EISPIRATEN

He219 contacted me at about 4:00pm on Friday night and asked if I was interested in heading up to Mount Baldy at 3:00am the next morning (we live a couple miles away from each other). I am an early riser anyway, so I said okay, all I had to do was rent some crampons at REI.

We were on the trail by about 5:00am, and made the summit by 1:00pm. We did the same route the Ice Pirates did last weekend, only it was nice and sunny instead of cold and blizzardy.

He219 had a little accident involving a snowboard and an iceaxe on the way down, which was a bummer, but he was still bale to make it out all right. I haven't heard from him since Saturday night.

Not much a of a trip report, but I'm a bit knackered from the weird hours and two hikes this weekend. But I did make a video (natch), though it came in a bit long at 8-1/2 minutes. Sadly, my video style is a bit more lethargic than the usual Ice Pirates fare:



PS: we found out that our own Taco Del Rio has an enviable reputation as a filmmaker among the local mountaineering fraternity.

Nice Video Mitch!


Headed up with simonov bright and early to the Baldy Bowl on Saturday Feb. 9th, 2008.

In order to take advantage of the ovenight freeze for our ascent we departed Newport Beach/Costa Mesa at 3AM and launched on the trail by 5 AM.
It was perfect, the freeze made the path up solid considering the warm temperatures we'll be having for the next few weeks.
We avoided crotch-deep postholes up to the Ski Hut and remnants of a small earthen slide.

The trip back was not so great as the daytime thaw had us making deep postholes on our way back down.
Water from melting snow gouged channels under the snow, making for some interesting pitfalls.
At one point I saw simonov stuck, just like that med-alert commercial "I've fallen and I can't get up"

Various Los Angeles Mountain rescue teams were also having a winter symposium and the Hut Host Jeff Moran was very hospitable.
I also got to check out simonov's classic Italian wooden Ice Axe. I am very impressed at how well he took to scaling the steep bowl.

Here are some pix:







The path up to the Hut was blazed fairly direct, saving a lot of time ..

Blueberry Pancake and Grade-A Maple syrup breakfast at the Hut; love my Primus Eta .. but I have to work on my leveling skills.


And on we went, straight up the middle ..



We saw thig guy scaling the same slope in Snowshoes, slipping and sliding in the process. After challenging himself he donned crampons half way up ..





In the process I developed a great respect for the Superbowl Sunday climbing crew who scaled the same path in high winds and whiteout conditions.
Hat's off to you guys ..




Echoes of the Baden-Powell Boulderdash come to mind ..


Summit pic; a toast of Onikoroshi 'the Demon Slayer' Sake was in order ..

Viva the frozencarnitas fanclub, saludos! It was great meeting you all.

Hooked up with some telemark skiers on top and started off with them intending to rendezvous with simonov at the San Antonio Ski Hut.
However, they decided to take the chute we just ascended. I opted to take a more scenic route and did a photorecon of the southern chutes instead.







At the end of the video you see a wipeout, location in the upper part of the picture above.
I hit steep ice as I dropped into the shadow of the upper rim. I attempted to break over the crest with the speed I had instead of turning down into the slope.

I learned a valueable lesson; Stow the ice axe (and camera) upon a steep descent.
The edge of the board works better for a self arrest than the ice axe.
I ended up putting the Piolet into my right thigh.


It took until 12:30am this morning to get it stitched up ..

Still, it was a great day and I wouldn't trade it for anything!
Simonov, thanks for being such a good sport!

That was great! Hilarious end to the video! Glad you guys had fun, and Fritz... jebus! Yer leg brotha!

Glad your Ok He219. I was nervous watching your video waiting for the crash!!! Glad we didn't have to see you getting stabbed.

It definitely looks more enjoyable to hike in nice weather, vs a blizzard

Wow, that looks like a pretty serious injury. Did it bleed much? Glad you came out all right and learnt a lesson,

we all have to remember to be careful out there,

Beautiful photos. One thing. In the video, I was nervous just watching you boarding down with that ice axe in your hand. Hope your thigh heals fast.

More awesome pics......nice videos too. Did you just walk back with the injury? Or did you have to dress it first?

AW wrote:More awesome pics......nice videos too. Did you just walk back with the injury? Or did you have to dress it first?

We dressed it.

At the ski hut we were surrounded by professional mountain rescue dudes (and a couple dudettes) and I suggested we have one of them take a look at the leg. But He219 pointed out there would probably be Paperwork and Red Tape and even more Drama (including the possibility that they would insist on evacuating him), so we broke our our first aid kits and cleaned, dressed and bound the wound ourselves.

He snowboarded down as much as he could since it was easier than walking on the leg.

As this was really my first stab at real winter mountaineering (the earlier Icehouse Canyon forays don't really count), I learned a few important things.

First, I should probably bring more water. Usually I bring far more water than I need, and on Saturday I took three liters, expecting to reach the trailhead at the end with at least one full bottle. But I drank an entire liter just on the bowl face (with no way of removing my pack to get to the other bottles), and by the time we made the summit I was nearly out. Luckily there was plenty of fresh spring water on our way down at the ski hut.

