ski_photomatt

Snow line was about 4500-5500 depending on aspect, terrain feature, winter avi accumulation, etc. last weekend (June 28-29) on the Forbidden tour (Boston Basin, Moraine Lake, Eldorado approach, etc). How are you planning on getting out? Isn't the Suiattle River road blocked 20+ miles from the Downey Creek exit?

Great collection of photos! Thanks for the link.

There is a route description in Routes and Rocks, if you can find a copy if it. We hiked the first half of this a few summers ago but were scared away from finishing the second half by a large electrical storm. We made it to the basin just north of Black. The north east side of Black has some reminent ice (at least it did a few summers ago) that you would probably want crampons for. It might be possible to avoid but crossing over looks to be the easiest way. You can do a nice two day loop in along Lost Creek Ridge and out the Sauk River. If you want more info I can check Routes and Rocks and let you know.

The MM5 run at UW has some web accessible cloud fields available: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/mm5rt/ These are forecasts. MM5-GFS is usually the best, 12 km. Use at your own risk as they are often inaccurate, especially at this level of detail.

I think Glazers (big professional camera store in Seattle) also has pelican and otter cases. Might want to call first though before treking down. http://www.glazerscamera.com/

I almost asked for his manager, but was already sick of the whole thing after going through it with two stores that I said screw it. The election was pissing me off and I feared I might take it out on some helpless Gart Sports sales clerk. I plan on calling again.

I got the same story as drC. "Nope, we don't have those" I called both the Auburn store and Spokane store, same deal. I asked the guy to look up the SKU and he basically said he didn't want to, he didn't know how and he'd need to ask his manager, ect.. Anyway, if you have the SKU, it'd be much appreciated.

We drove around in our SUVs by ourselves too much. This contributed to global warming; global warming gave our foe el nino a kick; el nino in turn got amped and is sending all our storms down to California.

I wanted to avoid speculation and only say what I knew to be true, but since you asked: that's the way it seems from my office in Seattle. I was surprised to hear someone died in an avalanche yesterday because there didn't seem to be enough snow. A collapsing snow bridge is more likely. I wouldn't rule it out an avalanche completely - if I've learned one thing about the Cascades and Rainier it is that they are unpredictable. Enough of the wind loading we saw on a big enough slope could potentially bury someone, but it doesn't seem likely.

Telemetry shows some snow Thursday-Friday, then a few inches Saturday night (4"). We skied up to Muir yesterday and there wasn't a lot of new snow at all, a few inches. The mountain was sunny above about 9K yesterday with very light winds at Muir. The upper mountain had some new snow, hard to tell how much; climbing conditions looked good. Below the Muir snowfield we were consistently fracturing 5-6" deep wind packed slabs with ski cuts, but these were very isolated and of little concern. My condolences to the friends and family.

you mean this one? http://www.mtbaker.us/ I think it looks pretty nice. I'm not gung ho about the drop down menus, but all the important info is only a click or two from the main page. Granted I haven't actually used it to find anything I needed, but first impressions are good. What do you think sucks about it? Added: ah, now I see.. many of the links in the navigation bar don't work

