The Basic Glacier Climbing Course Instructor Team and the Club Board of Directors is pleased to announce that registration for the 2010 Basic Glacier Climbing Course will begin Tuesday, February 16, at 9:00am.  The link to register will appear on the club website at that time.

Registration is first come, first served.  A lot of folks have expressed interest in signing up.  The instructor team as well as the Board have been meeting and making plans.  There is a lot of buzz surrounding the course this year, very exciting!

If you or someone you know would like to register, please view the course schedule and make sure you understand it.  The course schedule is posted on the Glacier Course page of the club website.

Okay, tell your friends and neighbors.  Registration begins Tuesday Feb 16 at 9:00am at the club website.

UPDATE:  The course filled very quickly.  We do have a waiting list, and we encourage you to sign up for that.  Also, if you wanted to sign up for the Glacier Course, please consider our Backcountry Skills Course.  It is also a great course, covers a subset of the skills, is led by a merry band of jokesters, and will visit some beautiful and rugged mountains.

The club has just set the dates for the Basic Glacier Climbing Course for the 2010 season.  They are published on the course page.  Look for the registration to begin in February.   Follow along with the progress here or if you're a member, look for updates in your email.  Go out and tell all your friends and family!  We're looking forward to getting out into the mountains with some new friends!

Hi all! We had a really nice Annual Club Meeting last week at Hattie's Hat in Ballard. It was great to see so many happy faces. If you couldn't make it there, well, we missed you & didn't get to share a beer with you. Next time, eh?

Along with food , beer & good conversation we highlighted the many club accomplishments for 2009 (Snow Shelter clinic, Leadership Course, Backcountry Travel Course, Spring & Autumn Rendevouz, Basic Glacier Course make up with a summit of Mt Baker, summit climbs of Mts. Rainier & St. Helens, Rock Climbing clinics, a ski trip or 2, 2 WAFA recertification events, Hmmmm, I'm, sure I'm missing a few but you get the idea-Club members were out there doing IT!).  Then we spent a few minutes talking about the upcoming club offerings for Spring 2010.   There will be a specific e-mail for each item as it get nearer so look out for those Bushwhacker emails.  Let's fill up those events!  This is just the Spring time.... much more to come.

Our website is undergoing an upgrade.  We started a couple weeks ago and have made a lot of progress.  We should be done soon. If you see oddities like formatting problems, well, excuse our mess!

We will also update the content of each page to reflect the New Year. Thanks for your patience!

The registration page for the 2007 Telemark Ski Clinic is now available. Please visit Telemark Ski Clinic page to see the schedule. Find the registration link at the bottom of the page.

Philip, Jim and Shauna are looking forward to getting started! See you on the hill!

UPDATE: Registration for the Telemark Ski Clinic has now closed.

Next Tuesday night, January 9th, is Club Night. Doug H will show slides from Bolivia. I hope you got the Evite - please let me know if you did not.

Club Night schedule will be different in 2007. In the past it has been second Wednesday of the month, and that was successful. However, I had numerous requests to let it "float" around a bit, because some people simply can never make Wednesday nights. That's cool. So this year we will shift to a more flexible schedule, where Club Night occurs one night during the second week of the month.

So look for Club Nights during the second week of each month.

The Board of Directors met Thursday night. A brief overview of the meeting follows.

We discussed plans for the telemark clinic and the avalanche course.

We discussed formation of leadership training for the club.

The Board approved a proposal for multi-year memberships and out of state memberships.

The Board decided to renew our membership in the Friends of Northwest Avalanche Center. This is our third year for corporate membership in this fine organization.

We also chose to join, at the non-profit corporation level, the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. We will be embarking on more Leave No Trace initiatives in 2007.

We had a good Annual Club Meeting. It was held at Northgate Community Center. I did a PowerPoint presentation about the club - where we are and where we are going. There was good feedback from club members, and new ideas came out.

Here is my PowerPoint presentation. If you prefer, you can view the presentation as a no-frills pdf file.

Our October Club Night was held last Wednesday night at Randy K.'s house. Randy was a great host, and led us through practice of basic knots for rock climbing. We had six in all, and it was great to learn new knots or practice old ones. Thanks Randy!

Well I'm so excited I'm just beside myself. Our buddy Seth Pollack has a photograph published in Alpinist magazine this month - a full two-page spread! The stunning photograph of Alaska's Mount Bradley was taken a few years ago in the Ruth Gorge. Light and shadow accentuate the snow flutings and sheer rock walls. The awesome face of Bradley soars thousands of feet into the brilliant blue sky. Don't miss it!

And in case you haven't seen it recently, visit the Seth Pollack Photography website. Its fantastic! Way to go Seth!