chucK

You suck donkey balls! The West Ridge is an excellent outing!

I found this graph someone did. It's not really very convincing to Olbermann's implicit allegations:

Sorry to interrupt this hilarity but here's a fun politics link: 0lberman

I guess it must just have been a big hoax (lie).

Wouldn't it be simpler to repeal the recently enacted Bush tax cuts (or even just the part Kerry wanted to repeal), instead of an extremely popular provision that's been around nearly 100 years? This would be much more popularly espoused, along with recouping somewhere like 3-4 times more lost revenue.

Sneaky freedom haters

They're with all that C4 that the insurgents stole from the unsecured Iraqi armories!

A correction that might make a difference to onlookers We didn't get started climbing on Epi 'til more like 10:30am (we left the campground around 9am). Epi is a real cruiser route as long as you don't get freaked out by easy chimneys. We topped out around 4:30, and we had plenty of time to lazily make our way back to the car before darkness hit @ 6:30. Otto is in error about us staying the previous night on the Strip. This may be of interest to onlookers as even though the Strip is much further away, we got much later starts from the windy campground. So Hotel room = earlier start. If you fly down there, it seems fairly easy to get a package where a couple nights hotel stay is basically thrown in for free. Also, he got his pitches switched around on the Prince of Darkness

You forgot to mention one of the highlights of the trip. Our descent from Black O via the gulley right of Solar Slab. A fun canyoneering experience!

Here's my recommendations: leavenworth climbing

West Ridge of Lundin is not a very long approach. It is comparable to the Tooth if you go in via Alpental (up the Snoqualmie Mountain trail then cut over). It has a comparable or much shorter approach than just about every climb Alex lists except for Guye, and it's a way shorter drive (from Seattle-Tacoma anyway).Lundin has got some great rock and you can link together/contive many little steps of climbing. Not near as exposed (and newbie impressing) as the Tooth, but avoids the nasty crowding problems. I think Forbidden and Thomson would not be the best choices for a day climb with a newbie! Long approach and non-trivial descent. Unless of course by "day" climb you mean 24 hour epic.

Another compelling theory for the huge drop in crime in the 90's: Roe v Wade

They are to release their findings in October, last I heard. Next week is October.

Is it open all year? If not, is it open now? If so, will it be open the next couple of weeks?

So I assume the camfire is gonna happen after the gear swap (for the cams noone wanted) But seriously, how much parking is available? Could someone show up unannounced and be reasonably sure of having a place to park and sleep? Or do some prior arrangements need to be made?

So is Santorum "grieving father" or "using his son's death"?

Found this in the Boston Globe: "In the ballroom of a Holiday Inn on Capitol Hill, about 350 ''jurors" sipped coffee and polished off desserts as they watched a mock trial of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former CIA chief George J. Tenet and US Attorney General Albert Gonzales. The men were accused of violating US law and the Geneva Convention in supporting torture." This sounds exactly like JayB's style. You think his new job in Boston is writing for the Globe?

number 1 was orignally spotted on the ABC news website. Now also spotted on USA Today, and Fox News. number 2, the Washington Post. It would be interesting to look at this story over the various news outlets and extend this categorizing them according to "using her son's death" versus "grieving mother". There's probably some other good categorizers too. edit add the Guardian and CBC to the "using her son's death" list. LA Times and Village Voice have opted for a third characterization that doesn't involve a dead son, "Woman whose vigil galvanized .... etc."

It's pretty easy when on toprope to minimize the gumption needed to get past one short unprotected spot, so I will defend Catbird on his reluctance to believe his own eyes. That said, I doubt the opinions of other climbers of total varying abilities' are going to give much more useful beta than a close-up personal evaluation.

Guess which national news pages these two intro's came from: number 1: "Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who has used her son's death in Iraq to spur the anti-war movement, was arrested Monday while protesting outside the White House." number 2: "Cindy Sheehan, the grieving California mother of a soldier slain in Iraq, was arrested today while protesting the Iraq war outside the White House."

I read that letter to the editor from Kelly Bush that MisterE linked and it seems nice and to the point. I think it was a well thought-out and perfectly appropriate response. MisterE = baby

I now have my McLane guide, and yes it does say 7". I guess my real question was whether I should lug a #5 Camalot size piece up Borderline-Angel's Crest for that offwidth. Probably a moot point as the piece would be no help anyway! Thanks for the beta BTW.

Does the Borderline -> Angel's Crest connection put you on Angel's Crest before or after the optional 6" (10b?) offwidth?

Survival of the fattest

Awesome, great job on the climb and the report. And junior, funny thing about spraying is, it's better to spray about something you have climbed, versus something you haven't. And when you see your mother this weekend, tell her...