MisterMo

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.

Wellll... I'm pretty certain it was a grizzly bear. Of course it could have been a brown colored, hunchbacked brown bear. The guy with me, coming off of 19 years core drilling in AK with plenty of looks at bears of all flavors, was certain it was a grizzly. But maybe not... We are both reasonably certain it wasn't your ass. Mine wasn't the only griz comment, but I didn't mean to offer it as support..or...opposition to the Wild Sky proposal. I'm in the latter camp but when I go off on that tirade I tend to start raving and only succeed in convincing people that I'm a twit.

Bear Mtn (Skykomish) Isolation Peak above McAllister Creek & Old Brownie (Mt. Crowder)

I saw a grizzly up the North Fork Sky around 1987. Haven't seen one since. There are shitloads of black bears in the proposed Wild Sky. That, along with the wild & lonely character of the area will change once the land managers & journalists get their mitts on it.

Don't have a clue about how the FA party did it but the 1965 Becky/Bjornstad guide describes going right to the bottom of the chimney as the normal route and the other possibilities as variations. I've always thought the funnest way to do P2 is to go more or less straight up to the big ledge, but I'm a bit of a fat boy & don't do well in tight places.

Right on. Some of the most devoted tourers I ever went out with were, at best, stem turn skiers...with a lot of kick turns thrown in when it got nasty. I could leave them in the dust on the run down but I doubt I enjoyed it any more than they did. It ain't necessarily about being a hot flash; it's how it feels.

No TV. No, that doesn't interfere with my drinking. More to the point NDT methods cause flaws invisible to the eye to leap right out. Probably not worth it for a biner unless one has free access to the stuff. Come to think of it we have a 10K dyno. Maybe I'll bust a few of my antiques and learn a bit about the toll of age and abuse.

Oh-Oh I have a whole boatload of old(30 years or so)biners that I trust my hide to. SMC's, REI's, Alpine Hut, Bedayn, Chouinard & some odds & ends. Can't magnaflux them, of course. Does anyone here have an inkling if dye penetrant would be an appropriate check?

Thanks. I too recall the skiing as excellent; not very steep but a very on top of the world feeling to it. I'll try to get to it about mid April

Thanks. It'll be fun trying to find familiar sights what with thirty years of tree growth and thirty years of brain cell loss

No, the beavers have been busy. They've got a pretty cool chain of dams in that little system. My back yard now goes under water much more than in the past as well. Watch for the wood ducks

I want to go back and ski the Sulphide this spring. When I last did it in 1971 the Shannon Creek road could be driven to the highest clearcut fairly near timberline. I am most curious how much of this road exists anymore and how much might be passable.