Headed north about 8:30 and traffic eventually mellowed a bit. Heading north has much less traffic in the morning.

Art and I met at the Parker LZ then headed up the hill in his rig.

At the trailhead with our packs ready, and heavy.

It is a 3/4-ish mile hike up but the ascent is over 700 feet in elevation gain.

The fog and clouds were THICK!!!!

After about half an hour of hiking we were to the summit.

Unable to see much of anything.

We dropped packs then wandered around checking out the top of the rock faces. The gullies between the faces held our attention the most as we have been wanting to climb them in mid winter when they are filled to the brim with snow.

For the love of.... SERIOUSLY we have a launch site rite here!!!!!

There is even less here to worry about than the main launch spot. No trees or brush all over and a quick flight into the meat of the lift right off the rock faces below. The other launch makes flight down the ridge then can tag into the main lift.

It's about 1200 feet from the top to the valley floor below.

Chewelah out there to the right.

THIS is the gully that REALLY had us excited. The rock is solid and not chossy, it's narrow, and would make an insanely killer winter climb.

We finally called it as the clouds just weren't playing nice. WE hiked back down to the truck in half the time it took to go up.

So after heading to my car I headed for home and when I walked in I found my new guitar waiting for me.

Quite pleased with it and I have it nicely tuned and it plays rather nice. I set it aside though as the drums delivered not long later.

We even got a bit of sunshine midday.

The drum set came in a box that looked way too small but managed to fit it all. J and I put everything together and after about 45 minutes we had it mostly all together. The thing that was fighting me was the set screw to hold the hammer on the kick drum pedal.

But I got it dealt with by using a bolt in place of the screw and it holds nice now. Good Eastman uses 1/2-20.

We had it together about 15 minutes before R got home from school and he was rather excited when he walked in.

He was soon bashing away at the drums.

It was 4pm and I looked out to see it raining....

It was that tiny cell over us that dumped nearly a tenth inch...

I also ran over to the rental place to ask but they no longer rent cut-off saws so I will check with Sun Rental today after my session.

4:30 am awake today... Dailies to do but now have to include guitar practice to the repertoire, boys to school in couple hours, weekly session, rental store, if the saw is available I will go cut the driveway for the gate job, #3dprinter going on more parts, and should move the drums to the studio.

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