Eli -- Thank you for taking the time to photograph the registers, and for leaving them in place. The Sierra once had many registers going back to the first ascents, but most have been ruined, deliberately destroyed, or "archived" in the Bancroft library where almost no one sees them. From my limited experience, the Winds do not have such a rich history -- I found no registers on recent trips to Temple, Raid, Bonneville, and Lizard Head, all prominent and not super-popular. What there is should be preserved sooner rather than later.
Also, as a former wannabe scientist, I dig that you'd fit a curve to the cumulative number of summits. It looks like a decent fit (though the coefficients might make more sense if you used (Year - FA_Year) as the X axis), with a doubling time of about 20 years. So there will be another 40 summits between now and 2040, and... I'll be long dead before it sees the ~1000/yr that a less-visited CO 14er does.
WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
I hope I'm dead before a less-visited CO 13er sees that many yearly ascents.seano wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:41 pm Eli -- Thank you for taking the time to photograph the registers, and for leaving them in place. The Sierra once had many registers going back to the first ascents, but most have been ruined, deliberately destroyed, or "archived" in the Bancroft library where almost no one sees them. From my limited experience, the Winds do not have such a rich history -- I found no registers on recent trips to Temple, Raid, Bonneville, and Lizard Head, all prominent and not super-popular. What there is should be preserved sooner rather than later.
Also, as a former wannabe scientist, I dig that you'd fit a curve to the cumulative number of summits. It looks like a decent fit (though the coefficients might make more sense if you used (Year - FA_Year) as the X axis), with a doubling time of about 20 years. So there will be another 40 summits between now and 2040, and... I'll be long dead before it sees the ~1000/yr that a less-visited CO 14er does.
Second on leaving summit registers alone or just upgrading the container if needed.
The rate of replacement on more obscure 13ers in CO seems to be accelerating, based on how many new registers I've seen in the last couple of years vs. 10 years ago, mostly "archived" I presume in somebody's personal 13er scrapbook.
- Vadim34
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
Agree with the summit registers…a lot of them in other states are being stolen and then sold…but it’s awesome to read a register from 1946 and the people that signed it then and after. WY still has many older registers and it was awesome to recognize many familiar names on them!
- Eli Boardman
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
Sadly some of the registers already seem to be disappearing from the Winds--or maybe I just couldn't find them, but I did search pretty hard. Most notably, I couldn't find the 1931 register on East Twin that I signed in 2020. I also couldn't find the (newer) register on Febbas. Do people seriously steal and sell these? Who buys them? Can we shut down that market by reporting them to the Forest Service for stealing historical/cultural artifacts?
On another note, someone asked via PM about the relative difficulty of doing the peaks in September vs. June-July last time. I thought it was worth sharing some thoughts on that here:
It was definitely way easier and way safer in the earlier season. Some of those moraines, particularly around Sacagawea-Helen, should be avoided at all cost when snowfree--it feels like inviting disaster to walk across a huge field of car sized rocks so unstable that they move around when you bump them. Up through mid July, most of that area is just a big mellow snowfield. Similarly, on Koven, my route was a moderate and enjoyable snow climb in late June, but a horrifically loose, vertical boulder chute in September. Finally, the snow routes that weren't melted out completely in September (e.g. Woodrow Wilson via Dinwoody, Twins via Mammoth) were super icy and an order of magnitude more difficult and dangerous than they would be in mid-summer. I'd definitely recommend the July timeframe for climbing almost all of these peaks. That said, most of the non-technical peaks are comparable in difficulty all summer (e.g. Fremont, Febbas, Sunbeam, Bete Noire, etc.) and the September weather was certainly a nice break from the thunderstorms. Assuming someone is comfortable with moderate snowclimbing (which is basically a prerequisite for Wind River mountaineering), the only peak that is distinctly easier late in the season is Turret, as the ice patch in the access gully from Blaurock Pass becomes sufficiently melted that it's possible to bypass some of the low-5th-class slab climbing and enter/leave the chimney at a lower point.
