JoshK

Nope, you use the car stereo's volume knob but the lower volume you have coming out of the device, the weaker the signal. It's pretty annoying when volume 10 on the radio is quite loud but barely audible when playing the MP3.

I am up for whatever. Just show me the line and I will ride it. I know that I want to get at least one day on the rock though. Hey anybody else able to go up Thursday night early friday morning? I want to make the most of it that weekend. I dont think you'd be intersted in riding the E face coulior on cutthroat unless you dig skiing 75 degree ice and rock The south shoulder approach route, however, is a great ski and makes a nice topping on doing the route.

I also went with the Epic on a Volant coat. I think it is a pretty good fabric choice all and all. I haven't had many problems with moisture getting in during normal conditiosn I would have my down coat on. Obviously I dont wear it during rainfall or something dumb like that.

I admit to generally carrying a few pins on a route that isn't super-common and I can't scrounge up really good beta on. I also admit to placing pins on several different occasions for bailing or rapping off something I didn't mean to get myself up.

yeah and I'll come along and board it... and the NF too maybe? Next time we get corn? I'd love to do the NF up and the white salmon down. Keep me in mind , I have friday->monday off every week.

Do you ski? I've heard the white salmon is a wonderful ski climb. If you wanted to ski it, I would probably be up for partnering up for it.

Learning to navigate with map and compass is esential, there is no excuse not to know how. But, with that said, those who deny the usefullness of a GPS (or even an altimiter) are just being stupid. If cost wasn't an issue, it would be ridiculous not to carry one when the weather good go bad. yes, you can do everything you can with a GPS by simply knowing how to read a map and use a compass but the GPS is great for moving fast when you cant see shit. The ability to simply look at it and follow an arrow is pretty idiot-proof. The better GPSs with topo maps are amazing, I have used them to navigate to a specific location (small pass, col, etc.) in a whiteout. As for battery life i Have a set of rechargable AAs that I use with it. My GPS will last an entire day of being on with one set. I generally dont have it on that long of course. I carry one extra set on most trips and I am always covered. Maybe its the geek factor but I often carry mine even during good weather just for the fun factor of tracking various things.

It also encompossed several economic downturns and recessions. I wonder what the numbers from 1990 to 2000 would look like? The numbers back up the obvious fact that the rich get richer while the poor get poor. More money and power gets you even more of both, while lack of them just gets you fucked even harder. What is amazing is the way the republicans are able to fool a good % of the middle class into believing their economic and tax strategies will actually benifit them, rather than the uber-rich.

Sounds like a great time. I'd be up for the E face coulior route on cutthroat if conditions cooperate and it seems like it might be good if anybody is interested in doing it with me. I did it last year and it was a good time. Combine that with the sweet ski of cutthroat's south shoulder and it makes for a pretty good day.

I'll throw in a vote for the ascension glidelites; the ones with the cow patterned print. I got them cause nothing else in the width I wanted was available and I really like them. It's a good connection system (similar to G3 I think) and they seem to climb well. I also had a pair of BCA low fats and they definitely were lighter. I didn't use them for long but they seemed to work fine if you are interested in saving some weight. I heard some bad things about the glue on the G3s, any one know about this? Also, for the G3 users...how can they climb well? The feel of the hairs going against the grain doesn't feel nearly as pronounced as on the Ascension or BCA skins...do they still climb the same?

Gib ledges looks like a walkup right now.

Dave, the spider glacier is neat, but I think it would only be worth it to go further. There is a tour described for northstar mountain...this would be a great tour. The lyman glacier snowfield on the other side of spider gap is a fantastic descent and the tour across the lyman lakes would be awesome.

Good suggestions so far. I've been up Snowking...it would make an awesome tour. I actually tried to fit in this winter but kept finding other things to do. Ruth Mountain is awesome and the views are spectacular On Glacier Peak, frostbite ridge is very skiable, and a much better tour than the shitkum (standard route), IMHO. The sitkum is a fun ski but not super exciting and the steep trail down from boulder basin isn't so fun. I think kennedy ridge (the way to frostbite) is more enjoyable. The area I was in a week or so ago off the twin lakes trail north of shuksan is great too. Tomyhoi is the well known peak (the south side of it) but there is lots of much better stuff in the area. You could tour for days in there. On tour I was thinking of is up the south side of Tomyhoi, down the north face (Dru posted a picture of this), up Larrabee, down to the saddle, up winchester, down winchester and out. That tour would give you a couple of real nice moderatley difficult skis and some great touring terrain.

