Moved

I have moved to a new location on the vast world of the internet.... find all the latest happenings at my new site- www.benmitchellmountainguide.com!

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Thanks!

Ben

California Climbing...

So my summer of climbing in California was a great one. This last season was my first real summer spent living in Tahoe, and it certainly did not disappoint. The weather was good, the climbing was amazing and work stayed busy. Pretty much everything you need to get by. Some of the highlights of the season included some great days guiding down at Lover's Leap, climbing down on the Eastside, and getting into a new hobby, mountain biking!

Tim Dobbins sending the crux pitch on The Red Dihedral on The Incredible Hulk

Tim and I headed in to climb the super classic Sierra route, The Red Dihedral on the Incredible Hulk in the second half of August. We had been down at Sanoma Pass where we were working with the Marines at the Mountain Warfare Training Center. We realized how close we were to the climb and decided it would really be ridiculous to drive all the way home without climbing something! So we camped out on the road the night before and cruised up to the Hulk in the morning. The climb did not dissappoint. It was beautiful climbing on unreal granite the whole way. It was sustained and amazing climbing. I can't wait to get back to do another route. When we got to the top I poked my head through the final tunnel pitch and heard my name. When I looked up I saw my buddy Jim already on the summit. It turns out there were three other parties up there from Tahoe! It is super fun to run into your friends in the mountains. It really reminded me how lucky I am to have motivated friends!

The boys on the W SW Ridge of Langley

For my last work trip of the summer I went down to Mt. Langley. Mt. Langley is the most southern 14er in the Sierras. We hiked up to the Cottonwood Lakes and made camp. This was a really amazing spot to camp, gorgeaous alpine lakes and mountains all around. We woke up and got an alpine start the next morning. The climb isn't particularly technical. It is more of a routefinding and scrambling type of climb, but the views are stunning the whole time. After climbing to the ridge we stayed on that all the way to the summit. We passed all the hikers coming up the other way on our way back down feeling hungry and satisfied! A great last trip in the Sierras for me!

Back in action...

So once again, there has been a long break in the upkeep of this blog. I really have no excuses, it isn't that there hasn't been time. I have been busy, but we all know that there is always a few minutes to keep up on something like this. It is just so hard to motivate to keep up on these things when there are so many fun things out there to do!





I will throw up a few entries to catch everyone up, but here is a quick recap. I got back from an amazing trip to Baffin Island and spent a few weeks as home. Then headed right back in to the snow and made a trip up the West Buttress on Denali. After a long, but successful trip up there I headed back to California. I spent the rest of the summer at home working and climbing around Tahoe and the Eastside of the Sierras. At the end of August I headed over hear to France. I am currently sitting in my place in Argentiere spending the day catching up on computer work as it rained all day outside...

All in all it has been a fantastic summer. Cali was awesome, and France is treating me well so far. I have been spending my time working in the beautiful mountains over here and flying and climbing every free moment I have!

Updates

So it has been awhile since I have checked in. Life has been good. Had an amazing 6 weeks guiding up at Points North Heli in Cordova, AK. We had epic conditions and got to ski some amazing lines. This season was my best season up there yet, and it was bittersweet coming home early. But home I am, although not for long. After a week of hanging with friends and trying to do as much skydiving as possible, I leave tonight for NY. Spending a few days there with some friends then heading to Ottowa, Canada to begin our trip to Baffin Island!

There is a crew of about 20 of us BASE jumpers heading up to the arctic circle for a month to go jump of some really big cliffs! It should be an amazing trip. Such a beautiful place and I have the opportunity to go with some amazing friends. Follow our progress on the trip at Baffinbase.com. We will have a blog that we will be updating as we are there! There should be some pretty amazing things going on!

Ski Base!

Photo courtesy of Jhonny Florez

We have gotten to days out at Lover's Leap ski basing. Ren, Katie and I headed out last Wednesday to build the ramp and make a jump. It was a good solid couple of hours of work getting the ramp built and making sure that it was smooth and ready to launch us into the void. Luckily, it was a beautiful day and we all had a good time hanging out and digging in the sun. All three of us hit the jump and made it down with no problems. Katie and I both lost some skis, Katie just one, but I double-ejected on opening. We spent some time looking for our skis as well as the bags that we had hucked off the cliff face. It was an amazing day. Ski BASE blew me away. It is such a different feeling from skiing or even normal BASE jumping. Skiing off a cliff that size is not something that you normaly do, so your brain is telling you not to. Same with the exit. With most jumps we exit from a standstill, maybe we get a little run if possible. In this jump we are hauling off the exit since we are able to build speed on our skis. Totally mind-blowing. That first jump was one of my favorites, combining two of the sports that I love. It was so good, that we grabbed a few other friends and headed back on Friday as well.

