Beck

...rode my bike to the Market...had a beer at ten am with my boss... drank beer all day at my office and worked on the newspaper...this month, fourty one advertisers! ...took a nap, up again, thinkin about a steak dinner...

i prefer to celebrate and get away on the bastille day weekend, usually, (and this year it is the full moon) libertie its usually fun to watch the huge boomers in Seattle though (wow is that what gunpowder is best used for?) but this is just my strategy on july.

jon, is there any way to search by date parameters?

lightweight shoes are the way to go, you'll be so refreshed versus wearing your boots... on a recent ski traverse trip, when i got back to wear i could wear my shoes again, i jogged for fourty five minutes with my backpack, carrying skis and boots, because i could, and my feet felt so good at the end of the trip, versus wearing boots the whole time.

mattp i'd be there but am working marmot until after six and my newspaper deadline is this friday so i'm freakin swamped.... id be happy to be tlgs belay slave, so long as shes not drytooling!

yas touray, congratulations yourself, but when I passed your climbing partner on the trail back to the cars, i noticed you guys didn't have any skis? anyway, i'm thinking of heading up there with the skis in mid july again, if any one wants to go.

how soon do you get to ride them?

thanks TLG! that means a lot to me- i'm just an organizing fool, been one for a long time-but the funny thing is, TLG, the more you've got going on, the more you can do... it's funny that way. this third ropeup should prove to be quite nice , if the stars hold course true until the event...

its nothing to get your panties in a bunch over, greg, but an organizer for the smiff event would hopefully realize putting events on same weekend would only dilute both.... and by the way, the dates already been set...Oct 10-11-12 in Leavenworth.

i didn't park at the trailhead pass required parking area without a trail parks pass, you figure it out....

have any of you people noticed how immaculately the trailhead restrooms and roads are maintained along the Mountain Loop Hiway? you could bring a mother-in-law camping out there and she wouldn't object... or the recent improvments to the staircase area in the olympics? Ashael Curtis area in Snoq pass also, etc... there are also hundreds of trailheads in washington state that DON'T require trail park passes.. and the handy quarter mile rule if you're truly a dirtbag climber and can't afford it

...you all have flippin fantastic ideas for the ropeup, we'll see what can be incorporated into the fun!

..and then, our f***** up american republicans will close trailhead access because of a project that is a decade in the making failing. Dru, you're a canook, its a bit fouler here south of the border...

any ski mountaineers interested in a three/four day trip up into the dakobed range in earlyish july? probably 35-40 miles Round Trip into the whitechuck, the suiattle and honeycomb glaciers, and hanging out and yoyoing for some of the trip? Glacier skiing ablity less important than the ability to travel far and suffer in that regard. need to bring basic glacier travel gear, and not be a complete idiot when it comes to summer snow. 10ish miles a day.

marmot in bellevue carries the yates harnesses. they carry the shield, the big wall, the 8000 meter, and the alpinist.

....we should have more than one free keg, carolyn, but if you want to "steward the barrel" up from TG, we would be forever in your debt. and we are still looking for any good ideas for events to do at the ropeup. It's just that setting things in motion required a certain early solidification of dates to bring in some cool stuff for all to enjoy, like more beer! and more important things....planning these things takes more than a few hours.. for fun events, we want to stay away from the milk chug idea.so what about a tug of war across the river if its' hot out? climbers pick a coed team of six?

okay, I don't know anyone who is organizing this thing except me and hikerwa, I honestly don't care about the smiffy contingent diluting the third annual full moon ropeup for the full moon in October- organizing a climbers' festival isn't a democratic proccess like a pub club destination, it's work, money and time. if you guys don't want to come and stay closer to home, sorry, you'll jus be missing out. Bridge Creek Group Camp site has been rented for October 10,11, leaving Sunday the 12th. This year, ostensibly, more free beer, we're working on a shwag bag full of cheap goodies, definetly free camping at the group site, a gear raffle to benefit some venerated climbing institutions, the editor/lead rock jockey of the American Alpine Journal, possibly some more muckymucks, probably some gear reps, a bratwurst feed Saturday night, and a pancake breakfast Sunday. Maybe climbing shoe demos. Possibly a slide show presentation Saturday night. Working with the Access Fund to set up a mini service project, to get good climbers cred with the FS rangers there. If you oregon people want to top that, do it on another weekend please. Don't be square, be there- at Bridge Creek Oct 10-11-12 for the third annual Cascade Climbers Full Moon Ropeup.

