| Steve Dougherty ~ Aug 12, 2001 |
| A group of Mazamas in the parking lot, scheduled for a 6am departure increased the level of anticipation. I knew full well that the party reaching the crawl second would likely endure a two hour delay. We leap froged with the Mazama party of eight all the way to the rock cairn marking the climber's trail. Fortunately for us, they stopped prematurely at a decoy trail, a short distance before the true intersection marked with a rock cairn. This mistake and the fact that we had a stronger group, put us at the crawl about 15 minutes in front of them. It was a great day for climbing. We enjoyed clear skies and good visibility. Warm afternoon temperatures and lack of water/snow on the route made possession of liquids a highly appreciated resource. I highly recommend three quarts of water/gatorade as a minimum for a warm temperature climb like this. Ice cold water and drinks at the car are a welcome reward for the dusty five mile hike out. I believe I drank nearly a gallon of water in 30 minutes at the trail head (thanks Mike and Jim). The six members of our climb party were Leader Steve Dougherty, Assistant Mike Rudy, Brad Dougherty, Jim Rudy, Cindy Ewert and Vaqas Malik. Only Brad and myself had summited 3fj previously. We used a 9.8mm/50m rope for the crawl and a 10.5mm/50m rope for the summit. A fixed line was established on the first pitch. Mike Rudy joined me at the anchor to provide a belay for the second pitch. I anchored the top of the second pitch to three nobs on the far end of the summit, using a cordelette. All six climbers were able to enjoy the summit together and take some nice group photos. Mike Rudy demonstrated his comfort level on the fixed line and disregard for the extreme exposure by walking the the length of the "knife edge" summit (20') several times. I thought it was hysterically funny that one member of our group shared later, that she thought Mike's "prayer flags", which he proudly displayed for the summit photo, were a collection of women's "panties". Group members descended the route and did a single rope rapel from the top of the first pitch. It was obvious that communication between the top of the first pitch and the summit is nearly impossible. Use of radios for communication here would have been very useful. The climb team rapeled a fixed line from above the "channel trail" down the 10' step and on down to the fixed line established earlier on the crawl. I untied the top end of the line and down climbed to the crawl. After "cleaning" the crawl and taking a 15 minute break we realized that we were 90 minutes ahead of schedule. Mike Rudy set a blistering pace back to the trail head, covering the five miles from the rock cairn to trail head in 95 minutes ( I had to jog occaisionally to keep up). After rehydrating and changing clothes we drove to the Cedars Restaurant in Detroit for dinner. Larry Peterson just happened to arrive at the same time and was able to join us for dinner. Vaqas chose not to stop as he needed to return to Portland by 8pm. We enjoyed recounting the events of the day with Larry and talking about recent climbing adventures. We arrived back in Salem at 8 pm. |