MisterMo

You may have to rethink your neighbor hood search a bit; there seems to be plenty-o-developing going on out that way.

So..OK...the Dihedral Wall was recently freed? was it not? Presuming that it was not previously done clean as an aid route (which I have no idea) will it/should it henceforth never again be nailed? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you philosophically, but I am courious where the bounds are, if any exist, to the standard you advocate.

East of town? Fight it. they've been moving the 50 zone all over the place the past few years & it's fucking ridiculous.

I'm really big on the one of Desolation Lookout all rimed up. It looks so spooky.

I am hoping to attend the Gold Bar meeting. I sadly do not think there is any near-term relief in site to traffic issues, and the problem is growing at a rate that borders on geometric.

There were two missing overdue hikers at Lake Blanca.

This popped up lately on the board at Index Store: Open house and comment solicitation for the SR 2 Route Development Plan. The Plan covers proposed improvements between Snohomish and Skykomish. People who are going nuts while parked on SR2 might want to pop in on one of these. Tuesday June 13 5-8 PM at Gold Bar School 419 Lewis Street in Gold Bar. Wednesday June 14 5-8 PM at Monroe High School Commons in Monroe 17001 Tesler Road There is also a project manager for this whose name and contact info may be gotten off the WSDOT site (I assume) or from me via PM. (maybe this should get moved to events, or access or something?)

This should get you going...sort of a massively belated TR: (All very lo-rez. I don't have all night) Neve Glacier Eldorado/Backbone Ridge/Isolation Peak Lake below Isolation Peak Wilcox Lake McAllister Glacier View N from Backbone Ridge crossing to Snowfield Peak Marble Creek Slope Marble Creek Slope Early Morning Spire Eldorado Inspiration Glacier Do it.

I/we took 7 or 8 days in my late thirties. You could do it much faster but it's very cool country with absolutely no reason to be in a hurry. I'll put up a pic or two tonite or tomorrow.

Howzabout Buck Creek Pass...High Pass...Napeequa...Honeycomb Glacier...Glacier Gap...White Chuck Glacier...White Pass...thence southerly on PCT and out via Bald Eagle/Curry Gap? Pretty country. I've also long longed to go into Hanging Gardens, Blue Lake, Sinister, etc. from the south and never gotten it together, dammit.

Do you mean non-technical in the sense of no 5th class climbing, or in the sense of no roped travel whatsoever? Whether or not you are willing to do non-technical but roped glacier travel changes the range of possibilities a bunch.

Winnies Slide = the steep snow slope between top of Fischer Chimneys and the Curtis Glacier Hell's Highway = the "flat" on upper Curtis Glacier that you stroll across Hourglass = the snow/ice exit from curtis Glacier to the upper Sulphide I don't have a map here to see how the gov labels it. oops, duh, you linked one. I think the Hourglass is correctly labeled, but Winnies Slide is not.

Second that. Also Middle Peak of Index for the same reasons.

Good golly. Ten pages of this hoo-hah. I may as well make it ten and a twenty-somethingth. Sooo.... The climb: Any and all subsequent self promotion, publicity, and such latherings: It was refreshing to go to the archives and dredge up the following from Chuck Pratt's long-ago delightful essay on desert climbing:

....which makes your getaway up our way a teensy bit puzzling. Hundred inches a year, documented, just like clockwork. That's almost two inches a week. Once we had a drought and only got 70......... Green though, elegantly green...thousands and thousands of shades of green.

Not yet this year. From what I can see the W ridge of Persis will be snow free up to the first rockslide or so. The bulk of the traverse will be under snow. Snowshoes/Crampons you might actually want both. Things have been setting up rock-hard at nite & getting pretty mooshy in the afternoon. Enjoy.

Sadly, what's missing from current growth planning and social reality are communities where people can live and work within walking distance. It seems like an awfulotta people want to live in Issaquah and work in Fife or something like that. After about seven hundred thousand miles of driving, plus occupational miles, all I can think of is how cool it would be to only drive once in a great while. I can't really talk; my commute: Index to Stevens Pass, is anything but short. I'd love to bike it; doing 31 miles and 3500' climb each day before work would have me in first class shape in no time, but I'd have to leave about 3 AM and wouldn't get home til 7 or so. Still, I'd like to do it once, in the next couple of months of long days, just to prove some obscure point to myself.

Incredibly boneheaded, enough so that I hate to own up to it: On a very early trip to Mt. Erie with my cousin we constructed a TR anchor with some hardware and since it was a fair ways back from the edge we used his fairly new Mammut rope for an extension. We tied it to the anchors, tied an overhand loop about the right distance out, then threaded my fairly new rope through the loop without the benefit of a carabiner! We then prceeded to do the whole climb/fall/lower drill for a bit before one of us climbed high enough to discover that the anchor rope was ruined. We were fairly lucky we didn't saw all the way through and die. I have absolutely no idea how we could have been so stupid.

Second that. When I was 14, 16, 16...the Mounties provided a wealth of experience and opportunity I would not have found elsewhere. In time I moved away from the club, a fact which does not detract from the good trips I had with them. I met a few good friends there. I left the club not because af any shortcoming on its part but because I preferred smaller, less regimented trips with friends. YMMV

I really shouldn't do this because it's so fucking trite but I can't resist. In June of 1970, fresh out of high school, I squeeezed into a Ford Falcon with three others and all our stuff for my first trip to Yosemite. The drive down (from Seattle) cost us 18 dollars and change...my full share was $4.50.

I will check the address this evening at home.

Oops, the meeting was Tuesday April 18, not the 25th. I was afraid of that. Besides Chief Walser I have the following contact address: us2safetycoalition@seanet.com

Maybe easiest ot contact Chief Walser directly at City of Sultan. I may have better info since we (Index) are a participant in that stuff but it's at home I will pass along if I find it.

With Romex the white & black run along the edges and the ground in the middle. A careful longditudinal cut along the center of the cable will expose things nicely. Of course you've already checked with your Volt alert & know it's dead except for those times when you need, for some unknown reason, to do the job hot. As far as the cutters go, you'd need to be extrordinarily well grounded to get fried cutting wire as you described, but lucky or not a couple of such incidents ruins a good set of cutters & good cutters aren't cheap. And oh yeah, If you're uncertain whether something is hot & you need to proceed, try to do stuff one-handed. That way you're not creating a left hand to right hand current path through your body if things go awry.

Get yourself a Fluke Volt-alert. Looks like a pen. Carry in your short pocket. Glows if the wire is hot. Works through insulation but not conduit. Works on receptacles. Life-saving little doodad...won't help with the rat turds though. There're probably non-Fluke equivalents for cheaper. As to the pliers monster flash it sounds like you cut two wires at once, yes? Don't do that. One at a time unless verified dead.