Mtguide

Second that, Tilly Jane is great, not far in, great skiing once you get there.Another one not too far in is Elk Meadows, good view of Hood, and there's an old log shelter there. Another nice spot is Paradise, you can skin up and over from Timberline down to Paradise Park and back out the next day (best if it's good weather so you don't have to deal with navigation difficulties, but it's pretty straightforward.)It's about twice as long as going to Elk Meadows. You can also ski or snowshoe up Newton Creek to the base of Gnarl Ridge/Lamberson Butte. Great upclose look at Hood, fairly sheltered camping, no cabin or shelter structure. You can also get there by simply continuing up the Ganarl Ridge trail from Elk Meadows.

Very nice little crag, interesting lines.Nice job on the pics and topo, too. What's the rolling plastic garbage can for? Not exactly the usual item of backpacking gear.

I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. Believe me, they are still fighting the Civil War down there. Things have changed somewhat in the last 40 years, but there are still many,many people who actually think Lincoln should never have freed the slaves, that segregation is god's will, that miscegenation (interracial marriage) is a high crime and mortal,venal sin, and that black people should know and stay in their "place". I was in class in high school the day JFK was assassinated. When it was announced by the principal over the PA that the president has been shot in Dallas, the guy sitting next to me at the table in art class jumped out of his chair,banged his fist on the table, and shouted "They GOT him! They GOT the sonuvabitch!", and you could hear the rebel yell starting to echo down the halls. When it was announced that the president had died, wholesale cheering and the rebel yell thundered throughout the entire school, and the efforts of teachers and the principal to restrain it had little effect. At the lowering of the flag to half-mast in front of the school there were less than 100 of us, out of a school of over 2500 students. And walking home through the parking lot, I was once again reminded of where I was, by seeing that almost every car and pickup, including those of the teachers, had a Confederate flag sticker or decal in the rear window or on the bumper. While you seldom hear of the Ku Klux Klan anymore, it's far from dead. A great many still support the idea of lynching, as evidenced by the incident a year ago in Mississippi where the high school students hung nooses in a tree that was a favorite gathering spot on campus after several black students tried to assert their right to also gather there. After a fistfight, all the black students in the fight were arrested and charged with attempted murder. None of the white students were even detained. The black students were imprisoned for several months until things were finally straightened out at the federal level. I've traveled throughout the Deep South, and in states like Mississippi and Alabama, I've come into towns where the hatred is palpable, a living energy field of malice and the ever-present threat of violence if you say or do the wrong thing. Several years ago when a black man was dragged to death behind a pickup by two white men in south Texas, I was as shocked and disgusted as anyone, but not one bit surprised, because I used to hear talk about such things all the time as a kid, and into high school. Any excuse was enough to set off such an incident. Actually the city people tended to be far more bigoted than the country people, at least in my day. I had a number of summer jobs on farms and ranches out around Fort Worth, and white landowners often worked shoulder to shoulder with their black and Mexican hired help, (the Mexicans, especially in south and southwest Texas, were called braceros, literally "strong arms") and over the generations a genuine respect and mutual regard had developed. I once saw a white rancher, about to go in and sit down for the noon meal with his hired help, tell his white insurance man from Dallas, to get the hell off his property and never come back, when the insurance man said, "You sittin' down with them niggers and wetbacks, are ya? Well, I ain't". The rancher told him, "Mister, these men are out with me every day before sunrise, without fail, and they work hard until we go in at sundown. They're welcome at my door and at my table, anytime of day or night. They're ever' bit as good and worthy as any white man, and a hell of a sight better than you! Now get out!" But that was a rarity. More common was an incident when my father and I were at a Lion's Club meeting one afternoon. Some of the members got into a heated discussion about states' rights and the civil right demonstrations. Finally one man pounded his fist on the table and declared, "By God, ah'm a bigot, an' ah'm PROUD of it!". Stone wall. My Dad and I left when people started to talk about settling the matter with guns. My father never went back. I doubt that much will ever truly, deeply change in the South. There's no question that the so-called "Reconstruction" was vicious and cruel in the extreme; Northern politicians and carpetbaggers saw to that. The war was unspeakably brutal, and the seeds that were sown by the burning of farms and plantations,the looting, the raping, torture, and killing of women and girls, often in front of their families, and the wholesale leveling of cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Montgomery, etc., are still open wounds to many southerners, things that will never, ever, be forgotten or forgiven in the next 1000, 5000, or 10,000 years. While segregation is against the law, and things appear very different on the surface of southern society, segregation continues in any number of insidious, hidden ways such as you describe. The south is still showing the signs of PTSD, and the entire nation as well. We still all have a long, long, ways to go. And we won't ever get there until we learn to have respect and compassion for each other, simply as fellow human beings, regardless of race or creed, each for the other, and that one person's freedom ends where another's begins, that those rights and freedoms must be equal among us all.

