JoshK

Anybody? Snowpack seems to still suck balls, so possibly some sort of ridge route or whatever. Just looking to get out, get up something and get some pics. If you are interested, PM or email me 2nite.

Jeff you may want to change your email so it doesn't read correctly or you are just inviting tons of spam.

Oh, yeah, that is totally understandable, I was just bitching about the constant stops in crap towns and the lack of two lanes the entire way. I've been spoiled by I-90 and I-5 I guess. Actually, I was wondering that...are we the only country that has a true **FREE**way system? I know any industrialized country has highways, but I have yet to see another place where you can get on a freeway and go nonstop anywhere in the country without having to stop inside a town, etc.

It wasn't visible inside the vehicle. Snoboy, interesting, but every other person we spoke to seemed to believe that out of province plates is generally the deciding factor between the junkie picking your car or somebody elses. We went trhough vancouver since we were doing a loop trip to show my girlfriend lots of different parts of the province, etc. I would never ever ever go on TC1 to get to the rockies again. That thing is a sorry ass excuse for a highway, and it as about as direct as going to alaska through china.

For next time I go to Canada that is...? Well, apparently the rumors of out-of-province (and probably out of country even more so) cars getting fucked with is true. We got broken into in Vancouver on the first night of our trip. What made it worse is the one thing the bastard stole was our MP3 player which was all of our road trip music. Major suck. The dudes at the speedy auto glass up on w. brodway were quite possibly the coolest folks ever tho. They did everything to make sure we were taken care of, the care was secure for the night and then fixed ASAP the next day. The said that with their backlog it would be 2pm but they would try thier hardest to have to done before noon. They called us at 10am and it was done. It's too bad one character can put a sour note on a trip but the rest of it was so awesome and everybody we met was so great it was easy to look past that. Anyway, I guess it's an excuse to do the MP3 player search all over again.

Good call, but there is definitely fat stuff that is in protected areas. Good to hear you are ok, that must have been seriously freaky. What climb?

Whatever...anything on that parkway is a hellavu lot more fun than any ice you'd find in WA right now. If the guy wants to climb ice I dont see why it wouldn't be a worthwhile trip. If PC isn't safe, you can certainly find something that is.

I got these "glacier glove" things that are basically neoprene gloves with fleece lining. obviously the dont breath for shit, but they are warm and sticky as hell. they seem to work pretty well too.

I have no clue what the avy conditions are here right now (seem to be very random from what I can tell) but I can definitely attest to the fact that polar circus, as seen through a 450mm zoom lens is FFFAAATTT. I saw a couple of teams on the weeping wall yesterday and that seemed to be pretty sweet as well. The last 3 days here it's been mild but not that warm during the days (was mid 20s to 32 on the parkway yesterday) and cold overnight. I'm not sure if any of these climbs benifit from melt freeze, but I have to imagine to some extent. Lake Lousie got a few inches of snow tonight and the temp dropped real quick...this made for fun times watching the major cluster fuck on the road up to the lake involving 1 stuck car, a stuck minivan, 2 stuck SUVs and a stuck tourbus full of japanese tourists. Definitely the highlight of my trip so far!

Im on a spring break road trip with my girlfriend through the canadian rockies. We spent a couple of nights in Vancouver then spent the last two in lake lousie. We brought some climbing gear as she said she had interest in trying ice climbing at some point. Yesterday we drove the parkway from lake louise to about 100 clicks south of jasper. We climbed for a few hours at tangle creek, a fun, right off the road beginners area. She had a good time trying ice climbing for her first time and I got to climb 4 pitches of ice on a vacation where I wasn't supposed to climb any, so that was a bonus! In any event, the torture of it all...the parkway is in FAT. at least every major climb I could see from the road and recognized looked awesome. From what I could see of PC it looked huge, so did most of the mt wilson climbs. Tangle creek was super fat and the ice was awesome plastic. It made for good conditions to sprint up and down the easy WI 2 and 3 ice. The torture is having to drive by all that awesome ice and not be able to climb it!

I don't know why, but from Winchester, Larabee looks like it's really big and really far away - the first time I went up there, I thought for a second that I was looking at Mt. Baker, which was plenty disorienting! But it's not as far as it looks - we were able to ski down into the drainage and then skin up Larabee (not to the top, but as far as you could easily skin) by mid-morning. You had the exact same impression as me, which is why I left it for another time. It just looked very large from that vantage. Oh well, that road will be passable in no time and I'll go do winchester and maybe ski down to the lake, that looked fun.

So Dru, from my camp, I could see the "light pollution" coming from the north. Was this Chilliwack or was I actually seeing the lights from 'couver? I'm not sure how big chilliwack is so I dont know how much light it puts off.

There is lots of good reading on this very subject in Al Franken's book. Unlike his right wing foes, Franken backs everything up with notes, dates, quotes, etc. very effectively. Anybody who thinks that it was Clinton who blew it and not Shrub really owes themselves a read of that book.

Yup, I was all by my lonesome. It felt like I had the entire range to myself The skiing in that area just looked endless. I could have camped up there for 2 weeks and not even begun to hit everything I wanted to. I wish I had time to go up Larabee but it looked like quite a haul from where I was at. Some of the big drainages coming down from the east of the approach road looked like they would be great skis too.

