Sometimes it seems that like all my favorite bands are between albums. In these times I swear I can’t dig up any new music that that is worth listening to more than the one time it takes to determine it’s terrible. However, this is not one of those times. An enormous number of albums worth their scratch have come out in the last few months. I’ll do my best to limit it to five songs off these albums, but it’s going to be difficult.

1. Stereophonics - Stone
I finally saw the Stereophonics in concert two weeks ago at the Showbox in Seattle and they blew me away. I had been waiting to see them for years and hearing Dakota live sort of marked the end of an era for me. In any case, Stone stood out as a quintessential Stereophonics song–hauntingly melodic and more often then not building into a giant climax. Near perfection.

2. People in Planes - Last Man Standing
These guys opened for the Stereophonics and are good enough to be the main act on any stage once their name gets out there. Last Man Standing is fresh off their new CD and is really raw and driven. Its reminds me of 30 seconds to Mars with a splash of Incubus, but less angry and less produced-basically remove the shit from these bands and you have People in Planes.

3. Santogold - LES Artistes
Santogold is true to her name and delivers a shining entry into the electro-pop arena; the genre hasn’t sounded this good since the Swedish first got their hands on it. This song in particular has all the needed fixings of an electro-pop hit- catchy vocals, a nice little treble arpeggio traversing the length of the tune and a driving bass line.

4. Counting Crows - 1492
The Counting Crows are back! Really a timeless band that had such a strong freshman album they were doomed to continually disappoint. The pop sellout in release of Hard Candy didn’t help matters. But, they have apparently come to their senses and put out an album on par with August and Everything after. 1492 is the very first track off the album and hits hard. It’s like Mr. Jones telling you about his bender last night- crazy as hell but sure to be on continual repeat in your mind for the next week.

5. MGMT - Electric Feel
So I have known about MGMT ever since I went on a ski trip with a bunch of crazy kids from Wesleyan. We had these epic dance parties that centered around the song Kids. I was told that MGMT was like the unofficial theme music to the Wesleyan experience. Well the finally got an album out and not just a bootleg. It’s called Oracular Spectacular. Kids is there along with this song, Electric Feel. Unadulterated, catchy, and you can’t help but dance to it. Think electro-rock, this band blends the genres seamlessly and doesn’t disappoint in the slightest.

Estelle - American Boy; Seriously catchy, seriously getting the play time it deserves
Gnarles Barkley - Run; Yeah it’s not that new, who cares it’s still great
Mudcrutch - Scare Easy; Did the Traveling Wilburies release a new album? Yeah, it’s that kind of Petty good

So a friend and I decided to try to ski The Great One, a couloir on the north face of Sacagawea’s southern sister peak. Our start was delayed due to the road to the trail head being closed (of course the first car through once the gate opened arrived just as we finished the 3 mile ‘extension” of the hike). The hike up required kicking a few steps and I in my running shoes obliged. The problem was that without a hard toe two things happen. First (and most obviously) your toes get smashed. Second, your foot get deflected and wrenched in odd ways. By the halfway point my right knee was starting to hurt. In any case, we ended up summiting Sacagawea a bit later than planned, but precisely when a rare 10 a.m. thuderstorm starting throwing bolts. Seeing lightning strike about 5 miles south of us, we decided to retrace our steps as quickly as possible. Neither of us felt good about being on the highest peak in the range holding metal sticks with metal skis extending 2 feet above our packs. I was especially nervous because I knew my knee was not going to let me ditch my pack and make a break for it. As we came down, another group continued their hike on the assumption that the storm will be funneled to the south of us. Whenever I see a person making the exact opposite choice as me in a similar situation, it makes me question my judgment.

While it sucked to bail, lighting is one of the few factors in the outdoors you have very little control over. It is probably the only nature phenomenon I won’t mess with. In nearly every situation there is gear or skills that will keep you alive. With lighting about all you can do is try to get to a less exposed area, crouch and cross your fingers.

