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21 year thread bump to post a 7 year old complaint. Bravo!

Some takeaways from the meeting this evening: I couldn't make the (sneaky!) 4 pm start time, so missed some of the presentations, but was able to speak to a number of folks about the proposals afterward. Basically, many of the concerns Kameron voiced at the start of this thread are spot on. - Most significant to me seems to be Aspire's plans to build not just a shelter at Heliotrope, but also one at Grouse Ridge and "a few" (Abram of Aspire's words) shelters at Artist Point. According to Abram, they would be running paid snowmobile shuttles to these shelters through the winter, and offering experiences to folks involving building fires and cooking food (read: glamping). They also hope to partner with guide services to offer ski trips and avy courses out of these shelters. Notably, the FS proposal only concerns itself with the Heliotrope shelter and many folks, including myself, were unaware of the other structures being pursued; when I asked Abram about this, he blamed it on the FS and took little responsibility for getting this rather critical information out to the user base. His arguments for the shelters centered on "spreading out impact" (not sure how running glamping trips on Heliotrope and Artist Point would be spreading out the crowds, personally) and the idea that lots of private companies make money off public lands, so why not them? A FS ranger told me that they are primarily considering the Heliotrope shelter first, and will make moves on the others depending on public comment and other vague provisos. - BMG seems to have zero plan in place for allowing the public to use their shelter, and they know that public use will be difficult anyway due to the logistics of reserving their shelter as a public user without official paid access to the Hampton land. And by "zero plan", I mean that BMG's owner said he literally hasn't considered it yet. BMG will pay 3% of their gross revenue to the FS for the land use. - the snowmobile club's shelter will be on wheels as stated in the proposal, and available to the public at any time. They'll pull it out every season once it melts out. - Roundhouse representatives weren't present, so not much information there. An interesting theme of the meeting was the general lack of information available about how these huts will benefit the public, how the commercial interests involved will run their operations, and how long these permits will be valid for. Numerous FS officials and guide service owners/reps had little to offer on these questions. The district ranger basically copped to a desire within the agency to make something happen with the proposal, whatever the outcome. We also caught the tail end of an interesting presentation on the possible impact on winter wolverine habitat, which would seem to mainly affect the Heliotrope site. Anyway, that's what I got. Sorry for the salty editorializing, but in my view this proposal is just ramrodding the interests of commercial enterprise down our throats with woefully insufficient information. I'm actually down with the snowmobile shelter, which has precedent in the Nooksack Valley and is being run by a nonprofit organization. The others are problematic, to say the least. Hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps that I missed or may have perceived differently.

Wow, "reservable overnighting facilities operated by three private commercial entities" is exceedingly vague about who gets to use it. I feel like if you're going to allow any kind of development on public land it should be publicly accessible. The way I understood it last time was that the huts were going to be for private guided groups. I don't want more access for the rich pay to play crowd at the expense of any portion of the public trust. Cheap public huts like in Canada... maybe.

No bites? Well, does anyone know these two peaks @Kit is pointing at? We got avalanched off the one on the left. I guess I'll need to go back.

