philfort

Here's the snout in late September 2001: Almost looks like it advanced a tiny bit between 1996 and 2001... the little snow-covered bench coming in from the left in the 1996 photo ends right at the snout, but the snout is a little below that in 2001.

A cool, but depressing webpage: http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/befaft.htm

One ridge east of Slesse, along with Mt Rexford.

Thompson is definitely more chossy than da Toof. Not horrible, but there are some loose holds. It's walk-offable on the east side, with a couple of short 4th class steps. Toof is solid.

Well, that's what the link I posted above is claiming (due to cold temps though). So yeah, the relationship between pressure change and altitude change would be different - but that ratio is fixed (at least on my altimeter), so the altimeter is "permanently calibrated" to some norm. But the changing weather is probably going to mess with your altimeter more than the "latitude error"?

oh come on Here's an article about why the effective altitude is greater at the south pole. http://www.polar.org/antsun/Sun020203/altitude.html

scott, There's no bergschrund problems with the east ridge. The approach is straightforward up a 35 degree snow gully, then scree. I think it would go in a day.

He's slow... as of last wknd, he hadn't moved from his belay ledge!

damn, I'm good!

guess without having seen the pic: American Border Pk

yeah, which route? If the east face route, how is the moat?

Yeah, I took a gamble buying them w/o trying them on, and I got them a little too small. I think mine are size 26.5. As for the MLT's, it really confounds me that they don't sell them with thermoflex liners. Kind of negates the whole weight savings thing unless you shell out extra cash.

I don't think any stores here carry the TLT4. I had to order mine direct from life-link.

I tried on a pair at Marmot at the beginning of the ski season. I think they only had a couple in stock, and not really my size. I already have TLT4s, and I thought the MLTs might be interesting if they were softer around the ankle (e.g. for french technique), but they weren't really, so it didn't seem worth it to pursue getting them.

Looks like its an insignificant bump next to Phantom Peak... i.e. so gentle that it doesn't get its own entry. I think its the ridgecrest with a snowfield in between Phantom and Swiss on page 117.

Conditions are fine now, go for it! And bring bugspray...

Wow, that's ridiculous! I went permitless twice last fall - we actually tried to get permits, but both times the station was closed and there weren't any permit forms left outside! What do they expect you to do? Actually though, all the rangers I've run into in NCNP have been pretty nice, and not copping a 'tude. (Except one who tried to trick us into saying we had spent the night in BB).

Actually I think it was 5 raps to the sloping terrace, one of them was hanging. "Mostly" straight down. No stuff to get the rope caught on though.

hakioawa, were you the two we met at the base of the route? We wondered how you were doing descending the wet sidewalk... heh heh. I guess the late start paid off for us.

I didn't find the rock that bad. Of course, if I'd had an experience like you, then I'd probably label it a chosspile too. Thanks for making the route more solid. The worst part was the sketchy scree on the descent.

"The rock (of Mt Thompson) is andesite of the Naches Formation, typical of the region." ... so says Beckey. This is in the scree below the peak. We didn't see any of these rocks on the peak itself, but there were a lot mixed in in the talus. Here's as good a closeup as I have: We hypothesized that they were snowflake fossils Well, anyway, I thought it looked cool...

Just curious... can someone explain what causes these weird starbursts and shards in these rocks?

He's been taking too many of these:

Don't know about Ptarmigan, but the Emmons was so suck for skiing last weekend. Might be ok on a really warm day, since its still continuous (no real crevasse problems), but it was bumpy and icy crap. The corridor has deep penitentes across its entire width. Didn't see any climbers coming over from Ptarmigan or Lib Ridge...

I use Vegas, from Sonic Foundry. Maybe a little pricey if you don't need anything too fancy (but still cheaper than Premiere I think?), but they have a good entry-level editor called VideoFactory, which is what I started with (60$ I think). Super stable software. You can download trial versions at their website. Windows MovieMaker will work, and its free, but its pretty limited in what you can do.