Gary_Yngve

quote: Originally posted by David Parker: But knowledge there is cold beer in your car will propell you like the wind! It's not that bad!! I was assuming he'd catch the boat at Big Beaver and not hike the seven miles. Alas, we didn't have a car waiting for us at the other end...

quote: Originally posted by David Parker: If I may be so BOLD...I highly suggest you reverse direction! Go from Hannegan to Ross Lake. You'll be much happier taking a nice swim and hanging out in the sun when you get done vs arriving in a dusty parking lot. Also, If there is marginal weather, it will only improve heading east. Take a quick spin up Whatcom Peak on the way. You'll have an AMAZING view from up there! But then the most brutal part of the trip is the last few hundred feet of up from the dam to the hwy. You reach Big Beaver camp and see it's only 7 more miles to the lake... you haul ass up a knob, contour around the lake, and then get to the dam, thinking you're back in civilization again... but not quite yet.

quote: Originally posted by fleblebleb: Hey, that was a really cool coincidence to run into you at Triumph last Saturday bcraig. How did your trip go? Did the weather stay decent Sunday? Here's a pic of the four of you crossing the glacier: pic

My parents are visiting in two weeks, and I'm taking them backpacking through the Enchantments (if we can get permits). They got $50 from a friend to purchase gourmet camping food. I've never bought the stuff because it's just too pricy for me... I stick to the couscous and HC. Anyone have any favorite entrees? Doesn't have to be MSR... there's also Mountain Gourmet?

quote: Originally posted by Cpt.Caveman: Wild things ice sack I love my Wild Things Ice Sac. I've used it all season, with the exception of the five, ummm... six, day Challenger trip, where I reluctantly went with a larger pack.

quote: Originally posted by Rodchester: The Mountaineers are going to mad at you guys. Tisk tisk tisk. Hey, I was with the Mounties on the Eldorado Glacier and the Sahale Glacier and we didn't rope up. As for some recent trips that come to mind, we didn't rope up on the Triumph Glacier, but we sure did rope up for the Challenger Glacier.

I was up there a few days ago via Sahale Arm. My only complaint was the trail kept switchbacking when I wanted the more direct route. Start early enough in the morning and keep moving and the flies won't be a problem at all. Queen Sabe has a few crevasses on it, but navigation is straight forward. Sahale Glacier felt more like the Muir Snowfield.

In John Long's "Close Calls," there is a hilarious account of some big-wallers who pack some clubs and a few hundred balls into their haul bag, and once they found a suitable ledge, turned the Valley into a driving range. Innocent tourists were getting bombarded, car windows were getting smashed... Fights were breaking out in the parking lot... The rangers were trying to figure out where the balls were coming from but couldn't.

quote: Originally posted by Dr Flash Amazing: Actually, yeah. Do you guys sell 2nds and/or blems from your HQ there in SeaWa? FF has an annual sale around April or so where they sell old rentals. I got a 20-degree down bag from them for $70.

quote: Originally posted by Dru: i have heard squirrel pie is a popular dish down South. probably with maynonnaise icing Haven't heard of that one... but a few years ago, my grandfather had a rabbit raiding his garden, so my dad shot it. He cooked it on a big ol' iron skillet, and it was quite tasty. When I was little, I ate the heart of a deer that my dad had bagged that morning. Well, it wasn't quite the full heart... you could see the bullet hole.

Nice sig, Stebbi. Though I preferred drinking water from Noel's bladder. The water had the slight flavor of caramel latte.

I had just gotten back from a climbing trip. Put my gear down and ran to the bathroom to take a leak. When I finished, I decided to do a pullup on the door frame. Little did I know that there was a pipe above the door, and the pipe was encased in a box with a sharp edge... I quickly fell to the floor as my hand went to my forehead to stop the blood...

A friend of mine's wife was at a corporate picnic for a certain large software corporation and decided to have her first climbing experience be one of the inflated climbing wall they had there. Well, she had no problem climbing up. Then the "belayer" (some 15-year-old minimum-wage punk) told her to lean back to get lowered. The dumbfuck was "belaying" by holding the rope directly, with maybe 50% friction from the TR setup. So he gets rope burns on his hands and LETS GO of the rope, dropping her about ten feet (though onto soft inflated stuff). But the other half of the rope gave her nasty rope burns across her back (they had some weird rigging with a pulley at the base as well). So the jackass wasn't even using a hip-belay. And he let go of the rope. And to make matters worse, he blamed everything on her. No surprise she never wants to try climbing ever again. I tried to explain to her that nothing was her fault and that the asshole deserves to be sodomized with horsecock, but you cannot argue with the pain from bad rope burn... Next time I see one of those inflatable wall setups and I see that their setup is unsafe and they have an incompetent belayer, I'm going to dry tool it...

quote: Originally posted by MATT B: If you where to label someone as experienced, what would you mean? Knows where to secretly cache the beers so we magically find some cold ones on the descent.

