Poor Man's Heli

This vid has absolutely nothing to do with snow, but apparently those pink furry guys are called snowths. That’s close enough for me on a Friday.

How hot? Well, the candles melted inside. As did the bar soap. As in the bar soap is now liquid soap. Make sure you bring a LOT of water if you’re doing anything athletic outside.

This candle needs Viagra

This jar used to contain bars of soap

After a 100 degree day, a half dozen and change Rainier and a pitcher or two of Bridgeport IPA the suggestion was floated to start our hike at midnight or so instead of 4 AM so that we’d miss most of the following day’s heat. Genius suggestion, undoubtedly, though I didn’t account for my buzz and inability to function well on a Tuesday when I last slept on a Sunday, and I thought I’d be laughed at for throwing it out there. I was right, I was laughed at, but then they came around, we finished dinner, had a few more cans of Yakima Valley hops refreshment named after another Cascades volcano, packed up and headed to Climbers Bivouac.

Not a lot of photos in this TR as my camera bag harness is in storage and I only have an ultrawide angle lens at the place I’m currently staying, but here are a few in case you’re considering the trip yourself.

Climbing permit

Headlamps and stars lit the route. Had hopes of spotting a sasquatch, but had to settle for satellites orbiting and shooting stars every couple of seconds. Squatch-free, but still not a bad way to spend a sleepless night.

The stars are projectors

Rest stop number 1. We figured when we got about halfway up we’d take 30 minutes to drink some water, have a quick snack, and get 10 minutes of shut eye. I popped off the boots, climbed into my Phantom 32 bag (lovin’ this bag so far just based on the pack space it DOESN’T take up) and actually got a few minutes of sleep before a shooting star was so bright that it actually woke me up.

Rest stop

At around 3 or so the night went from pitch black to subtly lit from the east. This view of Adams and the distant light was with us for awhile. Would have loved to have had my good lens to take a few shots of this and blow one up for the wall.

Mt. Adams is watching you

Rest stop #2. Everyone still giddy with anticipation, lack of sleep and exertion yet to kick in

Rest stop #2

Mt. Adams again, an hour or so later. There wasn’t much you could see to take pictures of, so I just took a lot of Adams.

Mt. Adams again

This picture had potential with a different lens as there was just one lonely star left above some random, unnamed peak

Oh look, Mt. Adams!

By now the sun was starting to rise and St. Helens was kicking off a shadow.

Mt. St. Helens shadow

Two of our five dropped out about 1000 vertical feet from the summit. Lack of conditioning and false expectations of the hike’s exertion had taken it’s toll, and the ashy/pummicey last mile or so drove home the final nail. This is the other two that stayed with me reaching the post-1980 summit

Reaching the summit

Rainier, Adams and St. Helens fangs

Decent view

Looking into the gaping mouth of St. Helens

Looking into St. Helens

The strangest thing about being on top of St. Helens was that there was no sulfur smell. Every so often on the hike up you’d catch a subtle sniff on a breeze, so I expected the top to be a full-frontal sulfur assault on my nasal passages. No dice. There were little rockfalls going off all around the inside of the crater, which was cool as you really got a feel for how St. Helens is an active living, breathing volcano. Right about the time this picture was taken looking into the St. Helens sarlacc pit there was a loud crazy rumbling/loud boiling/generally ’shit is about to hit the fan’ sound coming from inside the mountain that you could feel. We all looked at each other with a ‘what should we do’ look.

“Should we run?”
“Fuck it, if we stay here at least we can watch the rocks get spit out and try to dodge ‘em.”

The sound went on for a bit, and finally way down in the crater below we saw some MASSIVE boulders make a run across a snowfield and come to rest. The sound was just the rock avalanche, thankfully, but I admit there was a moment where I pondered the irony of my dad running medevac on St. Helens back in the day and his son getting snuffed out on the same mountain 30 years later.

Good hike overall, but mostly just to tick off the box next to St. Helens. I don’t think I’d do the hike again in the summer as it’s kind of boring overall. My hiking preferences tend to be spots that end at a cool mountain lake for swimming and fishing, this hike is pretty much hiking and scrambling over a barren landscape. I would DEFINITELY do St. Helens in the winter though.

Well hell, this takes ’smarter than an average bear’ to another level, and after reading I’m embarassed to admit that sometimes I need help from someone else to open my BV500.

Let’s face it – skiing and snowboarding aren’t cheap, and backcountry snowsports even less so. Summertime is the best time to buy your backcountry kit as typically stores are trying to blow out of whatever inventory they have left from the prior year to make room for the upcoming gear in the fall. If you shop around a bit, and don’t mind the occasional used/demo gear. This is my first take on building out a budget kit for someone getting into the sport or looking to upgrade their gear.

Splitboard – Found these Voile Mojo demos over at Mammothgear.com. Cool little shop staffed by cool people in the eastern Sierra, and the demos come with skins and the universal binding interface – something you don’t get if you buy a Burton or most other splitboards.

Beacon – Pieps Freeride for under $160 at Acmeclimbing.

Shovel – The Backcountry Outlet has got this aluminum blade Camp on sale for under $20. For just over the price of a pitcher of beer you can get yourself a metal shovel.

Probe – Again going to Mammothgear, they’ve got the Ortovox 340 for $50. Not the cheapest probe, and certainly not the lightest, but I’d rather save ounces on non-lifesaving equipment.

For under $800 and a few minutes of interwebbing you’ve got yourself the essentials (reminder: take an avalanche safety class and read up) to get you out of the resort and into the backcountry. It should be noted that I’m not endorsing any of the gear or retailers here, just showing what kind of kit you can put together on the cheap (cheap is relative) in the offseason.

Fresh pow on the cheap

Music and riding go hand in hand, and the Beastie Boys have always been a favorite of mine, as well as many in the snow/skate scene and other musicians that are involved in that scene.

Video below is the announcement vid from their site. Best wishes to MCA as he goes out to kick cancer’s ass.

This time it’s from the boys at Absinthe, who know how to put a film together.

(Yes, the audio cuts out somewhere past the 2minute mark. Not sure what’s going on there, the vid they have on their site is only 2 minutes and changed so maybe a Youtuber spliced some new footage in there?)

Oh, and a sick little trick by Mr. (you have to address him by Mr. after he did a stint in AK with the Deeper crew!) Travis Rice

Travis Rice – Neverland from Absinthe Films on Vimeo.

Of course I can, it’s my blog. This vid has absolutely zero to do with backcountry snowboarding, but everything to do with creativity and having fun on snow with your friends and enemies (frenemies?)

A find from the blogosphere, cuz we all know bloggin’ is life

http://bicyclescansavetheworld.com/

Golden Gate capital won the auction for Eddie Bauer’s assets. Winning bid: $286 million.

No mention as to what effect this will have on their newly launched (possibly newly closed) line, First Ascent, that was supposed to get EB back to their roots and start to distance them from just being another khaki retailer at your local mall. As mentioned before, I don’t foresee that dream ever happening, especially now.