You need to see a good orthopedist, since it sounds like the ankle joint is involved, not just the foot alone. A podiatrist specializes only on the foot, and would probably just send you to an orthopedist. And BTW, running, done properly, is actually better than jogging. Jogging can cause all sorts of problems due to poor form, the shuffling type of gait, uneven impact on the joints due to the slow speed and lack of momentum/balance. Man has been running for hundreds of thousands of years. One thing that can help is to have good quality, well-fitted running shoes, designed for the type of training you do, whether on a track, trail running, cross-training, etc. Good shoes can make a huge difference if you have recurring problems. In the meantime, before you see the orthopedist, ice it. Use a 1 or 2 lb. bag of frozen peas. Ice for 25 to 30 min. at a time, remove the ice and let the area warm to normal temp. on it's own, then repeat 2 or three times. After the first 24 hrs. alternate between heat and ice, ice first. But by all means, see that orthopedist. It would be best if he or she is familiar with or specializes in sports medicine. Best of luck.

Seeing what a big slab avy can really do was what finally brought home to me the sheer destructive power unleashed. Over 20 years ago, we went to see the debris field of a huge full snowpack slab release in upper Logan Canyon, above Logan, Utah in the Wasatch range. This avalanche had traveled twelve MILES from it's origin near the base of a big peak. The immense mass had literally scoured the canyon walls down to rock and soil, washing up around the bends like water sloshing around in a bathtub, before finally blasting across Logan Canyon Highway and fetching up against the opposite wall of the canyon. The road was buried over 45 feet deep before they cleared it out. The debris field of concrete-like snow was filled with rock the size of everything from pebbles and basketballs, to boulders the size of cars and pickups, there were at least a dozen carcasses of deer that looked like they'd been caught in a mangler, in some cases hide and flesh stripped to the bone,bodies torn completely in half, headless, limbs shattered, and hundreds of trees, some as large as 2 feet in diameter, broken into chunks 3 or 4 feet long, with all the branches and bark completely stripped off. There were some smaller animals as well, squirrels, a skunk, marmots, etc., everything just smashed to pieces. Nothing could have survived such a meatgrinder. A few weeks earlier, the son of my writing professor had been killed by a big avalanche just one canyon over. Ever since then, when the forecasts say to stay out of the back country, I listen and find somewhere else to go. I wish every BC skier could have seen that; I think there'd be at least a few less "accidents".

Absolutely, I use the straps on the flats as well, especially when carrying much of a pack. And hey, we're not gettin' old, just smart, right?

This is such a fun thread; I'm not sure which book of Long's that was, but as I remember that passage, he was talking about tourist families, kids and all, standing out in the meadow across from Camp 4 in Yosemite, gawking upwards at the wall, and then hearing, floating down from on high, the exasperated exclamation of a climber trying to communicate with his partner, "Off rappel, ASSHOLE!". Family vacation entertainment.

I'll take it; PM sent.

Second that; in spite of a stated federal corporate tax rate of about 33%, most corporations, nationwide, pay little or no actual taxes due to write-offs, loopholes in the tax codes, tax breaks on the state or local level to attract business, etc. In Oregon, giants such as Nike, Intel, Tektronix,etc. have for years paid the minimum of $10.00 (yes, that's just TEN dollars, the decimal's in the right place) per year. If corporations would, or could be made, somehow, to pay their fair share of federal, state and municipal taxes, the state would have the funds for essential services, maintenance and infrastructure, Oregon health plan, etc. Not to mention schools and higher educ., adequate numbers of State Troopers, cleanup of environmental problems. National infrastructure, rail lines, highways and bridges,health care, proper care for veterans, mental health, Superfund toxic waste sites, the National parks and Forest Service recreation and trails( a big issue for those of us on this site)could all be fully funded. The cities could confront and manage the challenges of homelessness,gangs and drug trafficking,the list goes on and on. Not that I have any illusions or delusions about that happening anytime soon. There is a flip side, in that charitable donations are largely tax deductible, thus the existence of large corporate foundations for everything from education to cancer research to Public Broadcasting. Nonetheless, these kinds of funds never reach the problems and people in desperate need outside of such channels. Only the states and cities themselves are able to know where and for what items funds are needed. So, because the corporations and the super rich amass more and more wealth,while slashing jobs and cutting wages, us little people wind having to pay more for the basic needs and simple joys of life such as trails to hike on, decent schools to send our kids to, reasonable safety and security in our towns, and a few bottles of reasonably priced brew waiting in the creek at the end of the climb. Cheers!

