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harpell, You asked where the platforms were. Ralph showed you were both parties have posted them on the internet (a great tool for disseminating information!). You got snitty because you thought that the candidates themselves should be voicing their platforms. Ralph showed you that Kerry stated many positions of his platform right in his speech, that you implied that you watched! It makes me wonder why you are posting this question? I am curious if Bush will actually outline something in his speech tonight about any part of his party's platform besides, "September 11, 2001!!" Do you think he will mention the constitutional ammendment banning same-sex marriage? I have heard nothing of that in any speeches so far.

Park at first pullout after the first big wash after the Taylor River bridge. Hike down the road about 50 feet then cut up through the forest and find the well trodden trail just across a small creek at the base of a small waterfall. On the route follow the bolts. Don't get overly fixated on pitch numbers because everybody who does it seems to get different pitch counts for different places (you will understand why once you climb it). When you're at the base of the big chossy slab (you will know this because you are 1. at a two-bolt belay station 2. you've just climbed a pitch that's starting to look a bit dirtier than the rest of the climb and there were only two bolts or so on the pitch. 3. the "pitch" above looks flatter and chossier than the rest of the climb so far. 4. you don't see any bolts above you 5. there is a "hummock" with bushes and grass just above you and to your right.) When you get to this spot, look up and right past the hummock and locate the relatively large (3 foot high) bush about 120 feet away. Straight above that bush about 100 feet is a two-bolt belay anchor. Note that 100' + 120' is probably longer than the lengths of your ropes. Plan accordingly. My apologies for the SYO (Spoiled Your Onsight).

What does it have to do with being gay though? Was Lincoln gay? Are people who live in log cabins gay?

I doubt it's rift inducing. I think it's publicized in an obvious attempt to make the GOP ticket at least palatable to those log-cabin repubs. Why the hell do they use the "log-cabin" moniker anyway?

Saturday - my first visit to Safeco Field Sunday - North Ridge Columbia Peak. Excellent weather both days! Can't understand how all you guys got so wet?!

Climb: Columbia Peak-North Ridge Date of Climb: 8/29/2004 Trip Report: Jeff Hansel and I climbed Columbia Peak via the North Ridge yesterday. We biked then hiked up to Glacier Basin. Very nice up there. We came across a camp of bitter-looking people in the bog. They looked really wet. We scrambled up rocky buttresses then cramponed up for a bit of glacier right before Wilman's Gap. The snow/ice is quite hard. Actually had to cross a snow bridge at the bergshrund. At the top there were two choices of notch to ascend to. We took the left (poor choice?) since the right (lower) notch had about 20 feet of steep choss to get to it. The left was easier to get to, but it was very ugly getting back down the other side, 300 feet of so of slippery, wet, sandy, crumbly, steep gully . Not fun. Anyway, we finally made it down to the '76 Glacier by about 1pm, and were climbing the ridge by 1:30. We climbed a couple of short pitches up a face to gain the ridge. North Ridge route. Summit is upper left in clouds. The ridge was mostly pretty easy, sometime precipitious. The highlights were the constant views and a slab and crumbly towers about halfway through. slab and crumbly towers views We summited at 4:20 pm summit celebration We pored through the summit register and found this interesting note. history of spray We descended the standard (West Ridge) route, and took the Twin Lakes trail back. Back to the bikes a bit before 8pm. No headlamps required (barely). Pretty fun and adventurous day. Not a lot of technical climbing, more of a Klenke-type climb. Gear Notes: Single 50m 8.5 rope. Doubled for 2.5 short pitches to gain ridge. Small rack. Crampons, ice axes. Approach Notes: Don't do Wilman's Gap this time of year (probably much nicer when filled with snow).

Off, If he/she is planning on approaching from Teanaway, then there usually is a snowfield on the North side of Goat Pass. I think that's what Woland is asking about, "Is there still any snow there; and if so, do I need dee-vices?" As for the snow in the Cascadian: if there is any, it can be avoided. One can hike down the buttress that comes off the false summit and separates the Cascadian from Ulrich's. Then, once below the snowfield, one can downclimb or rap into the Cascadian.