What a storm cycle!

We have had a great cycle here in Tahoe. The snow just kept on falling. I have been in my ski boots in killer snow everyday for the last ten days. We have done some great touring, a couple of amazing days at Squaw and Sugerbowl and even spent today hitting a big kicker out in the hills. Lucky for us, the snow just keeps on falling!

Welcome back to CA!

It has been some great skiing here in Tahoe. Although it hasn't snowed in a few days, and the sun just keeps on shining, the skiing has stayed remarkably good. We have been exploring some of the touring and sidecountry around here, and it has done nothing if not impress. We had a mellow cruise up around Castle Peak three days ago, checked out the sidecountry terrain around Sugerbowl two days ago, and went up to one of my new favorite zones, Mt. Tallac yesterday. We even managed to squeze in a few BASE jumps over the last week.

I am in a bit of a hurry this morning, off to Sugerbowl to guide a day of sidecounty up there, so I will keep this brief. I will get back on tonight to post some pics of the last few days.

Ringing in the New Year!

Winter trips are always a fun time. One just never knows what you are going to get. I have been on trips that never even got into the park; I have been on trips that barely made it to camp Muir. Sometimes, when the weather gods of the Pacific Northwest smile on us, we get to the top of Mt. Rainier. This last seminar was one of those trips. But have no worries, we had to fight to get there.

We met up on the first day in Ashford. Took care of orientation and got right into gear and packing and finished off the day with some self-ascension training and ice climbing on the wall at Basecamp. We split up for the evening off to eat a good meal and sleep in a bed for the last time that week.

Waking up to rain and high freezing levels did not bode well for us when we met up in the morning. But we decided to give it a go and see how far we got. We climbed to the base of Pan Point in the rain. Rather than continuing in the wetness and losing a day, we went into training mode. The rest of the day consisted of avalanche training including an evening classroom session after we all dried out. We ended up with another meal and bed in town after all.

The weather didn’t change a whole lot on the next day, but we were able to persevere and make it to Muir anyway. It was a tough go, as it rained on us pretty much all the way to 8500 feet. Cheers to the gang for staying as dry as possible and cruising in good style! That night consisted with drying everything out and making water.


What an amazing day! We got up this morning to a great sight, the sun. Light winds and sunny skies were the name of the game this day. We trained all day in the sun at Muir. We went through basic mountaineering skills, anchor building, and crevasse rescue. We all went to bed early after packing up for the summit climb in the morning.

The sky was clear on summit morning. We woke up at 4:45 and started getting ready, eating, drinking, and getting everything ready in the dark. It was a little after 6:00 when left the ridge and started climbing. The plan was to ascend to Gib ledges and climb the chute there. It is a pretty direct route, involves a little steeper climbing, and isn’t one we get to climb all that often, so that was pretty fun. We got to the ledges and found them a little icy and exposed, so we dropped down a few hundred feet and entered the chute a little below the ledges. It was 55 degrees or so for the next several hundred feet. Pretty exciting climbing to the top of Gibraltar Rock.

From the top of Gibraltar, we could see of across the Ingraham Glacier to the top of Disappointment Cleaver. It was a stunning view with the beautiful morning. We could easily see to Mt. Jefferson in Southern Oregon. The wind began picking up a bit more at this point, and we had already been climbing for a few hours. Everyone stepped it up and climbed strong for the next two stretches and we climbed into the crater rim around 11:30.



After taking some summit shots and fueling back up the crew began the descent. It was pretty good going back down to Gibraltar. From there we crossed the Ingraham and descended Disappointment Cleaver. Generally the Ingraham Glacier is a nice, direct route up and down the mountain this time of year. This year it is still extremely broken, and we wanted to avoid tricky route finding on the descent.

The cleaver went well. There was a little more snow there and everyone stayed strong even though we were all a little worked. The wind had continued to pick up and by now was blowing pretty hard and was making life a little harder.

We got into Ingraham Flats just in time, as our visibility went to about 50 feet at that point. It was full on whiteout navigation on the way back into Muir. We even had Andy stand out on the ridge at Camp Muir with his headlamp as a little beacon to show us the way home. It was a great reminder of how much the weather in the mountains can change in just a short period of time. It was a great climb and we were all happy to get back into camp. There really is something pretty cool about getting up Mt. Rainier in the winter.

The walk back down from Muir was better than we thought it was going to be. When we woke up it was raining at Camp Muir. It is pretty rare that there is rain at 10,000 feet. But about the time we were starting our trip down, the precip stopped and we just walked down in a cloud to about 7,000 feet. The fog lifted and we walked the rest of the way in a light rain.

All in all, a pretty great trip. Congrats to everyone who was on it, you should all be proud of the work you did up there. I am off to California now; maybe I can find some sun there!