curtveld

The Things They Carried & Lake of the Woods are mind-bending.

Pick up a copy of Big Walls by Long/Middendorf, which has a lot of good info and graphics intermixed with classic climbing tales. For a technical book it's a pretty enjoyable read.

Depends on how much slop there is!

That's the one. Gary's middle shot is the butt-hanging move in all it's glory!

How bout the big flake undercling on the NW face of N Early Winter Spire? Nothing for the feet but vertical smears as you hang your butt out over the abyss! Then once you're up that, you get the long fist crack corner. Mmmm, what a great route.

It’s certainly been ‘car-to-car-ed’ before and the commitment wouldn’t be all that high. If you get to the top of the face and are short on time, you can traverse west across the Hanging Glacier and descend either the Chimneys or the White Salmon Glacier. It’d be a great day out, whether or not you tag the summit. But if you get stuck in the brush on the approach, you’re screwed!

and similar in steepness to main snow face on Redoubt?

Great photo. Anyone care to compare the difficulty of this route to the Redoubt NE face? McLane gives them both AD+, but Weart looks considerably smaller and less complex.

Dude, it isn't even the best in the Sultan Basin

Years ago, I decided I needed to solo Diedre. Drove up to Squamish after work one summer Friday and jumped on it in the fading twilight. Got about halfway up the route to find a crux layback section dripping wet. The adrenaline told me it would be better to push through it than down-solo all that way, and so I did, one shaky move at a time.

Right on - as you say, Sunshine is a very aesthetic route in it's own right!

OK, so how bout some other nominees for Washington’s BS (Best Slab) Climbing Award then. All too secret to reveal…hmmm?…

I wouldn’t argue, at least for pure slab climbing (most Darrington routes have some cracks mixed in). So, you gonna let us in on your secret, Mark?

At least he went out doing what he loved.

TJ's has fantastic sauces-in-a-jar - indian and thai curries and some others. Tasty, easy...and poultry free.

Very impressive. I hope other CC.comers take note of how much better a TR can be with a little help from the old thesaurus! Nice photos, too.

Great looking route, but for god’s sake, when is someone going to give that peak a more worthy name?

Robinson may have helped, but the text has the signature Coonyard directness throughout. What Chouinard says in a sentence, Robinson could reflect on for a paragraph, if not a page. Maybe that's why it doesn't read as dated. And most of the technques are still relevant, if not cutting edge.

Did you mean “wiener” or a “whiner”?

Don’t know whether this story got any coverage outside Bham: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060419/NEWS09/604190344/1001/NEWS Condolences to the survivors, friends and family.

A bunch of the older logging roads have been reopened in the last couple of years and now nearly all that show up on the topos can be ridden or walked. All roads are gated about as soon as you get off the pavement. Dixie Lake would be the long way around – the west fork that crosses Gilligan Cr. is much more direct. On the west side of the hill, there are some motorbike trails - go wandering into the larger timber and you’ll probably encounter one. Outstanding views of islands and Olympics up top, but quite a bit of snow up there still.

Have a couple of kids. Less time for climbing + more for guidebooks = ten-year project list in no time!

I can only think of one spot that has all the key elements: top quality skiing and climbing, a half day from the road and not within an established Wilderness: Silver Star basin. Still would take a hell of a lot of red tape to get it through and it’d be a damn long drive during the winter. As to whether we actually need any huts in the Cascades, I’m in complete agreement with Goatboy (way back there): Huts are a nice change, but for my local mountains, I’ll happily live with the protection provided by the Wilderness Act, despite the few limitations it puts on us climbers.

No, they’re not set up for climbing access. And though they’re not the Purcells, somebody fills them up each winter….

Actually Washington does have a handful of modest ski huts: the Mt Tahoma group SW of Rainier, the Scottish Lakes hut near Leavenworth and a few others in the Winthrop area. They are generally pretty humble in size compared to other countries, and are definitely not in wilderness settings for the land ownership reasons mentioned above. Having stayed at a Tahoma hut, they provide a nice tent-free backcountry option, if you can manage to book a spot. They're popular.