klenke

Faust: based on your avatar image, I'd say I'd know when it's you. I'll be on the look out for a white-haired and white-bearded old man sitting indian style on the summit cairn. You might even be levitating.

Yeah, I placed the new register pipe on Vesper last September after the old PVC one got tossed off the North Face and smashed into smithereens. You will find the new one all very amusing since I used PVC endcaps on a metal pipe. Hey, at least I saved a pound or two in weight. I'm sure one eccentric screw on too many and the PVC threads will strip. Oh well. Faust: boy, seeing how you like to be alone at the summit, I'd hate to come up to the summit and find you there. You might toss me right back off again. Sucks to be the party to make it up AFTER Faust.

A film cannister as a register? What? Come on. And then I suppose when it gets filled up every five weeks (depending on the frequency of visitation) that it should be removed and a new one put in its place. A film cannister register is okay for a very seldom visited summit, but not for something that would see a dozen or so parties per year. I agree that a big box like that found on top of Boston Peak is a little too much, but a short metal or PVC pipe is perfectly sized. You can roll a register book up and put it in there snugly. The entries fill up the book at a pace that seems acceptable to me. Plus, it is small enough to "hide" in a crack or crevice. In regards to ruining the pristine nature of the summit, there's no such thing. While I wouldn't want to be able to spot a summit register from a mile away, a little cylinder placed in the rocks or in a cairn at the summit is pretty invisible until you're right there, at which time it's sudden appearance is not something unexpected--especially on oft-visited summits. Maybe it would be a little deflating to think you got a FA of an obscure peak only to find a film cannister register there. Sure. If you're going to complain about registers, sucks to be you to climb up to a summit only to find a big lookout building there (or the ruins of a lookout). Those generally ruin my peaceful feeling more than any register ever would. All that said, I sign registers when they're there. When they're not, I'm not disappointed.

I was under the impression that the gaging stations in the creeks are used to gauge the volume flow rate so as to know the input into a reservoir behind a dam or into a aquaduct system further downstream. I could be wrong. You do see them on USGS maps quite regularly. Josh: how was the trail from the Cascade Glacier to the S. Fork Cascade River Road trailhead (if you used it)?

I would like to know what is your stance on registers placed at summits. Please, no spray here. Registers are:A bonus thing at a summit when found; something worth havingLitter (pollution) that has no place in the outdoorsI don't sign registers; it's against my beliefs Note that registers and what's written in them is considered a historical record and is archived as such.

And when all the rhetoric around the campfire had finally died down And the crows at their listening posts in the rocky boughs finally blinked one last time When the embers of discussion one by one dimmed into the ashes of history Only then did this tire old thread get up and stagger into the corner of the clearing To tuck itself into the warm folds of its -30 degree Marmot Mountain Works sleeping bag And dream of deep bootsteps up the next morn's icy slopes. Yes, once again, Thumb Rock was a peaceful place. And all climbed and lived happily ever after...unroped to the summit of Columbia Crest. THE END.

Or take matches and set that shit on fire... Summit registers are pollution. Friggin' mountaineers... In the grand comparative scale of what counts as pollution in the mountains, summit registers are about as inconsequential as you can get. The real pollution (man-made eyesores, et al.) comes from the construction of logging roads, the construction of trails, the clearcutting of hillsides, the exhausts of vehicles driving up said logging roads, the flatulence of climbers hiking up said trails, the creation of soot from the burning of papers that were otherwise not doing any harm inside a metal register, the construction of cairns at a summit or on a trail (these are more visible than any register), the sound of the freeway below peaks of the I-90 corridor, the sound of motorcycles in the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness, the sound of snowmobiles whining their way up Ingalls Creek--illegally, the sound of airlines flying overhead.... Anything more? Registers are not pollution. They are not litter. They are less intrusive than a boot path up to a summit--a boot path that tramples native vegetation. So I call bullshit, Alpinfox.

Yeah, I kind of found that ironic too.

Hey, if you think of the plastic as being that of a credit card, then the TR reads more like something erotic and not at all related to climbing.

I know that Mountaineer Basic Gumbies have been going up there already this year, so it has been climbed this spring (main/North Peak, that is). My friend just led a Mounty climb up there. He didn't go up via the Red Slab Route (can't remember which one he went up) and didn't report to me any snow, which is not to say it wasn't there, just that he didn't find any of it to be an albatross toward their success. I doubt it's snowfree. Ah, the snow cornices just make it that much more invigorating. Both peaks are over 7,600 ft, so snow should be expected--especially in shaded areas and north slopes.

A little extra information: with three of us searching and one waiting in the car for a speedy getaway, we could not find the supposed fisherman's trail (as per Beckey and his alternate West Route approach) that starts at 50 yards past the bridge across Illabot Creek and goes up to the small lake at 4,760+ ft. I found one little piece of blue flagging on a tree in the middle of nowhere, but no semblance of trail. Also, the metal pipe register at the summit has no logbook in it, just an ad hoc assortment of loose papers. If anyone should decide to go up there, it would be nice if you took along a new register book. It needs one.

Na, you could just jump over them when they roar down on you. You know, like that dude on That's Incredible who tried to jump over the speeding Ferrari.