Here you go slothrop You don't have OpenOffice either? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coming from PDX a night rest at Seattle feels always good. Next morning drove to Rainy Pass on N. Cascades Hwy. Started hiking on PCT and it just got better as we went up to Cutthroat Pass with all the larches and great weather. PCT switched back down to Granite Pass with great views of our goals Tower mtn and Golden Horn. I guess too much stopping and admiring the views took us a long time to get to Snowy lakes at the base of Tower. As the sun was setting scouted out a bit the talus and scree ahead. After a chilly night with a bright moon got up and headed for the SW ridge first over heather then talus. Kept going up on the ridge staying high, where the rock was more solid. Once high up we could see three broad gullies, the farthest south was our route SW gully upper W ridge. To get to it had to side hill high the other gullies which are filled with ball bearings waiting to send you down. Once in the gully the rock got 4th class but clean and fun to climb, some more fun scrambling we got to the 60 feet high nice slab next to a wide crack rated 5.6. The climbing was fun and I was glad to have carried my rock shoes. There is a nice handhold in the block which is described as the awkward move in Beckey’s CAG, so not bad. Shortly after that enjoyed the summit just to see we were the first ones here so far this year. Unfortunately one of us could not go up the pitch with stiff boots. So as we came down, a brilliant idea how about doing the West gully, cannot give up so easily. So entered the first gully marked with a pillar and a rock sitting on top of it, filled with lots of loose stuff up to the notch. From there the route is straight up to the headwall marked by a white V, which can be seen from way below. There turn right over ledges and back left to the NW ridge, huge exposure there ok back on the black blocky rock and after few moves came up right underneath the huge summit cairn. Sun was setting so quick pics and down the same way arrived at camp at dark but satisfied, everybody made it! Next morning off to Golden Horn, stayed in the trees until the ridge crest to avoid the scree, then skirted bunch of gullies until we got to the west side of the summit pinnacle. There took the left gully once again filled with loose stuff once over and up the summit block is solid. Couple hard 4th class moves, a rope is good to have here, brought us to the top. Still long ways back to home, quickly surfed the scree down to Snowy lakes, packed up hiked out the 10 miles and drove back home to PDX after midnight, a looong day but worth it.

My girlfriend found what appears to be a wedding ring at the Mowich Lake trailhead Labor Day weekend. A brain malfunction meant I didn't think to post it here until now. If it's yours, send me a pm or e-mail ski_photomatt at yahoo com

What j_b said. It's also worth pointing out that the MSU satellites don't measure the surface temperature, they indirectly measure the temperature in the low-mid troposphere (and even this is somewhat dubious, as it is masked by the upper atmosphere). Comparing it to the surface temperature record is like comparing apples to oranges. The surface temperature record isn't just land based measurements either, ship and ocean buoy data is also used. This is the reference: Fu, Q., C.M. Johanson, S.G. Warren, and D.J. Seidel, 2004: Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, 429, 55-58.

Bushwacker - please think a bit before posting. Go read some of the linked references on what "proof" is currently available concerning the connection between humans and climate change. I can sum up the several flaws in your argument quite simply. 1. Science, and all human knowledge for that matter, is cumulative. Modern climate science stands on the shoulders of all the work done previously - the mathematics developed progressively since the dawn of time, the physics developed over the last 300 years, the technology needed to power a modern computer. The equations governing fluid motion were written down in the 1800's. You get the point. Climate science does not exist in a vacuum. 2. There are climate records extending back many thousands of years (110,000 years or more). Aside - JayB, it's more convoluted than measuring the thickness of each layer in the ice core. The concentration of O18 is measured, then this is correlated to temperature, see this: info on GISP2 ice core 3. This is all somewhat irrelevant anyway. If one can understand how the climate system works, then build a model or otherwise translate this understanding into something that can be used to predict the future, then it doesn't matter how long that takes, whether it be 40 seconds or 40 years or 40 centuries. If you understand the system, then you can understand how it will react to a forcing. This is the problem though, as JayB rightly pointed out. We don't completely understand the climate system. Understanding what CO2 does is easy - this problem was solved 40 years ago - but understanding how that feedbacks on Earth is very hard. Given a concentration of CO2, no one can answer how much warming will occur. A range of answers is more appropriate. Couple this with the value question we as a society must answer: How much warming is OK? How much is too much? This is where it gets sticky. If society could answer that question - a big if - scientists still couldn't tell them what CO2 concentration to shoot for. They could give a lower and upper bound, but uncertain answers like this don't fly so well in DC. The great tragedy of all this is that this uncertainty - about how much warming will occur, not about whether it will, or what the cause is - gets taken and spun around and fed to the American public as a bunch of scientists bickering among themselves. In the end the real message gets lost.

