LeeLau

Too beautiful. Any pictures I have of the area are in winter in whiteout so your shots are appreciated

jesse - I've been using this for weather http://weather.unisys.com/ would you or anyone ever consider doing a class on weather for dummies for mountains? I just kind of bumble along and could use a lot more education

I've got a Vertex VHF radio. Very very handy and I got it for the same reason you mentioned ie keeping in touch with party members or with SAR if all goes wrong. Esp if you get a whip antennae you can hit repeaters. Even with line of sight reception/transmission is v good. Basic politeness if to ask permission to get the correct codes for the repeaters - eg in the Bugs you would call CMH Bugaboos and ask for permission and don't always expect it to get granted. Here's a good place to get them http://www.mparam.com. He can do modifications for you and he can set you up with what you need. I got the Vertex VX - 170 btw - very tough. Its taken falls, dropped on snow and ice, basically beaten the crap out of it and it still works great.

Perhaps an obtuse question but what route were you planning?

Thanks! Need more Chilcotin range shots if you're looking for ideas

It's probably too late for your purposes but its 2WD-able till about the 900m mark at a toilet. Past that, the road goes left and waterbars start. High clearance would be nice for that. The next junction is the Snowmobile hut - left goes to the meadows, right to metal dome. That's usually where even the high clearance 4WD park

I've never experienced that. The only times my Dynafits have come off were a) icing of toe b) yardsale fall I've never had that happen either jordo. I've released out of the heel then gone into tele and then immediately stomped down to go back to alpine. That happened when the toe was locked out and was in deep powder. If I had lost the ski in that snow I'd have been choked. To the original poster, my wife's Garmont Megaride dynafit toe fittings were very slightly misaligned.

I haven't had problems myself but I did help troubleshoot a binding that had issues. It turned out to be Scarpa TX boot that had misaligned Dynafit inserts at the toe. There was enough of a misalignment (barely noticeable w/ naked eye) that the toe wouldn't quite engage even when the skier stepped into the binding. We had to fix this by dremelling some plastic around the toe piece. Scarpa replaced his boot. My wife's Mega-Rides also have a small toe misalignment. Not as much as the Scarpa TX but there's just a tiny bit of misaligment - noticeable when she's trying to step into her heel pieces so she has to step down with a bit of force. FWIW - I use brakes now after also having lost a ski down a run when I was too lazy to clean off the ice out of the toepiece and had the ski rocket down the (fortunately) closed run. I haven't had issues using brakes as I pull the brakes up and squeeze them together before rotating the heelpiece to tour mode; this reduces stress on the binding In short, perhaps there's a boot issue? What kind of boot are you using? I had anecdotally heard that some Scarpa Spirit 3s had issues.

The road that goes up past Cat Lake is also in decent shape actually. I rode up it about 2 weeks ago and checked it out - turned back when hit snow.

There was about 24 new about 3 days ago. Its settled out well as of today. NW slopes skied fine in blackcomb sidecountry. Some friends went out today to cache stuff at Naden so there'll be a track in. Not much snow projected so should still be a track in for weekend

Nice shots - you scored the weather.

Did a quick search - didn't see this posted before. Apologies if this is a repost ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Animated knots by Grog Want to learn to tie a bowline or munter mule? This website shows all kinds of climbing (and other) knots being tied in animation. Each knot automatically "ties itself" when the page opens. "Fast" and "slow" buttons allow each animation to be replayed. To study each stage, the animation can also be played step by step. Go to http://www.animatedknots.com/indexclimbing.php?

Im in Kokanee glacier that week but I can always go out the week after as Im pretty flexible. Get hold of me the following week and lets see if it works out.

It's possible to mitigate avalanche exposure pretty easily on this trip. Because so much of the trip is on glaciers, its easier to control risk if visibility is good. The Baldwin map is quite detailed and shows a bunch of different routes and some of the crevasse hazard. The contour lines should give you a good idea about what terrain is flatter vs steeper.

buy the John Baldwin "Backcountry whistler" map from escape route - a whistler shop - www.escaperoute.net or http://john_baldwin.bivouac.com/ That question about avalanche hazard is strange. I don't know how to answer that. Crevasses can be easily avoided at this time of the year and well into spring if traveling the standard route A quick google search will show numerous route descriptions.