Message posted by JB737 on January 02, 2008 at 6:40:50 PST:

Believe it or not, this is after the rockslide had leveled off quite a bit. I simply wasn't able to deal with getting the camera out, for the main grind up the rockslide. Now in sight of solid rock for the first time in about 600 vertical feet of slogging up on sliding rocks mostly varying in size from bricks to refrigerators, I took the camera out and took a break, thankful to not having gotten crushed on the way up.

On most of the Tikaboo shale slope, stepping uphill 1 foot will on average gain you 0.98 feet of progress. On the steepest 10 vertical feet of shale on Tikaboo, it took me probably only 15-20 feet worth of effort. Really only on the toughest 10 feet did I truly slide back more than a few inches.

But on this rockslide to the cliffs east of the north peak, the average step taken involved a 70% chance of sliding, and there were several 50 foot sections where it took me 250 feet of effort to get through them. Many times I would scoot up 3 feet and slide back 5 feet, or attempt 1 foot of progress 5 times and end up 2 feet below where I started.

You cannot believe the relief I felt at making it to within sight of solid ground again, regardless of whether it was only clean/solid because every loose rock that had been on it in centuries, had been headed downhill (hence toward where I stood) at high velocity.

And as is true on Tikaboo, the camera is pointed uphill so much in order to get the top of the hill in the photo, that you just can't imagine how steep it really still is, even after having eased up a bit.

I have prettier pictures of the small slide-generating east-facing cliffs, but posted this one because it shows the left end of them, which is where I snuck around them to get to the main ridge of the much larger west-facing cliffs.

Sneaking around the left end, I almost took a handhold on cliff material until realizing that no matter how big the rock slab I was going to grab onto was, pulling on it would be really dumb....everything was already pre-cracked and ready to slide, and it might only take a fifty or a hundred pound tug to get it accelerating down the steep slope with me attached.

JB737

In Reply to: Posting photos from April 2007 first posted by JB737 on January 02, 2008 at 4:55:55 PST:

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