Sierra Journal

How To: V-Thread Ice Anchor

Man, I love what American Alpine Institute is doing over at their blog. They keep putting up these great little how-to instructional articles and videos with tips, tricks and basic skills. Even if this is stuff you already know, it's important (and fun) to review every now and again.

Here's a complete list of the articles they've put together with subjects like the prussik hitch, snow anchors, backpack fitting and a ton more. See below for a video on the V-thread Ice Anchor (also know as the Abalakov anchor). Great stuff guys!

Crystal Crag and North Peak's North Couloir

There seems to be some sort of stigma in the US attached to the idea of guided climbing. It must be something related to our collective sense of individualism (how's that for a conundrum?). Americans seem to think that hiring a guide is somehow a cop-out - like the climb doesn't "count" or something.   

I've never thought this way, and after spending three days in the Eastern Sierra over the weekend with a guide from the American Alpine Institute, I must say my feelings on the matter have only been confirmed.

I plan on hiring a guide for a weekend of climbing at least once a season going forward. Why? Mostly because I learn more in the span of a single day with a knowledgeable guide than I could learn in a year otherwise. It goes a long way to keeping your skill sharp. We all tend to get lazy and having a guide evaluate your techniques, anchors, rope skills and gear placements really helps you stay sharp. Plus, guides tend to be a ton of fun to climb with.

We climbed Crystal Crag via the north arete and North Peak via the north couloir. Both are moderate Sierra classics - and both very fun routes. We continued through the entire ridge on Crystal Crag and rapped off the far south end of the ridge. Then we did North Peak car to car - long day but awesome. See below for some cool shots:

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Rock & Ice names top 10 climbing towns

Of course I'm pretty sure that the actual top 10 climbing towns are all in California and Nevada, but here's a list of runners-up in the September issue of Rock & Ice. To be fair, they did include South Lake Tahoe. So they're not totally off. :)

New Paltz? Never heard of it. Favetteville? Nope. Man, I gotta get out to the East Coast more often I guess.

1. Chattanooga, Tennessee
2. Boise, Idaho
3. Ogden, Utah
4. South Lake Tahoe, California
5. Leavenworth, Washington
6. New Paltz, New York
7. Favetteville, West Virginia
8. Vancouver, British Columbia
9. Flagstaff, Arizona
10. Boone, North Carolina

The non-trip report

I had a hard time deciding on a title for this post. Runners up were (the last being my favorite):

- I Feel Like an Idiot
- Two Days of Scree Scrambling at 12,000 feet
- Summitpost approach descriptions suck

My climbing partner and I met in Bishop around 1:00 (he coming from LA, me from SF) and headed up to South Lake to tackle the North Couloir on Mt Gilbert. This is a classic Sierra alpine ice route (5.6, WI3) that's on most climbers' tick lists. We met at Starbucks, drove up to the trailhead, sorted gear and were on our way.

Now, the Summitpost page has this:

The approach is a fairly short (3 miles ?) hike from South lake via the Bishop Pass trail, the Treasure Lakes trail and cross country hiking up slabs and scree to campsites at the base on Mt. Gilbert. This can also be easily done as a day trip from South Lake.

So I kinda thought this would be a no-brainer. We were hiking along, having a good old time, and accidentally went all the way to Treasure Lakes. Found out later that we should have turned east off the trail shortly after the junction with the Treasure Lakes trail. By this time we were far to the south of where we should have been, but we keyed in on a couloir off in the distance that looked vaguely like our objective.

"That must be it," we both thought. Nope. We got up closer and found this (which is most definitely not the north couloir on Gilbert).

It was getting on in the evening, so we decided to bed down where we were. Over dinner we decided to hike the north the next day along a 9 or 10k contour. This turned out to be, as would be expected, a pain-in-the-ass scree scrambling adventure that took most of the morning. I finally said "Screw it, lets head back and chalk it up to a learning experience."  My partner wasn't so easily placated, so he  climbed another hour to crest the next ridge and (Eureka!) there it was - at least another hour away.

It was too late to get to the route, climb it, descend and get back to the car by a reasonable time. And since I had a 6 hour drive back to SF, and I was dead tired, we turned around and headed back to the trailhead. Here's a shot above South Lake on the way back...

It was a moonless, cloudless night the night before, so I saw a ton of shooting stars at least. That's something.