Alasdair

I am a scientist, and I can confirm this. Heavy metals is a crappy term for them also. It refers to just about anything. Toxic metals and Metaloids is the correct termanology. To put it simply dont drink water around a mine site. If you do not have a choice, use a filter to filter out possible undisolved solids, and find an area of surface water that is not comming out of the ground or a mine shaft and is not discoulored and drink that. Better yet, go thirsty and continue walking.

I did not say that filters will remove disolved metals, THey wont. But they will filter out the undisolved sediments that are much more likely to be a problem.

Oh and if you are filtering then there really is not likely to be any problem, as there are likley to be very few disolved metals in the water, unless you are drinking water that is comming out of a mine shaft or a spring near it.

Dont drink the water if it appears to be comming out of the mine shaft, through tailings piles, or running throught the mine site. Go up hill a bit and you should be fine. The worst thing you can do is stir up the sediments in the bottom of the water. This is where nearly all of the nasty stuff will be. look for an area with high water flow with big rocks on the bottom and you will be fine drinking it.

NCl3 is an explosive. Try mixing Amonia and Iodine together you get NI3. Also a very unstable explosive it can be a lot of fun for practical jokes. On second thought no one try this you will kill yourself.

also possible: 3NaOCl + NH3 --> 3NaOH + NCl3 or NH3 + NaOCl --> NaOH + NH2Cl NH3 + NH2Cl + NaOH -->N2H4 + NaCl + H2O 2NH2Cl + N2H4 --> 2 NH4Cl + N2 Hydrazine and nitorgen trichloride. not good.

yes it is. 2NaOCl + 2NH3 --> 2NaONH3 + Cl2

I have a whole pile of those nice yellow write in the rain notebooks, that I managed to get for free from this place I used to work. I think you know the ones I mean. They work pretty well.

I second this. Not only does leaving the guide book at home open new possibilities, it's fun to spend the afternoon with friends grading routes based on how they climb, as opposed to just accepting the rating in the guide book. I find to that I am more willing to hop on something if it looks 'doable' than I might if I know the "official" grade and I think I'm not climbing at that grade that day. This will sound silly, but I love hopping on boulder problems or routes in the gym before the routesetter tapes up the little sheet with the really clever route name. It's cool to look at the route or problem, guess the grade, and then hop on to see if you're in the right neighborhood. Then, in a day or two, you can see how far off your rating was from the routesetter's rating. Agreed. Last week in Yosemite I did not have the guide and jumped on a bolted line that I thought was difficult, hung a couple of times but did all the moves without much dificulty. Found out later that the climb was rated 12b/c. Due to the fact I have never climbed a 12 before I would never have gotten on this if I had had the guide.

yep

I have some extra time on a work trip this weekend, and am going to go to Yosemite since I have never been there. I figure I will get there about 4 PM tomorrow and have all day sunday and monday to climb. Any suggestions where I should plan on sleeping tomorrow night, and what the best way of getting a partner to climb with on sun, mon? Any help appreciated.

Jesus dude, you need to mellow out. Its all a little fun. Why dont you try throwing it back at us rather than getting all pissed off. Oh and saying "everyone sucks, you cant climb as hard as me" is a pretty pathetic way of throwing it back, so try a little harder, and you might even make us laugh.

You dont climb, you boulder. Sport Climbing Alpine climbing Trad Climbing Ice climbing mixed climbing bouldering... Note no one ever calls it boulder climbing. It is just bouldering. Oh and your right Distel, I never climb, I just talk about it.

Mike the only way for you to keep up with distel is to only post pictures of a single subject, make all of the pictures look exactly the same and be sure that they all suck.

Go to Colchuck. If the weather and snow look good climb there. If not go back down and climb on Icicle creek.

Dont think so. I believe there have been at least a couple of others. Ok, upon further checking I realized that the climb referenced in the Beckey book was acctually done in April, but is described as a "winter variation", hence the confusion. There is also no reference to winter ascents in the AAJ. So thanks for the heads up Kyle, it does appear that we have inadvertantly done the first winter ascent of that route. If anyone knows any differently please let either Ade or I know.

Those were not the tracks that we saw. They were fresh tracks from the day before.

Dont think so. I believe there have been at least a couple of others.

Good we will have to do it again sometime.

Then why place the fucking gear in the first place.

Huh?

To add a couple of notes: The first section of ice off the deck was a really nice AI 3 pitch. Worthy of an ice climb in its self. From a distance it looked really thin at close inspection it was perfect. Several sections of the N. Face route looked to have very simmilar ice on it. From the base the N face looks like it would be a very good climb right now. I think that TCs is pretty much in right now. The whole area has fairly nice cramponing on the snow. Makes me think that the obvious couloir to the left of the summit of Colchuck would be a pretty nice route right now. Snow conditions deteriorate as you get higher. So the exit couloir on TCs probably sucks. As ade said any significant snow accumulation is going to make this area pretty scary. If you were one of the people who climbed N buttress couloir on colchuck on Sat and found the quick draw on the snow below dragontail, i suggest you dont use it. It fell at least 1000 ft hitting many rocks on its way down. If anyone is on Serpentine any time soon and finds my sunglasses I would like them back. I will buy you a beer.

I will save my spooning for you pat_o

This country can be so pathetic sometimes. If you took some of these PC idiots to europe they would keel over. For example: The MSN Gemany site. Why the hell can so few people in this country handle a pair of breasts?

Yea yea there are lots of crack problems in Everett. I hear about it on the news every night.