estivate

quote: ------------- I have a halloween mask of Richard Nixon strapped to my pack. We'll scare em' comin and goin. ------------- I read somewhere that woodcutters in the mangrove swamps of Bangladesh (one of the last tiger strongolds on the Indian subcontinent) started wearing such masks on the backs of their heads (perhaps not Nixon masks) and it reduced Tiger predation deaths markedly. I can see the Vancouver Island tourist board telling visitors to wear Nixon masks backward...

Vancouver Island cougars do seem to be unusually aggressive. The island accounts for something like 2/3 of all cougar attacks in BC. In the past century, cougars have killed four people on Vancouver Island, only one in the rest of BC. Most cougar attacks are not fatal. Most occur on children. Bees and vicious dogs kill far more people. Keeping the pack light and leaving behind stuff you're unlikely to use is a basic climbing principle. I cannot imagine a good climber ever judging that the risk of cougar attacks justified bringing along a revolver and a bowie knife. You'll never see the one that gets you. They attack from behind, a bite to the back of the neck. Perhaps if you carried the gun in your hand at all times, with the safety off...with luck you won't shoot yourself when you trip.

Regarding horses on trails, you are fighting against tradition. Sitting tall in the saddle, Marlboro Man, Ronald Reagan, herding bovines, all that shit. It may be a stupid, annoying anachronistic tradition perpetuated by blockheads who seem to go out of their way to do things the high-impact way, but we're stuck with it. Personally, I would observe that horses are steppe animals adapted to flat and rolling terrain; they really have no business being in mountains or wet country. Let the horsey people ride around the Columbia basin and Eastern Montana to their hearts' content, I say.

Update on the direct route from Canyon Creek: The Sevenmile Creek rib route up to Goat Flats no longer has a tread, and flagging is just a few useless bits of old orange and red surveyor's tape. At present it should be considered a pure cross-country route: you'll have to find your own way. A cliff band about halfway up can be threaded via a walk-up gully climber's left. Time to Goat Flats, about 4 hours. Faster than bike + Tupso Pass trail. The glacier arm up to the north peak already shows much bare ice. There is still steep snow on the trail to the S Peak past Tin Can Gap. Easiest route to the lookout at present is probably dropping down to the glacier and traversing.

Leave the bike at home. Easiest approach to Goat Flats/Three Fingers is now the climbers' path from S Fk canyon creek. The gully road washout is only a mile before the S Fk canyon creek bridge crossing. Cross the bridge, look for tank-trapped old road on your right, take that road upstream about a mile, crossing one major stream/ravine outlet. Before the second (Sevenmile Creek), take the rib uphill in the woods. It's marked as a dotted line in "green Fred". If you're OK with routefinding this is a very direct route to Goat Flats, almost as fast as the beaten-up Tupso Pass trail, and much pleasanter. It's half as long as the Tupso pass route and gains about 1400' more of elevation. If you've been avoiding the Three Fingers/Goat Flats area because of the mobs, this is the year to do it. Long may the washout remain unfixed! It's apparent on a map that the closest road approach to Goat Flats is in fact the S Fk Canyon Creek crossing. The eight miles of road beyond that, to Tupso Pass, actually take you away from your destination. The washout is easily negotiated by foot, incidentally. The washout is due to a stream blown out by debris flow from a seventies-era clear cut a few hundred yards uphill. A pleasing circularity there, a road constucted for logging plants the seeds of its own destruction.