Second, I have to bring more food. Normally I lose my appetite at altitude, and when I was a younger and more vigorous man it didn't matter. But this time I really felt myself running out of fuel. I have never been one for nibbling on trail mix or whatever during hikes, but I think for this sort of thing I will have to come up with something I can munch on more or less constantly. The entire day I ate one and a half turkey sammiches and a blueberry pancake, plus some trail candy I found along the trail on the way down, and it wasn't enough. At the very least I need to revise my bad habit of setting out without a proper breakfast first.

There does not seem to be an easy way to deal with the deep afternoon slush. We saw a couple of LA Sheriff's deputies floundering around with snowshoes on the trail down, and they finally took them off. The trail was too narrow and thrashed up for showshoes, but without the snowshoes you just sank. But at least you made some progress. The trick, for me, since I am an early riser anyway, will be to get onto the mountain as soon as possible and get as much done before midafternoon as possible.

I am pretty happy with my clothing, at least for warm days like this. I was plenty warm in the morning and except for a few moments in the bowl when I was getting pretty hot, I felt fine the rest of the day. I know wool has gone out of fashion, but my wool shirt is really a nice intermediate weight between something light and flimsy and something heavier like pile. It was also nice having buttons on the front I could undo when it was getting warm.

I'm pretty sure I will be back up there again this Saturday, either Baldy or somewhere above Icehouse Saddle.

He219 wrote: I learned a valueable lesson; Stow the ice axe (and camera) upon a steep descent.
The edge of the board works better for a self arrest than the ice axe.
I ended up putting the Piolet into my right thigh.

WOW!

Other than the icy section in the shadows, it looked like you had nice conditions in the bowl...about what time did you make you decent? About what time do you think it all turns to soup in the bowl? I'm sure it gets bad early below the ski hut.

Wanting to ski it this weekend and trying to figure when conditions will be best for descent to the hut.

Thanks for all your kind words.
I was back at work today and things are healing up nicely.

Travis wrote:Wow, that looks like a pretty serious injury. Did it bleed much?

Surprisingly no bleeding.
My doctor later that day told me that upper leg punctures don't usually bleed.
When I slipped and rolled over bakwards I felt the impact on my first or second roll before landing on my heel edge 15 feet down or so.
I didn't even know I had a gaping wound until I droppd my pants for a look at the hut. Nothing was damaged inside, but the injury was quite unsightly.

AW wrote:More awesome pics......nice videos too. Did you just walk back with the injury? Or did you have to dress it first?

Thanks, didn't have a problem boarding down.
It was easier than walking. At the hut we bandaged it up and off we went.

406 wrote:

He219 wrote: Other than the icy section in the shadows, it looked like you had nice conditions in the bowl...about what time did you make you decent? About what time do you think it all turns to soup in the bowl? I'm sure it gets bad early below the ski hut.

Wanting to ski it this weekend and trying to figure when conditions will be best for descent to the hut.

The very best conditions were in the sun just below the summit to the south ridge overlooking the trail back to the hut and also the entire bowl with it's heavy coverage of snow. The exceptions were the shadowy chutes and faces that become icy once out of the sun.

Howerver, conditions are deteriorating rapidly with each warm day. The peak already had a bare patch on the south side.
We could see the snow melting in front of our eyes and lots of boulders rolling down the bowl in the mid-morning sun.

With each passing hour of the climb the slope got slushier and less enjoyable. The paved road past the falls in still buried in packed snow.
It should stick around in the shade for a while, but the start of the trail at the register on up to the hut will become more of a slushy mess as the week progresses to no coverage at all.

Early morning is definately the time to get up and by mid morning everything is soft. Be safe and get out while it's still there.

Good to hear it's all good Brotha.

Great pix and video - I love it. I think we took the same path part way up the Bowl late Saturday morning. This was our first time up in winter - we got as far as the first big rock - I guess about ¾ of the way? We were getting wildly conflicting information from fellow climbers on how much further from this point so with my hiking partner sick with bronchitis we decided not to push it. But going down the way we came was not easy... very slippery with occasional hip deep postholing. A ton of fun, though, and great experience. I’m eager to get up there again with an earlier start and a helmet. We didn’t have any falling rock but those giant speeding snowballs might sting, or worse.

simonov wrote:He219 contacted me at about 4:00pm on Friday night and asked if I was interested in heading up to Mount Baldy at 3:00am the next morning (we live a couple miles away from each other). I am an early riser anyway, so I said okay, all I had to do was rent some crampons at REI.

We were on the trail by about 5:00am, and made the summit by 1:00pm. We did the same route the Ice Pirates did last weekend, only it was nice and sunny instead of cold and blizzardy.

He219 had a little accident involving a snowboard and an iceaxe on the way down, which was a bummer, but he was still bale to make it out all right. I haven't heard from him since Saturday night.

