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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.

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.

Thanks for working on the trails Dave The first mystery mountain is Little Big Chief.

Wow! Seriously fast there! You must not have stopped to chat too long with any of those guys. Nice job

Way to go Otto! Thanks for the report.

Won't argue with you there, but just to belabor my point, I'd also add "entertaining".

Most of the time, extremely unpretentious people are not very exciting to watch. This is a show here damnit! Stop trying to impose your manners constraints on us, you bunch of whiny wannabee wankers. Ever go see some of those punk bands who derided the rock-star guitar heroes? The thoroughly unpretentious, stare at their shoe guys (Royal Trux guitarist was so shy he'd always have his back to the audience)? Cool music a lot of time but the shows? Pretentious people can make for some damn fun reading. Unless of course it makes you upset cause you think you're better than them. I'd suggest not calling 'em pretentious ('cause that's actually quite pretentious, you wanker!), just call 'em lame, if that's how you see it. Maybe that'll make you feel better.

I've never worried about this problem because I've always found it pretty easy to outsmart five year olds (packs of 'em are even easier to confuse). But for you guys I guess it might be a different story.

Dark Rhythym is a "pretty good" route in terms of climbing. Basically 8 pitches, 1 of which is extremely good, 4 are are pretty good, and 3 get you where you're going. You can skip the last two ho-hum one's and rap if you don't particularly care about getting to the summit of Exfoliation Dome. The approach is a bit more work than 3 O'Clock Rock, but it's also pretty fun. Padding up a big long slab. At the end of the day, in the sun, though it can be quite tedious. Rain Man is a more interesting than Dark Rhythym, and a bit more difficult. I think DR has a more difficult crux, but Rain Man has more sustained difficulties. It's got cracks, roofs, corners and of course, slabs. RM has 3 "very good" pitches sandwhiched by two ho-hums. Rain Man is good to do second route of the day (i.e. after you are well warmed up) as it has a totally bogus tendon-trasher move right off the ground, on a pitch that has no other difficulties (or avoid that pitch with the 5.5 alt, which I've never tried). If you've been to the summit already rap from the junction of DR and RM. Jacob's Ladder is good too, but more difficult to find. Check it out. One good way to get to Jacob's Ladder is to climb one of the above routes to Blueberry Terrace, then find the rap stations for JL and rap on in. Stations are at the far N end of the terrace. Make sure you really know what you're doing with this approach though. Sounds like a good way to epic/get killed for someone without a good amount of experience.

I think someone oughta carry a whole bunch of those "NW forest pass required at trailhead" signs up on top of mailbox peak.

I find summit registers to be an unvaluable source of historical weather data.

Bring a damn quicklink to leave on the fixed cam and do everybody a favor.

scritch scratch scritch

Just because he stole your thread with a way more interesting post, there's no reason to get all pissy Josh!

Some climbs I recommend. Many are in the "9 and under" range, or have initial pitches that are in that range.