The story has a predictable ending though. As the other group forecast, the storm blew to the south. So we tossed on our ski boots and got in about 1000 feet of turns. It is July, so I can’t complain. Now I just have to figure out how to move to Seattle without bending my right knee…

Each time I drive to the park via the Gardiner entrance Emigrant Peak looms in the eastern sky of the Paradise Valley. Emigrant Peak is an impressive geologic structure. It rises steeply more than 6000 feet from the floor the valley. It is a classic, non-technical scramble than rewards climbers with panoramic views of the Beartooth, Gallatin, Madison Range, and Absorka Mountains.

We chose to park at Gold Prize Trail head. To get there follow the road to Dailey Lake and make a left before the dirt road descends to the lake. Follow the through a burned out section of forest. The trail then arcs left and climbs steeply to old jeep track. Follow this section of double track until you spot a creek crossing and trail ascending to the right of a stream. This trail will deposit climbers into a large meadow which slowly ramps up in steepness until a large stand of trees.

From the meadow you have two choices. The route described on SummitPost.org and in Turiano’s Select Peaks will have climbers follow a fence line on climber’s left into the trees. We did this and made our way through the trees. This is somewhat of a pain, as the slope is about 40 degrees and is forest floor, which does not offer the best traction.

The other option to aim for a large rock formation on climber’s right of the meadow. Gaining this formation, scrambling over scree and talus begins very quickly.

Either route will deposit climbers on the northwest ridge. The ridge is made up of easy class 2 scrambling over 40 degree talus. There are a few short class 3 sections where use of your hand is necessary, but these are very easy. The final summit ridge is quite exposed, especially in early season when snow makes the ridge a knife edge with 50 degree slopes to either side of the climber.

Ascent Time: 4 hours

We stayed on the NW ridge to take advantage of the scree and avoid the trees, but otherwise retraced our steps.

Descent Time: 3 hours

II Class 2 (Short section of Class 3 scrambling)

Check out my gallery of pictures from the climb: Emigrant Peak

I had been eying Gallatin Peak for a few years. It is the largest peak visible from Bozeman and looked to be a great peak to ski. With the huge snowpack this spring, I finally got the chance to climb and ski it this past weekend (6/15/08). It’s quite a haul to get in, but the ski descent made it well worth the trip.

The approach from the North Fork trail head was a very long skin in. It probably totals about 9 miles into Bear Basin, where we made camp, and another 3 miles to the summit. Other parties we ran into were skinning in from the Beehive Basin Trail Head to climb the peak as a day trip. In hindsight this appears to be the wise choice.

The route is pretty straight forward from the North Fork Trail Head. The trail begins at 7179′ and descends about 100′ in a half mile to intersect a subdivision. Unfortunately, there is no parking allowed at this intersection. The trail is well built for the next mile and half. After two miles a hiking bridge is crossed over the North Fork River. A well blazed trail continues for another mile until it intersects with the Beehive Basin Trail No. 402. It appeared that the skin track to Beehive Basin was actually about a half mile north of the actual trail. The North Fork trail becomes thinly marked at this point. Just follow the river generally north. The key is to round Mt. 9385 on the west side of the river. After this point continue up Bear Basin. The skin track over the divide breaks off well before (half mile) before the charted trail switchbacks up the divide. After that we skied a wonderful 800′ into the Hell Roaring basin and made our way to the base of the climb just right of the prominent rock buttress on the south face.

We skinned the first thousand feet of the climb before throwing our skis on our packs and kicking steps up to a well defined saddle. From the saddle we climbed the east facing snow field to the summit. This was the steepest part of the climb (~50°). The slope mellows a bit to about 35° for the final 200 feet to the summit.

We skied the same line we climbed due to wet slide danger on the south facing bowl.

IV 50° (Class 3 in Summer) (via North Fork)
III 50° (Class 3 in Summer) (via Beehive Basin)

Check out my gallery of pictures from the climb: Gallatin Peak