and you can't drive to the trails without paying a tax that gets spent by other beauracracies, food/gas/sales tax to pay the man- and a large percent of the trail park pass goes directly back into trail maintence and actual capital improvements projects in the state that sells the pass- i believe it is about 80%... it does not go to buy the tool more radios or bullshizzie. If you look at a list of projects completed in Washington state via fee demo funding, it's pretty impressive. you pay, the state or FS gets 80% to fix things up in the woods. it's 30 bucks- forego the stupid titanium spork and buy the park pass, you're doing a GOOD thing. on the other hand, I've see two paid state employees handing out the violations at the railroad grade parking area, even though they were the $5 violation notices, it seemed very inneficient to have two people handing out tickets on the clock, vs some trail work or trash pickup. and don't forget you pay the man in gas taxes everytime you drive up the icicle road regardless, quit being such cheapass "me me me" people, and look at a larger picture- the feds are giving a lot less money to maintain things nowadays, do you want the tool to just close the roads altogther, because that is one of their options if they don't get funding to keep trailheads open. The mandate of fair use is an impressive argument, but specious. grow up people! in a regulated society, payment for use is fair and expected. like someone mentioned earlier, The days of free recreation in the wilderness is over!

gee, thanks all! I'm just an assertive sonofavbitch-one of my first adult jobs was managing a hotel/bar/ gambling joint in a mountain town in the Great Basin when I was 17. Was left to mind the whole joint when the boss would go to Vegas, or Mexico....guys with guns, drunk cowboys, hotel's own call girl, 50,000 bucks in the safe room (small gambling operation) and a caveat to "take care of business" got me my stripes PDQ. Cojones of steel. -when the rest of my high school buddies were neck deep in senior projects and worrying about curfew and their daddies car, I was running a hotel with slot machines and a hooker in the mountains, kicking ass and taking names. calling "bullshit" since 1968.

the lowest class dirtbag climber in U S has a much better standard of living than many of the rest of the global populace;I feel VERY lucky I didn't grow up in Uganda or the UAE

icegirl, we've got a complete stock of repair parts for many stoves at, you know where- glad to hear your are using one of the most reliable stoves out there. i'm there T-W-T-Sa-Su this week if you need some help with the 123.

Dru, it sounds like you're getting some good plub, and I hear from John something is cooking with the you and a certain mountain Journal, you touque wearing, north-of-the-border miscreant!

Being an early proponent of the Cascade Climbers "We're Drinking Now" Pub Club, and believer in proletariat representation of drunk climbers across the greater Northwest, let me squelch any disparities between the virtual scrum of intoxicated Ballardites & other emerald city inebriates with the smaller cadre of T-Town tipsters. We need not get drunk only one day a week! My Proposal: Seattle venues and other cities shouldn't overlap. A trip to Tacoma Thursdays might supplement a Tuesday out on a deck or park in Seattle. Why don't we come together in a spirit of solidarity and recognize a well founded desire to go out, as well as stay close to home. Climbers drifiting afield could more easily drink, and with more opportunities for , who can complain?

stand corrected about the Backes beta, that's right, they didn't use sleeping bags, but at some point, either at the slide show, or at pub club afterwards, during most of their trips, as they dialed their systems in, that he was using about a twenty degree synthetic bag, and Twight was using a fourty degree bag... I'll putting two and two togther and imagining Twight was referring to this as a sub two pound synthetic bag.

