Tour de Cascades?

Thanks for the historcial perspective Lowell, there's nothing new under the sun is there, just variations!
The Pemberton race sounds like it should have been renamed the Darwin challenge!
Can we see Carl's photo that you mention?

check it out - about as euro as it gets, but I have to admit its pretty damn cool. 

www.pierramenta.com/

that's interesting. what exactly do you mean by 'euro'?

Somewhat related -- here's an amusing blog on the Pierra Manta:

slc-samurai.blogspot.com/2009/03/oh-crap.html
I just found the Race Bible for the Pierra Menta. I was frustrated at first because I don't speak french and Google doesn't translate .pdf files very well. But then I came to the elevation profiles. I knew that the race climbed 10,000 meters, but I'm not a metric guy, and I guess it didn't really register. I just did the conversions and now I'm scared. Here are the elevation gains per day.

Day 1: 8640 feet
Day 2: 9186 feet
Day 3: 8640 feet
Day 4: 5249 feet

Maybe it's better that I don't speak French that well. Ignorance is bliss.

I've done a death march from the top of Mission Ridge to Cabin Creek on Snoqualmie a couple of times.  I've tried to enlist adventure racers but they haven't been too keen on skiing some 90 miles of snowmo roads and 10 miles of trailbreaking.  Anyone interested in that?!!!

tour de Cascades, is an OR bike series. - maybe Le Tour de Volcanoes ?