BMS Graduate!

Well, it seems trivial, and on most levels it is. But man, it was more of a commitment than it looks like on paper. Nearly 2.5 solid months of outings, lectures, tests, etc. I'm glad it's over, so I have my weekends back, but so glad I took it. I learned so much, and learned it well--it is an exceptionally run school let alone for only paying $200 and buying some gear. I invested in a mountaineering specific pack, the Osprey Variant 52 (which I totally LOVE), an ice ax (BD Raven Pro), helmet (Petzl Ecrin Rock--thought about a BD or Camp model but how can you resist a brand that means little boy penis in Yiddish? Exactly, you can't), plus sundries like a few lockers, a new belay device that could accomodate the fatty fat-fat 11 mil ropes we tend to use, a couple of new sewn slings, and a snow picket (I learned on soft snow day that if your pack wasn't anchored to a picket or an axe Frank WOULD kick it down the hill to teach you a valuable lesson!). James was kind enough to gift me an extra pair of brand new deluxe semi-rigid crampons he had lying around in his Garage Mahal, I already had a pair of new mountaineering boots, and I've been stockpiling different jackets, hats, and gloves since I got here and realized winter is a whole different shade of crazy out here than in SoCal (duh!).

Since I was on the river when my group climbed Citadel for Routefinding, I got to crash Steve Hughs' party up Bancroft. We met at the park 'n' ride at 4AM, and I immediately knew something was different from my group when I checked my watch which read 4:05 and we were still standing in the lot waiting for people to arrive. Frank would have blown the taco stand at 4:01, and if you were late tough titties. Given how unpredictable the weather is here and how important 15 minutes or so can be, I totally get it now. I think we left at 4:15. Someone asked me if Frank was a total hardass with my group. I smiled in the dark to myself and replied, "Yeah, but in a good way--I like that he won't let you get away with shit."

We jolted a few miles up a jeep road (had no idea how much crazier the ride down would be--a few times my head hit the ceiling and I contemplated putting on my helmet) past the first open gate (yay!) to the 2nd closed one. We gathered, organized, decided to shit can the snowshoes, and set off. Once at Loch Lomond we veered west and started climbing up benches to get onto the East Ridge Route. Once on it, it was fun class 3/4 scrambling for an hour or so that got progressively more knifey until we got to a feature called the Notch--a huge chunk that is lopped out of the ridgeline. Iain and David went on ahead to set up the rap and protect the climb out. By the time we reached them the wind was up (cold!) and clouds were beginning to come in. It seemed like it took forever to get everyone down and up the other side. I can't believe some guy actually free soloed it in his ski boots--it's not super hard, but it's plenty exposed and there aren't the greatest holds when you have bulky feet--if you fall you're going for a long and possibly deadly ride.

Once out of the Notch we still had to get up the 2nd crux of some very spicy class 4 scrambling, and then more scrambling just less exposed for another hour+ until we got to the saddle before the final scramble section before the false summit and easy ridge run to the top. By the time we got there it was after 11AM, and the clouds were socking in and the graupel was definitely falling. It was disappointing, especially as this pair of climbers behind us pushed on (they caught us at the bottom and said they'd summited in the knick of time but had an awesome glissade down), but we knew it was better to be safe. We traversed out onto the snow field in the cirque to our left, sat down, and had a fun ride all the way down to Lake Caroline. By the time we got to the cars we couldn't even see the mountain--it was a good call.

I also crashed Steve's High Peak climb, since my group did theirs up Lamb's Slide on Longs the day we climbed Bancroft. We climbed Citadel from the couloir, then traversed the ridge onto Pettingel, and would have climbed that too if not for the stupid weather.

We met lazy on Saturday afternoon in shorts and tank tops to backpack in the token 1.5 miles to make it an overnight. Weather began coming in and we set up camp at the last sheltered flat spot, and watched as lightning lit up the sky and clouds engulfed Pettingel. It alternatively rained and graupeled for a couple of hours. Lee built a fire, at dinner time I enjoyed my Mary Jane's Farm Bare Burrito while others ate their smooshed Subway sammiches. FINALLY it was late enough to justify going to bed, so into my bivvy I crawled. It wasn't so bad. Jen's bivvy has a hoop, which helps, and it's not the people who had schlepped tents got much sleep anyway. I got up at 4, put on boots, made sure my bento box was full and pack was arranged, and was ready for the 4:30AM leave time. Except that at 4:25 people were still boiling water for oatmeal. Yeah, we left about 4:45.

Fortunately we made good time to and up the couloir, despite 2 people veering way, WAY off route on the approach (routefinding, people!). It was a fun snow climb, and even though it was only 8AM or so it was an east-facing couloir and plenty soft and squishy--another reason to leave early.
We had some spicy scrambling along the ridge to get to the true summit, then a little bit further to reach the rappel. Once everyone was off the rap, more scrambling along the ridge until we were onto the flanks of Pettingel. The weather was rolling in fast, a few ghost turd pieces of graupel were beginning to float and swirl in the air around us, and we knew it was time to go. No more summits that day.

Lee volunteered to glissade down into the middle of the bowl and see how bad the post-holing would be. Fortunately, he took off walking easily once he reached to bottom of the glissade so we took off after him, me starting too far to the right and having to stop and adjust my course to avoid the tib/fib fracture of the rock band in the middle. We got SOOOOO lucky that our trek out was mostly easy walking--we were expecting to post-hole up to our waists, and were rueing our decision to leave the snowshoes in the car.


The rain hit by the time we got to camp, but it was a mostly quick and dirty (one tent group was trying to do a careful, artful pack job for some reason and one guy who insisted on camping on a snow slab took a bit to dig out his deadman, not that it was windy enough to need them oh well.) Again, happy to have only packed the bivvy, and happy we only had an easy 1.5 mile cruise down to the cars. Man those beers at Tommyknockers tasted good!