Leaderboard

Yeah, a similar sort of stupidity is going on in Skagit County right now. Again related to liability, kicked off by a death in the local SAR community several years ago. It may well result in the death of the local MRA unit which has been serving Skagit County since 1962. Time will tell. Whatcom county Sheriff's office has a much better relationship with BMRU, but they also haven't had a SAR death recently.

Approaching strobach will always be a bit of an ordeal, but if you hew closely to the attached .gpx there is almost zero bushwhacking or blowdowns. It follows the route we flagged a few years ago (2015?). I think the main key is that if you go directly from the road to mother lode, you encounter a ton of blowdown, but this gpx track swings to the right, generally onto a berm/ridge on the climbers left edge of a large boulder field, and provides much easier travel. I was in there in early January this year, and was surprised that almost all of the flagging was still there. It's not that much help if there's any snow on the trees/bushes, since you can't see most of it until you're right on top of it, but you're never more than twenty meters or so from a piece of orange so you can use it to verify that you're on the right track. strobach.gpx