mneagle

My wife and I just got back from our first trip to the area as well. Incredible rock and a paved approach trail rather than a bushwhack through slide alder and Devil's Club! We connected Broken tree with Assemblyline on the first day (6, 10a, 9, 5) and then Belle Fourche Buttress with the direct start and the Peterson variation to finish (9, 10b, 10a, 5). The handcrack on Assemblyine and the finger crack on BFB are unreal. We also stopped through Fremont Canyon and Dome Rock for some excellent granite, solitude and stiff grades. Tons of BLM land and free camping out there. Note: The KOA in front of DT shows Close Encounter's of the Third Kind seven nights a week on an outside screen. And for a real return to your childhood, go across the street and buy a pack of Close Encounter's trading cards, complete with stale gum.

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB3&Number=53831&Forum=All_Forums&Words=baring&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=53831&Search=true#Post53831

Matt_Anderson climbed Burdo's big project a few years ago. When we climbed the North Face of Baring a few years ago there hadn't been any ascents logged in the register for several years. Does anyone know whether the right side variation of the North Face has been repeated?

Anyone know of a good online company that can convert digital images to prints for the photo album?

I've got one to trade. I'll e-mail you.

http://colonialsuperior.com/bearmace.htm

You are correct. NSAID's (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) such as ibuprofen, naproxen, relafen, etc are anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs. Tylenol is analgesic only. Naproxen is stronger per weight than ibuprofen but causes some people more GI troubles. Being well hydrated does protect your kidneys, but if you have normal kidneys to start with you have little to fear from a short course of high dose NSAID's. I usually carry a vial of Toradol (an NSAID) and a small syringe to give an intramuscular shot for fast and very effective pain relief in case of a major injury. Narcotics make me puke my guts out.

Reminds me of one time at the VA hospital when a vet had a recurrence of a pneumothorax and I got called emergently to the bedside with his blood pressure in the toilet and impending respiratory failure. I told him, "this is going to suck." He made an effort to flop to the side and lift up his arm and said "go...for...it..." with a gasping voice. With no anesthesia at all I cut the old sutures out, stuck my finger through his chest wall and got the tube in. I thought the med student in the room was going to pass out. The guy let out a little groan but mostly just dealt with it. Vets rock.

The winter is really the best season to visit the olympics which creates a lot of access problems. Many of the best routes are chossy scrambles in the summer but sweet alpine routes when the snow and ice hold everything together.

It sounds most likely that your friend had a spontaneous pneumothorax. This occurs most commonly when a congenital bleb ruptures at the margin of the lung, releasing air into the chest cavity. Tall thin individuals are the classic owners of such blebs. There is no association with high altitude but there is an association with heavy exertion (e.g. weight lifters). It's interesting that your friend only experienced significant symptoms after descending. Usually what we worry about with altitude and pneumothoraces is when you are ascending. At lower atmospheric pressure the gas trapped in the chest expands and collapses the lung more as you go higher. We typically don't let anyone fly for this reason for the first week after one has healed.

Here's a summary paragraph I pulled from a review paper on anabolic agents. Tape is aid but HGH isn't as it's never been shown to enhance athletic performance. In supraphysiologic doses, it's all the bad effects with no benefits. Apparently you would have to be brighter than 5% of high school aged males to believe this though. By the way, Creutzfeld-Jacobs disease is the long name for Mad-Cow Disease. Human growth hormone (hGH) has been used, especially by power and speed athletes, in attempts to increase lean muscle mass and strength, often in combination with anabolic steroids [4] [6] . Ergogenic (performance enhancing) effects have not been proven, however, even when using supraphysiologic doses [67] . It is difficult to detect with currently used laboratory tests, and the user runs the risks of having an impure product obtained illegally. Recombinant DNA technology has provided r-hGH to those able to pay the high cost of this agent (more than $3000 per month) [26] . A recent survey of more than 200 high school male athletes noted 5% prevalence of hGH [67] . The question of hGH purity as a natural product was previously raised with the development of Creutzfeld-Jacobs disease. Side effects of hGH supplementation may include jaw enlargement, gigantism, hypertension, hyperglycemia, fluid retention, carpal tunnel syndrome, slipped capital femoral epiphysis, and pseudotumor cerebri [6] . Though a number of amino acids (arginine, ornithine, lysine, and tryptophan) are used to induce release of hGH, the doses that are usually used do not significantly raise human growth hormone in the body.

After living in Salt Lake City for almost a year now I find myself incredibly homesick for the North Cascades. Sure the access to ice, rock and the best skiing in the world are only 15-25 minutes from my doorstep, climbing towers down around moab is cool and Zion has some amazing walls, but I deeply miss the whole alpine experience of the North Cascades. You can't beat humping in a loaded pack, bushwhacking up a slide alder slope, crossing a glacier and taking off up a granite peak and descending by headlamp. I'd trade the access here for a 3 hour drive to the Pickett's trailhead any day. Be thankful for what you have. See you in 20 months when my fellowship ends.

