campwire

The issue of permits I find particularly frustrating, not just with NCNP, but almost every national park. I understand permits are needed for some areas to keep from over crowding. However, pre-reservation system permits like what Yosemite uses don't work. You have to know exactly what day you want to go months in advanced, so there is no flexibility for weather or other plans and you have to be online at the exact moment the permits become available or you won't get one. To make it worse, most people who get permits don't use them, which takes permits away from people who would use them. They issue 300 permits a day for half dome. The day I went it was sold out in 5 minutes 3 months in advanced. The weather was absolutely perfect and I saw no more that 100 - 150 people on the trail that day. The day before the weather was horrible. There is no reason some of the people with permits the day before should not have been able to go the next day. The system the NCNP uses where there are no reservations doesn't work either. You have to get lucky enough that nobody else is doing a longer trip that uses the camp sites you need. On multiple occasions I went to take a small group from cascade pass to lake chelan, but unless I go a week in advanced and pretend I am hiking for a week I can't get a permit for the popular areas. I think a combination system of some reservations like what olympic uses, but allow some on site issue is probably the best. They also need to reconsider the number of permits per location. In most cases it seems overly conservative on the low side. I can't help but wonder if it isn't part of the parks strategy to get people to go other places. It works, this year I took my family to the Psayten where there are no permits required other than the parking pass.

Were they actual tickets or warnings?

If the money doesn't go to labor where does it go? Labor equals jobs, although not necessarily government jobs. That labor could be the labor to build, install or fabricate toilets, it could be to make, transport or grade gravel parking lots, administer user fees, write tickets, manage volunteers, or whatever. That labor paid or done by volunteers.

I agree outhouses are necessary, but trail maintenance can be done by volunteers. Anyone who has been to Si or Tiger know they go way overboard on trail "maintenance". Lets tell it like it is, the discovery pass is a job's program. Which personally I don't have a problem with (to some degree), but since it is a jobs program and more jobs benefit the general public it should be funded with general taxes not another user fee to administer. $30 isn't going to break most people's banks, but half the time, even if I have an up to date FS pass, snow park permit, or access pass I forget to put it in my window.

For the first time in my life I sent my state representatives a note; I didn't focus on how much I hate these very limited directed user fees. I seriously doubt they generate significant revenue or useful services, but figured I wouldn't waste my and their time on a done deal. I focused on using lack of notification as means to generate revenue and no provisions, at least that I could find, for SAR organizations who use state land regularly for training and education. I'm sure their/our efforts save the tax payers more than our $30 fee. I know the FS has threatened to ticket individuals who didn't have a pass and were part of an official volunteer organization training (DEM number). They only got out of the ticket by driving from the training site to get a permit and then returning (Buck Creek Trailhead, near HWY 410). I'm sure I wasted my time, but who needs sleep anyways.

I'm sure it varies from season to season and even climb to climb, but here is what the park has to say about it: http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/jasper/activ/activ8.aspx The weather looks a little warm.

One of the big changes since the accident and institution of climbing fees is the decreasing usage of volunteer SAR teams. In some cases it may make some sense, rangers and guide who are living on the mountain certainly can get high quicker. There are a lot of volunteer SAR organization who are qualified and willing to help support the park. Then I'm not sure that part of the budget goes to SAR so it may be mute for this discussion.

I saw Jeff Lowe give a talk at a conference a couple years ago. He said his climbing was escalating to the point where he would have eventually died and that MS saved his life.

This article hits close to home form me. A small group of us were climbing in the same area in. It hadn't snowed in over a week. 3 of my friends were climbing Midnight Rambler on Mount Wilson (same as in the text). An avalanche that started 1500 meters above them swept the route. They were not lucky. I was lucky for being on a different climb that day (Wet Dream). The experience changed the type of climbs I will do. We try to make the best decisions we can at the time, but there are things we can't control.

May be I missed them on the list, but a couple of my favorites: Nanda Devi, John Roskelly K2 The Last Step, Rick Ridgeway I Chose to Climb, Chris Bonnington A Women's Place is on top, Arlene Blum

Mt Baker around 1982. I loved that K2 expedition cap.

Yesterday we said good bye to Lee Tegner who among many other accomplishments was a founder of Tacoma Mountain Rescue Unit and instrumental in building the Sherman Hut on Mt Rainier. People like Lee paved the way for climbing and mountain rescue as we know it today. RIP

Unfortunately the last time I checked the statistics (I admit its been a while) on avalanche deaths, most people killed in avalanches have moderate to advanced avalanche training. Unless things have changed the biggest issue seems to be decision making not training. So either they chose to accept the risk, or they ignored the signs.

Canmore junk yard is a great place to go for new people, because there is easy safe terrain for soloing. That gives you lots of time on the ice. My first time up there I had a great time soloing around for hours. The second time it wasn't as fun.

In the Banff area Canmore Junkyard, Grotto Falls, and Hart Creek Falls are great for WI 2 and 3. If you want to be in a more remote area the David Thompson HWY and middle of the park are hard to beat. 2 O'clock Falls, Klein Gallery, Wet Dream, SARS on Ice, its limitless for WI2 and 3. Shundra Creek Youth Hostile near Nordegg is a great place. This area involves more driving. The Sunwapta pass to Jasper is also awesome. I can't wait to go back

Thank you Cascade Climbers, Department of Emergency Management, Tacoma Mountain Rescue, Seattle Mountain Rescue, Central Mountain Rescue, Everett Mountain Rescue, Washington Mountain Rescue Association and the Mountain Rescue Association for representing the best interests of the general public, climbing and SAR communities on this bill.

It's easy for us as climbers to say if I'm dead I'm dead don't come and get me, but if you're dead you don't get to decide if someone comes to get you. Your family, the authorities, the volunteer rescuers, and others involved do. I've had this discussion with my wife many times. Personally I don't want anyone dying while trying to recover my body, but like I said I won't get to vote if that time comes. As a rescue volunteer myself, we go to great lengths to recover people who fell into harms way. As an organization we have the training and decision making infrastructure to minimize the risk, while still trying to bring some closure. Sometimes we are not able to bring closure. That being said, I agree there is no problem to solve here other than public perception. I don't think any more regulations are necessary. This is supposed to be a free society for good or bad and the frequency of these events is low and the real costs are insignificant to the tax payers.

Tacoma Mountain Rescue was there yesterday as well.

When I started BC skiing in the late 80's I used plastic mountaineering boots. They worked fine in decent snow conditions in almost any terrain, but your balance had to be perfect. At the time there were very few AT boots available, most hardcore folks were stiffening their boots with homemade plastic uppers. I looked into making my own uppers using splinting plastic, but chose to switch to tele instead and use the AT for approaches. Besides at the time tele gear was much lighter for the uphills.

You may want to look into the Psayten (Cathederal lakes area is awesome) or Chelan area.

I haven't actually seen dynamic testing with spectra or dynema used as a prussik, so can only speculate. The testing I have seen with nylon showed the failure was due to friction heating up the material and melting it. In the tests I witnessed the friction was caused by not pre-tightening the knot in the webbing loop enough and one side of the webbing loop lengthening as the knot tightend. The webbing failed at the pin, not the knot due to heat generated with friction. Back when I was a kid I would prusik up a rope and then use them to slide back down. I melted more than one prusik that way. I personally would not use materials with lower melting points in friction situations like prusik or percell unless I had no other option.

I don't know about hero's, but some have been inspiring to me, specially when I was younger: Chris Bonnington John Roskelly Rick Ridgeway Barbara Washburn Yvonne Chouinard Jeff Lowe Tom Hargis Lou Reichart

Check this report by Art Fortini out. It doesn't directly compare the pickets you are interested in, but could still be enlightening. http://www.mra.org/services/grants/documents/FortiniSNOWANCHORS3B.pdf

Some good areas in the North Cascades are North Fork of the Entiat, Emerald, Saska, etc. or off the Chiwawa River Rd are, 7 finger Jack and Maude. These can be all class 2 or easy 3. If you look at the 100 highest list, there are lots of nice groupings of easy peaks, both in and out of the North Cascades. A couple other good areas for peak bagging are the Sawtooth and Psayten. Have fun

GPS's definitely can interfere with avalanche tranceivers in receive mode. I experienced it personally while searching for the 3 lost snowboarders near Crystal. Once I realized I could be getting an erroneous signal (I searched in circles for about a minute), I turned off my other electronics one at a time, the culprit was my Garmin 76CSx GPS. It made my tracker give a reading of 30-35. Others experienced this as well. This link isn't related to interference, but others may find it useful with regards to tranceivers. http://www.beaconreviews.com/transceivers/