OlympicMtnBoy

Cool, what route is that on Vallunaraju? We did the walk up as an acclimatization climb in 2007.

Or climb Town Crier and sleep on Stoner Ledge (I think that's the name). It's off to the right a little bit up the easy part of pitch 3 (before the mini-pendulum). There are some bolts and a memorial plaque. It's a bit sloping but not to hard to sleep two on. I broke it into two days that way once. Or fix a couple pitches and sleep on the ledge at the top of P1 if you want to feel "up there" more.

The middle was a bit funky (or I was off route), but the last 2-3 pitches were awesome (your last 4 pics). Nice pics, we didn't take many.

No, if you include rock shoes you can easily get above 4. ;-) But yeah, I wouldn't wear any of those for summer except a volcano where I was starting on or very close to the snow. Although really for summer if you are just starting out a good pair of hiking boots will do a lot, pair them with a pair of strap-on aluminum crampons and you can get up a lot of great moderate summer routes. You don't always need step-in crampons, super rigid boots, and sticky rubber fancy lightweight mountaineering boots if you are climbing 5.4 and moderate snow.

Skiers buying lift tickets are more important than dirtbags like us. $ talks and the concessionaires get to make the rules. They don't care as much when the ski areas are closed so you get to park there with only a trail pass. Maybe calling the above number will work.

Nice, looks like fun!

Somewhere I ran across an old website that had a sort of home DIN check, basically strapping your boot and ski on and wedging the ski under something and torquing your boot around on each axis to get it to release. Somewhere around 6-7 you should be able to try really hard and get a release still before it feels like you are breaking your ankle. It's about as reliable as the old bindings on non-ski boots anyways. I mostly feel happy when they don't pre-release and they still come off when I wreck.

Hehe, reminds me of finding someone's car keys in the dirty gully on the last pitch of Town Crier/Green Dragon. I forget who but they got them back through this site. Amazing how the little things still sometime make it home.

Check your PMs, where are you located (or where is the tree)? Unless you need some real cutting done and then there are a few real certified arborists here as well.

Hmm, that's when I'll be starting funemployment. Got any projects in the northwest in mind? Squamish wall?

That was awesome! After failing on Inspiration once due to weather this is so going down this year!

Fred B is looking for a partner if you want to hang out with a piece of history.

I'm fairly happy with my homemade ones with thin webbing and bungies and metolius FS mini biners and a swivel) but they don't get used all that often. Dane's website had some more good info if you haven't looked at it. I might try reworking mine to be more like the Blue Ice with no biner attachment between the tethers and the tools as those are a tad annoying even with the mini biners. I like having a swivel though. There are people here who do a heck of a lot more multi-pitch WI than I do though.

Cool, does this tie in to the studies Andy Luks has been doing down here? I went in for one of his studies but that was using ultrasound and measuring heart valve blood velocity. I ended up not being a candidate for the study but it was still kind of fun for the first round.

Nice pics! Maybe it'll be a good spring season for this?

Only tangentially related, but here is a great video of what happens when a culvert is too small (like almost all of them on these roads) and gets clogged. Mother earth literally spits this one back up before ejecting it downstream (keep watching): http://www.wmtw.com/r-video/17144859/detail.html

You got a link for the pic?

Not much you can get to without a car, but check out Kevin Pogue's webpage for some of the smaller crags over that way. His driving times are from Walla Walla. http://people.whitman.edu/~pogue/climbing/climbing_areas.html

Cool. I saw those big guns hanging out when I was there several years ago. There is a military base not far off on the shoulder of Mt. Cheget too, so they probably have a dual purpose of avalanche control and border defense. We got run off when out acclimatization hike got too close to the border control area.

I think the Grivel Eagle is the only ice axe I can think of with a plastic grip area. I actually find some insulation most useful for spring climbs where it's generaly too hot in the sun to want gloves but your ice axe gets cold in the snow. My solution was a piece of bicycle tire innertube. I took a short (3 inches?) section and cut a round hole in the middle, then stretched it over the head so the shaft poked through the hole. It's held up for several years and makes it warmer to gram with or without gloves and doesn't interfere with grip any.

Interesting. It would be cool to see those results broken out by respondent age group and climber type.

When actually climbing I just have a tiny Spyderco Ladybug clipped to a biner. I find I rarely need a multi-tool on routes. The tiny knife works for cutting tat and lunch purposes. Otherwise I still use my Leatherman (CS4? Blue one). It's heavy buy has everything I want (pliers, scissors, saw, screwdrivers, wine opener, bottle opener). I normally only use it for non-ultralight backpacking and ski touring (when i might need to adjust bindings or something). They do have some newer micro tools that look nice though but I haven't handled one.

You might try asking at one of the ultralight backpacking site, but I think Evazote just defines the type of foam, but that there are different grades (densities) that will have different r-values and may be available in different thicknesses. All grades may not be available in all thicknesses, and different companies sell slightly different varieties. http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=15694 The main thing for me in this type of bad is that it is pretty durable (especially compared to inflatable pads) and works great as a half pad strapped to my pack on climbs where it gets scraped over rocks and laid out on uneven rocky bivy sites with no ground cloth or anything. I have no idea what exact grade I use, the weight differences for my cut down torso sized pad are pretty minimal.

It's a rope stretching 60 so make sure you have the exact middle, but it works fine. I wouldn't take two ropes if that was all I needed to do.

It's been a long time since I've been there, but at sea level you won't find any snow. It's not a huge park so I'd suggest beach combing and exploring, I don't think you could get more than a mile of hiking if that. Or are you referring to the Dosewallips River and not the state park? If you head up there I don't think you will hit snow before the old ranger station/campground which is ~3 miles past the road closure/washout (several years ago). Just hiking up the old road can be a nice mellow hike. The worst part will be getting around the washout but I think they may have completed a bypass trail since i was last there a few years ago. nwhikers.net may have more hiking info/conditions.