We did it in July last year. As that picture shows, it's fairly steep snow up high, then there's a huge flat runout at the bottom. We didn't have crampons, but did have axes. In hindsight we didn't need the axes (the snow was very soft), but they were nice to have (useful on CC descent too), and I wouldn't count on the snow being that soft again. Looks like you can probably downclimb some ugly rock to avoid the steepest part? Why are you doing the East variation? Is it your goal to bypass the only interesting pitches? I'll bet you change your mind when you see it.

Yeah shit! This is almost as bad as not allowing people to smoke in office buildings!!!

link doesn't work :sad:

Scott, You didn't answer the important question! Are they an invasive foreign species? That is, do we get to "smoke 'em!" We went on a "hike" in Discovery Park on Friday evening. Saw and marveled at a big ol' anthill, looks just like your picture, and wondered what they were. Come home, read cc.com, and there's a picture right there! Quite a coincidence.

The argument that multiple observations confirm the evidence is based on the assumption of independent observations. Think "50,000,000 Elvis Fans can't be wrong!" That is, four republican shills repeating the same "information" doesn't really hold much more evidence than one.

The reason you might want to do this, is that you know that your "fee" is going directly and completely to trail maintenance. You have not contributed to trail-park enforcement signs or vehicles. You have not helped purchase military hardware, or funded deforestation.

If you're soloing it, routefinding is not an issue (provided you're not dumb enough to solo up anything that you aren't sure you can solo back down). If you make a wrong turn, just try again. No big deal. You can waste hours routefinding and still not be benighted. Just you probably won't beat SEF's time.

I guess with Icegirl's departure it's unanimous. INDEX!!!!

I thought you wuz dayd.

Anybody not worried about being sued (and who also is still alive and has not been burned really badly) wanna post on your methods for puncturing these babies?

If G-spotter climbed it, then I'm an assmonkey!

That Kendall Lakes "shortcut" is BS anyway. You save some elevation gain, but you gain a bushwhack, some of which is through clearcut slash. You don't really save much time considering it takes at minimum 15 minutes extra driving time to get up there. And if you're gonna climb Thomson, just save the weight of the rope and rack and do the East Ridge (might want to bring a very short (30') chunk of rope or webbing to get down one bit right at the top. Thomson is a nice scramble, but a very marginal rock climb. If you want a cool, easy, uncrowded alpine rock climb, check out N Ridge of Foggy Peak or Sawhorse Tower. Both in the Monte Cristo area and in the green Beckey guide. Approach times probably similar to that of Thomson.

How much?

I have heard of soooo many people getting shut down by Jack Mountain. Great job T ! Nice pic too Ursa

Climb: Mt. Blum-N. Ridge Date of Climb: 8/10/2004 Trip Report: Mark_L and I Headed up to Mt. Blum to try out that granitic N. Ridge mentioned in Beckey and partake in some outstanding meadow sniffing. Scary jungle the first bit of the way, until you find the trail. And you will find it. There's about 1,000 of those little flags. And on some tree's there's close to 2,000! After about a jillion feet of steep dry open forested ridge we broke out onto the meadowed spine. It was pretty nice. Camp was at an alpine lake so untrammled that the heather actually was not spider-webbed with foot trails. unnamed lake below NW ridge of Blum Next day we headed out for the North Ridge. A giant dark buttcheeks chimney at the base looked pretty unnappealing so we hiked around to the East flank. buttcheeks at base of Blum skirting around East side of ridge We found a reaonable-looking line. Aimed up to just left of this big ear. We found an old piton at our first belay. The granite was very clean, but a bit compact (sparse pro). There were some loose blocks but not a bunch. Views out to the N. Cascades and down to the glacier were cool. climbing first pitch The climbing was pretty sustained 5.7 or so, with one ugly doubleplus awkward spot of 5.9. looking down from p. 1 The rest of the ridge was less technical. We only climbed one more roped pitch (5.7 x), but there were plenty of exciting moves on super exposed ridge spine. fun scrambling It turned out to be LONG!! It was very much like the North Ridge of Stuart. As in like doing that part above the Gendarme about 30 times. It was hot and we woulda died, but we found this gigantic snowfield with a drip. cheers! Descent was uneventful, if a bit hectic. But you can't really complain about strolling about in open alpine country right around sunset. view from summit There it is! That's the North Ridge (from the West) Gear Notes: most of these photos by Mark Landreville cause my POS Sony cam stopped working halfway up p2 Approach Notes: There's a bridge over Baker River now! That is, it is no longer necessary to ford the river. This is not the bushwhack that legends make it to be.