That gully totally sucks and most of the rest of the route is way easy and boring. The east ridge is a much more solid and fun climb with the 5.9 crack being one of the best I've done.

Oxygen makes up 21% of the air at all altitudes. The barometric pressure goes down in a non-linear manner as you go up in altitude or go north or south from the equator at a given altitude. The humidity of the ambient air makes no difference as by the time air has been inhaled and reached the alveoli in the lung it has been completely saturated with water vapor and warmed to your body temperature by the mucosa of the respiratory tract. The formula for calculating the partial pressure in the alveoli is: (P barometric - P H20) .21 - 1.2 (Pa CO2) P barometric varies w/ altitude and latitude P H20 = 47 Pa CO2 (arterial partial pressure of CO2) depends on how many liters you breath per minute Even in normal lungs some blood will reach the arterial system without being fully oxygenated so that the actual arterial partial pressure of oxygen will be lower than the alveolar amount. This difference is called the alveolar -arterial gradient and it is only affected by the barometric pressure at extreme altitudes when diffusion across the alveolar and capillary walls begins to become a factor. Breathing more to drive down your CO2 will increase the alveolar and hence arterial partial pressure of oxygen (one effect of taking Diamox) as will being at lower altitudes or climbing closer to the equator where barometric pressure is higher per given altitude. Breathing supplemental oxygen will increase the .21 in the above equation to a higher percent oxygen which will also increase the partial pressure. Now the complicated part. Partial pressure does not equal the amount of oxygen but is better thought of as a measure of chemical activity, determined by the concentration and temperature of the gas in the system. The higher the temperature, the faster particles move and the higher the concentration the more particles there are moving around. As you can imagine, the more oxygen molecules there are in a given space and the faster they are moving the more likely they are to move across the alveolar wall and smash themselves into a hemoglobin molucule. The partial pressure is a measure of how likely this is to happen. But it's not even that simple because hemoglobin it turns out is a fascinating and dynamic molecule that has entire textbooks dedicated to it. Each hemoglobin molecule can carry 4 oxygen molecules. It's affinity for oxygen is inversely related to the number of oxygen molecules it has bound, however it's not linear. An oxygen dissociation curve plotting saturation vs. partial pressure of oxygen surrounding it forms an S shaped curve. This means that the hemoglobin saturation is not linearly related to the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood. Other factors including pH, pCO2, temperature and the amount of 2-3 DPG around also affect its ability to pick up and deliver oxygen. The only factor I think that is feasable to mention here is 2-3 DPG which is a molecule our body makes to enhance oxygen delivery to tissues as we more to higher altitudes. This takes a few days to achieve and is one of the known factors involved in acclimatization. What's fascinating about this is that it's action is to DECREASE hemoglobin's affinity for oxygen, allowing more efficient delivery of oxygen to starved tissues. This is all good and fine until you reach extreme altitudes when this becomes a possible detriment as partial pressure falls to a point that diffusion across the alveolar/arterial walls is hampered by the lowered oxygen affinity of the hemoglobin. However, this is mostly theoretical. An interesting experiment would be to see if elite high altitude climbers have a unique response to altitude with regards to 2-3 DPG production. One last area is oxygen content and delivery. The actual amount of oxygen in our blood is determined by the equation: (1.39 x hemoglobin x hemoglobin saturation) + (PaO2 x .003) This actually gives you the grams per deciliter of oxygen in your blood. The 1.39 is a constant. Obviously the best way to get more oxygen in your blood is to increase the amount of hemoglobin or increase the hemoglobin saturation. Incraesing the hemoglobin can be done by blood doping or by the natural effect of acclimatization throught the increase in endogenous production of erythropoetin which stimulated bone marrow production of red blood cells. It's too bad we can't just increase the amount of hemoglobin per red blood cell, but only certain Himalayan birds seem to be able to do this. The saturation of hemoglobin is non-linearly affected by the partial pressure of oxygen in the blood and all the stuff mentioned above. Finally we have oxygen delivery which is expressed by the simple equation: oxygen content x cardiac output When the oxygen content in the blood falls as you go higher, your body makes up for this by first increasing the amount of blood pumped per beat (stroke volume) and then by increasing the heart rate. This is why heart rate is such a good measure of acclimatization. If you are tachycardic at rest your body is already working at near max capacity. As you acclimatize, oxygen content increases (through increasing hemoglobin) and efficiency of delivery increases (effects of 2-3 DPG etc.) which will allow your heart rate to come down.