I'm a Ph.D. student at UW and have spent much of the last 4 years learning everything I can about global climate. I'm less than a year from finishing my degree. I don't consider myself an expert, yet, but I am surrounded by them. I talk to them every day. I've gone to conferences with them, listened to their talks, given talks of my own. I've read more technical, peer reviewed journal articles than I care to remember. In short, Lowell and mattp are right. Within the scientific community, the vast majority of people, myself included, believe global warming is real, and that humans are the cause. We still discuss it among ourselves, about how much warming will occur, about how it will be distributed around the globe, about how that will affect inter-annual variability, about the exact mechanisms, feedbacks, and all the rest, but few disagree about the basic premise. Every time this topic comes up, I recommend to those who are interested in learning more to read the IPCC reports. The last one was issued in 2001. These are internationally peer-reviewed syntheses of the breadth of knowledge regarding climate change. There are three parts: Two reports were issued for each part, a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) and a Technical Summary (TS). The SPMs are written for non-scientists; each is about 20 pages long. The TS are longer. You can find them at http://www.ipcc.ch

The snow in late June and the snow in late August are drastically different. I'd take crampons.

willstrickland makes many good points. If you are using a point and shoot I would recommend using print film. Fuji Reala is a great 100 ISO negative film, sharp and fine grained. If you want to go with slides, most nature photographers shoot Fuji Velvia or Provia. Just be aware that a 1/3 - 1/2 stop difference in exposure is quite noticable on slide film, so your camera's meter needs to do a good job to get nice slides. There is far less margin for error. That being said, depending on how many pics you shoot, you'd most likely be better off with a digital camera. Each roll of (good) film will cost ~10 for film+processing, or more if you are shooting slides and getting them processed locally. You can get a decent digital camera for $300. You won't notice the difference in smaller prints. My only recommendation - get a camera with at least some manual controls. It won't cost that much more. You don't have to use them if you don't want, but if you want to get more into it and want to take control, you will be able to. Don't let your camera limit your photos.

I second the recommendation for the Olympic coast. I took my mom out there a few summers ago and she loved it. A short, mostly flat walk through nice old growth puts you on the beach. Wander as far as you like, pitch your tent where you please. Get permits at the ranger station - they are a few dollars a night, but you don't have to pay the park entry fee. I believe they also require hard sided containers for your food, but they are available at the ranger station too. FWIW, they issue as many permits as people want (no quota), so it can get crowded on the weekends. The trail is also ultra short, so you see all sorts of crazy stuff - dads making multiple trips back and forth to the car hauling the family's gear in rolling luggage, strollers, ect. For short, easily accessible views, I can't think of anything closer than the Artist Point area near Mt. Baker. It's popular w/ day hikers on the weekend, but you could probably find some nice camp spots too.

I've done the Ptarmigan three times - twice in September when Red Ledge is a sidewalk, and once this last June when it was partially snow covered. It was hot, the snow was soft, and we weren't certain at all about the snow conditions on the ledge. It looked like it was possibly moated out and/or involved a few tricky transitions between snow and rock, so we bypassed it via the steep snow gully and some scrambling on climber's right. It turned out to be pretty sucky, but went just fine. Given the choice again, I'm not sure if we would go the same way; surely this time of year Red Ledge is the easiest route.

http://www.turns-all-year.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=ha3;action=display;num=1090342474;start=

I believe the old schoolers used Suphur Creek. The valley isn't that long and there is a trail for a few miles, but there would still be a couple miles of what I'd imagine would be pretty dense brush. You could schwack out Agnes Creek to the trail. I believe there is a trail into the research station above the S. Cascade Glacier, but that's only 1/2 - 2/3 of the way along the traverse and skips the best part, the cirque from White Rock Lakes over to Dome. You might be able to put together a high route from the S. Cascade Glacier over towards Buckindy and Green Mountain. There was a ski route pioneered from the Chickamin to Lyman Lake that might also be feasible on foot. Any way other than Downey Creek would probably add some time to trip.

FYI: I have a few friends who were planning the Ptarmigan this week but changed plans because of a fire in Downey Creek. Checking the forest web site, sure enough Downey Creek trail is closed: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/mbs/fire/index.shtml

There was a nice display from Maude Saturday night. Vertical sheets of green dancing back and forth. Occasionally one would shoot off into space to be quickly replaced by another.

I may have run into you during the descent - you mentioned something about descending down an easy gully that turned harder, then had to climb back up to the top? I was walking up to bivy on the summit. I didn't go down to the top of the N. Face route, so didn't see your crampons, sorry.