I'm honestly a bit worried about encouraging others to climb all these peaks in September--between the moraines, the rockfall from melting ice, and the icy glacier conditions, it's just needlessly dangerous imho. I know it's easy for me to say now, having already done it, but I don't know that pursing all these peaks in FKT-style is the best approach, especially since it seems to necessitate climbing so late in the season to beat weather patterns, when the peaks are largely out of condition. On the other hand, the peaks do combine naturally into one mega-outing. With all this in mind, I'd prefer to see the culture develop something akin to a club of people who've done them all in one year, which would encourage climbing them earlier in the season in safer conditions with a little extra time built in to deal with weather. I believe there are a few people looking at attempting something like this next year in fact.
On another note, someone asked via PM about the relative difficulty of doing the peaks in September vs. June-July last time. I thought it was worth sharing some thoughts on that here:
It was definitely way easier and way safer in the earlier season. Some of those moraines, particularly around Sacagawea-Helen, should be avoided at all cost when snowfree--it feels like inviting disaster to walk across a huge field of car sized rocks so unstable that they move around when you bump them. Up through mid July, most of that area is just a big mellow snowfield. Similarly, on Koven, my route was a moderate and enjoyable snow climb in late June, but a horrifically loose, vertical boulder chute in September. Finally, the snow routes that weren't melted out completely in September (e.g. Woodrow Wilson via Dinwoody, Twins via Mammoth) were super icy and an order of magnitude more difficult and dangerous than they would be in mid-summer. I'd definitely recommend the July timeframe for climbing almost all of these peaks. That said, most of the non-technical peaks are comparable in difficulty all summer (e.g. Fremont, Febbas, Sunbeam, Bete Noire, etc.) and the September weather was certainly a nice break from the thunderstorms. Assuming someone is comfortable with moderate snowclimbing (which is basically a prerequisite for Wind River mountaineering), the only peak that is distinctly easier late in the season is Turret, as the ice patch in the access gully from Blaurock Pass becomes sufficiently melted that it's possible to bypass some of the low-5th-class slab climbing and enter/leave the chimney at a lower point.
I'm honestly a bit worried about encouraging others to climb all these peaks in September--between the moraines, the rockfall from melting ice, and the icy glacier conditions, it's just needlessly dangerous imho. I know it's easy for me to say now, having already done it, but I don't know that pursing all these peaks in FKT-style is the best approach, especially since it seems to necessitate climbing so late in the season to beat weather patterns, when the peaks are largely out of condition. On the other hand, the peaks do combine naturally into one mega-outing. With all this in mind, I'd prefer to see the culture develop something akin to a club of people who've done them all in one year, which would encourage climbing them earlier in the season in safer conditions with a little extra time built in to deal with weather. I believe there are a few people looking at attempting something like this next year in fact.
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
Finally got around to writing a proper trip report in case anyone's interested: Trip Report Link
- yaktoleft13
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
Awesome writeup and effort on that trip. Read every word and felt like I climbed it, but with much less tired legs!Eli Boardman wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 9:35 am Finally got around to writing a proper trip report in case anyone's interested: Trip Report Link
Last edited by yaktoleft13 on Thu Feb 16, 2023 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
A tip o the helmet to you -- great writing, great pix, great accomplishment. Still can't understand how someone can be so smart and cool and still quote anything from the Grateful Dead, but that's another thread...
Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
I'm still working my way through your daily entries from the effort, but it's been a great read so far, thanks for sharing such an in-depth writeup!
- Eli Boardman
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
yaktoleft13 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 1:11 pmAwesome writeup and effort on that trip. Read every word and felt like I climbed it, but with much less tired legs!
Thanks everyone! I'm glad people are enjoying it. It was fun to relive while sorting through pictures and writing it.
Haha as Ken Kesey apparently said, "we are operating on many levels here." Just be glad it's not Phish.
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Re: WY 13ers Quest, The Sequel
Great writeup, and congrats on the book! Your discussion of efficiency is spot-on: I spent a lot of time in camp in the northern Winds, and did very little headlamp time. This made it feel less like an FKT, but I’m not sure where I could have made use of longer days and less sleep to link more things and save a significant chunk of time. I would make a couple changes if I did it again, eg your route on Bow, and not faffing around doing Sphinx the way I did, but don’t see how I could have cut a day.Eli Boardman wrote: ↑Wed Feb 15, 2023 9:35 am Finally got around to writing a proper trip report in case anyone's interested: Trip Report Link
BTW, I started with Francs because I knew that drive would be bad at night in my Element, and because I had a good idea how long it would take, so I could delay my start to save a few hours.