JoshK

I have a light axe and until last weekend just made due with duct taping it to the pole for sketchy shit. Hehe...pretty ghetto. I just got a whippet...much better. They work fine on steep snow and stuff but, I agree, you aren't going to climb much ice with them.

I haven't heard of any other ascents. I'm starting to understand how old-timers get that way. Twenty-five years slip by and you suddenly think, "Dang! How did that happen?" Then there is the opposite side, us "young punks" who think we know experience or what-have-you, when the reality is people were climbing way cool routes before we were even alive.

That's such total bullshit. It's a failure if you didn't reach your goal, and failure is frustrating. It might have been cool anyway, you might have learned something up there, but it's still failure. Sorry to hear that you didn't make it. Nice TR. It may be failure of one specific goal, but I always take multiple goals on trips. For example, summit, take great pics, and come back alive. It's that come back alive one that I make sure gets met above all else

same here...

Don't worry about it too much, it's not as bad as it seems. In fact, I think for the situation handed to the both of you you handled it as well as anybody could. You both took a chance on each other and when the conditions didn't cooperate you made the right call and didn't argue with each other about it. I agree about just being up in the hills, that's the whole point. I didn't summit either this weekend, and I froze and soaked my ass off Friday night, but hey, it was still better than sitting at home!

I'm not suggesting anybody buy them if they would have to be drilled again. If you have a boot of a matching size it would be a good setup, considering everything could be included. They are a fine AT ski, you could do a hellavu lot worse.

No, not this Fri->Mon. This week is finals, next week is spring break. After that spring quarter starts and I only have classes Tues->Thurs. I should be free a good deal for climbs. Mostly interested in alpine, be it climbing, skiing or a combo. Rock is cool too, but not as cool, and I'm a suckass rock climber anyway.

Wow, great pic. Beautiful face. The top looks fairly mellow, any guess how steep it gets below that? I can never tell very well from pics.

That's cause you are a hardass guide and shit dood. The rest of us wankers can't ski that tough resort shit in AT gear!

Alasdair and Ade, nice job guys. It hope it wasn't too cold for ya...I did that route in cold snap in october a couple of years ago and remember some damn cold belays on that shady side of the mountain. Then again we weren't dressed for winter temps.

snow peak gigapower is a great little stove and has an awesome windscreen that you can buy for it. heavy if you're counting grams, but imho it's worth its weight if you're fighting wind. I second this. I tested the coleman F1, the MSR and one other superlight canister stove against the gigapower in wind (ok, blowing on them hard) and the gigapower was FAR superior to the rest. It wasn't even close. It's worth the extra $ as far as I am concerned.

I say again...reasonable.

Yo, I've got a pair of 175cm K2 Shuksans. These are last years model, the one with a 75mm waist. They are mounted with tourlite bindings. The skis are drilled for the heel piece to support either a 301 or 308mm boot length. They can also be adjusted a few mm from either of those. Let me know which mounting you want and I'll have the other holes plugged. I'll also throw in my pair of ascension skins that are cut and fitted for the skis and a pair of tourlite ski crampons. This is a *very* light and great AT setup. They ski just fine, but I'm looking to try a little different setup now. Make me a reasonable offer...

Do you have any pictures? thanks!

Somebody posted a report on the condition and expected repairs a while back, right? Does anybody know when they plan on repairing the damage? Boston, midas, morning star, and probably more creeks up the road done seriously fucked up the road. The pictures were one thing but I didn't realize it was quite that bad. Are they going to wait until later in the spring to start working on that? I sure hope not... Then again...maybe the damage (which could be easily bypassed with a bike) will keep the touron-fest away for a while...

Paul, if you end up doing it more around spring time, let me know, I think I have some pictures looking straight up at the bottom of snow gultch where I could show you where to find the "trail". Once you get up to the snow it's a fun a snow climb in a very cool setting. I would also second the descending the same way you came. I want down the trail way and found it very loooong. Going down snow gulch would be much quicker unless it's icy enough to demand several thousand feet of downclimbing.

Matt, while I am certainly not arguing the climb is fun with the brush, when I did it last year there is actually a faint trail going up the left side of "snow gulch" if you can stay on it, which, surprisingly, I did, it makes the lower section not all that bad. If you can't find it and get stuck schwacking things would get very un-fun quickly.

Well, I got pretty high up, but didn't get it. I had an "interesting" trip to say the least Friday night was the most miserable bivy of my life...snow and spindrift like crazy...froze my ass off. I was pretty sure I would just head home in the morning, but somehow I got myself rolling (I figured it was better sitting around freezing) and I started up hill. For some idiotic reason (utter lack of sleep probably) I picked the wrong notch and after climbing to 8200 I found the other side was a 500 foot drop to the boston glacier. At this point, despite it being early, I was too exhausted from the night before to want to climb all the way back down and then climb up the right notch. Instead I chilled in the sun for an hour and enjoyed the ski down, which was absolutely awesome. As a "bonus" the couliors I climbed to get to the notch were quite sketchy, so I got my technical fill for the day.

Man, if the conidtions you guys had were anything like the sweet shit I had in boston basin today, then I am extra really pissed I didn't go!

Still not quite a fair comparison. Denver is 5k yeah, but the rockies really rise out a higher plateau than that. The cascades are about a 7k range, relief wise, the rockies are more like 3k to 4k, and the relief is over much longer distances. Anyway, 5500 for washington is high, there should be more snow than that.

I've learned from dealing with apartment neighors and shit that you are better of just throwing in some earplugs and ignoring it. More often that not I am buggin' them, not vice versa, so it's good if everybody cuts so slack.

I'll try to say what I think they are all saying a little more...dimplomaticly Distel, I think that bouldering pics can be very cool. Those ones in the photo contest layton did were very impressive. You definitely get some cool shots, but start playing around a bit with your exposure and lighting options and you might be real surprised with some of the cool stuff you can get. One of my favorite pics that I shot was an action shot with the subject in focus and a color and interesting background that was blurred. It shows the action and keeps the subject in focus; a kind of neat effect.

ERRRRRR...damnit! It probably would have been worth skipping that quiz after alll..... Sweet job dudes.

Washington pass is at 5500 feet, so that doesn't really explain it.

Does anybody know why the SR20 snowpack would be so low? It's at average or above most other places...