nolanr

Colchuck Peak via Dragontail/Colchuck Col on Sunday. Got to walk across part of Colchuck Lake, frozen solid. Frickin' awesome 2000+' glisade from the col back down to the lakeshore, almost a straight shot, only had to walk a few steps. My was a little cold but no worse for the wear.

I noticed that green stuff on some boulders in a little lake basin to the north of Ingalls. Lambone, I'd have to say the slipperiest stuff I've found in the Cascades was on Sperry--when it was wet. Right next door on Vesper the stuff was bombproof even w/ little rivulets running down it.

Bush pilot? In the Sierras? It ain't exactly friggin' Alaska! Ditto on the map thing. I almost never carry one, I like to think that even if I don't know exactly where I'm at, I'm never lost.

What, I thought it was May now. Isn't that stuff supposed to be melting off now? It was coming down pretty steadily below 4' K today. And totally unrelated: first there was Son of Caveman. Now our newest member is Petitdru. Cavey, Dru, will you guys quit procreating.

Alpinfox maybe you were up there the same time as us. We got to the trailhead too late so just crashed there, did it car-to-car. There was another party that camped at Colchuck Lake and were a little ahead of us on the route, I think there were 3 or 4 of them.

Did W. Ridge last year in early June. A lot less snow than this year, snow free 'til a little above Colchuck Lake, then completely snow covered the rest of the way up to Aasgard and in the Enchantments. Route itself was snow free. It was windy and cold, route was mostly in shadows. Have fun!

Where the hell is Mulvey Basin at?

Aren't there issues w/ going thru the Indian Res. if you do around Adams? Something that might be cool, I haven't done it, if you have 2 cars or you stashed a bike: do Del Campo from the S. Fork Stilly valley side, same trailhead as Headlee Pass. Descend to Gothic Basin and follow that trail out to Barlow Pass. Or you could continue up to Monte Cristo/Glacier Basin area. Heck, you could throw in Columbia Peak too, for a REALLY long day.

Are Caveman and Lambone having a little love fest? My how times have changed.

You mean sexual harrassment can go both ways? I thought only men were capable of offending.

I get it. Projecthex is like the Borg on Star Trek or something, some kind of collective organism that will take over the universe eventually. At least they are climbers.

Yeah, Leuthold did look pretty obvious in hindsight. We did have a picture copied out of a guide book, I think it was Oregon High. It sure seemed like it showed the route going to the left of a buttress down at the lower end of the coulouir, and from where we were standing at the time eyeballing the route, to get to the actual Leuthold we would have had to go to the right of a buttress, which we assumed was the one in the picture. We didn't study the area real close from Illumination, some climbers we ran into down low on Palmer told us to check things out from the safety of a rock outcrop just below the route, so we could guage the amount of rockfall coming down at the time. Yeah, that whole thing about it being too wide to look like a coulouir applied. The one we entered definitely LOOKED like a couloir. And yes, we did see Yocum beside us, and I am pretty sure we actually did gain the ridge line near it's upper end. To continue beyond that point looked to be beyond our technical abilities. Thanks for not laughing too much.

Hah, only 29 posts? You are definitely not worthy of being a ninja spraymeister yet.

Alright, well I'm anxiously awaiting the book whenever it comes out.

Hexie, chill out. Something definitely crawled up your ass and died today, based on your posts. Or are you just trolling?

Hmm, maybe Projecthex is trying to fill the void left by the missing Caveman: beat the shit out of somebody first, ask questions later. Whatever works for you dude. I don't think the original poster was whining, he was asking a question. He stated twice he was already done climbing, so he wasn't even effected by it.

Gimpy, You had to train your cats to hunt mice/rats? I thought that was pretty instinctive. I've actually heard a theory that the reason cats leave dead carcasses around the house is that THEY are trying to train US to hunt. Also, I've read that prey species control predator populations as much as the other way around. Simple supply and demand. Not enough food for predators, they have large die-offs. Then less pressure on prey species, their numbers increase. Or something like that.

Well, this is kind of embarassing, but if you can't laugh at yourself who can you laugh at. We attempted it on Sunday, smooth sailing from south side over Illumination Saddle, across Reid Glacier, then...we made a route finding error that led to a very interesting day. We missed Leuthold all together, ending up on a gulley further to the left, we think it was the Upper Buttress of Yocum Ridge route. We only brought 1 picket, 1 fluke, 1 ice screw and 1 piton. It seemed a little more difficult than we had anticipated. Found a pitch of near vertical (aprox. 85 degrees) WI. I got to follow on that...with only 1 ice axe. I put on a wonderful display of thrashing and bashing, managed to get up it. A little bit more climbing and traversing on fairly steep snow gained us the ridgeline, where we thought all the difficulties were behind us. Turned the corner, and there was the friggin' rime encrusted gendarmes of Yocum R. laughing at us. Holy snikeys! No way we were continuing. After some putzing around, it seemed like our only option was doing a steep downclimb to hit the exit gulley for Leuthold, then trudge back over to Illumination S. w/ our tails between our legs. Once at the saddle we were treated to near zero visibility. Good thing we had map & compass, found our way back down to Timberline. We were thoroughly worn out by that point, shut out on summiting, but all in all still a great day. Then it was time to take turns on the drive back north.

Was there 4/21, snowshoes completely unnecessary.

Was just there 4/21, didn't rope up, didn't see any crevasses. A few open on Reid Gl., there was a track traversing across it we followed w/ no problems.

All this talk about Pope got me thinking. We've all heard of the Boardman/Tasker Omnibus. Can you imagine if the above mentioned near legends combined all their tales in one fine piece of literary work? All the Big Lou sightings. Big Lou near-sightings. Big Lou non-sightings. Big Lou mugs travelling from one corner of the state to another. Something about wigs and cheerleader outfits. I'm not quite sure about that one. Adventures and misadventures w/ the ladies. Trolling for crunchy granola chicks w/ tambourines and beads. And, um, it might be a little embarrassing, but they couldn't leave out the unfortunate sleeping bag crapping incident (or incidents?). I think they even do a little bit of climbing, too. And hell, even if none of it is true and it's just a bunch of tall tales, it sure is entertaining. I think we could have a best seller on our hands here. Jon, Timm@y, can we get the guys a cash advance or something? Maybe the Caveman could come out of retirement to write the forward.

You can keep your SE cragging, I prefer ALPINE! [ 04-20-2002, 12:28 PM: Message edited by: nolanr ]

I used to figure, "Why not just pay, it's only $30." But the more I learn about it, the less I like it. Very little of what you pay goes to anything useful locally. Most of it goes into a general fund, I believe, or like someone else said, gets eaten up paying someone to write tickets who they wouldn't have to pay if they didn't require trail passes. I haven't decided if I'm going to practice civil disobedience this year. If I had the balls to put my money where my mouth was I definitely wouldn't pay. It's definitely double taxation. And "pay for play" seems like a dangerous trend that could easily escalate and increase in $$$. The FS, etc. should get money from Congressional funding (re: our taxes we pay), not fee use stuff. Sorry, getting off topic. I haven't gotten a ticket thus far.

The NW has the full attention of the Bushies. They want this fee demo thing to stop being a demo and become permanent, they know there's a lot of grumbling about it out here, so they're trying to do some PR work. I read about it in the paper, there was some memo about "putting the fires out in the NW." Like a few non-improved camp sites would no longer require a pass, or something lame like that.

Nobody's biting on this one. I wonder if it mentions large parties of Mounties as objective hazards on some of the routes?