MisterMo

Bought from them a number of times. That's where I go first if I need that sort of stuff & am willing to go to the city to get it. Nice people, good service and the nicest sleeping bag I could ever hope to own.

Ay-yup. A little further back in history than the REI stuff. Don't know if Raffi made them or just had his name on them. They were OK strengthwise but had the drawback of not being openable under body weight & thus inferior for aid.

Oh, it looks like that. It was snowing on that pitch. The ridge is solid, straightforward, and wonderful enough that it shouldn't bug you. The descent was, for me, a different matter. Easy enough but oddly insecure and massively exposed, facts compounded by the fact that we did most of it unroped after 2 75 foot raps off the summit. My mind eased when we put the rope back on near the end. A very cool climb, enjoy

Could easily be 35+. Mine identical to that were purchased late sixties. Don't remember when they came out with the nose on the gate.

Yup, there it is. Pretty cool

OK...not to be a dick but I've always been curious about something: Back in the day, in the years before way back when (up until the mid 60's when the road was widened & paved from the irrigation intake to Bridge Creek) the road remnant thru 8 mile CG, past the rock, & on up to Bridge Creek CG was THE Icicle road. If that right-of way was under government ownership or on a formal easment, and, if it has never been formally & legally vacated, then there would still be lawful public access along that road. Maybe when the weather someday goes to hell I'll research that if it's not already been done.

You get a chance; the quickness arrived at thru practice pays off. Hard snow & crampons necessitate being very quick; you have little chance of stopping once you gain some speed. Fortunately, at least in the Cascades, the number of truly hidden crevasses diminishes as the season wears on & conditions get harder. If there are only two of you & one goes in a hole things could get pretty interesting if they cannot just straightforwardly self-extract. Loosely on the topic of crevasse rescue...check out David Roberts' "Deborah, A Wilderness Narrative" if you haven't already. Awesome trip, great reading, and crevasses from hell....

Think too about those moments between when you first get that sinking feeling and when you proceed to get out of the crevasse. Is your self arrest up to snuff? A lot of clubs & classes practice team self arrest in early season when snow is soft. It's an entirely different matter later in the season when hard conditions abound. Not to be horribly gloomy but crevasse rescue gets complicated when your whole party is in one.

To which I would add: 1)Pick a cold shitty day 2)Make sure gunk of some sort falls on you from above 3)Maybe have somebody hose you down with cold water during... 4)Make sure you do it with your pack on There's more to being in and getting out of crevasses than the vertical distance

Jump back, Jack If you, poor or not, are not getting a 'deal' on your rent or being subsidized in some fashion then you are buying the place for your landlord; pure and simple. Whether you are working poor, working rich or whatever has nothing to do with it. Oh, you bet, there are lot's of working poor people, many more than there once were and many more than there ought to be for which purchasing a home is going to be pretty tough to pull off, mostly due to the difficulty (I think) of getting ahead enough to come up with a down payment. But that's another topic I did, by the way, bust my ass for what I've got...luck had nothing to do with it.

Right on. Everybody, save perhaps those who live at home or under bridges, is buying a home. The only variable is whether the deed is in their name...or their landlord's. The only reason I can see not to buy is if a person wants to be itinerant...probably not worth it if you don't want to be in the same spot for, say, 5-10 years. Buying my place was one of the most (accidentally I might add)intelligent things I ever did. Gagged on the price...worried about the payment...but a few years of appreciation made both those concerns vanish. Now all I got to do is cough up for the tax man a couple of times a year...a nice feeling

Happened upon a total pigsty up that road with the slobs present about a year ago. Got fairly pissed off about it all. Called Sky FS (per the sign at the highway) & ratted them out, license number and all. Got a totally "Who Cares, Thank you very much response" Maybe the FS could pitch in a little better on this issue? Anyhow...enjoy yer cliff...

Coupla Manchester mentioners already but check out Goodbye Darkness by him. A bit old ('78?) and maybe out of print.

Did it in 68 via Forsyth Glacier & again a couple of years later via the Dog's Head. It was just a slog but very pretty and zero approach since you drove to timberline above Spirit Lake.

No offense taken; I haven't paid much attention. I did look around & find Leeper's recall. It seems that the problem is not Leeper stuff per se but much/all chromolly hangers of that vintage.

Wuz there some issue with Leeper hangers that I missed along the way? He must have some reason. yeah cause they break and he doesn't want people to die. it's a recall. OK I dug one out of the toy box & am staring at it. The geometry seems OK. Is the flaw in the thinness of the material? or some weird metallurgical reason? or

Wuz there some issue with Leeper hangers that I missed along the way? He must have some reason.