I've been in possession of Stephen Fry's list of supposedly the steepest mountain faces in Washington. I actually have those top faces in terms of vertical drop for 1 horizontal mile of distance and for 1/10 of a mile horizontal distance. Since you would most likely only be interested in the latter, I will include only that list: #1 Mt. Index, W Face (2,150 ft = 5,150 ft - 3000 ft) #2 Baring Mtn., NNE Face (2,000 ft = 6,000 ft - 4,000 ft) #3 Mt. Index, ENE Face (2,000 ft = 4,760 ft - 2,760 ft) #4 Hozomeen Mtn. [s. Peak], N Face (1,950 ft = 8,000 ft - 6,050 ft) #5 Davis Peak, NE Face (1,830 ft = 6,780 ft - 4,950 ft) #6 Twin Spires [E. Peak], E Face (1,800 ft = 8,200 ft - 6,400 ft) #7 Bear Mtn., NE Face (1,755 ft = 7,920 ft - 6,165 ft) #8 Copper Lake Wall, NE Face (1,700 ft = 5,400 ft - 3,700 ft) #9 Three Fingers, E Face (1,700 ft = 6,600 ft - 4,900 ft) #10 Garfield Mtn. [N. Peak], NE Face (1,670 ft = 4,560 ft - 2,990 ft) #11 Booker Mtn., NE Face (1,660 ft = 8,120 ft - 6,460 ft) #12 Hozomeen Mtn. [sW Peak], N Face (1,660 ft = 7,440 ft - 5,780 ft) #13 Hozomeen Mtn. [sW Peak], W Face (1,640 ft = 7,200 ft - 5,560 ft) #14 Mt. Blum, NE Face (1,620 ft = 4,220 ft - 2,600 ft) #15 Mt. Bullen, NE Face (1,610 ft = 5,410 ft - 3,800 ft) #16 Mt. Shuksan, N Face (1,610 ft = 7,400 ft - 5,790 ft) #17 Peak 7895 nr. Mt. Spickard, NW Face (1,600 ft = 7,600 ft - 6,000 ft) #18 Bonanza Peak [sW Peak], W Face (1,540 ft = 9,140 ft - 7,600 ft) #19 Hozomeen Mtn. [s. Peak], E Face (1,540 ft = 7,740 ft - 6,200 ft) #20 Hozomeen Mtn., W Face (1,510 ft = 7,910 ft - 6,400 ft) I don't know how much Mr. Fry actually did his homework, so don't take this list as gospel or definitive of the highest cliffs in the state.

The distance from Garibaldi to Queen Bess would be about the same as the distance from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Baker and I know you can see one of these from the other on a clear day. There is a mass of mountains to the left of the mystery peak. Waddington could be hiding behind this. It is also conceivable that the mass on the left edge of the photograph is itself Mt. Waddington, which would put it and QB in the right places relative to each other. I suppose it is possible your mystery peak is Waddington, but it doesn't look high enough relative to the adjacent peaks. It's also not rugged enough. Plus, it's too solitary to be Waddington. Waddington is closely surrounded by some pretty big peaks (like Combatant, Tiedman, and Munday). Munday would be on the front left of your mystery peak if it were Waddington. There's just nothing there.

I think your mystery peak is most probably Mt. Queen Bess (10,869 ft). See here Phil's Coast Range Trip for a good comparative picture (it is the 29th picture in the set labeled "Looking south to the Homathko icefield, and Mt Queen Bess." Other pictures can be found on Bivouac.com (but they're not that good). Queen Bess is about 200km NW of Garibaldi.

Hmmm, except for the above, it still isn't working for me or some others. Is my old process flawed? Am I just a gaperklenke?

I was looking at doing Mt. Constance by something other than the punter South Chute, North Chute, or Finger Traverse Routes. Guidebook talks about the West Arete Route (Route 2) and it goes at Grade III, 5.4. That doesn't sound bad at all. But then the book says this route is difficult and very exposed. Exposure can be found on any class rating, but why would 5.4 be considered difficult when there are other routes listed as harder? What I want to know is what made it difficult? Chossy rock? If you don't recommend the West Arete Route, what other rock routes would you suggest?

Ok, I just can't resist this: Jarred, if you go to Zugspitze right now, it looks like you'd have a whale of a time.

When I was in college, one of my friends in the dorm had a blind roommate for a while. The roommate subscribed to Playboy--the braille version. Pages and page and pages of raised dots on white paper, that's all. I found it quite unstimulating.

Hmmm, I wonder why? Didn't Ralph recently move over that way? I agree, though, Grady's is a good place to hold a public cublic.

This is from Colchuck Lake in mid-April. You can see how the gullies would be in winter/early spring. Don't know about what they would be like snow-free, but it does seem like you could get down one of them if you really wanted to--especially if you already had gear with you with which to rappel. Here is the image: Colchuck BR from Lake

Winter photo of Lane Peak from this year: Lane Peak from north

Test to see if ya really fixed it...

Hey Bug, I went that way too in late summer a few years back. Best way to sum it up: Brutal, brutal, brutal! BW5 in a lot of spots. I was actually trying to traverse over to Mt. Index from that valley but bailed and went for Persis instead. On the way up from the overgrown spur road (at the large open [parking] area just before the washed out road) I climbed up the dryish watercourse (for you, this was probably not possible in early season) then took a dry junction rightward practically all the way up to the alpine upper basin. Very nice up there once I got there. Most of the bushwhacking was to be had on the descent--because I tried to bear directly for the car. I just couldn't get out of it, despite the fact that the forested slope was so near. It would have been much easier and quicker to take the trail back and then walk the couple miles of roads back to the car, but noooooo.

Alrighty then. I have the right to be "officially" jealous now. Congrats guys...except for Chris & Jeremy I guess.