Many of my regular BC ski buddies and I have for years practiced removing our ski straps once we enter skiable terrain in the backcountry, even on known slopes, under favorable(safe forecast)conditions. Not only to avoid shoulder injuries, but because you should never take avalanche forecasts, or the slopes, for granted.

For those with a literary bent, I suggest "Adventures in the Skin Trade". For those of a political/financial mind, "Full Disclosure". And I'm surprised no one's suggested "Full Monty". There's also "Hosers", "Tool Time", "All Racked Up and Nothing to Wear", "Space Balls","Will Climb for Clothes", "A Mighty Wind", "Harder Than It Looks", "Rude Boys", "Gotta A Lewd Attitude", "Straight Up", "The Spice Channel", and my personal favorite, "My Ex Got Everything But My Climbing Gear". Oh, and of course, this climb can only be rated XXX.

Hey, it's America: Shopping list found on the sidewalk- (American Eagle/Crossed Flags symbol at top of page, titled "Things I Gotta Do Today": BeeR cHiPs ciGs BulleTs Have a Nice day ::

Very sorry to hear of Don's passing; I only met him a couple of times, but his personality left an indelible impression, warm, bright, and genuine. A truly fine person. My sincere condolences to his family and friends. "Cattle die, Kindred die, Everyone dies. But the good name Will never die Of one who has done well." -Viking Proverb

Thanks so much for your post; it's indeed a very moving and beautiful place,and seeing this brought back in a rush the thoughts and feelings I had when I was there in 2003. I also have several friends whose graves are there.

Chinooks are used on Denali; on a trip to Talkeetna in 2003, we saw them practicing on the upper Ruth glacier near Mountain House. Not terribly high altitude (they were doing landings on the patch about halfway up the W. face of the Moose's Tooth), but someone in Talkeetna told us Chinooks have gone to some very respectable elevations in the mid-teens on Denali.

Stashing booze in the mountains has been common practice for centuries. The St.Bernard rescue dogs of the Alps with their kegs of brandy on their collars is one early example. My first personal experience with the extent to which it can be taken was while I was working as a guide and packer for Irv Lozier at the Box R Ranch NW of Cora and Pinedale, Wyo.back in the early 80's. This incident was presaged by the fact that I was hired over the consumption of an entire fifth of Jack Daniels at a table in the Cowboy Bar in Pinedale, one bright spring afternoon in April. Irv Lozier is a pretty colorful character around Pinedale,a Vietnam vet with 2 silver front teeth, built like a fireplug,a plumb forked cowboy/packer/guide, and used to be ( he finally had to quit, it was literally killing him) a prodigious drinker. Irv wanted me to come with him on the first pack trip of the season, a 5 day swing through the Section Corner Lake country of the northern Wind River range. We had 5 or 6 guests,another guide named Rocky, and Irv and I each led four pack animals. The lead animal in Irv's string was a big old Missouri mule about 18 hands high named Simon, I think. It seemed to me like a lot of pack animals for such a small party, but there was a reason for that. The first two miles out of the ranch are a long steady uphill grade, and it was a hot day as we left the corral,Irv in the lead with his string, then the guests, and I brought up the rear. We'd stop every once in a while on this climb to let the horses and mules "blow", or catch a breather. The second time we stopped, I noticed Irv way up ahead, lean over from his saddle and reach into the crotch of a tree he'd stopped beside, take something out, and then turn in his saddle to reach under the cover of Simon's pack. Then he reached over into the crotch of the tree again and put something back. The next time I watched a little more closely, and this time I could see he was swapping near empty flasks for full ones. This continued all day long with frequent stops. At one creek crossing, I pulled up next to Irv as we let the animals drink. He reached into his saddlebag and came out with a flask, and said "Here, ya better have some o' this, she's good for what ails ya," with that big silver-toothed grin. It was Christian Brothers Brandy and Welches Grape juice, pretty nasty stuff. Finally we got to camp, and unpacked the horses and mules. I hadn't personally packed all of the panniers, just several in my string. As we helped each other unload the heaviest ones, I could tell that four panniers were completely full of filled flasks, and two more were mixed fulls and empties. No wonder we needed so many pack animals. Over the rest of the week, we stayed over for a day in a couple of different spots, and while Rocky and I took the guests on dayrides up to scenic views or fishing, Irv would take off after breakfast with a mule packed with booze, stocking the mountains for hunting season in the fall. When we got back to the Box R at the end of the week, three animals came back with their panniers full of empties. I mentioned it later to Norm Busselle, Irv's foreman, and he laughed and said," Oh yeah, hell, Irv's got thousand of bottles stashed all over the entire northern end of the Bridger Wilderness. I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that you're probably never more than about 50 or 100 feet from a bottle of brandy in this country, you just gotta know where to look." In later years, I ran across some of Irv's bottles way to the south end of the Winds, in the Wolf Lake and Rainbow Lake country, near Mt. Bonnevile,( Irv used to have a hunting camp there) and way up high nestled in the crags up above Tipi Creek,sheep hunting territory at the extreme northern end. So, if you're ever in the Wind River range, headed down after a climb or backcountry ski tour, maybe pushing snow in a whiteout, and need a bit of a pick-up, just look around a bit, cause you're likely close to some long- forgotten "Lozier Water", as they used to call it.

