pete_a

another argument for carrying an ice screw or two even on an all-snow-glacier slog route is if you're the one in the crevasse and are too beat-up to ascend the rope, you can at least try to sink in some screws into the crevasse wall, clip into them and get the weight off rope so your partner can have an easier time rigging a haul system.

if you're in portland and need a skiing fix, just head up to Timberline and get in some laps on the Palmer snowfield... the lifties on the Palmer usually don't check for lift tickets... just skin up in the morning and then try to hop on the lift for a few yoyo's.

have a plan figured out before your partner and you rope up, such as agreeing to just hold the weight of the fallen climber for ten minutes or so before trying anything, which allows the climber in the crevasse a little time to prussik their way out on their own. hopefully they're not too banged up to not help get themselves out. If the time has passed and you have to extract them on your own, hopefully you have your picket(s) very easily accessible and can access them with one hand, as you'll have the other hand on your axe until you can get a decent anchor to transfer the weight to. Once the weight is transfered, you'll need three of four items that can be used as anchors (even deadmanning stuff sacks or making bollards would work) cause if you're really going to try to haul the person out, you'll likely need to rig a double Z-pulley or C-Z to get a mechanical advantage that would allow a single person to haul another out. Elaborate setups like that take a lot more time to rig and the prussiks/pulleys need to be re-set twice as often, but its probably the only way unless you're really strong or your partner weighs 100lbs.

the russell and flett glaciers on the mowich lake side of rainier have been good the past few weekends. some smallish cracks opening up on the russell and they're hard to spot until you're flying right over them on your boards so bringing a rope might not be a bad idea. staying just on the flett glacier, no cracks as of last weekend.

As long as you have solid snowcamping, navigation, and crevasse rescue skills, organizing your own trip is great. RJ Secor and Colby Coombs both have written good Denali guidebooks. Beckey's 'Mount McKinley' is a great read too. Just search on this site too...I posted a shitload of questions when organzing a trip to Denali last summer. The NOLS Cookery book is another good resource for your meal planning. I've got a pretty good excel spreadsheet for organizing gear and food that I'd be happy to pass along, send me a PM if you want it. For a backpack, just get the biggest, most comfortable one you can get, try to find one with the burliest suspension with a minimum of bells and whistles.

its over a month old, but here's a link to a trip report and pictures from Daniels that was put up on turns all year http://www.turns-all-year.com/goldhome3/hp135/index.html I've been up to Daniels before in September and the Hyas Creek glacier wasn't all that suncupped even then, so odds are the glacier is probably still smooth enough for good turns. With the hot weather though, I doubt you'd be on snow until past Peggy's Pond and on the glacier proper. As for it being suitable for a beginner...as you can tell from the photos, the hyas creek cirque has rather low angle, mellow terrain and I don't think there any crevasses on that side of the mountain, whether there's still a continuous line of snow from the east peak of daniels down the hyas creek though, who knows, might have melted out by now, which would make for rather limited terrain to ski on. The Lynch and Daniels glaciers are low angle but have a few more crevasses probably disqualifying it from being suitable beginner terrain. Its a long hike in to carry skis/board (as I'm sure you're already aware of) but I doubt you'll see many other skiers up there.

If she's willing to give contacts a shot, she can probably go to her eye doctor and get a couple free trial pairs of short term wear contacts...might be a cheaper option if she doesn't want to spring for prescription sunglasses. There are some great contacts out now, like the Ciba Night & Day contacts, that breathe so well you don't have to take them out at night and can leave them in your eyes for weeks on end, I wore one pair for three weeks straight on a trip once...no need to hassle with figuring out how to keep your contact case from freezing at night or how to get your hands clean enough to deal with your lenses.

some of my ski buddies that are from caifornia, and those who've done extended trips to cali in the spring swear that the corn snow is better and/or more consistant in the sierras, particularly the east side....but in california one cannot find multi-thousand foot runs mid to late summer either, so perhaps its a trade off.

thanks. I've been looking through Baldwin's book for trip ideas...guess I should take a closer look at it for the airdrop info.

Anyone have first-hand experience with doing a ski tour or traverse in the BC coast range that involved caches of food/fuel placed by plane? Hoping to do a multi week ski trip maybe around the Homathko icefield or Waddington or who knows where next spring and I've read trip reports that involved air drops of supplies so one does not have to sled their whole supply of food/fuel from the start, but I'm just curious how this is typically done. Do folks generally place the caches on the flight in to the start of their tour? Is it literally and 'air-drop', where one can expect half their fuel to not survive the crash landing? any rough ideas on how much one's heli or plane flight costs increased with placing caches? any info would be appreciated...just trying to figger out if it would be best to just look at a trip that doesn't involve any pre-placed caches.

