Stefan

Okie dokie. Whatever you say! Love you too!

I bet the Gates Foundation will be the biggest purchaser of this stuff someday.

I misunderstood. My bad. So, are you going to pay the $8 then? If so, then you are willing to pay for that price--which means the price is reasonable to you, and your whining does not make sense.

Man, this is like the NBA with a little bit of MLB mixed in it. I knew I should have registered to race in the Tour this year. I could have had a chance.

It's not $18. That's just the entry fee. Add $20 for a campsite and $8 for a campfire, and, and, and. My question still remains. Did you pay $8 for a campfire?

awesome to see some newbie stuff! thanks for sharing!

btdt so passe

So, did you pay for the fire?

I wonder how much carbon is used to produce a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. like to see the data on that.

you been getting out some good trips in the last two weeks. you been having a lot o fun.

Ummmm. If you haven't heard....numbers are dropping of people getting out to these hard to reach places. Only close places to urban settings are seeing an increase in the number of people. Road damage will keep these places even harder to get to. You have nothing to fear.

love the tie in with the parents on the trip report

I for one, am for the road. Getting more people to any mountain is a plus. They more people see an area they can't get to, the more people are willing to preserve the area in the future. Its a necessary evil. Heck, the Forest Service has now added a gate at Dingford up the Middle Fork right in your backyard. Now it is an additional 7 miles of hiking one way to the original trailhead--now all on a road. Let's see how many more people are willing to go into the wilderness with that hike. And lets not forget the abandonement of the road past Stehekin. What about the Suiattle River road in its condition? Abandon it? What about the Cascade River road--should the NPS just abandon it too?

I watched it last night. Great show! My favorite quote: "I am not going to risk my life for a television show." -- Raindawg

If you have a 401K I can bet you a lot of your 401K money is tied up in Exxon. I have looked into my 401K and yep. There it is, in almost every fund option. Exxon. It sucks to pay for gas, but then again, it is helping my retirement. But I digress. Excess is not good.

Do not trust the news media who gives you information.

Actually, I do not agree with this statement. There are more peaks out there that have not been written up on. That's becuase no one really goes to them....and I can vouch by seeing only limited people signing those registers. For example, I haven't seen anyone do a trip report on the north face or west face of Pocket Peak. What about Ghost? What about Chimney Rock? What about Mt. Christie? not much. Lots of peaks out there, just that people do the same peaks over and over.

It was pretty good until my partner decided to use his face in the gravel to stop him and his bike.

pm sent

Trip: Pleiades/Larrabee/Winchester/Bear 7/7-8/2007 - Pleiades Date: 7/8/2007 Trip Report: Went out with Greg K. this weekend intending on climbing American Border. In the end, we did not do it for several reasons. We left the car at 9:30 on the Twin Lakes road just after the Yellow Aster Butte trail. Be forewarned. You need high clearance 4WD to get further. Seriously. The road is now a 2.2 mile walk to Twin Lakes. There was one dude who did make it up quite a distance on the road, but he was thwarted by snow on the road. We walked our bikes up to Twin Lakes. There was a lot more snow than I anticipated. In fact we had to use crampons walking around the trail under the east side of Winchester. This trail is definitely going to take at least 2 more weeks to melt out. This traverse tired me out more than anticipated. We got to High Pass at 12:45….just over 3 hours from the cars. Normally under ideal conditions with driving to Twin Lakes it would take the average Joe about 1 hour. We went for Pleiades. Wouldn’t you know Beckey guidebook has left out a lot of details and is incorrect? Here is how you do it. Go over the eastern of the western two summits (7280+). Ascend a choice of class 3 gullies to the 7160+ col between the two western summits. Class 3 to get out of col to the eastern of the western summits. Descend an exposed and rotten class 3 gully on the eastern side of the western summit to the 6880+ col—we used a rope. Ascend up from the col to a goat ledge. This goat ledge is fricken amazing. It goes for about 200-300 meters around to the base of the 7160+ col between the eastern summits. You know the goat ledge going around Dumbell to get to Greenwood? Well multiply that by around 5 to 6 times in length! Beckey’s descriptions says nothing about a goat ledge and this ledge is quite critical in making the summit. I now doubt Beckey did this peak. I was going by Beckey’s description and it appears he says the farthest eastern pinnacle is the highest (7334). So that is what we did, and there is quite a cairn on the summit. Beckey is wrong. The highest point is actually in the clump of spires at 7320+ on the map. You can access then highest point (7320+) peak from the east, but I do not recommend it as we did. In fact I recommend you ascend a potential class 3 way up once you pass the first gully while you are on the goat ledge. We got back to High Camp at 8:30. It took us 7 hours round trip. Oi. Sunday morning we woke up to sleets of rain we could see to the west moving towards us. What? We were to climb American Border! The forecast was bomber and now we are looking at rain. In spite of how tired we are and the gloomy way the skies were going we went for Larrabee which is a mix of class 2 and 3. Around 7000 feet the wind picked up, we entered the fog, and we had driving sprinkling rain for the remainder up. Oh, and it got cold. Glad I was not on American Border because this weather would have made American Border suck for the one rock pitch and wet rock on the class 3 traverse. We could see that further south…about 50 miles the weather did not look so bad, but here it sucked. We came down easily to High Camp, picked up our gear and headed for the Winchester Lookout by going up the NW slope. Never been to Winchester Lookout. This place has an awesome view and is open to anyone who can get there. I recommend the place, but you might be fighting for space on nice weekends with other people, however, with the road conditions expect now a 4 mile additional walk. Get this, the snow was in such a condition, that we even needed crampons to get off of Winchester Lookout trail. Crazy I tell you. We still had some extra time, so we went up Bear (6480+) which is just north of Goat Mountain and directly west and above the mine. We left from the bathroom of Twin Lakes, went over the subsummit, traversed a little bit around and then went up. Nice summit. On the way down on bikes something happened. About ¼ of a miles from the car Greg went over his handlebars and fell on his face on the rocks of the road. He had many cuts and blood was everywhere, but he did not loose a lot of blood. We stopped the bleeding on his forehead with duct tape and bandages on his nose. The notch in his nose did not look good. He is pretty banged up but will recover nicely. He will have forever scar on his nose. His wife Sarah helped clean him up when we got home. Hope you are fine Greg! Stefan 7/7-8/07 Gear Notes: Recommended rope for Pleiades even though it is class 3. It is rotten class 3 in many places.

you mean I will be able to climb more than I do right now?

IMO any pardon by any president is a disgrace. It flies in the face of the people who work for the Justice department who do the time to convict people. There are so many people who are guilty the justice department does not convict becuase they do not have the time, and just do not have enough evidence beyond a resonable doubt.

...anything is perfect...until it turns into an epic.

Maybe the dude lived in France while his parents worked there and what you saw was the result of his environment he grew up with. No biggie to him.

Dang. He gives me hope at that age.