So...I snowmobile 80+ days a year...at work. I'm probably old from your point of view; I'm not fat. Anybody who says snowmobiling isn't hard work has never stuck one of the mothers. That said, I have zero interest in snomobiling on my own time. Can't stand the racket. But there are God's plenty of places I can go where they're not around; I can't begrudge them their share of the world. Just my 2 cents...

Don't know/remember what UIAA or other climbing bodies use as a safety factor but for rigging as used for lifting 5:1 is the standard ratio for breaking strength to rated load. There are lots of good reasons & examples why that's not excessive.

Haven't been there yet this year. There's a five star+ camp (The Perfect Place) about a mile south of Persis summit on top of the little flat topped peak (5400'+/-)at the head of Procter Creek. Several small tarns...one with good diving rocks, goats, bears, a good boulder trundling chasm, and very few geeks. About two hours from Index summit

Excellent today from the look of it. I was working but people came down Big Chief Bowl and DD past us and they were all smiles. Get it soon; there's not much there & it's going quick.

Marble Creek Cirque, the perfect grass flat under Early AM Spire Marmot Skull Meadows, across the way at the head of Sibley Creek The Perfect Place, near Index

They've done a few of them in the Sky Ranger District. They pull culverts & fills & generally raise hell with the roadbed to the tune of, if I remember correctly, about $10,000 per mile. This is many times annual maintenance costs, but when I squawked the FS countered that $$$ allocated for eradication could not be used for Maint. Go figure. At least eradicated roads cannot be driven by anyone. If I have to hoof it (and I don't really mind), then the whiz kids in the institutional green trucks should as well.

OK...here we go... I don't believe the Wild Sky proposal is left-wing or deceitful; I just think there are some holes in the wilderness proposals in general: One such hole concerns natural resources: timber, and in the case of the Wild Sky, minerals, principally copper. Much of the region was logged in the past century, long enough ago that stands of second growth are reaching harvestable size.The Sunset Mine was in operation until approximately the mid 1900's. If the Wilderness becomes a fact both logging and mineral extraction will both cease to become possibilities. Fair enough; that's what wilderness proponents seek...but.... If you take increasing amounts of land out of natural resource extraction then you have to, at some point, either reduce consumption of natural resources or shift an added burden of production to some other chunk of land somewhere. ...I haven't seen anything in the wilderness proposal that makes any effort to balance this equation. That's not necessarily dishonest, but I think it's really shortsighted and a bit selfish...e.g. it's ok to log the shit out of Canada and mine the shit out of the third world (where it's also so nice & cheep) while we, as members of the most consumptive culture ever anywhere slurp up the fruits of all that, all the while feeling PC because it's taking place somewhere else where we don't see it. Oh, Yeah...the Wild Sky is just a drop in the bucket, but there are many such drops and they all add up. Additionally, I take issue with the current concept of wilderness. Much of the Wild Sky proposal would currently qualify as such. There isn't much easy access; there aren't many people; there's a lot of rarely visited summits & drainages. Yet when I view the proposals and talk with supporters I cannot believe that this is what they have in mind. I believe the proposal is one more for some sort of city park for the huff & puff set. The Seattle Times will rave about it; trails will be built; visits will increase; managers will leap to the fore, agonizing about the number of concurrent users in Sector Q...fretting about overcrowding, banning camping here, setting up a permit system. There will be no nasty loggers or miners, no bubbas on ORV's, probably no smelly horses...just a steady stream of.....polypro & trekking poles. It won't be a wilderness unless your vision of wilderness includes being up the West Fork of the Foss on a Saturday in August. Don't believe me? Washington is just chuck full of cool places ruined by the dual scourges of protection & publicity. Do I have a better idea? I don't know about better but I do have a thought or two: Thought one is Leave It Alone Thought two is if there is sentiment for a wilderness then let's pick a patch of ground & do just that, make it as Webster says, "a wild and uncultivated region, uninhabited or inhabited only by wild animals". Fence it off or sow mines or something. No hikers, climbers hunters, or fishermen. No cars, boats, bikes, horses, motorcycles, etc.. No wildlife biologists, no back country rangers, no owl counters. No people, at all, ever. Let's have a wilderness for all that is non-human. Let it thrive, burn down, or wash away as nature may intend. Just leave it the hell alone. That would be a wilderness. If people want something else, that's OK but I think they'd also do well to call it something different

Fairweather, Oh, yeah, oops...the little "Re:" thing. Point taken; got to pay attention to that. Now finding myself getting all fired up for a few hundred word rant about the Wild Sky. It probably belongs in the Access section or something. Maybe I'll rehearse a bit & let fly over there.