Last post on Sept 18??? yipes... had to think up something for Northwest...aaahh... important stuff....how about guessing when the North Cascade Hwy will be closed? SP can offer a prize...

LOL Well the larches just fizzled. Now comes the dreaded time of year between Larch season and snow season. It rains everywhere for 6 weeks and everyone in western WA crawls back into their caves. Shortly before Xmas, some of them might crawl out for brief moments to brave the winter!

There are still some great peakbagging and hiking opportunities during the transition timeframe between larch season and snow season, even combining aspects of the two seasons.

Last weekend, I led a friend up to the Copper Mountain Lookout (my second visit, his first visit). Sure, it was 20.4 miles roundtrip and had snow... but we also experienced fall colors, great views (in the morning), and frozen berries still on their bushes! Good times.

Redwic wrote:There are still some great peakbagging and hiking opportunities during the transition timeframe between larch season and snow season, even combining aspects of the two seasons.

Last weekend, I led a friend up to the Copper Mountain Lookout (my second visit, his first visit). Sure, it was 20.4 miles roundtrip and had snow... but we also experienced fall colors, great views (in the morning), and frozen berries still on their bushes! Good times.

This year it has been somewhat decent though...usually it rains for 45 straight days beginning around October 10th

Nick and I went to climb Tomyhoi Saturday... got past the lakes, up the ridge, down the ridge into the what I would call the last major dip and called it quits. But we saw this ice thread from that spot about 6600 feet. Looked like about 300 feet of continuous ice, and more lines lower between bands of rock. Impressed me... someone needs to climb it... Snow and ice on trail after1/2 mile. Yellow Aster lakes all froze 6 inches. Beautiful day. Might post a trip report...no summit this time.

I wanna climb it I wanna climb it!!!!