For the skiers and climbers out there. The ridge they swoop over is the South Ridge of Mt Superior (5.3, 50deg snow) on their 3,000 ft descent to Snowbird. It was my first 'mixed' climb! If you're fast you can do it in 1/2 a day.

The notch one guy swoops through drops into "Suicide Chute".

Bonus prize - how many run avalanches can you spot?



(Edit: Dec 25th) Apparently SP is sometimes having trouble displaying the video. The full link is here if you have problems:

We actually don't call snow and rock mixed climbing, rather we reserve that for steep rock and ice. Just call it your first alpine climb.

I wasn't sure what was really the best term, so I used the term 'mixed' in quotes. Basically, steep snow with intermixed scrambling, so you're stashing your ax or using it for short sections, and climbing the rock in boots & crampons since there is too much intermittent snow to use rock shoes. Most of the climbs I see called alpine usually don't have snow on them (at most, they have snow at the base, and then the rock is dry), or people only climb them when they're dry. I guess it could be called an "alpine climb in winter conditions"? A bit long-winded, though

You just have not traveled or climbed enough yet....much of the alpine climbing we do involves glacier travel to reach the rock. Just call it an alpine climb. Stating winter or summer conditions is just another descriptive term you could chose to include or not. Mixed climbing is an individual technique/sport to itself.

I've traveled and climbed enough to know that there are a lot of types of climbing that qualify as "Alpine", and in much of the lower 48 states it doesn't include ice. In Canada, Alaska, and the PNW of course most alpine routes have glacial approaches and therefore year-round ice on routes. IMO climbing types are really a continuum and this is just a silly tangent about semantics - especially since I never called it mixed climbing, but rather, 'mixed' climbing, so you're jumping to conclusions here about my understanding of proper mixed climbing (note how the quote ends on "mixed" instead of the entire phrase. Perhaps I should have been more grammatically correct and used double quotes?).

Anyways, Merry Christmas!

For what it's worth, I'd consider your route a "mixed" climb. In my mind, "mixed" can refer to any climb that involves more than one medium. Yours involves 1) snow and 2) rock, so it's a mixed climb. Hell, "mixed" is used routinely (and I'm pretty sure over at Mountain Project) to describe routes that involve a combination of trad gear and bolts. So to say that the term "mixed" can only be applied to a very specific subset of modern ice+rock routes doesn't seem justified, even if it was in single quotes.

Sorry Dow, we agree on most things, but I'm going to have to side with PW on this one.

Well anyways, that's a really cool video. Thanks for posting it.

Cool Video

tazz wrote:Wow! They have quite a bit of control to keep touching down on those ridges! Great video.

Now they just need a climber on the ridge to hand them something in mid-flight as they strafe the ridge - like a Red Bull

Dow Williams wrote:Mixed climbing is an individual technique/sport to itself.

Yep, that's what I'd say too. And, with that said...it's a hard technique/sport to break into.

Psycho

Gehy....

Wow! Cool!

Accessing from Brighton Ski area avoids long climb allowing 2 runs - 3 if you're fast enought to sync with the bus schedule.