Not much a of a trip report, but I'm a bit knackered from the weird hours and two hikes this weekend. But I did make a video (natch), though it came in a bit long at 8-1/2 minutes. Sadly, my video style is a bit more lethargic than the usual Ice Pirates fare:



PS: we found out that our own Taco Del Rio has an enviable reputation as a filmmaker among the local mountaineering fraternity.

That is a cool video. How did you get the red lines on the Google Earth image showing your route? Thanks for sharing.

Leslie L wrote:I’m eager to get up there again with an earlier start and a helmet. We didn’t have any falling rock but those giant speeding snowballs might sting, or worse.

I'm going up above Icehouse Saddle or maybe Baldy again on Saturday, and will start at dawn. Weather.com says there might be a light dusting of snow this week, unless it's rain. Temps are pretty warm.

He219 and I witnessed a huge rockfall over on the southern side of the bowl. There were about three hikers on the Baldy Bowl Trail at the base of the bowl, and large debris shot past them. None of it came that close to the hikers, but sterner men than they would have soiled their pants.

I didn't have a helmet this time, but if I head up to Baldy again this week, I'll rent one.

Travis wrote:That is a cool video. How did you get the red lines on the Google Earth image showing your route? Thanks for sharing.

I didn't have a GPS track (my GPS batteries died on the trail), so I eyeballed a path using the Google Earth path-drawing tool. Then I saved a JPG of the route as well as a JPG of the same image with the path disabled.

Then in Sony Vegas (my video editing software) I used the two images together by fading from the one without the path to the one with the path, with a diagonal crossfade, lower left to upper right. Since the fade was roughly the direction of the route, it provided the illusion of the route line growing up the mountain. The illusion works better the faster the fade and the straighter the route line. A slow fade over a loopy route wouldn't animate as well.

I did something similar to animate the graphic showing the degree of incline (though I am sure there were points in the climb steeper than 37 degrees).

It's easy to add graphics to videos by saving a frame and using it as a template for manipulation in Photoshop. But I have learned that the video resolution is lousy, you want to blow up your template frame 300% or more and then save the resulting graphics as transparent GIFs, to overlay on top of the video. The resolution of the graphics will be higher than that of the video, and the video software should anti-alias out the jaggies resulting from the reduction in the image size (and thus resolution).

Leslie L wrote:Great pix and video - I love it. We didn’t have any falling rock but those giant speeding snowballs might sting, or worse.

Those speeding snowballs were something else!
We dodged a couple of them and small rocks on our way up but also saw a good sized rockslide on snow at the southern end of the bowl ..

Just got these images e-mailed by a nice lady who I passed topside.



Thanks sini

Badass shots!

I got a YouTube message from Robert, part of the Taco Del Rio Fan Club. In his YouTube profile I found several videos of him and his sons glissading down the bowl last Saturday, pretty much going down the route He219 and I went up:







He219 expressed some amazement when I told him they had glissaded down that route, so here's the proof!

I think Robert is the father and Christian is the name of one of the two sons, but one of these days they will be here in the forum to correct me.

If I'm not mistaken, they are glissading in crampons. I was taught to NEVER do this. So I'm curious: are there exceptions?
Thanks,
Leslie

Really soft snow, but I'm with you, crampons may not be for the best when glissading.

What Jim said. I've done it before, but was careful, and we didn't quite move so wel (woulda been the same sans-crampons).

Generally, remove them.

Leslie L wrote:If I'm not mistaken, they are glissading in crampons. I was taught to NEVER do this. So I'm curious: are there exceptions?
Thanks,
Leslie

This is Robert. The guide who trained us here on Jan. 12, 2008 (as seen on YouTube video trogrey121 ) said as long as you hold your feet up you can glissade down this slope.

Also, I was hit in the jaw by a high speed snow ball and it did sting for a good 3 minutes. Its good to have someone watching if possible, You guys on the mountain are the best it was a great day being up there with you all.

RR

Hey Robert! Glad you stopped in ...


I agree with your guide about keeping crampons up, but one would have to be on one's back and not on one's butt to keep crampons in the air, a difficult and dangerous position to maintain and not a true seated glissade.

The rule of thumb while in crampons is that you don't want them catching and pitching you into a cartwheel when sliding. The soft snow largely kept that from happening. When on one's stomach it's a lot eaier to lift one's feet above the slope than while seated.

One certainly wouldn't want to do a standing or crouching glissade with crampons on. Personally I believe the key is to be conscious of one's crampons relative to a planned or accidental slide ...

Saludos!

Hey Fritz, you are absolutely right. On the glissade before this one, because we left our packs at the bottom, I did almost flip over hurting my arm, So don't use crampons?

Thanks
Robert

The subject of never glissading with crampons on comes up on the Whitney Portal Store board occasionally. When the old timers trot out their stories of exotically-broken ankles and destroyed knees, it is enough to convince the less-experienced (a class that includes me) to take the things off. Glissades do not always go smoothly. Legs that are supposed to stay int the air do not do so (due in part to the awkward position required). Taking crampons off is risk reduction, pure and simple.

I just realized, Guillermo made a video that same day. Fritz and I make a brief appearance at the summit, and he even glissaded down the Bowl while holding the video camera in one hand: