First Winter Ascent Mt. Huntington French Ridge

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Alpinista55

Mountain climber

Portland, OR

Topic Author's Reply - Mar 7, 2014 - 02:17pm PT

Hey Bruce, Thanks, man.

Seriously, though, it would never have occurred to us to adopt these modern smash-and-grab tactics back in the 70s and 80s. It had only been a year or two since I started climbing, and I was influenced heavily by books like Mountain of My Fear, Conquistadors of the Useless, the story of the sourdough fist ascent of Denali, and Galen Rowell's circumnavigation of the same. For us it was as much about the journey TO and FROM the mountain as it was about the ascent. Pushing off on foot from the highway was as much a rush as starting up a route on Mt. Huntington.

Luckily for us, we had lifestyles that supported long periods of free time to go trucking off into the Range for months at a time. Funny thing is, not much has changed for me, because very soon now I'll be setting off aboard Betty Lou for months at at time into the watery wilderness of BC/SE Alaska.

It's about the journey...

Off White

climber

Tenino, WA

Mar 7, 2014 - 03:37pm PT

Fritz said:

Of course the folks at Cascadeclimbers have only commented on it about 15 times since it was posted on March 1.

Sniff-sniff thinks the Seattle-based climber: This ascent wasn't in the Cascades. Really not worthy of comment. Surprised the moderators allowed it in. Why don't they post more volcano ascent stories?

Oh, don't be so harsh on my home board Fritz, between it being the slow season up here, the Alaska Forum not getting a lot of attention (CC.com is more partitioned than ST), and the fact that we're a little jaded by John's frequent startling exploits, the relative lack of comment is not particularly indicative of anything.

Gorgeous pics of a pretty intimidating place.

Note that this is the FWA of the French Ridge, FWA of Huntington (via Nettle-Quirk) was possibly Colin Haley (another CC.com contributor) and Jed Brown in 2007. http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=657811