dberdinka

wow!

Scenic - Moonset & Sunrise on Glacier Peak from Buck Creek Pass 8/20/05 Climbing - Ti following the 3rd pitch of Borderline, Squamish Ice - Polish Bob in the E Couloir of Cutthroat Skiing - Early season Pow near Rainy Pass Humor - Trying to load a llama in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru All images were cropped, resized, level adjusted and sharpened in PS Elements

Crap! Funny how that sneaks up on yah!

Testing...Testing....

Almost T-shirt weather on the UTW. Damn near perfect.

Gte a partner to clean the pitches for you.

Ignore Mike, he's just a little grumpy from not gettin any lately Try a search on "Colfax" on this site. Alex's plan is actually a pretty good one should the 1 in 20 chance of decent weather actually occur over Thanksgiving.

It was TOO deep at Baker today. Figure 11s on all but the steepest lines. Another 14" tonight. WTF!

North Rib of Slesse is incredible. I second the NE Ridge of White Chuck. The Houston-Cosley Route on the N Face of Colfax Peak has to be one of the more reliable water-ice routes around and has easy access to boot. It should be mobbed.

You dont understand, it's cooler to be a binge drinking alcoholic than a stoner.

Baker Ski Area has gotten something like 48" of snow in the last two days. It doesn't sound like it's going to let up. No one will be climbing shit anytime soon.

Cool Shot Dave. Looks BIG. Surprising number of these things around it seems. Anybody need a topic for a Geology Thesis??

There is in fact no vacancy. O'Conner is still presiding until a new justice is confirmed. Get your facts straight you right-wing knucklehead.

While backpacking with my wife near the Napeequa River this summer I spent a night near a relatively unique feature in the Cascades, a cannonhole. In the morning I scrambled up near it and took the photo posted below. It wasn't huge but at least 15' across, maybe more. I'm curious how many more of these exist in the Cascades. A large one near Dome Peak is pretty well know and is featured in the Kearney Guidebook. The Pillar of Pi, if not a cannonhole, is certainly an oddity. John Scurlock seems to be aware of quite a few. I've paraphrased part of e-mail from him below. "Dome, Jack, Snowfield (has two), Bear (two also), Arches (up near Arriva), Silver Star, and a couple others that don't come to mind just now." If anyone has photos of these or knows of others I'd be interested in hearing about them. This is found on the high ridgeline seperating the Napeequa River from the north side of an unnamed valley dropping down from High Pass.

The Green Creek Valley in all its Glory

I took a hike up to Heliotrope Ridge on Thursday. The warm, wet October seems to have treated Colfax nicely. Ice lines are definitely shaping up. In fact the Houston-Cosley Route looks in. The crux pillar appears a wee bit thinner than last March. Glacier is seriously broken up a few feet of snow is going to hide a lot of small/medium crevasses.

YOUR MOM! ROLF More importantly why did this take a 100+ views???

The most interesting part is that while sitting in basecamp one of them got diagnosed with what sounds like MAD COW DISEASE! See the Oct 25th blog entry.

NICE WORK! Did you find it worthy of repeats? Looking at your topo you punched right through a wall of grey rock up high, my recollection is that that looked really shitty. Was that the friable pitch? Any thought of traversing out right to stay on red rock??

Nice trip Curt and great photos! We still need to hook for beers soon!

There you go again, you're a Nihilist. THE MAN BELIEVES IN NOTHING! Furthermore that's bullshit. Wilderness is not neccesarily unknown it is simply not impacted to the point where a human presence is evident (to one extent or another) in the landscape. While GoogleEarth might allow you to have some limited knowledge of every square foot of the planet, satellite photos and even airplane rides aren't going to reveal the best line for schwacking into the Green Glacier Basin. That knowledge has to be earned through effort, careful thought and maybe even some luck. To simply hike in there with your eye's glued to a trail at your feet would diminish the experience. Plenty of trails out there to follow already, lets enjoy the challenge of what wilderness is left!

THAT'S A REALLY BAD IDEA. On second thought even flagging it is a bad idea. The best aspect about that area is that it REALLY IS WILDERNESS where as every other valley between B'ham and Shuksan has a fat trail and a parking lot full of Subarus to match. The schwack is only an hour at most and pretty tame by NC standards. Let's leave it as pristine as we find it. ...though obviously that might be tough for you Layton.

Cool. Looks like some great pitches. The approach I described and the approach you took seem to differ significantly, maybe it's time for some flagging.

Every night I pray for another shitty ski season.