Dru

you wanna melt spectra after you cut it? HOTKNIFE!! get the blowtorch out, get the knives redhot apply and SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. you dont wanna sniff that smoke though.

I have only taken one paid course ever in my whole life and it was an Ice Climbing Intro with CWMS up at Lillooet. I had done a fair bit of rock and alpine climbing already at that time, and had spent one previous day TRing some easy ice. With that background I learned fuck all of new stuff on the CWMS Ice course and it was the biggest waste of $165 I ever spent. $20 would have been a better price for the amount of value I received. One good thing I can say about CWMS is that they have gone out of their way to develop obscure, out of the way cliffs into TRing areas for teaching beginners on so you dont run in to them monopolizing popular crags in the Smoke Bluffs or Murrin. The Mountaineers could probably learn something from that, hint hint?

Hey Ray i did the central couloir on Joffre a few years back. cool climb but probably better when cornices are not falling down it. there is a trip report on that climb on www.bivouac.com actually there are a lot of TRs on Matier and Joffre on bivouac.com cause it is our version of the Snoq/Wash Pass areas, quick road access to alpine summits here is a pic a guy name Brian Wawro took of Matier summit ridge

Ya, Rainier...Tooth...same thing.

quote: Originally posted by DOUG LARSON: HI Klenke, You're quite right to point out that Curry killed what was at the time the oldest living thing. As far as Methusela is concerned, the 'currently' oldest living Bristlecones are evaluated using increment boring. They too are near 4900 years but in most cases the pith (the centre of the tree) is lost so all we have are maximum ring counts. When one gets near 5000, who cares, they all incredibly old. There has been some recent published reports of ancient fungi and ancient cresote bushes. These estimates talk about 12000 year old organisms. I have written a paper about this in Journal of Experimental Gerontology (I can send you a reprint if you'd like) in which I point out that for both the fungi and creosote bush stories the clonally expanding plant might be part of genome that is 12000 years old, but the branches of what you'd call the bush are no more than 20 years. In the case of the fungus, the tissue is no more than 1 year old. If we allow clonally expanding organisms to be included in this discussion, then E. coli bacteria are probably millions of years old since they've been expanding clonally for that time or more. Doug Larson SAVE THE ANCIENT E.COLI!!!!!!

quote: Originally posted by erik: okay i am going to lower myself to post in this thread.... but maybe greg, while you and dan were in the army. you all had an encounter with each other...maybe him the angry drill sargent and you the timid new fish....you were violated, he covered it up.....i dunno really just specualting....think full metal jacket..... then again dan has never tried to rename a classic ski route after himself.....so i give him the benefit of the doubt enjoy DIDNT YOU KNOW DAN"S MIDDLE NAMES ARE "ENIGMA COULOIR"???? DAN ENIGMA COULOIR LARSON SUCKS!!!!!

Doug, that 1200 yr old yellow cedar is growing right by the cross country parking lot in Cypress Prov. Park, I'm not sure how exactly it was dated but its age is recorded in the Hiking Guide to the Big Trees of BC, and as far as I'm aware has been scientifically verified by conservation biologists. It isnt very high(actually it has a snag top about 40-50m up) but it is quite wide around and very slow growing (rerally miniscule growth rings, really tough wood). Too bad most of the park was logged, then turned into downhill ski runs, back in the 1960's and early 1970's.

quote: Originally posted by Off White: Umm, actually Dru, I don't think so, no, no other lines. These are not the droids you are looking for.... I see no lines. That rock is choss. Where is Silver Star, isnt it up by Vernon? Granite is evil. "Looks good from a distance but not close up".

Ray now that you done it maybe it should be renamed the Triple Coolers, after what you took in to keep the beverages maintained at ideal temps?

quote: Originally posted by bellemontagne: In the spring of 2000, I sent my 1995 Ethereal Parka back to Mountain Hardwear because of seam tape delamination. Instead of repairing the jacket, they sent me a BRAND NEW jacket. Not bad customer service at all... Its real hard to fix delams. Most companies will give you new Gore if your old Gore starts delamming (WL Gore warrranty is for up to 7 years I believe).

