Stefan

What? It's your birthday? Dude you did not tell me. Are you working?

TO: The guy who had the accident on Yellow Jacket Tower MESSAGE: I know you are going to read this thread. I am sorry for your accident. I am happy that you are alive and I wish you a successful recovery. I have been there. I hope you continue climbing after you recover.

So, when did you move here from Colorado? The brush and downed trees and worse than most cross country areas around Index. Seriously. Index brush is pretty bad.

If you do the Rat Creek goup my recommendation now is to start at the Stuart Lake trailhead and walk the abandoned road east, and keep traversing. Yes, there will be some up on the way out, but you will avoid all the brush bashing. We did the standard SW face route in Nelson's book. Pretty solid route.

It wasn't bad at all. Plunge stepping went okay. You got your heel in every time--not all the way, but enough to be secure. Thanks for the pics!

I did not do a search so I apologize. Went and climbed The Mole on Saturday. We went up Hook Creek. The fires in Icicle Canyon several years ago have made this a very difficult approach to the Rat Creek tower group. After you leave the trail to Yellowjacket Tower, you have to go through new vegetation growth and downed trees everywhere up through Hook Creek. It is about 1700 feet of elevation gain through this stuff and it is definitely time consuming. Rat Creek is also not recommended becuase we scoped this out too.

I did not do a search so I apologize. Went and climbed The Mole on Saturday. We went up Hook Creek. The fires in Icicle Canyon several years ago have made this a very difficult approach to the Rat Creek tower group. After you leave the trail to Yellowjacket Tower, you have to go through new vegetation growth and downed trees everywhere up through Hook Creek. It is about 1700 feet of elevation gain through this stuff and it is definitely time consuming. Rat Creek is also not recommended becuase we scoped this out too.

You dog! I am jealous you could pull that off!

Thanks for the steps on Dragontail. We came in from the trailhead that morning and did Dragontail first...we arrived at 12:30 at the summit in a torrent of snow and rain and we were following your footsteps the whole way...we then came back down to Colchuck col and went up Colchuck in the continuing wind, snow and rain. It was nice to follow your footsteps! Thanks!

Great! Nice pictures dude!

You know this does not surprise me one bit coming from a person who works with the Bush administration. Hell, I bet you really work for the CIA and made plenty of runs to the Eastern European countries last year.

There is an unmanned vehicle company that sells its products to the Navy right here in Washington State. They have sold some of their stuff that was engaged in Iraq (although, they really are not designed to carry bombing loads): http://www.insitugroup.com/

How does climbing an arch like that do damage if you climbed without chalk? I don't see Indian paintings on that thing.

Only two choices. 1)Climb or 2)think about climbing.

Don't try and fight the rain. Embrace it. Give your heart peace. I don't wanna be looking back on my life and say, "I did not get out enough becuase of the weather." So I go out regardless of the weather. It is true. Ask Klenke and catbirdseat. They see my trip reports.

Trad climbers really have no money. They can't get there when gas costs $3 a gallon.

You might burn some rubber. http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Imgs/Jpg/MSH/MSH06/MSH06_slab_on_new_growth_from_NE_04-28-06_med.jpg

Making money rule too much and many of my life's decisions.

When I was there a couple of years ago they had built an ice cave at the exit of the tunnel by the Klein Matterhorn and had ice sculptures with lots of neon around. Pretty cool to be in there becuase it was a raging blizzard during the first week of August. They had done that too to attract the tourists.

Mt. Cook in New Zealand is a little easier than about 20 years ago.

Truth is that leadership really doesn't know what to do most of the time. You just have to act like you do know the future to be a leader.

Park Service doesn't really open the road to the end until 4th of July. I think that might be the case too. In other words....more road walking...and I have never liked road walking. In addition weather is never usually good around 4th of July. You usually have to wait for about 7-10 days after Fourth of July. The last week of July and the first week of August are typically the hottest times in Washington.

Money rules in today's civilization. Try getting rid of it. Question is: Were the Native Americans more of an advanced society over the white man becuase they had less?

I am most grateful to them too for extracting me off of The Temple.

I wonder if anyone has traversed underneath the seracs at the top of Willis Wall?