Wastral wrote:I love the Cascades as well, but the homerism exposed above by Matt Lemke/Josh Lewis is ludicrous. To make them happy, yea Snoqualiame pass north are harder on average to reach the top of than other regions in CONUS. Uh, JBerg is class 3 =-)
Naming those class 4 and above is fairly easy as there are so few of them. Also depends on what you call a peak. There are many sub "summits/spires" that could make the list longer.
If you keep debasing and underestimating the difficulty of the terrain that you climb, you may find yourself in a spot of trouble someday. Cockiness and confidence have their place, but when you start making factual errors about the difficulty of mountains and routes due to your presumption that "every peak in WA is so eeeeaaassy," you should rethink your attitude toward your relationship with the mountains. You are not better than them just because you can climb them; they allow you to climb them, you are a guest, and your aplomb will only make your experience less rewarding at best, and very possibly dangerous.
Even mountains that are "only class 2" can put your ass in a predicament if you get off-route, or it snows or gets dark. I just tried to find a post from a couple years ago (I think it's deleted by now) where a couple of people I used to be in the UW climbing club with got off-route on Snoqualmie Mountain. They decided to take an apparently easy route down on the other side of the mountain, and eventually had to call SAR after getting cliffed out with no way back. Now, the
easiest route on that mountain is what I would call class 1, or
maybe class 2, but they still got into trouble.
Also, if you are going by Beckey's ratings, most of his "class 3" is really class 4, or so I've heard.
Anyway... the original poster didn't ask about how many mountains are class 3/4/5, they asked about guidebooks. To return to topic;
I haven't used many guidebooks, and don't have lots of experience north of HWY 2, but I always liked Beckey's guides for at least initial research into peaks. If I decide that something I find there seems fun, I will usually seek out secondary resources like books more specific to the region or online beta. I have hardly ever gone on a trip using only 1 resource, unless it's strictly trail hiking in a familiar or busy area. So, I would say use something like Beckey to get a general idea of what or where you want to go, but to find more specific information use a more narrowly-focused resource. There are thousands of peaks in WA, and at least hundreds in the N. Cascades, so you can't expect one book to have all the info you might want.
edit: here's the post I was referencing, it was in the UWCC forum, not here:
http://students.washington.edu/climb/fo ... =33&t=4547