JoshK

Klenke, the summit consisted of a 20-30 degree snow slope leading to a very athestc knife edge of snow, and as eric said, 2 feet of rock. It wasn't technical, but it was definitely exposed. A firm axe self belay was helpful here.

yikes, scary. it was an active weekend avy-wise. Had to be moving with your eyes and ears open extra wide.

It sounds like am. border peak. I have some picks from shuksan from almost this exact day last year that I could scour up to confirm.

Slogged (or diet slogged as eric called it) dome peak with Eric (Ivan) this WE. left car 12:30pm saturday. Stopped by rain ~5:00pm saturday, approx 9 miles up the approach, 3 miles up the bachelor creek trail. set camp in woods to stay dry. hiking by 5am next morning. cold and foggy. reach itswoot ridge around 2pm after much postholing misery and slow going. visibility is shite, cannot see route at all. set up camp around 3pm on a small ridge 1/4 mile past itswoot ridge. wake up at 2am hoping to climb. visibility is about 100 feet. repeat this process every hour until 7am when it miraculously clears up all of a sudden. Hmm, we still want to do this? yeah, but we gotta haul ass. leave camp at 7:30. miserable postholing all along traverse across basin. from 7400ft+ plus snow is hard. thank god. summit at 11:10. yay, very happy. shit, snow softening very quickly, 20 miles back to car. let's fucking move. snow is utter slop. much miserableness back to camp. watch giant avy scour slope we need to cross. good...slope is now safer. bad...shit, that's awful close for comfort. much hot and miserable sweating back up to itswoot ridge, down to cub lake, back up to cub lake pass, back down to bachelor creek, through the brush and to first night's camp. last of food is eaten. down to downey creek by dark. hellish 6 mile trail walk along downey creek with boots utterly soaked and empty stomachs. feels like we are walking on sponges. car reached at 11:40. damn...suiattle river road is long. yup...darrington still sucks. smokey point jack in the box is reached at 1:30 or so. 4 tacos, 1 dbl cheesburger, a chicken fajita pita, 2 large fries, a large coke and a large sprite is consumed between us. home at 2:30. summary: unbelievably beatiful area. definitely more work in may w/ unconsilidated snow than it would be later in season. a good honest ~35+ mile weekend with lots of elevation gain. met our goals of a good non-technical, yet demanding, scenic outing with no other people seen on the normally heavily jackass infested memorial day weekend.

To second what MattP said, we witnessed several slides in the north cascades this weekend. One in particular was quite large. On our way out on Monday it had warmed up quite a bit and I was released two seperate slides (intentionally) by cutting slopes we needed to descend. Neither was fast enough to kill you (unless it rode you over a cliff) but it certainly highlighted the instability that the quick warming brings.

erik, I thought you just stayed on rock!?!?

Holy crap that's a lot of people! I knew hood got crowded but I never imagined *that* many people.

Myabe next time you should post something earlier than one month later?

nice job guys, looks like it was a fun trip. The north cascades were great this weekend, despite the sometimes iffy weather. It's awesome to head out on memorial day weekend and not see any other people.

I think it's a kind of devil's club?

Don't worry, I'm not going in there this weekend. But, in any event, I agree. I've been there before, it's one of my least favorite areas. I'm only going back cause I left some gear there.

Thanks for the info. It's not so much that I want to ski Dome (I plan on skiing the traverse as a whole also) but that I think I'll need flotation of some sort and skis are almost always less shitty than snowshoes, ya know?

Yo. What's the brush bash up bachelor creek on the dome peak approach like? Am I crazy man for thinking I can pack skis through there? It's only at around 3500 feet so I'm thinking the brush is going to be pretty exposed by now.

BWAAHAHAH Haha, you fucking jackass, listen to you. I'll pray that mohammed doesn't rain down rocks on your head for believeing in Jesus then, you fecal felcher.

If it was me personally, I would aim to hit the "ice" pitches between couliors 1 and 2 by sunrise, but that's just me. I'd rather trade some sleep for colder conditions. If the ice isn't there, just be prepared to find some way to bypass that section.

It's been skied before. Extremo, that shit is below your level.

It's been skied before anyway.

It's gonna be warm this WE. Climb early, man.

Alison is right on this one. She owns a copyright to that music and she can replace it however possible. If the end result is an extra copy being out there in the world, that's the theives fault, not hers. Oh yeah, and FUCK THE RIAA.

Shit, cavey hates me cause I'm too nice, or so he says, and you hate me cause I'm too mean. I'm so confused...I need Oprah and Dr. Phil.

Zero Cam is specially designed to flex all the way to the head. That placement would hold. Any other microcam placed that way would RIP! Get ZeroCams they rock. Or Metolius if you want slightly larger sizes cheaper ALIENS ARE JUNK AND SUCK More great advice from the guy who climbs so much he can spray 364 days a year. C'mon, Dru, like everything else they have their pros and their cons. I've been damn happy to have aliens with me on several occasions. I do want some zerocams too tho, they look very useful.

Dude...55 or *SO*...for all we know it was pushin' 60! When you are that rad you can be non chelant (sp?) about a mere 55 degrees!

bwaahhaahahh...I didn't catch that. 55 degrees max. I call a fat bullshit on that. People (myself included) have a very hard time distinguishing actual slope angle. In reality, most double black diamonds at ski areas push around 45 if you're lucky. I bet adrenaline at alpental is 50 or 55 maybe, and that's for only 30 feet at best. Aside from maybe 1 or 2 things at crystal, that's the steepest "marked run" I can think of in the state.