JoshK

Honestly, it's a bit more fair to the rest of us if rescuers and the news were MORE critical of climbers in accidents. I'd rather they exaplin that, in this case, somebody probably did make a very poor judgement call, rather than allow the "climbing is randomly dangerous" perception to linger.

zo, i highly recommend trying the other direction as well. The gentle approach through the ever chaning scenery you get from the snow lakes approach is very nice. After that you drop down and get out real quick via assmaster, which is great. The bike is HIGHLY recommended!! The snow makes things very easy to get up to prusik right now, IMHO. I found travel efficient with only boots.

Awesome stuff. Was just listening to some about 20 minutes ago. Ivan, i've got a couple of great albums i recently picked up. You can, um - listen to them, next time we climb.

Climb: Enchantment Lakes-Hike Date of Climb: 6/15/2006 Trip Report: I wouldn't normally post a hike report, but people are always asking about enchantment conditions and I wanted to recommend this trip as a way to see the entirety of the enchantments without the pain of overnight permit hassles. I had been wanting to try a loop hike from the Snow Creek trailhead, through the enchantments, and out via assmaster pass and the colchuck lake trailhead. With a "partly cloudy" forecast i did this on Thursday. I started out by caching a bike at the colchuck lake trailhead. The hike was beautiful, as expected, and the snow because quite solid around 6500 feet. Above that the snow pack was still quite significant and I was on snow the rest of the way, until assmaster pass. A freeze overnight left the snow very easy to walk on. The bike ride down was a nice bonus. Very quick and almost entirely downhill. It only takes like 20 minutes to get back to the car. All totaled it is about 16 miles on foot and 8 miles on the bike. I highly recommend this as a fun and interesting training hike. I definitely plan on repeating it when the snow is gone and the larches are yellow. I used tennis shoes the majority of the way on trail and switched to lightweight boots for the higher parts on snow. I could have gotten away with just tennis shoes. Assmaster pass can currently be descended almost entirely on snow. This made for a way more pleasant descent of the pass than is normal. Total time was about 11 hours and this was moving fairly slow. I was consantly stopping as I took ~300 pics and was totally without sleep. This hike could certainly be completely muched faster.

How much snow does this buttress normally hold? Would I still encounter significant snow on route? thanks, -josh

Yeah, cause I'm sure REI is gonna be thrilled to update your mega-cheap-on-sale beacon while they are at it - so they can lose more money on the sale.

Wow...that thing is pathetic. 9.6" ground clearance - the same as my Audi allroad station wagon, which doesn't look like a toy. I admit, it's probably a bit more capable than the even more poserish H2.

Don't get me wrong - AWD is my much preferred choice. I haven't owned anything but in, i dunno, 5 years. They do, however, suffer from much worse gas milage and, as I said, gas is a major $$ factor in climbing today. I have definitely got places in my AWD that a standard FWD small car would not have made it to but all things considered, a FWD small car would have sufficed 95% of the time. For the other times, find a partner with AWD and make him drive.

At this point I would aim for fuel efficiency. You can still get up the vast majority of roads in a small FWD car. Gas is becoming a huge % of the cost of climbing for me. What price range are you thinking?

I will die rather than fart into my precious nalgene. heavens to betsy use the tubing you brought along as part of your Backcountry Enema Kit - New from Burton Gear this year! - for lifesaving and not From Burton? Does it come complete with a heavy baggy camo print case to store it in?

Unfortunately, here in reality, the farmed fish are an important part of bringing a decimated species back to healthy numbers. I certainly stick to eating wild salmon, but still, this sucks awful.

And where exactly did you have that spatula?

If any rangers are reading this: it is extremely LAME that the gate is locked. The road is in perfect shape beyond the gate. Agreed. Unless the result is going to be harm to the road (not the case at this point) there is no reason you should have us locked out. Let US deal with the parking. It's our fucking road, we paid for it, now unlock the damn gate.

Both approaches are easy. Bitching about the Enchantment approaches qualifies you for automatic Colorado residency and a membership in the 14ers club.

Was Dave K one of your guides? He's a good buddy of mine...

I am listening to the neighboring English pub go crazy. Soccer (err...."football") == great sport to play, boring sport to watch. John Stewart had a world cup guide on the other night. He had some tips for distinguishing between an "exciting" scoreless game and a boring scoreless game. Perhaps I should have watched...

Well, fortunately AWD is better for 99% of the real world driving scenarios out there than 4WD. My subbie has AWD with a driver controlled locking center-diff.

You can thank Ronald Reagan...

When I did it (in april if I recall) the coulior was straight forward (as picture in gary's pics) but the west ridge was totally mushroomed snow - basically winter conditions.

It was great news to come back from the mountains and hear this pile of human excrement was eliminated. Too bad it will change exactly jack shit in Iraq...

Wow, what a testament to the effects conditions play on a route. When I climbed that route it looked absolutely nothing like your pictures!

Is Ulrich's and/or Cascadian still a worthwhile ski descent, in your opinion? Would converage allow skiing from the top of the coulior to the valley floor? thanks, -josh

Dan, what is the snowpack looking like? My back up plan for next week was to head up to the Stafford Creek drainage and ski Navaho and Earl. -josh

I would bet a pitcher of beer that anybody who claims to be as intelligent as JayB thinks he is would realize there is no such thing as an "opposite" in a science completely devoid of absolutes. Trickle-down is tax breaks for the rich. The only thing trickling down, as Ivan alluded too, is piss. The rest of us (the piss recipients) get to suffer the economic conseuqnces of a huge deficit and a growing pile of debt. You can sugar coat it all you want but in the long term that catches up and screws us all, even the rich.

Who cares, we have the Pacific ocean. You ever try to eat seafood in CO? Blech...