Zeno I thought Avatar was avatar? Or are you saying you are Avatar? what would Al Pine or the Antagonizer say about that?

I use an old Pentax Zoom90WR. I dont think they make it anymore. Takes great pix, fairly compact, pretty heavy for an automatic but light for a SLR I guess. The main reason I got it was cause it is quite weatherproof (aside from dropping it in a lake it will not mind getting wet) and I like to take pix of people on those rare occasions when it is pouring rain, lots of spindrift, or ice shower and Im actually there instead of at home drinking hot chocolate and reading the guidebooks. Those mini cameras may be nice and compact and all but most of them are sucky in the wet. also they dont zoom much so good luck taking anything other than close ups.

quote: Originally posted by goatboy: My thoughts on this discussion. I climbed the Triple Couloirs route with a partner on April 2, a few days after a few of the other parties mentioned here. I did not do the NF variation. We soloed the hidden, belayed and simulclimbed on the first couloir, simul-climbed the 2nd, belayed the rock step, and soloed the third couloir. Most of the route was good, quality snow. The two cruxes were the ice runnels linking the Hidden with the 2nd couloir, and the rock slab transitioning from the 2nd to the 3rd couloir. The whole route may have been better protected and easier to climb, in my opinion, with more ice. Instead, it was ice buried under lots of variable quality snow. The rock band up high had enough powdery snow to obscure gear placements or holds, and it was too soft to use for adequate purchase. The conditions were, in this regard, challenging. The protection was scarce throughout, though I was able to place occasional cams and pitons and clip several fixed pitons on the first ice pitch. I have not climbed many routes of this nature, but would disagree with Ray's observation that the route is not technical right now. I guess it depends on how you define "technical." The first couloir and the rock slab were rather technical in my opinion. There were long runouts on the first couloir and drytooling on rock covered in sugary snow on the slab. I do believe that it makes as much sense to solo this route, in these conditions, as it does to belay it. In fact, it may be safer to solo it due to the scarcity of pro. In any case, it was a very fine route and I enjoyed it a lot. Stellar views up top, from Baker to Adams! And Stuart, and the South Face of Prussik, and Rainier . . . great climb, great conditions, great views. Ya, see Borbon is a hardman and he is just being modest. Next he will report how he did Cassin Ridge, and it was easay 4th class and a good route for a Mountaineers Basic class to do.

No, see, when I looked at that photo in the Beckey book I wondered why no one had climbed that line actually... arent there a few other potential lines in that same vicinity?

What about the Muir on Saturday webpage? can you order weed cheaper there now or what?

quote: Originally posted by rbw1966: When were you at Smith? I was on Koala Rock last Sunday (3/31). Guess I saw you cuz I was doing Marsupials Traverse that day in the morning. was that your large party TRing stuff on the first pitch of Thin Air?? or were you in the party of 2 that did all the pitches? [ 04-09-2002: Message edited by: Dru ]

quote: Originally posted by Slide: Chiggers, ticks, gnats, nits. Cicadas. Millipedes, centipedes, omnipedes, minipedes, pincerheads, poison toads, land leeches, skinks. Palmetto bugs. Iguanas, fer-de-lance, wolf spiders, diggers, buzzers, hissers, stinkers. Oonipids. Spitting spiders. Ants. Mites. Flits. Whips. Misquitoes. -T. Coraghessan Boyle "Green Hell" Knowing TC Boyle that is what he ate for lunch, right?

quote: I know. It's just that differentiating between the two seems contrived. Both climb the north face of dragontail and share most of the same terrain. It's like doing a variation on any other long alpine snow/ice route. It's just a name thing. If there was much technical difference between the two variations, maybe I'd conceede. I'm just sticking up for Climzalot. I just thought it was pretty low to put down their accompishment right after they climbed it by throwing some nitpicky technicality in there. Anyway, it only matters to .0000001% of the population anyway. If I ever do a new route on a north face, I'll use a 6 inch wide indellible marker to show the route. That way any variation will count. I am going to do v2 boulder problem sitdown start to the north ridge of stuart this summer and call it North ridge Superduper Direct Start and only people that do the sit start can claim that they did the route

Trask is my avatar

Homathko? Monarch? Ha-Iltzuk? Waddington? Silverthrone? pemberton? lillooet? misties? mcbride? cambria? pantheon? vancouver-to-skagway?