First Date: bivy in the rain followed by car to car trip up Mt Cruiser in the Olympics. Kiss in the parking lot lasted hours. First unplanned bivy: 12,000 feet on Shasta with a 100+mph wind storm and -20 F weather in bivy sacks. My nose and her toes blistered and peeled. Had a distinct feeling things were going to work out. First mid-mountain decision: The thunder in the distance started while we were at Rockfall Point on Mt Baring. She was the first to say we should just keep going and risk it. Is she for real? First day ice climbing: She followed me up a WI4 and WI5 without falls, hangs or dropped screws. Yo baby! Pre-honeymoon: 8 weeks treking through Patagonia and climbing in Bolivia. When the other 2 guys couldn't handle it, we went on alone, summiting the two highest peaks in Bolivia. We got married 9 months after meeting and are now approaching our first anniversary and things are still great. I'm not trying to rub it in anyone's face that we're so happy, just trying to let you know that when you know, you know. Don't settle. Don't compromise. Wait for the right person to be there and you will never be sorry.

Just climbed there 3 days ago. It's the middle of spring break and it didn't seem that crowded. We headed up Dark Shadows for the first trad route of the year. We ended up doing the 5.8 to 5.10 right side variation then rapping back down and climbing the 5.7 route proper. We thought about going to the top of the tower but after the first pitch above the roof we realized that we wouldn't have enough time. We got a Red Rock Select guidebook from the local climbing shop for $10.50 Enjoy.

I have one of the new MSR Prophets which I took to Bolivia last year and had a good experience with. It's got 2 doors, decent sized vestibule and a true square floor plan that gives 3-4 people equal and ample amounts of head/foot room. It has a low profile that makes a big difference in heavy winds but has enough headroom for 4 to sit in a circle for cards.

Here's a post I put in a year ago or so, hope it helps: The SE buttress is a really great route with consistently difficult climbing most of the way. Getting on the route can be a little confusing from Becky's topo. Head up the ravine between the buttress and the monk and start on top of the flat table sized boulder into the slightly left facing corner crack. From there it's mostly straight forward, following good cracks with a few sections of class 4 and low 5th stuff. On the last steppe, the 5.8 is pretty stiff and ends at a hanging belay just left of the off-width crack. It was wider than I had anticipated, probably needing a #5 camalot to be done safley, so I was glad to find a sweet 10a finger crack about 5 feet to the right. After 15 feet of good finger locks, there is a hand jam to the right and up to where you can traverse back to the top of the offwidth. The descent is straight forward, just follow the Cairnes. Good luck.

Charlet Moser M-10's are awesome. They come as dual points, so if you set them up as mono's you have a free spare set. My wife climbs with old style rambo's which are solid but not as good on technical sections. Barrabes has a pretty good deal: http://www.barrabes.com/barrabes/product.asp?dept_id=74&pf_id=5483&opt=

My wife and I climbed the first 3 pitches of Stairway to Heaven today down near Provo. The WI 4 stuff is pretty stout but still with decent pro. The WI 5 section up high hasn't formed at all. We got a good look at Bridalveil Falls which did not look to be in very stellar shape. Although the ice climbing is better than the skiing right now, I'd put off a trip out here until we get a cold snap of a week or so.

We made it out for the first time today. The Great White Icicle up Little Cottonwood Canyon was totally in. We talked to some guys who said Bridal Veil and a lot of the stuff around Provo was in as well. If it stays cold stuff should get super fat over the next week or so.

I upgraded to M-10's last year and was amazed at how they improved my climbing. They felt very secure on steep ice and mixed ground. They are highly adjustable to suit your taste and come as dual points, so you get a free extra pair of front points if you rig them as mono's. I got them for a great price off Barrabes.

My wife and I did the Torres del Paine Circuit last April. It was incredible. A group of us went in on a minibus to get from Puerto Natales to the park and managed to get all the way to the camp just below the Torres lookout in one day (arriving after dark). After witnessing a magnificent sunrise on the Torres the next morning, we did the circuit in the clockwise direction, spending a total of 9 days. We took every side trip and didn't rush things. I found going up the pass from that direction to be strenuous but I'd rather go up something like that than sustain the knee trauma it would take to get down it. Although you'll be there during the "climbing season" I wouldn't bet on getting up anything unless you have a long time to spend waiting out wind and rain. I agree with RM that just doing the "W" on the front side cheats you out of the less crowded and equally awesome parts of the trail. Don't miss the hike up Vale de Frances to the lookout. We also hiked to the Rio Pingo area and spent 2 days day-hiking out from the Refugio Zapata. It was much more secluded than the circuit. The best view of the entire area is from the Mirador Zapata in the late afternoon. Be very cautious with your foodbag. The mice showed amazing ingenuity in getting into ours. In Puerto Natales you can get some of the best seafood imaginable. Indulge fervently.

You may want to check out the Stephenson Warmlite. It weighs significantly less than either of the ones you're looking at and if you get the side windows it is much more versatile due to excellent ventilation. Mine has fared well in some huge wind storms in Patagonia and Bolivia. www.warmlite.com

Mt. Constance: North Chute The Brothers: South Peak Mt. Shasta: Casaval Ridge All three are superb winter alpine climbs.