thoth

Diamox isn't a HAPE drug, try Nifedipine, oxygen, descent, Gamow bag, etc. Gingko - garbage, but a great product for snake oil salesmen, look here - http://nccam.nih.gov/health/ginkgo/ (a generically good site for real data on alternative medicine) Diamox- helped me tremendously when it came to being able to sleep above 15k, the tingling and carbonation side effects were well worth it. +1 on the taking longer to go higher suggestion, if you get sick your trip is probably over.

I seriously doubt you are "acclimatized to 14k", but it sounds like you are in good aerobic shape. Be aware that traveling from far away and trying to squeeze a big climbing trip into a narrow time window might make you more prone to ignore avy conditions/weather/etc and say "aw fuckit, let's go for it" when the prudent climber would probably bail. It's a potentially dangerous situation and has lead to some deaths in the cascades in recent years. I've only been caught in avalanches, crevasse falls, and collapsing seracs on two of my last 5 out of state trips. 60% safety, better than 50%, not bad. Shoot, I've only ever lost a couple partners and never good ones. Thanks for the replies, we'll leave 3 days but are watching the weather, our route/peak may well change depending on what conditions we come across.

Thanks, hopefully the weather plays out. We'd been planning on Olympus but underestimated the driving time from Seattle.

I'm headed out to Seattle for a few days in mid June. My partner and I are going to pick our climb based on current conditions and weather. One thing I was wondering - assuming perfect weather, avy conditions, etc. how long would it take to do Liberty Ridge. Assume two very strong climbers. Not Ironmen type but certainly competitive adventure race level fitness. Edit - We're from Colorado, acclimatized to 14k, and used to long trips with packs for technical peaks.

I bailed, calls for high avy conditions generally make me skip routes and my friend had already done the standard route so he wasn't into that. We skied Mt. Saint Helens instead. Worm Flows/Swift Glacier is very, very easy and non-technical and the snow conditions sucked - deep mush but I've never been on a volcano before so I was happy to have the experience and see the views.

Well, I'm flying in today, it looks like ~ 1-3 inches Friday night, the avy forecasts are mixed bad when warm, better when cold, helpful... I'll check stuff Friday (i.e. troll local shops/forums for beta), right now it looks like Sunday is our best bet. Worst case scenario is we'll hike up to the end of the easy south side stuff then ski it.

I'm flying out tomorrow night to climb up one of the first three and ski down the standard. What are the current conditions? Can I leave the ice screws at home? It looks like avy conditions might be stabilizing towards Saturday/Sunday.