...north sister via the south ridge ain't that bad, I've been up it several times mid-summer and actually never had any close calls with rockfall (maybe I'm just lucky). my opinion could also be skewed by the fact that when I lived near the Sisters I had yet to go climbing in the North Cascades and see what less crumbly mountains were like. the rock quality gets better up near the top, decent enough rock to actually put in a rap anchor if you don't want to downclimb the bowling alley. the high snowpatch that you have to traverse to get to the bowling alley usually has a big moat on the uphill side that makes the traverse much easier than crossing the middle of the snowpatch. that being said, there are better climbs to be done in the central oregon cascades...middle sister is a safe walk-up and washington has good quality rock for being an oregon volcano, and the last moves to the top of three finger jack are decent too.

you can always pony up more cash than for superfeet and have some custom orthotics made by a doctor or physical therapist...got some about seven years ago for running shoes..since then that one pair of orthotics has been used in all my ski and hiking boots. I paid $100 for mine to be made by my doc, and it was money well spent.

When I used to spend my summers fighting forest fires (and was on my feet 12 hours a day 7 days a week sometimes for weeks on end) all my toes went numb and stayed that way for a good several months after the fire season was over. No long term problems with numbness of sensitivity to cold. Guess its a rather common affliction going by the number of posts.

I skied the SW chutes on July 3rd, we opted for a one day climb from Cold Springs, we carried our running shoes with us and were happy to have them for the hike out. It was relatively easy to find the round the mountain trail by following the continuous snow as far down and to the left (south) as possible, then we descended on foot about another 500vf till we found the trail. The last of the descending to the trail was involved minimal bushwacking and the occational following of a goat path through short cliff bands. The trail is now 90% snow free and you should have no problems finding it as long as you have a map and know at what elevation to start looking for the trail.

kinda silly to mention this but...the road to Mowich Lake has some big potholes and really sharp gravel. I had a blow-out on that road last year that was bad enough the can of flat fixer I used just shot right out the hole in my tire. So, its not a bad idea to make sure your spare tire is pumped up and you're set to change a flat.

MysticNatcho- The standard route to get to the base of lib. ridge traverses the winthrop glacier and descends off of lower curits ridge at around 7000-7500ft onto the carbon glacier...the rangers are probably starting there in order to retrace the likely route up the carbon to see if the lost climber can be found somewhere along the way.

I've had no problems using sabretooths on my T1's or T3's, but who knows, my sabretooths and boots are all about five years old... Try doing a search on telemarktips.com too, there are many threads that have been written on crampons and teleboots there, probably find someone who's already using the boots you've got and has found a good crampon match.

don't know much besides its called the Garmont Adrenalin and it has interchangable boot soles for both alpine din and randonee din but you probably already knew that. http://www.garmont.com/free_ride.html some info on teton's bulletin board: http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3868 http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6993

marmot over in bellevue has carried those green skin tips in the past...picked some up there last year...they might still stock them.

okay, nevermind about the Redoubt suggestion...I had heard it was a decent late season destination, guess its not.

just my two cents... seems like climbing something like lib. ridge in the fall would only be feasible under very specific (and rare) conditions that occationally occur when the mountain gets plastered with new snow from an early winter storm and then the weather warms up then turns very cold producing a nice layer of firm snow/ice over most of the rotten rock. The odds of getting that kind of weather is tough enough, and although I've been snowed on over labor day weekend before on Rainier, I would think if you're looking for early winter conditions, sometime in October might be better....even then you could still get your head knocked off by rockfall. why not just be patient and take another crack at it next summer? or if you really want to get out here this fall, why not head into the north cascades or the coast range and find something steep and icey that won't be a rockfall deathtrap, like the northeast face of Fury or the north face of Redoubt or the Entiat Icefall on Maude?

FYI, The guys at Rainier really went the extra mile to help me out. Mike sent me a message saying he'd follow up the permits and I got a call tonight from the park service letting me know that a bunch of permits that had been in the deposit box at Longmire got mailed out last week...so anyone who didn't get their permit yet and paid for it at Longmire this spring will probably get it within a few days. Thanks Mike!

I guess its good to know that I'm not the only one who hasn't received their permit....still frustrating though...when I head up again this summer I'll just take my chances that the ranger I talk with is in a good mood and will believe me that I paid already. I completely understand that the park service is horribly understaffed even in the summer, but I've never had to wait more than a few weeks to get my permit in the mail in years past.

my climbing partner and I bought annual permits at Longmire Saturday morning April 10th and neither of us ever received our actual permits in the mail. I still have our 'climbing special use permit' for our overnight stay at Muir that weekend but of course neither of us kept our little temporary annual permit slip...and both paid in cash. I've called the park service three times, explaining the situation to a different person each time and giving our climbing permit# from that trip, yet no annual permits mailed out, not even a returned phone call to tell me 'tough luck, buy another one'. Don't want this to come across as pointless griping over a measly $30, just wondering if anyone else out there who bought an annual permit around that time or that same weekend has also not received their annual permit? I figure lots of folks were on the mountain that weekend, so it seems like at least a few folks paid for annual permits that weekend.

congrats! six days at 17k, that had to have been rough. looking forward to reading your trip report. hope you hit the Fairview Inn with your climbing partners afterwards and all got thrown out in the wee hours of the morning...its a good way to end a trip like that!