philfort

Is Scott not telling us something? nwog is a system that began with jim fries' windows nwog is developing into a complete online gm assistant nwog is a complete database of hiking nwog is making a stink over herr haider because he is not one of their puppet bureaurats nwog is snooping on you nwog is using terrorists to force bureaurats

summitpost is wierd

cascadeclimbers is brought to you by the letters h and c

Re maps: I built a thing of map drawers with some wood (frame), particle board (drawers/shelves) and long L-shaped plastic things (screwed in on the sides to support the sheets of particle board). Works pretty well, except it's a bitch to move 'cause it's big. Maybe overkill, but I like maps, and I have a lot, so it made sense.

No, not climbing, avalanche-watching. The forecast of EXTREME AVALANCHE DANGER sounded bad for skiing and anythign else, so we hiked into the ice caves basin this morning to watch snow fall down the north face. Got absolutely drenched by rain/wet snow, but it was highly entertaining, Big Four put on a great show. None of the debris that fell went as far as the recent stuff that was already there, so I imagine what we saw must still have been "relatively small". The big dust clouds were nice. As we were leaving, the towers on the left let loose a bunch of snow right from the top, which rushed down those narrow gullies, shooting swirly billowing clouds of powder out horizontally once it reached the bottom, like compressed air.... very cool

I was out (bc) today near the pass, and while the snow was phenomenal deep fluffy powder, avie conditions were some of the sketchiest I've been out in. Probably a good weekend to stick to resorts. We tried to ski low angle treed stuff, but it's so tempting to start skiing steeper open stuff - maybe go somewhere where you don't have that option (someone suggested Mt Catherine? I've heard it has decent old growth glades). We saw one good-size natural slab that had released, with debris running into dense forest. Also had a 25 degree gladed slope crack and settle under us. Luckily the snow was so light than face shots were possible even on low angle stuff.

That sucks... I got stuck just above a tree-well today for about ten minutes (luckily my friend knew where I was, and was slow skinning back up extricate me) - I was able to free myself eventually, but it would have been a much more serious situation if alone. (I was on my back, head downhill pointed towards treewell, dangling from slide alder because of my Rainiey heel lifts both caught on alder. I absolutely could not undo my bindings because of angle. Finally with much struggle after 10 minutes I was able to reach a branch, pull it forward and unhook one ski, which I was then able to get out of, and then I could reach the other alder branch. During the whole ordeal, I had to keep hosting my self away from the well by pulling on some other alder) ...important to ski with a buddy in the trees.

I hope it sucks this weekend, as much as it did 2 weeks ago

I thought it was supposed to be dumping all today... the passes have only got a few inches of snow Is this going to fizzle out like all the other big storms they have predicted this winter?

1000ft from the top of the White Salmon (after I punched through into a hidden slot), so we never saw Hell's Highway. The bottom part of the NW couloir (I think?) looked like a sweet run!

Damn, that looks like some tight skiing! Good job

Your attachment is a Word document (.doc) with the picture embedded in it. That's probably why you can't upload it to the photo gallery. You need to save the picture as a .jpg or something. I don't know how you do that once it's in a Word document. btw, the photo is mine, but I don't mind if you post it to the gallery (just credit me please)

Maybe not for long? Forecast is calling for a bunch of snow later this week at low snow levels...

Check out "fresh reports" on wta.org: http://www.wta.org/~wta/cgi-bin/web10.pl?FreshReports+tr+fr+time chances are there will be something recent for monte cristo.

Not bad - 6 inches or so of dry powder on firmish windcrust. Snowpack is thin here - about 4 feet at the lower base area (website says almost 10 feet at Heather Meadows - hmmm). We intended to ski the White Salmon glacier, but stopped about 1000ft from the top due to deteriorating snow condtions (variable/powder/crusty) and thin coverage (crevasses not covered too well). What an awesome run it would be in better conditions Better skiing was found below 5000ft - nice dry, but not deep, powder. Approach to upper White Salmon creek took about 1h15m, but is annoying due to thin snowpack and too many stream gullies. Also tree wells seem to be larger and more numerous here than anywhere else Slopes below 4000ft getting direct sun got crusty. No avalanche activity noted, except for 30 second loud noise coming from icefall on Hanging Glacier, while we were in deep forest on the deproach and couldn't see anything

Well, I wouldn't quite say 'discovery' . I know folks who have been up in this area many years ago and noticed ice potential. Who knows, maybe someone already climbed it all in the 70s! Hope not...

Here's some more less-than-world-class ice I saw hiking two weekends ago, only 2 miles from a road (mostly on trail), elev 4000ft: It was falling down that day -- maybe it's in with this cold snap? oooo - I wonder where it is.....

that wasn't his fault of course... I recall reading a quote from his wife saying something like "the gaping hole just came out of nowhere and swallowed him"

It's not too hard to find your own secret ice stash by looking at a topomap - sometimes the terrain is pretty obvious - that's how this place was "found". I think people need to do more exploring and less whining.

"I ... hopped my "frank and beans" right onto a big ass "

Inspired by MattP and Wotan's climb of Sloan Peak a few weeks ago, 4 of us set off up Bedal Ck to find some turns. Like Matt and Wotan, we were able to drive all the way to the trailhead (~2800ft), though this time there was about 8 inches of freshiez on the road. We were able to put on skis at about 3200ft, but still lots of logs and alder, and devils club glades. We made it to the basin in about 3 hours, using the worst possible route (advice: keep on the north side of the creek - we took this on the way out and it was much quicker). Skied west-facing slopes up in the basin in a foot of powder, in the sunshine, in the solitude, under the 2000ft cliff on the west side of Sloan - verrry nice - the best skiing of the year for all of us I think. Temps were nice and cool, lots of spindrift blowing off the peaks, but not very windy in the basin. Wow, there is a lot of water ice on that side of Sloan.

You should send this to NEWSTIPS so the media can finally understand climbing.

I dunno, maybe he's too happy for you, but I appreciate that Renner is a hiker/skier/mountaineer, unlike the other meteorologists. He even wrote a fairly useful book about mountain weather in the northwest.

Pretty sure it's Buck Mtn.