Now *that* is bizzare.

I think she is right. I feel bad for you people who live in paranoia and fear. You like in Portland, OR not a Kurdish village in Iraq. I'm thinking the chances of you getting gassed in such a way that your home gasmask is going to save you is about as likely as a band of mormon school children invading your neighborhood and executing everyone.

Ha! The French are idiots.

Nope, it is a B.C. problem. More auto thefts here than any other place in N.A. because of the meth/ drug problem. That is what most people there seemed to indicated. One dude said he lived where you do, in langley, and I guess it is the stolen car capitol of canada?

sweet! It's mine! Glad you found it!

I've got fleece tops and bottoms if you still want those? As for axe, you'll probably want your basic glacier axe which obviously wont be geared for waterfall ice. Then again, I dont think you'd want to carry a relatively heavy technical ice tool on rainer either, but who am I to say? Same things with crampons, you'll have to make a sacrifice one way or another. technical crampons with vertical front points often use a vertical rail front piece (tho I have seen those that dont, such as BD bionic which is sometimes called a cookie cutter. They snowball up pretty easily compared with a flat front piece crampon. If I was going to get one pair of crampons for everything I would get something with vertical front points and a flat front piece, such as the BD bionic I mentioned. I have no idea if that is a good crampon or not, I am just using it as an example. For boots, I would look seriously at leather boots. Leathers climb ice better and are warm enough for rainer (IMHO) in all but the coldest times of winter. There are some plastics that climb ice very well, but I would prefer leathers overall. I've never climbed a volcano around here (or any glacier for that matter) in anything but leather boots, save my ski boots.

Blake, are you just trying to do Fernow in a day or specifically do it in a day from Holden? If the former, it is definitely doable in a day from the phelps creek trailhead. I really enjoyed the hike up into leroy basin and up and over onto the miniglacier to fernow. It's a great peak in a neat area, definitely one I'd recommend. Seven Fingered Jack on the other hand...

No, as ketch says I'll just adjust my expectations next time and enjoy it for what it is. As it was I was hoping for fast travel and didn't get it. As we've discussed at length here it obviously isn't the best way to get to banff from seattle, but it at least it allowed us a loop so we could see new things the entire time. Unfortunately it was nasty weather the day we went east through chilliwack. I was hoping to see tomyhoi since I had been up there just 2 days earlier. So you expect a giant highway through a extremely low population area that traverses a bunch of mountains.

Good info Paul. We started learning about this in geology last quarter, and I found it very interesting. I'm sure you know this, but for the others on the board, an interesting Washington fact: 90% of the earths continental crust is limestone (is that the one?) where only a small portion is basalt. The oceanic crust is comprised entirely of basalt. Washington is interesting in that it's exactly the opposite of the rest of the continental crust. Something like 90% of the crust here is basalt, owing to the fact that a good majority of the state is on an old giant lava bed. Oregon and Idaho also have parts of this flow.

Whatever, that couldn't be further from the trip. I probably noted to my girlfriend 100 times during the trip stuff that I liked so much more about Canada than the various fucked up things that exist down here. I love it up there. The fact remains that TC1 sucks compared to the interstates, and that one I am sticking by! About the breakin, in no way to I label that as a Canadian problem. As I said, the way people treated us and helped out following that incident was just awesome. Lots of people went out of their way to get us fixed up quick and on with our vacation. I think the problem with out of province plates is something you'll see alot in any place, however. As I said, everybody we had to mention the breakin to said that they generally go out for out of provine vehicles, probably for the reasons listed above. What I would like to see happen is the US get rid of the southern half of this country and unite the north with Canada

Columbia peak has a somewhat canadian rockies look to it in that picture...with the horizontal banding of snow and rock.

Apparently if you fucking read, you would have seen that the entire point was to go through Vancouver. My girlfriend really wanted to go there as part of the trip. I would have gladly headed right through Idaho and up (the way we came back) and climbed ice for 6 days if it was my choice, but it was a trip for the both of us.