I was actually watching the launch on live coverage from CNN.I'll never forget hearing the Mission Control flight controller calling out the airspeed and altitude as the rocket rose, and then, when the rocket exploded, pausing for a moment, then saying in a completely flat,almost robotic, utterly emotionless monotone, "Obviously a major malfunction...". It was appalling; in the next few moments, the camera showing the open air spectator gallery focused on Christa McCauliffe's mother in the stands, looking up at the sky with her hands trembling at her face, in utter shock and disbelief. Mercifully, they turned the camera away as she turned towards her husband and broke down. The camera then went back to the explosion cloud, with the auxiliary twin fuel tank rockets spiraling crazily out of control, until they too were detonated by Mission Control while they were still over the ocean. Then the camera began to track pieces of debris falling out of the sky, trailing smoke, until they struck the water. It reminded me immediately of the terrible tragedy that occurred on the launch pad in the 60's when Gus Grissom and two other astronauts were killed in a fire inside the space capsule when an oxygen tank sprung a leak. Space travel is indeed extremely dangerous; while astronauts don't necessarily have to have the same kinds of skills required of fighter pilots, they are nonetheless literally "riding fire" into space, and things that go wrong can transpire in split seconds, irretrievably. Their chances are very,very slim, in any kind of problem. So, they definitely do have to have "The right stuff", like the test pilots and fighter jockeys in Tom Wolfe's book of the same name. They face instant incineration as a part of their job.

Possibly the N.face of Pinnacle Peak?

So let me get this straight, your wording is a little confusing; when you said "the County has changed their plans to decrease funding.", does this mean that they DO intend to to decrease funding for Madrone? And if so, by how much? Does this mean that money earmarked for Madrone has already been spent on Knightsbridge? Just what in the hell is going on? Wasn't funding for Madrone somehow legally committed or locked in? These commissioners sound like a very slimy bunch.

That's pretty cool, I'd like to hear about that, maybe see some photos, over a brew at PubClub sometime. And Peter Arnett; now THAT was a great journalist and newsman. They'd probably never hire someone like him nowdays, too accurate, articulate, and penetrating. Also the difference between my version of the quote and the real thing, it conveys a whole other level of nuance and intent: "...it became necessary...". Words do make a huge difference. "A tenth of an inch difference, and heaven and earth are set apart." -Chinese Ch'an (Zen) Proverb

Many thanks, I stand corrected. After all, we are talking about clarity,and that means attention to detail. I'd honestly never bothered to check the source I first got that quote from, years ago. Hm, for that matter, I have to admit I'm not entirely sure it was Edmund Burke who said "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Thom Paine? Jefferson? Patrick Henry? I had a wonderful American History teacher in high school who told us to never be afraid to ask a question, because, "it's better to look stupid for five minutes, than to be ignorant the rest of your life."

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it.." -US Army Ranger mission report, Vietnam, 1971. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -Edmund Burke "Liberty is always unfinished business." -Title of American Civil Liberties Union annual report, 1956

Wow, Bill; excellent-almost a whole university education right there.

