Climbing and Mountain Recreation

Jim Frankenfield; snowman@csac.org; 1-877-604-0166

[Climbing and Mountain Recreation Page]

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Current Events, Photos, News, etc

There is nothing current here anymore, but still lots of good content. I began this personal website along with avalanche-center.org in the early 1990's. I still periodically but infrequently update it. But over the past 30 years life has changed, and in fact the world in general has changed. Dramatically. At some point I no longer had time to update this section with any new adventures or photos. I hope you enjoy the archived content though!

I don't foresee adding much at this time (2022) but won't rule it out. It all depends what the future brings.

Photo Galleries

Organized Trips Archive

These are some of the climbs I've done, a long time ago. There were many more, of course, but these are the only ones I had (or took) time to write up and post reports on. These are older trips, predating the modern era of easy internet use (with instagram, facebook, etc), which I took the time to put reports together on.

• In June of 1997, while in France, I climbed the Mallory Couloir on the Aiguille du Midi (Mt Blanc massif) with Bill Dean.
• In August of 1996 I went into the Wind River Range of Wyoming on a trip organized by Kyle Williams. Kyle and I climbed the Mt Helen Ice Couloir (with another climber, Brooke) and the NW Arete of Ellingwood Peak.
• In August of 1995 I soloed the NW Arete of Mt Sir Donald, which is by Rogers Pass in the Selkirk range of British Colombia.
• In March of 1994 I climbed Polar Circus (IV, WI-5) and the Weeping Wall (III, WI-4) in the Canadian Rockies. Slides and a report is available from my partners web site - Tuan's Mountaineering Page. On Polar Circus we had a large avalanche from a gully above go by. Tuan was securely anchored to bolts at the top of the route and was hit by the snow. I was on steep ice below and watched it go overhead.
• In March of 1993 I soloed the North Ridge of the Pfeifferhorn, in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah.

The trips below are from more somewhat more recent years than those above. These were longer trips - multi-day solo ski tours in the Alps, climbs from a base in Rogers Pass, and a week at the ACC hut on the Clemenceau Icefields which we flew into.

• Stubai Alps Part 2, Tirol Austria - June 13-17, 2004
• Stubai Alps Part 1, Tirol Austria - June 8-11, 2004
• Various Climbs in Rogers Pass - August, 2003
• Mt Tupper in Rogers Pass, BC - August 7, 2001
• Clemenceau Icefields, BC - August, 2000

I used to organize a spring ski trip and a summer climbing trip, and each trip has it's own full set of pages with reports and photos. These were generally week long trips with helicopter access to a base camp or hut. Winter trips have included Fairy Meadows and Great Cairn, summer trips have included Great Cairn and the Battle Range. Information on all these trips is available from the Organized Trips page.

"What would a guide be without someone to lead? Good weather, bad weather, easy, difficult, I need to sing the same tune as he. That was the gift of our mountains. Climbing to the summit, one man does his job, another is on vacation and the luxury of their efforts is friendship."   --Gaston Rebuffat

I still have a separate outdated guiding website although I am no longer active at this time. I am either semi-retired or temporarily retired or both. Time will tell. I have developed cutting edge online avalanche classes on the Avalanche Center. The outdated guiding website does still have a sampling of the feedback I have received, and info/links of professional interest. As well as other resources. It is not https and not responsive (adaptive to screen size), I'm working on making this site responsive now and have no plans for the guiding site at this time.

These links were last verified December 28, 2022. If you find any bad ones please let me know!

Learn all about avalanches at Avalanche-Center.org (aka the Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center), especially the Avalanche Institute.

I still have some Mountain Safety Notes under my (currently outdated) guiding pages.

Knots on the Web has links to all kinds of things - knot tying, mathematical knot theory, and knot art. (This site is still there but semi-abandoned so the status of their links is unknown..) Ropers Knots Page includes an index to knots on the web - if you want to look up a certain knot this extensive index is the place to go. And if you really into heavy duty applications, you might be interested in the Rigging page on the Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit web site. Now there is also an animated site showing how to tie various knots.

For altitude medical issues, the Himalayan Rescue Association has some good information on their website. The High Altitude Medical Guide is an excellent resources and includes information which is oriented towards physicians. More good basic general information and advice can be found on the Guide to High Altitude page maintained by Princeton's Outdoor Action program.

The Mountain Medicine pages have good information on a variety of topics, including AMS and the use of Diamox. The information is made available by the UIAA Mountain Medicine Centre.

Petzl has some very useful information available on many topics, mostly related to ropework and rigging. For an extensive collection of information on vertical ropework devices (ascending and rapelling) see the Vertical Devices Page by Dr Gary Storrick.

Climbing Humor Archive

Morbid Eiger History (saved from rec.climbing re: historic deaths on the Eiger)

A news story in which I was featured appeared in the Eugene, OR Register-Guard

As of August 1998, a photo taken by Tuan on our ascent of The Weeping Wall is being used by Soundprint on the web to promote the audio tape Beyond the Climb.

Quang-Tuan Luong (Tuan), with whom I climbed the Weeping Wall and Polar Circus, participated in the fourth ascent of "Sea of Vapor", a WI 7 route in the Canadian Rockies. His report and a more general report by Wayne Trzyna are available on Tuan's "Cold Mountain" page.

Here are some of my favorite quotes about or related to climbing and a really nice poem which I picked up from one of the newsgroups a long time ago. And a Skiers Prayer by a priest in Verbier, France.

Some interesting historical stuff on the Vaux Family and the "Canadian Alps".