ChuckC

A second on the BCA Trackers. Easy to understand and use for beginners and beyond. Once you feel like you have mastered it and want more power for multiple burial situations you might want to reconsider your route choices.

Definitely recommend using a guide service over one of the clubs in the area. If you aren't a club member the cost is pretty much the same. If you are a club member there's a slim savings but you pay for it with a dragged out course schedule. I've also found guides to be a lot better at teaching as they do multiple courses each year rather than one or two. Plus they don't get off track as much telling war stories. If you have the discipline you could also acquire your safety gear and Tremper's book and pretty much self teach a lot of the information with practice. It's acquiring the skills and experience that counts not necessarily some piece of paper.

To me the biggest problem with the basic climbing class is that it trashes your ski season. I did some work with guides and took the equivalency evaluation. Done. More importantly, I got a lot of skiing in.

Wow. Thanks for sharing that.

I did the Old Chute route on Monday. Pretty simple route. The chute ends at the ridge and the exposed traverse begins but isn't really that long. Seemed worse going back from the summit. Someone had gone down the chute in skis ahead of me and scraped off most of the steps. So the downclimbing kind of sucked. That was the hardest part of the route.

Was up on Chair 7/28 and took these shots. Reports are that its going fast now. We did encounter a skier coming down from PP who remarked that there was a sizeable moat near the base of the Tooth. http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=21556.0

Dave, Check out some of the local gear shops like Marmot in Bellevue. They tend to have lots of used, good condition skis/bindings to choose from. I'd say focus on the boots though. Find a pair that work well for you and then decide what to attach to them. Its worth spending more money on the boots since they are what will make you miserable. Once you find some good boots see if you can set up a demo arrangement with someone to try out different binding and ski combinations both in bounds and in the bc (including going uphill here). Some places will run demo days at some of the ski areas and these are pretty good opportunities to try a bunch of stuff fast. Within a binding class (AT or tele) I'd be less worried about weight and more worried about beginner friendliness. I have Fritschis on my Mt Bakers and 7TM power tours on my tele set up. Both run a little heavy but the 7TM is releasable and has a nice touring pivot (you want that). My Fritschis are really easy to get into regardless of the snow conditions but are heavier than Dynafits. I've seen a lot of new bc skiers come with Dynafits and take forever to get the boots into them. So if you go that way make sure you can get into the teeny tiny posts easily regardless of the snow conditions (soft, deep seems to be the worst). Also make sure you get proper safety gear and training on how to use the gear and how to avoid needing to use the gear.

Was up there the weekend before last. Bring snowshoes or you'll be postholing for a long time. Snow was still to the parking lot but may have some small breaks here and there now. Lots of snow above the trees. Some of the snow banks along the gully sides were peeling away from the rock so you may want to pay attention if your route takes you through one of those spots.

Mens Atlas snowshoes, Series 8, size 825, carries 120-200 lb. Like new condition, no nicks or scratches. $100 Fisher metal edge XC skis, 179 cm, used 2 days up at Rainier. No damage, like new. Mounted with NNN-BC bindings. $150 Both in Seattle.

How about the Scarpa T2 Ecos or whatever they are called? They look similar to the T2s. Feathered Friends had a bunch of demo Garmonts on sale a week or so ago that you might check out.

Nice trip. Saturday we did a descent of the couloir on Chair Peak that comes out right below the "19" on your map. The snow up above was really nice and it was all debrised/glopped up down low in the couloir as well.

I got mine heat molded up at Marmot. Didn't take long and they are super comfortable. So its probably worth it. Plus your feet are nice and warm for awhile. I've found REI stopped being a coop years ago. I only go there with coupons now. Too many other good local shops to leave my paychecks at these days.

I recently finished a glacier skiing/crevasse rescue class and am looking for some not so intimidating glaciers to try to gain some basic experience on. Any recommendations on where to start in WA? I'd prefer something not super steep or hairy to begin with.