philfort

Call the ranger station... I called sunday, and they had a conditions report from a party that had just been up there. I only asked about the snow level on the approach (4500ft).

Vegas is great, and if you don't need anything too fancy, their entry-level program called VideoFactory is good too. Someone mentioned the Canon Elura - I have one of those (40MC) and the things that suck about it are: 1) the mic picks up tape noise, and 2) batteries last less than half an hour (with the LCD off!). Otherwise it seems fine, and its really tiny.

Poll:

I think those gullies are briefly described in Dallas Kloke's book of winter climbs.

Sledheads don't obey the wilderness boundary that runs along the Ingalls Pass ridge... and there's no one there to police them.

There's an underground lake on top of Rainier...

Good times... thanks Dave! Skiing Sunday was good, but nothing like Saturday. Found some nice glop on north slopes, and half crust half corn on south slopes. on a sad note, found out the Baker Street Grill in Concrete has closed shop

How about this, does this count?

Good riddance!

I've done this approach twice. On skis a couple of months ago, it took just over an hour from the base lodge to open slopes in upper white salmon creek (then probably another hour an a half to the base of the north face?). Not really any bushwhacking if there is snowpack. There are several stream gullies to cross, these are a pain in the ass. When I did it a few years ago, they were all filled to brim with avy debris so it was smooth sailing.

Nice... oddly, the weather may have been better around Cascade Pass than in the Stuart range this wknd. When we drove through Marblemount saturday afternoon, Hidden Lake peak, and all of Marble Ck cirque was in the sunshine, except for a little cloud on top of Eldorado (in the morning, there had been high cloud, but good vis). The lady at the bunny diner said it hadn't rained all day. Pretty annoying to see, because we spent the day in a steady moderate rain just east of Ross Lake and got soaked... weird. I wonder if anyone was up Cascade river road this wknd and can attest to the gorgeous weather it seemed to have?

Sounds long. Isn't it almost 10 miles from the closure gate to the summerland trailhead? I would bring a bike and hope there's a bunch of dry pavement (they may have started plowing 410?)

The website now says earliest possible opening is April 14 (Monday) http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/regions/northcentral/Maint/Area3/nc2003/NC4Eastside.htm

The best thing about toporama, is the popup that appears when you start looking at the maps, telling you to bow down to Her Majesty the Queen, etc.... btw, toporama is still online, so I don't know what you are complaining about.

Interestingly, the snowdepth at Rainy pass is only a foot lower than when the plowers reach the pass last year (admittedly a week later), which was supposedly a "good snow year"....

From the site: "Although I have tagged hundreds of SUV's without incident, you do take a risk and should be aware that there are crazy violent people out there and if you cross one who happens to own the SUV you are tagging things could get ugly. I have a report of one person who took up the sport of big game SUV tagging getting into a fight with an enraged SUV owner and getting hurt, so you can be risking a serious confrontation with the owner of a tagged SUV. You have to decide if you want to take this chance. But remember, the founding fathers didn't shy away from a skirmish. " so there you go...

They mentioned it on the news, the guy was airlifted to the hospital... in serious condition. The "point" of their story was that the chopper had to come all the way from Fairchild airforce base due to the lack of resources due to the war. This was probably the chopper we saw fly up icicle canyon mid-afternoon today.

For what it's worth, it was groomed for snowmobiles on wednesday... that might give you some idea of the snow left on the road http://www.parks.wa.gov/winter/parks/motorparks.asp ?Park=20

True... I was thinking of the top shape, which would be a small dark square... that would make the top shape pattern obvious. but yeah a bottom shape would be "impossible" there..

I think the middle box in the top row is "hidden", otherwise, it would be too obvious...

Hmm, I guessed the white circle with the cross... I guess I guessed "right"... I guess I don't deserve my 140

Hmm... I figured the shapes repesented digits, since there are 9 different ones. thought it might be a magic suqare, but I was too lazy to figure that out. Also stumped on the last question (blue shapes)... I guessed the answer that had the small square, but it didn't feel right...

haha... I just did it again and guessed randomly at each one. It gave me an 82. Awfully high for random answers. The choices are:

Ok, most of them were easy, but I had to guess at this one.... ???? I'm stumped