Trip: Pleiades, Larrabee, Mt. Shuksan - southside couloirs, eastside, nwc Date: 1/13/2012 Trip Report: On the 11th I booted and skied the NWC on Mt. Shuksan. Encountering mostly good but slightly wind affected snow. In a spot just above the first cliff band there was a questionable slab... I did some tests - finding that there indeed was a slab there but it did not propagate well with an extended column test, so I traversed a little to the left, and no more slab. The high traverse to the entrance chute was very icy, with a thick breakable ice crust and a bit of solid water ice here and there. Mostly good snow in the upper chute with maybe a 10' section of hard ice crust near the top. There was also a short section of rime ice above the couloir entrance that I made a point to remember for the ride down. I'm finding that I like to boot pack more thank skin, something about the movement speaks to me. The next day, after some grocery shopping in kendall, I parked my rig a quarter mile or so past the DOT on Twin Lakes Road... Skinned in, then booted up the gully to the west of Winchester, I descended and set up a bivy at the headwaters of Tomyhoi creek, I fell asleep under a canopy of stars, Orion directly overhead. In the morning I ascended the west ridge of Larrabee which had me kinda skered because it was mostly hard rime ice with serious exposure -- my intended descent route. At the summit I questioned my original intention, after some thought I decided to descend the south face route instead of the west ridge. Cautious turns down hard rime ice off the summit led me to the entrance of the south face, but on a whim I dropped into the east face instead, thinking that I would just skin back up and ski the south face too... But instead, once at the base of the face, I traversed out to the Pleiades couloirs and climbed and skied both of them. The first (the west one) was longer than the second, and held a hidden top portion, it held mostly good-variable conditions, the second held terribly crusty conditions necessitating jump turns to bust through the crust. On the way up the second I developed a painful leg cramp in my lower right quadricep, but being pretty close to the top, and having a hunch that the pain was just coming from a muscle cramp, I pushed on, I felt the pain during the skiing, but I had to ignore it because a fall was not an option. The angle mellowed once out of the rock walls, and I skied the phatty lower couloir/gully ALL the way to the valley floor(a long way down) it got dark. I massaged my painful leg a little, melted some water, ate some hot food, then began the long ascent up to the col between Winchester and Larrabee eying the way in twilight before dark. My leg started to feel a little better, but I was gimping it very slowly, staggering awkwardly to avoid stressing the muscle. I was booting up somewhere in some trees, and snow began to fall, it grew steadily heavier as did the wind. Reaching the col, I got lost for a bit before I dropped into Tomyhoi basin where I recovered my bivy gear, then ascended towards Winchester hut in heavy winds and snow, feeling stupid for forgetting my gps. I was surprised to find the door of the hut locked, I knocked... no answer, then bellowed an awkward "hello" ... "hello" in return came from inside. It was apparently around one o'clock in the morning, limping up from the valley had taken me quite a while... The peoples inside were super cool and cooked me a hot meal, I told them that I had intended to descend after an hour or so rest in the hut, but I ended up spending the night. The storm pounded the hut all night. In the morning, I set out in the still stormy whiteout and proceeded to descend - ski cuuttin slabs left and right, flushing my intended descent route( a gully) occasionally ski cutting a slab off the side of the gully, deepest crown was probably around 2 1/2 feet... Amazing powder skiing lower down... The ski on the road out was slow cause the deep damp snow stuck to my skis, and the leg cramp returned. After about six miles I found my motorhome and road-out under two feet of snow, shit... I am a dumbass for sure, for throwing away my rusted chains and not getting another pair, for not respecting the unpredictability of the weather, for parking up the hill instead of at Hannagen pulloff... To make the story short, I took some advice from a passerby, who said that I should coast down in first gear and to "lay off the brake" After digging out and turning around I ended up loosing control a couple hundred feet down, with my front driver side tire half hanging off the steep embankment, truck tilted, I remained calm as it went down, but I am really glad I didn't loose my transport and home in the rollover into trees below that would have resulted if I stopped a foot two later. This morning, the BP pulled me off tha' cliff and I gingerly drove down with ebrake half applied/sometimes more, front brake applied accordingly, and clutch and first gear in necessary transition. Looking back on my time there on the road -- there was little hardship, I was well provisioned and warm enough - except some shivering at night that I am used to -- in hindsight, I see that my experience was a positive one, since I had some high quality times playing my guitar -- I think I finally broke out of that plateau that I've been stuck on. some video clips of the variable conditions -- nooksack tower ice on tha traverse alpenglow larrabee ABP Skagit Range -- *edit* Cheam Range Tomyhoi! oh shit stay away view from west couloir Does anyone have a shot of the Pleiades couloirs? Would shurley apriciate...

check out the american alpine institute www.mtnguide.com an excellent company, and im almost certain that all of their courses are not full next summer.