JoshK

That is what I thoguht but I am pretty bad at picking out the peaks if I am seeing them from a new aspect. Ruth has some great summit views, one of my favorite so far.

Just going throguh some pics...here are a few to look at if you are interested. Ruth Creek Valley from Ruth Summit: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3212&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1 Seattle Skyline and Olys: http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3213&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1

The closeup pic of the single mountain I assume you mean? thanks!

I really suck at figuring these out, so any help I can get to rename my pictures is great. Here are two more, both taken from the summit of Ruth Mountain, near Shuksan. http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3211&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1 http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3210&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1

judging by the weather forecast, 1 week from now we are going to have about 5 or 10 feet of additional snowpack. Decent freezing levels too for the most part.

Cool, thanks, that makes more sense now. I didn't realize sahale was so pointy from that aspect.

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=3208&password=&sort=1&cat=500&page=1 Can somebody (Klenke) tell me what peaks these are. It's taken from the Snowking Mountain approach, but I forget what direction. It looks like forbidden on the right but the glaciers just dont add up to me and it also looks too short. Maybe I am fooling myself. Anybody?

Anybody tried to tour up Snowking Mtn in the winter time? It would definitely add some miles skiing up the South Cascade River Road, but the approach is entirely through forest (lots of old growth at that) and the route from Cyclone Lake to the summit is on a ridge. I think this could be a very fun (gorgeous area) and relatively safe, albeit difficult and long, wintertime tour. Anybody done it?

Do you think the road is clear of snow far enough in? I have skied Earl a few times in the spring when the road is mostly melted out. Good tours back there. Dave, they plow too 29 pines which gets you a decent ways in there from what I can tell. It's about 2 miles from that point to the standup creek drainage which looks like a good place to start. I've never done it but I figured it looked like a promising area for the winter with minimal extra effort. The only downside would be having to listen too the snowmobile tools for a while on the road.

Maybe a ski tour on Sunday...was thinking wenatchee mountains...maybe earl and navaho...possibly good pics of stuart with lotsa new snow.

I was up there on Sunday and tried to ski paradise valley. went up to panorama point and the skiing down sucked. It actually would have tolerable if I could have seen more than 36 inches in front of me. I fell off cornices 4 or 5 times due to not being able to see them. THat got old real quick. The vertigo was awful in the sections without trees. On Monday I went up to blewett pass and skied up and down diamond head. That was pretty fun aside from the moron-mobiliers and their noise. The skiing wasn't great but the nice conditions and visibility made it fun.

Lowell, how have you found those atomics to perform in variable crap and crust?

Hehe, sounds a lot like your now exposed "secret ice" of last season

Because it was probably in perfectly fine shape this weekend.

Sam, those pictures are really gorgeous. Some great shots in there.

I was up there in May a couple of years ago...the pretty big snow year I think. The entire summit pyramid was awesome neve which took tools great. That was the perfect icing on an awesome ski tour (20" of new the day before then 3 days of sun... )

Doing some crap weather ski touring on Sunday. Unfortuantely errands on Saturday and homework on Monday.

That is awesome! Great post!

Sulfide could be a long haul in mid winter, esp. with the amount of low level snow we have add. That could add several miles on roads; not sure if you care or not. Sulfide would probably be more straight forward in terms of less avalanche prone terrain, but there are definitely plenty of areas in that approach to get yourself in trouble as well. A couple of years ago a partner and I dug a pit and continued over a suspect slope during cool weather. Two days later, upon heading down, the slope had slid due to the warmer days...

Norman, the Fernow->SFJ->Maude has a lot of distance that I didn't realize when we did it. THat was probably a bigger factor than the elevation. Despite the topo distances, Fernow and SFJ seem *much* farther apart than Maude and SFJ. I just *might* be able to be talked into trying the foursome with Copper added.

OK, I just looked at a topo. Indeed copper is about as far away from fernow as fernow is from SFJ, and maude and SFJ from each other. Copper is 8964, so it is definitely a top 1000. If you were seriously looking to punish your self you could do copper->fernow->SFJ->Maude in a day. Distance wide, I'm virtually certain it's possible because we actually ended up having a lot of spare time after doing the 3 of them and we weren't really hustling too much. The difficulty looks like it might be getting over fernow's ridges and over to copper. From the topo it looks like steep terrain and copper itself looks rather rugged.

Yeah, Dave and I did fernow, SFJ and Maude in a day. Frenow was actually pretty cool. It felt much more "removed" than the other two and walking up through the col then across the old dying glacier is pretty neat. If you are simply trying to hit 3 or more in a day, I'm sure you could find an easier trio, however. There is another peak nearby there...copper maybe? I think that is top 100 as well, but I could be wrong. I dont have a topo handy, but I wonder if it would be possible to enchain all 4.

How was stuff at Banks Lake? Worth the drive out there?

I actually had a couple of fun nights of skiing 2 years ago in the light rain. Like I said...it was empty, and the groomers were kinda fun.

Yeah, it sucks balls. But hopefully everybody will stay home and it'll at least be less crowded.