Vacation...

If you haven't noticed, there have been few updates over the past 2 weeks... my apologies. This is largely due to the fact that I took a much needed climbing vacation. But I'm back, and with such fabulous weather on the horizon, I'm looking forward to more mountain related reports and gossip.

To start things off, Rainier fans will appreciate this recent Camp Muir development. Now there is a remote weather station at 10,000 feet. Check it out! With just a click of the mouse, you can find the temps, winds and other basic weather data at Camp Muir (providing the equipment doesn't fail). Which is pretty cool, as climbers and skiers will appreciate the high altitude information when predicting (guessing) the conditions. Maybe someday, we'll even get a Camp Muir Cam!

In other Mt Rainier news, we now know that climbing visitation is up from 2005. Not a huge leap, but up. We are already above 9,200 attempts for 2006, and I suspect that a few more will trickle throughout the fall and ealry winter. Also up in 2006 was the success rate, which is hovering around 62-63%. On the downside, however, is overall visitation to all of the National Parks (and in this case camping). The Denver Post covered the story in "Camping vacation falls out of favor." I find this topic interesting, and wonder about the trend.