Flying Rampart Ridge - The story that started when I landed

Every once in a while you luck out... Well, that's how it went for me. In the paragliding community, it seems there are two groups: The super experienced pilots who fly Cross Country (XC), and "The Newbs." With only 140 flights under my belt, I would solidly place myself in the "Newbs" category. There is so much to learn in this sport. However, being part of this community is also quite cool at times. This past weekend, one of the more experienced pilots, Owen Shoemaker invited me out to a new site in the back country. Don't get me wrong, flying at Tiger Mtn (my home site) is great, but I've been desiring to fly in the REAL mountains for years. When we arrived at the site, Matty Senior was there and graciously gave us a ride up the bumpy, unkempt & steep old forest road that led up to the launch.

It was a little past noon. The wind felt gentle and in the right direction. The thermals were just starting pop, and after a site introduction, I and a few other newer pilots launched behind the more experienced pilots.

My initial thought was to get high so that I could go explore a bit, so I worked with Jake to find a thermal and did just that! However, I saw Brent in the distance in his red & yellow wing already exploring the ridge below and it made me to want to get over there!

I made it over to the ridge and started gazing at the alpine lakes. However, farther in the distance was my real objective: I wanted to fly over Mt. Alta

8 years ago, I had hiked up Mt. Alta with my buddy Wolt, and now 8 years later, I wanted to FLY over it! It was further into the mountains than I was comfortable with, but I thought I had enough altitude to get there and back to the landing zone.... At least I HOPED I had enough :-)

I DID finally make it over Mt. Alta, and while this feat may have seemed small & inconsequential to the the more seasoned pilots, I was stoked! The other pilots were already started on their XC routes miles away but I was happy with this... for now :-)

So my next hope was to gain some more elevation so that I could get on glide and get back to where I hoped to land.

Toes: I know I'm excited & enjoying life when I extend my feet in front of me... This is my happy place... Keep Reading below on to hear the REAL crazy story.

Side Note: This Doarama link above is a SUPER COOL online tool that shows my route in 3D. If you click on it and give it some time to download the satellite images & track, you won't be disappointed. I recommend using full screen. Watching this made me think 2 things: 1.) I seriously need to get better at thermalling. I was sloppy and very lucky that there was lift everywhere.  and 2.) People are gonna think I landed in a lake! Just to be clear, I landed safely on dry ground. The lake bed was dry from low water levels.

• But HERE's where the crazy story starts:

As soon as I landed, I reached for my phone to text Rachel and let her know I landed safely... However, as I was searching my pant pocket, a feeling of dread came over me... I released a few choice expletives as I realized that my $700 phone had slid out of my pocket during the flight and probably dropped to an untimely death! As soon as I caught up with some friends, I had them us the "Find my iPhone" app in the hope that I had only dropped it at launch.

After inspecting the photo, I thought "Well, S#%T!" I realized that the phone was a goner. It was no where near launch, a dirt road, or even a trail. I wanted to get up that crazy road, but I knew my car was not burly enough to get up there... So, I left it and drove the 1.5hrs back to Seattle extremely bummed and feeling stupid for not attaching it to myself better.

The next morning, I sullenly went to the AT&T store and had my service swapped to my fiance's old, small, slow iPhone 4. When the sales person heard about how I had lost my phone, he laughed and said "NO WAY! That's crazy, man!"

In the early afternoon of that same day, I get a leading text fro my buddy Jake Pratt (who happens to own an awesome 4WD vehicle), saying "I think we can find your $700 phone. Want to take a quick evening stroll?"... My response: "Uhhh. yeah!"

What I did not know, is that he had been looking at the location of my lost phone via the find my phone app that I had left logged on to his phone. After studying the map, he approximated the location on google maps, dropped a pin, exported the location to a GPX file, and then imported the GPX file into his GPS unit. We were IN BUSINESS! We drove the 1.5hrs back to the launch and started our search.

We had to bushwhack through some varied terrain for just short of a mile and ~800ft of elevation gain. Branches in our faces everywhere.

A quick stop to pick some delicious alpine blueberries

The terrain became steeper and steeper until the GPS unit BEEPED. "You have arrived at NM iPhone"... now we just had to scour the area and hope for the best. I was thinking that we only had a 30% chance of finding this thing, and even less of a chance of it actually being in working order... I mean, I DID drop it from 150-300ft over gnarly terrain as I was flying overhead...

And sure enough, within 20ft of Jake's dropped pin, we almost stepped on it! It still had battery life and NOT EVEN A SCRATCH ON IT! It works perfectly! Go figure!

Not only did we have a phone, we picked a full bottle of alpine blueberries to take home to our partners... WHAT A DAY! I'm a very fortunate guy. Special thanks to Jake Pratt for being an all-around nice guy!

Ruth Mountain

We wanted to get an early start on Saturday morning, so we drove 3hrs up to the North Cascades after work on Friday evening. We set up tents in the parking lot and tried to sleep. I've been excited to climb Ruth for a couple years now, and was anticipating good weather.

We started at 7am (should have started earlier) and the approach was easy enough. There were quite a few landslides & areas of left-over avalanche debris that we found our way through.

First sight of Ruth Mtn in the distance

once we arrived at the Hannegan Camp, the real upward progression began

Leaving Hannegan camp behind us and headed toward Hannegan pass. The snow was hard enough that snowshoes were not necessary.

There was quite a bit of very steep snow... Can you spot my buddy Jake kicking steps for us above?

Rachel's dad as we headed up towards the arm of Point 9530. You can see where we started our hike from in the valley in the distance. 

Since the snow was pretty steep and quite hard in places, we put our crampons on.

This is the place where I should NOT have stopped and taken a picture. When we saw the remnants of a small wet avalanche, we all became a little nervous.

I was following Jake up as we approached the east arm of Point 9530

After going around point 9530 (the hill on the left), we were all not liking the feel of the snow. It was becoming deeper, much softer & sometimes it would slough down the side of the mountain as we took steps. It was at this point we thought it would be best to head back (without a summit) before the snow became anymore unstable. It was a bummer not to reach the top, but the mountain would always be there.

Things aren't always what they appear to be. This picture MIGHT look like someone who is triumphantly raising his ice ax as as he is reacting to the pristine beauty of the North Cascades. However, if you look a little harder, you realize that he is actually chasing his wife while yelling "Dammit Kim, SLOW DOWN! I need to catch up!" I believe the raised ice-axe was more of a threat.

Ruth Mountain, we'll be back for you!

Jake had no interest in hiking back down, so he decided it would be a good idea to fly & ski instead... He launched from the top of Point 9530.

Jake in his happy place... He ended up landing on the shoulder there, and then continuing over the side of the mountain to meet us WAAAAY below. Easily saved him over an hour of hiking in nasty snow.

Coming back down

Having fun heel-plunging as we came down the steep slope

As we were looking around this place, I was telling Rachel Rachel how I often fall into the trap of thinking that we need to go to distant & exotic places (like Nepal) to find rugged mountainous beauty, but then I arrive at a place like this and realize how much beauty is right in our back-yard. I'm very grateful for adventurous friends to share life with!
Photo: Jon Warren