The planning for a ski traverse across Glacier Peak and into the Dakobeds had been in the works for over a year. Reconnisance photos, scouting trips to find exit routes and escape strategies all pointed to excellent ski touring terrain across the south flanks of Glacier Peak. With a promising weekend weather forecast for the first weekend in june, I met up with Steve Barnett (for all you old ski farts out there, that Steve Barnett) at the Darrington IGA Saturday morning to embark on a ski traverse of Glacier Peak. Steve had it on the back burner for over two decades, and I had been eying the terrain around Glacier Peak since I first saw photos of it in the Cascade Alpine Guide. Our Plan: Ascend Glacier Peak via the Sitkum Glacier, then descend around the back side of Dissapointment Peak onto her southern icefields and make an exit off the White Chuck Glacier onto the northern slope of White Mountian and out the White Chuck River drainage. 30 or more miles in some of the more desolate reaches of the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Our gear: minimal. No tent, just a bivy tarp, lightweight ski gear, to allow fast travel. My setup: Lightweight tele skis with ski crampons, voile 3 pin cable and leather Asolo Extreme 3 pin boots. Steve chooses an even lighter setup of Fisher Outbounds waxless metal edge skis, the Salomon SNS backcountry binding, and a Salomon Raid X Ski boot. 10 AM at the IGA puts us on the Kennedy Hot Springs trail at 11:30 and we trudge our way to the climbers camp at Boulder Basin Saterday afternoon. Finding a cleared patch of moraine with a rock wall gives us a great campsite for the evening. Blue skies in the evening gives rise to a gusty winds and a small cloud cap on the peak Sunday morning. We decide to go up and off the mountain as fast as possible in hopes of beating the weather, and set off at 7AM, climbing right out of Boulder Basin on skis onto the Lower Sitkum Glacier. The weather cooperated, with an intermitent cloud cap and strong but not hurricane winds. 11 AM found us ducking around a rock rib at about 9,000 to get out of the wind and enjoy a brief lunch. The weather is cooperating as we climb off the upper Sitkum on steep slopes to below the summit cone. There was a layer of rime over bluewater ice on the summit rocks, and with the clouds returning, we forgo the last scramble to the summit, and point our skis toward the Cool Glacier and Dissapointment Peak. We peel our skins off on just above the Cool Glacier and look for an enterance over the bergshrund. The shrund allowed easy entry onto the Cool Glacier, and we ski cautiously around a few gaping crevasses with an eye on our altimeters to guide our traverse onto the Gerdine Glacier at 9,140 feet. Skiing around some gapers to either side of a series of nunataks puts us on the compression zone between the Cool and Gerdine glaciers, and with an easy transition over some blue ice blocks and holes, we enter the upper Gerdine glacier for a long run of over 3,000 vertical feet on lightly crevassed terrain. The weather turns for the better, and we spend the rest of the afternoon making sweeping runs up and along the Gerdine and Suiattle Glaciers towards our next high point, Glacier Cap. this glacier cap divides the watershed of the Suiattle and WhiteChuck rivers, and we touched the headwaters of both that afternoon as we skied across the cap and onto the WhiteChuck Glacier. Ominous afternoon clouds gave use good cause to make an exit route clear for escape, so we camp a thousand feet lower than planned in case bad weather closed in overnight. If the weather holds, Monday will find us touring up the Suiattle Glacier and onto the expansive Honeycomb Glacier. Monday morning we awake in the clouds. No visibility and a heavy mist that isn't breaking up. By ten am we make a decision to bail out. We break camp, and navigate our way thru the fog to easier terrain. Route finding didn't present much difficulty, with only one wrong try that resulted in us reclimbing a gully, to put us smack dab on the trail across a crucial bridge at 4,900 feet just as the snow ends. A perfect navigational tour to the exit point we were shooting for put us twelve miles away from the cars, and by 7PM Monday night Steve Barnett and myself were back at the cars. A sucessful ski traverse of Glacier Peak across a series of five glaciers, thirty some odd miles and over six thousand feet of ski descent over three days was completed in fine form with lightweight ski gear.