I know, I'm gonna cash in on that road sometime! I guess you are right, it's just the shock of seeing it across from such a rugged and interesting area.

Turns down from Winchester false summit. You can see the true summit just to the left of the false summit. There was also a real nice run down that.

The point is not that battery wears out and can't be replaced but the fact that it isn't field replacable. This is just fucking stupid. Myabe i'm the only one that actually likes to use my MP3 player for more than 1 day on a multiday trip, but this is why 98% of the players out there didn't fit my needs. The last thing I want to do is carry around the dead weight after day 1.

Also, of all the things I didn't think I'd see...I saw a pretty "in" looking ice line (maybe 1 pitch) up on a cliff on the side of yellow aster butte. That kind of surprised me considering the rather warm temps.

Now I see what everyone means about Canadian logging. From the Tomyhoi peak area it was pretty evident how...umm...liberal the canadian logging restrictions are.

Climb: Winchester Mountain & Tomyhoi Peak-West Flank and Standard Route Date of Climb: 3/21/2004 Trip Report: Did a tour up in the Yellow Aster Butte area this weekend. I started up Twin Lakes Road (which is drivable for quite a while but the WSDOT is being a dick about letting people in) and left the road at the summer trailhead for yellow aster butte and tomyhoi lake. I skinned up to Gold Run Pass then started up the "ridge" towards Winchester Moutain. I made camp on a prominant knoll (more like a cliff with one passable side) marked on the topo as 5924. Beautiful night to be out and a comfortable bivy. On the down side I was careless and let my wonderous spaghetti dinner slide down the snow, into a chute and off into oblivion. If anybody is hungry, there is a freez-dried spaghettie meal somewhere at the head of Swamp Creek. IN the morning I skinned and climbed up tot he summit of Winchester mountain, and checked out the lookout while I was there. I couldn't get in and I didn't feel like extracting the snow from around the door. The ski down from Winchester kicked ass beyond belief. Great snow. After packing up camp, I skied back down to Gold Run Pass and started the climb up Yellow Aster Butte. From the top of the Butte I skied down to the "many tarned meadow" a ways south of Tomyhoi. After gaining the very gentle rib ascending to Tomyhoi I dropped all my overnight gear and skinned up. By the time I reached the top of Tomyhoi the lighting had become somewhat flat, but the snow was still decent, if a bit heavy. The ski down was uneventful and pretty fun. I grabbed my gear then skiied down to the road, only having to do about 15 minutes of swearing making my way down through thick ass north cascades forest. The road out sucks balls cause it's literally flat for quite a while. I was looking forward to coasting down, but it wasn't to be. All in all, a very fun tour, I had a great time and the area is gorgeous. The views of the border peaks and the fraser river valley and the peaks up in canada are awesome. That Larabee mountain is also very nice looking, at least with snow on it. And, of course, the views of Shuksan and Baker can't be beat. Hereis a topo map. Climbing/Skiing in red and Descents in yellow. I'll post pics when I get them downloaded. http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3973&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1 Gear Notes: Skis, Skins, basic overnight bivy gear. Approach Notes: It's something like 4 miles to start out on road, but not very bad. If you are willing to piss of the DOT and shovel some of their burm out of the way you could drive up probably 1 1/2 miles of that, and it's all the steep part. Something tells me they dont actually have any jurisdiction over national forest land, so I really dont think they could do much. Snow pack get's consistent at 3k (what a bizzare year) and is quite sizeable from 4 up. The cornices up high are mammoth!

FWIW, I did a backcountry tour north of the baker ski area (in the tomyhoi area) both sat and sun and conditions were beyond perfect. The only real slide hazard was slow wet snow slides on very steep stuff below rocks and that was all very avoidable.

Doesn't bother me a bit, junior. Dole was as exciting as a piece of Melba toast...never had a chance. But just for the sake of semantic clearity, Clinton did not receive more than 50% of the popular vote versus HW Bush, hence a 'majority', or I believe, versus Dole. (I'll have to investigate the latter.) Hey, shouldn't you be lounging in New Zealand on daddy's dime right now? How many of those jet-a bottles did you end up tossing into the burn can? Sorry, my mis-type, I meant to say he actually had more votes than his opponent, unlike our current commander in thief. Nope, ended up bailing on NZ due to your stirring arguements.

fairweather, it must just burrrrn you that Clinton was not only re-elected, but elected both times with an acutally majority!!

Funny the folks at Headroom Headphone (some serious headphone audio junkies there!) don't seem to think so. With or without a headphone amp, the iPod holds its own. It's all about the mp3 encode in the first place. I run the iPod with Beyerdynamic 250's and it sounds sweet. OK, fine, whatever. I hooked both the iPod and the Creative to my car's preamp in and tried them both. The iPod got to about 75% before it started to clip and get noticeable background noise. The creative could be played full volume (which lets the volume knob work on the same scale for the MP3s as with the tuner, etc.) without any distortion or hiss. the iPod is great, it's among the best, but for the use I wanted, belive it or not, there are actually MP3 players out there better than the iPod. Additionally, as I said, I wanted a very large player and I wasn't ready to take out financing to get a 40gb iPod.

Why? Even if you are all for the tourons having access (I guess, in reality, I'm prety indifferent) it's a pretty short ride on a bike.