The purpose of a broad-based general education, and the older traditional classical university education, including things such art appreciation, literature and the humanities, is to give us a more humane and truly civilized understanding of the world at large. It's certainly possible in many schools today to get a degree in some area of science or technology without more than a smidgen of exposure to the arts, but if you look closely enough at anything, you come to find that things such as geography, engineering,chemistry,physics,etc, are, in and of themselves, very, or extremely advanced forms of art. And you can't get into geography very deeply before you start running into all kinds of history,archaeology, anthropology, architecture, politics,- in other words, the arts and humanities. Everything we do as human beings is a form of art,whether visual,conceptual,physical or theoretical. Even war; witness the, ahem, LITERATURE Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf referred to from his West Point studies, Sun Tzu's The Art of War,(incredible book) during the first Iraq War. The arts and humanities give us a foundation from which to reason, evaluate, and yes, to examine our feelings about life and about what these various endeavors and disciplines we engage in, are actually FOR. And I'm not talking about touchy-feely, but about what makes anything we do worthwhile- to have a drive and passion, a dedication to some purpose, or to simply be able to do and appreciate something for it's own sake--such as (!) climbing. About as useless a sport as there is,especially in the view of those who write letters to the editor demanding the closure of Mt.Hood and the imprisonment, institutionalization, and financial excoriation of climbers every time there's an accident on the mountain. Why? Probably because many of those who write the letters have had little if any exposure to the arts and humanities, and consequently some very limited views of what human beings, or mountains, for that matter, are all about. I mean, after all, it's just a big 'ol ugly bunch o' ice n' rocks, n' junk, right? An' people? Climb? Do somethin' as crazy azat just fer fun? "Goddamned hippies!! Get A JOB!!" I agree that some of this stuff can be boring--there is indeed good and bad, great and tedious, or middling classical or contemporary literature, art, etc. But a lot of times it's because you don't have the right teacher - someone who knows how to get the magic of the material across to you. And that's not your fault. I struggled with algebra and calculus in high school and college until I ran into a professor who broke the whole thing wide open for me; the next thing I knew, I was literally living in a different world. As it happened, I wound up as an artist and writer, from starting out as a major in natural history. But to this day, those "boring" classes in inorganic and organic chemistry, and the attendant math, were some of the most valuable I ever took in terms of stretching my perceptions of reality, and in developing the discipline and persistence it takes to be a working artist, and not just an educated dreamer. Dreaming, however, is also important, so important, in fact, that none other than Albert Einstein himself once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." This is only the guy who pretty much made the world as we know it, possible. All that knowledge is pretty useless, unless you have some idea of what to do with it. It also reminds me of what the speaker at one of my commencement ceremonies said; "Always remember that your plumbing, as well, as your theories, must hold water." Comparative literature is all about the way people have dreamed, day-dreamed, imagined over the ages, plumbed the depths of thought, emotion, human experience. Seeing that others have been over the same ground, the same questions and difficulties, hundreds or thousands of years before us, we can learn from their mistakes or successes, and, possibly avoid repeating history, or re-inventing the wheel. Otherwise, we're in for trouble. Big trouble. We've come pretty close to it during the Bush years, and this is regardless of whether you're a liberal or conservative. It's become very clear that an administration run by a president who boasted about never reading newspapers, a VP and Sec. of State who had utter disregard for history or cultures other than their own, who stuck to narrow,black-and-white thinking ("you're either for us or you're against us")and rushed in where angels feared to tread, have brought us all down,whatever our political persuasion. So much of this could have been saved by even just a little reading of Shakespeare, not to mention Disraeli, T.E.Lawrence, Caesar, and Marcus Aurelius,or Abe Lincoln, to name just a few. They'd all been there, done that. But nooooo... they didn't even bother to ask GW's dad anything about war,diplomacy,Iraq, or anything else, for that matter. Of course some of that useful history is not all that long ago. In Nazi Germany, a entire generation was raised with very circumscribed ideas about what was and was not "acceptable" art and literature, while being very highly trained in the sciences and technology. Millions of books were banned, and burned, in an effort to rewrite history and literature,to focus thought, opinion, and maniacal pride on an ethnocentric pinpoint. The result was an educational system that produced people who could design, build, and close the doors on the gas chambers and cremation ovens, and when questioned about it later, say with complete equanimity, "Vell, I vass chust doing my job...". To this day there are Germans young and old who think that Adolf Hitler was "a very nice man." The arts and humanities can probably never completely prevent this kind of thing, but they go a long way towards making this a world where people are likely to think twice before committing anything to the flames.