quote: Originally posted by two_banana: "Someone postulated on National Public Radio a week or so ago that Lance Armstrong was the greatest athlete in the world. Greatest athlete in the world? I wonder if he’s an athlete at all." http://www.msnbc.com/news/785267.asp?cp1=1 This bozo must be a friend of Ken Schram's. The bozo wrote: "For my money, being the greatest athlete in the world involves strength, speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, mental toughness and the ability to make your body do things that defy description. " In that case, the greatest athlete ever was Alex Lowe.

quote: Originally posted by dbb: I say buy your big cams as forged friends: #2, 3, 4. As ppl have said, they're light, cheap ($25-35 at MEC) and bomber. Then drop the cash for Metolious or somthing good for the small stuff. Does anyone have any opinions on DMM 4CUs? (They are at Jim's store and are also available for cheap at MEC.)

quote: Originally posted by Lowell Skoog: I'll second the comment about the wind. It was strong all day. I cleared the clouds above 6500 feet after 1pm. The wind was blowing wild looking cloud plumes over Rainier. Willis Wall was covered with spindrift--blowing dirt. Ah, so the clouds cleared up... at about 7000 feet we found some shelter and waited from 9:30 to 10:30 to see if conditions would improve, but no such luck. There was a huge lenticular over Rainier last night. About 3 AM I got a picture of it lit by the moonlight. As someone posted elsewhere, what's up with those meteorologists with the forecast on Sunday? Usually they do better than that.

Mowich Lake Road is open all the way to the lake. Just came back from there; we were about a quarter mile from Echo and Observation and decided not to go further in whiteout and high winds that would not go away. But the flowers are great, and there are no mosquitos yet on the peaks on the western perimeter of Lake Mowich. I used the trip to introduce a friend to alpine scrambling... He started off extremely hesitant about descending a 3rd class gully, but by the end of the trip, he was referring to Spray Park Trail as the Grandma Trail.

quote: Originally posted by Lambone: Any good bivi site recomendations? Thanks If you don't mind camping on snow, Eldorado Basin (6100), the ridge between Eldorado Basin and Rouch Basin (6300) or the ridge between Eldorado Glacier and Inspiration Glacier (7200). There is also a rocky place on the Inspiration Glacier (kinda where you stop traversing and start going up) where some jackasses built somewhat of a rock wall.

quote: Originally posted by Matt: Question for Gary: How bad were the mosquitos? I didn't get bitten up at all. But you know how the mosquitos are -- a new batch might have hatched by the weekend.

quote: Originally posted by Matt: How hard is it to climb Eldorado in a day? It looks reasonable, but Nelson's book makes it sound like a death march. I don't think it would be too bad. We pushed from 2100 to camp at 7200 casually in 7 hours, and the next morning, it was only an hour to summit. Without bag, bivy, pad, stove, pot, doing the remaining 1600 feet the first day would have been no big deal. The main problem is the terrain is kinda hairy. Climbing through the forest (the first 1700 feet or so) in the dark would take longer because of the roots, muddy spots, trying to stay on-trail, etc. Maybe you could start at 7:00 and be at the talus before sunset. The talus isn't actually so bad because after the lower talus field, there is a trail to the right that mostly skirts the rest of the talus. Maybe take the rest of the route at an easy pace to top out around 4 AM? I prefer the two-day version because the sunrise and sunset are so spectacular up there.

quote: Originally posted by enem: has anyone been on eldorado recently ? are there any open crevasses ? how is the river crossing, is the customary large log still in place ? thx in advance A new tree just caved in and bridged the gap. The crevasses on the glacier are just beginning to open up. Things are melting out fast up there. We summitted at 5:45 this morning. The snow was so soft that we didn't use crampons, and we didn't place any pickets because they probably wouldn't have held.

quote: Originally posted by wotan of ballard: Crossing the North Fork of the Cascade River is rather gnarly now. A 3 foot step across from a bare log to the root wall of an overturned huge tree, with the racing waters below. Kind of like the step across from Jello Tower on Castle Rock, reversing the move is more dicey because its balancey. Blow it and your body will be floating past Marblemount before your buddies could drive there. A tight handline or good extension to the log (well secured board) could significantly reduce the risk. Not any more. Yesterday: Today: But I make no guarantees on how long it will last -- the river is high and eroding everything in sight. Oh yeah... the bad thing about the tree falling there: the second half of the tree fell on the trail.

quote: Originally posted by tomrogers: Hello, we are going to climb the NE Ridge of Black Peak this weekend (and the East Facetime permitting). Are there any snow updates or suggestions regarding these routes? Here's a pic of it from last weekend from Cutthroat Pass. Maybe it will help.

quote: Originally posted by forrest_m: ...so it's too much of a pain to figure out who is a motorist making a potty break and who is the scofflaw climber? Nah, those forestry losers would probably give the motorists a ticket and make them prove that their pot[ty] break is not recreational.