OH MY GOD I AGREE WITH PETER PUGET OVER SOMETHING? what next? maybe I will start drinking lagers or give up trad climbing No: here's my point, which I have alluded to but not made directly. Doug and Michelle, please comment. Everything I have seen about this issue has reported it as: "Rock climbing severely damages cliff ecosystems". Which may be true for the area studied. i havent read the full paper so I won't comment. What I'm concerned about is the potential this paper may have if it is used by policy makers to govern climbing in an area other than on the Niagara Escarpment. I have no doubt that climbing on West Coast area cliffs does impact vegetation - mostly during route preparation and the first ascent when trees are cut or pruned back, moss and lichen is scrubbed and dirt is removed from cracks. However: 1) the trees, vegetation and lichen found on West Coast cliffs, based on my undergrad biogeography experience, does not seem to represent a differing ecosystem from non-cliff adjacent areas on the West Coast; 2) the trees growing on cliffs on the West Coast are demonstrably not ancient; 3) there are many cliff faces on the West Coast and only a few have been impacted by climbing development I would say less than 1% of cliffs within 50kms of Vancouver are climbed on. so the impact climbers have HERE is not seriously impacting the overall local cliff ecosystem; 4) if a route does not get repeated frequently on the West Coast, it regrows vegetation rapidly. I have seen moss inches thick regrow on climbs within two years of their being cleaned simply because they did not recieve enough traffic or were not of the climbing quality to become popular routes. So the potential impact from cleaning a route is acceptable to me as a first ascencionist, in that it is demonstrably not permanent. So I guess my pint for Doug and Michelle is that I would like to see recognition of the specific spatial limitations to their study area so that people dont apply their work out of context to areas that they did not study, which may behave in a cpmpletely different manner to the studied area. I happen to work in the resource management field (on the regulatory side) and one of my biggest criticisms of much of the science I see is that results of a study done on a limited area are applied out of context, ie a biologist working for a logging company does a study that shows a small amount of logging improves fish habitat in a specific area, and the logging company then tries to do a lot of logging along streams in a much larger and climactically different area on the grounds that "we have shown that logging improves fish habitat".

quote: Originally posted by verve: The reason the trees have lived to be 1000 years old on the cliff face is not just because they weren't logged. When the same trees grow on the plateau or in your backyard they'll likely reach maximum ages of a couple hundred years.... it's the cliff face environment that's so special. The growth of the tree is constrained such that the tree may only produce one or two bands of cells that account for an entire years growth. It's this slow growth and small, stunted development that prevents them from just growing big and falling over - like trees on a horizontal substrate would. True, if some wacky logger rapped down the cliff face and lopped them off, that would also prevent them from reaching ages of a thousand years or so.... A thousand years old.... think about that for a second, if a tree germinated in the year 1002...what was the world like then? It's just insane to consider all that's happened in the world in it's lifetime. Again Michelle you should clarify your point as being specific to back east. 1000 yr old trees are not unknown on flat ground out here. Cypress Provincial Park in West Vancouver has a couple of 1200 yr old yellow cedars on flat ground. Agree with you, it is because they are slow growing - but the stress is subalpine weather not vertical environment.

If you got extra big feet this guy might be able to help you out:

"you're clearas a heavy lead curtain want to drill you.like an ocean we can work it outnow im running outyeah im running outdont forget about it baby" Bad Religion, "Infected" Dude is confused, is he a drilling sport climber or a runout trad? And that heavy curtain sounds more like ice climbing. "Solo, I'm a soloist on a solo list, all live, never on a floppy disc" - that's Zach de la Rocha but it could be John Bachar! [ 04-09-2002: Message edited by: Dru ]

We had a good quote thread last year, mostly from climbers. All the usual suspects go trotted out like Harding pulling over the lip on the Nose and Mark Twight eating GU and whatnot. So lets start a new thread of non-climbers quotes' which taken out of context seem to be about climbing. Here is my first offering: "In 'reality', also, I choose to fall." - Andre Breton, First Manifesto of Surrealism.