philfort

No one's talking about removing flagging that is used for environmental work. But why would someone use biodegradable flagging if they are trying to permanently mark a bushwhack? Doesn't that kind of defeat the point? I see tons of flagging in the wilderness. I don't know if its biodegradable, but it's bright, orange, and doesn't belong.

I removed a bunch of flagging while hiking in along the south ridge of Kyes Pk (um, it's a ridge, good tread). On the way out, we suddenly ended up at a spot with cliffs all around and no way down - we probed around, but didn't see a way down. So eventually we backtracked and found where we had gone wrong. Turns out we had missed a hard-to-see 90 degree turn in the path, which, until that morning, had been marked with flagging No, I didn't learn anything from this.

fyi, the Mtn Loop is gated at Deer Ck (about 2 miles before Big 4).

Actually the yellow snow thing was pretty funny... as was the separation from doughnuts remark... The only annoying thing was he was applying European French stereotypes (obnoxious, stinky, surrendering, etc...) to Quebecois. Typical British ignorance ... uh, I mean American ignorance.

Hmm... I didn't think it was that insulting. I'm embarrassed those canadian govt officials are so uptight! It wasn't very funny compared to other Triumph segments though.

this sucks... I used to be a member of TMRU, and knew two of the victims - really nice guys.

I use an older sled, an '88 yamaha exciter 570, .75 inch track depth. It's noisy and belches lots of smoke, but it's been reliable so far, of course I only put 100 miles or so on it per winter. I was worried that it would get bogged down and useless in deep snow, but that's never been an issue as all the logging roads I've been on have been somewhat packed. Maybe this weekend will be the first time It is kind of a hassle though, and I find myself not wanting to use it that often. Just adds complexity to a trip. I will be looking to sell it at the end of this season, as I'm probably being an idiot and upgrading to a more enviro-friendly 4-stroke for next season.

We're planning to maybe snowmobile into White River CG and head in to glacier basin this weekend for some freshies sat-sun. I called the forest service and they said the old sno-park just a few feet up the crystal mtn road is no longer maintained, but that I could park there if I could get in. Does anyone know how feasible that is - is there a huge amount of snow there that would have to be moved, or have people been "self maintaining" it? Surely there are some folks here who drive to crystal regularly and may have seen its condition? They told me I would get towed if I parked on the highway. Also if anyone else with a sled is interested, you're welcome to come along (my skier towing capacity may be maxed out).

Logging roads from Lake Wenatchee go fairly high on the north slope. Long way, but with a snowmobile it would be reasonable day trip.

That is the best use of flash I have ever seen lol!

This is what I did: Assuming you're using IE, right click on the link for the 14mb file, and choose "Save Target As", then type in a name for the file that ends in .mp4, like "foo.mp4". Then change the "Save as Type" box to "All Files". Then hit save. Then that should work (it'll give you a foo.mp4 file whereever you saved it), assuming you've got the latest quicktime. I think this is the first video on Baker's website that I've ever figured out how to watch - they certainly have issues with the way they host them.

Download the highres version, save it as a .mp4 file, quicktime will play it.

On the Baker website: http://www.mtbaker.us/gallery0304/video_fs.html

The rain/freezing rain is putting a nice glaze on things up there... looks like an "interesting" weather forecast for the coming days, so conditions will surely change.

Anyway, the story referred to it as "the rugged backcountry west of Alpental". Which pretty much describes it exactly.

Sure it does.

The october storms washed away part of the road at Varden ck: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/regions/northcentral/Maint/Area3/nc2004/

actually the guy in blue pants is top roping it, the anchor is already set up. But the "20 degree slope" looks vertical!

huh - I have video of your party leading that thing on Sunday - assuming you were a party of three. Guy with the puke green helmet was on the ground, and a guy with blue pants and red gaitors was on lead. I think the skiing must have been 1000 times better than the ice (not that the ice was bad...)

Driving up to the pass yesterday afternoon, the long waterfall in those bluffs on the north side of the highway, just past exit 38, looked phat. It was running water on Sunday. Warning: phatness may have been exaggerated by the whiteout conditions, limiting visibility.

So he was lost, but mobile... and in 4 days he couldn't get back to the highway!??? The thread on ttips said he was found at Tuscohatchie Lake, although I haven't seen that in any of the news reports.

There had been minimal snow (judging from the telemetry - couple inches a day) since the previous weekend, when we skied on Heather ridge in stable conditions. Anyway, my main point is that I think these were pretty tricky conditions, perhaps conducive to luring folks to places they shouldn't be. Sure, people should have realized as they were heading out and the snow was getting intense, to maybe re-evaluate their plans. But I wonder if even more incidents would have occured if the snow had started a little later in the day, perhaps allowing people to travel into more hazardous terrain while it seemed a reasonable proposition.

Stevens Pass. They received 3 inches on Friday, and no new snow by the time we left Seattle Saturday morning (5:30am - in order to get in an early day, since the forecast called for winds to switch to the west by afternoon, warming things up). At that point, Snoqualmie had received only 5 inches in the previous 24 hours.

Give the avy forecast, and the weather forecast, it was certainly not an unreasonable day to plan to head into the backcountry. The forecast did indeed call for only 3-6 inches, and the previous day only 3 inches had fallen (where we went anyway)... hardly extreme conditions. But it sure did turn out to be extreme. I don't know how much experience those snowshoers had, but I'm thinking this could have happened to any of us. I guess one of the lessons learned is "get the hell out" when the snow is coming down that hard for that long, but it can be difficult to gauge how much snow is falling. Someone commented on another bulletin board "But I was floored that people were insane enough to be up in that entire area today at all!" ... that sounds like a reasonable thing to say after the fact, but actually I think that's a bit of an ignorant statement.