town that we'd have to drive through towards them and about 30 seconds of pulling off the interstate the van DIED! AHGHG!? The engine stopped, power steering was a gonner and we were left stranded in Safeways parking lot. We lifted the hood and began to inspect. What were we looking for? Good question, for both of us it was like trying to read japanese and failing miserably. Coming to our rescue was 3 lovely homeless men who had some previos car knowledge. Sam and these guys spent about half hour discussing and trying to nail down the problem as I was on the phone with AAA working on getting a tow to the nearest mechanic. As soon as I had all squared away and the tow truck was on the way Sam came running up to tell me to cancel the tow because the van was in working condition. The van has 2 gas tanks and apparently something with either the fuel filter or fuel pump in the gas tank we were using had malfunctioned. We switched over to the second tank and were back on the road again! The day had began to get late and the wineries were soon closing so unfortunately we skipped on the tastings and continued towards our climbing destination.

 

We ended up stopping about 25 miles from Lake Tahoe and climbed at a few areas the first being Phantom Spires. These contain multi-pitch routes with "knob tying" as protection. Seems less than stellar but turns out that maybe they are on to something by tying slings around rock knobs to protect you from falling to your death. I was feeling exceptionally brave and decided it was time for me to take on a few lead climbs of my own. I felt awfully proud when I finished the second and final pitch to the top of a cool spire! We also found a crazy amount of booty gear on the climbs. We walked away with a new nut, two quick draws, a sling, and a wire gate caribiner...not a bad days work!!

 

 

 

Just a few miles up the road is the super popular climbing area, Lovers Leap. We scoured the internet for some moderate and classic routes to climb. Found a few that looked intriguing (and some that I could practice my lead climbing on!). This area can be crawling with hundreds of other climbers so we opted for a rock face that gets less traffic than the usual East wall. We found a few routes that looked fun and switched off leading pitches. After we exhausted our options in this area we wandered over to the wall where all the popular routes are. We timed it just right as it was late enough that most people had called it a day and we jumped on something called the " Bears Reach". This was a cool route that followed a series of flakes up 3 pitches to the top of the buttress.

 

 

 

 

On the last day at Lovers Leap we wanted to jump on one of the classic routes in the area called Corrugation Corner. We didn't necassarily get an early start which may have been our first mistake. We wandered our way up to the base around 11 to find 2 other parites on the route with a guided group waiting to get started at the bottom. We patienly waited our turn and slowly made our way up the route. It was a fantastic climb on great rock and one of the best 5.7 multi pitch routes we've been on so far. What should have taken us about 1.5 hours to finish took us somewhere around 4 hours due to being behind slow parties. This was the last climb we did before heading up north to Mount Shasta!

 

 

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