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Bronco

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    Teachers Strike

    in Spray

    Posted

    THANKS OBAMA!!! :lmao: (I crack myself up sometimes)

     

    Guess our Senior has one more day to endure:

     

    MUKILTEO TEACHERS TO HOLD ONE-DAY WALKOUT ON MAY 20.

     

    Members of the Mukilteo Education Association (MEA), the union that represents teachers who are employed by the Mukilteo School District, have voted to participate in a one-day walkout on Wednesday, May 20. With the walkout, classes in all Mukilteo schools will be canceled on that day.

     

    Union leadership has emphasized with school district officials that their action is not a strike against the school district or its students, families or the community. They explain that their action is being done as a way for staff to show solidarity with their colleagues across the state and to send a message to the state legislature about the importance of adequate funding for education.

     

    Although all classes will be canceled on Wednesday, May 20 as a result of the teacher walkout, some activities will proceed as scheduled. Classes at the Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center and at the Early Childhood Education Assistance Program (ECEAP) will continue as scheduled. Transportation to out-of-district programs also will be available as usual.

     

    Due to the one-day walkout on May 20, the missed day of school will be added to the end of the school year. As a result, the previously scheduled last day, Thursday, June 11, will become a full day of school rather than an early-dismissal day. The final day of school will occur on Friday, June 12, which will be an early-dismissal day.

    [TR] Mt Rainier - Liberty Ridge 5/9/2015

    in Mount Rainier NP

    Posted

    Nice work, thanks for the report. I was camped at Thumb Rock in 2003 on a warm afternoon when the ice cap let a serac go. The cloud came right at us but the debris veered off both sides of Liberty Ridge and ran out onto the Carbon Glacier far below. I voted to descend but my two partners were able to talk me into completing the climb. I wonder if that route gets scoured off more frequently than most of us want to admit.

    Tent on a budget

    in The Gear Critic

    Posted

    I don't have any experience with those Alps Mtneering tents but commend you asking about them. The worst I've ever slept was in a tent that was not specifically designed for mountaineering in a fairly mild wind.

     

    Have you looked at used tents? Look for used Walrus brand. It was bought by MSR a few years ago but they made great tents.

     

    I have no idea about this particular tent or seller but there's a lot of solid tents on Ebay if you look: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Walrus-two-to-three-person-three-season-tent-EUC-/121640603664?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c52585010

    Compelled to Climb- Have a few Questions

    in Newbies

    Posted

    Welcome Steve. Freedom of the Hills is a good general resource book but I'd also add Training for the New Alpinism by Steve House and I still dig out my old Extreme Alpinism by Mark Twight for various references. I haven't spent a lot of time in Mike Layton's newest book yet but it contains volumes of information on training, diet and moving in the mountains which is helpful.

     

    Summer weight puffy parka for sub 10,000 peaks in the PNW should weigh about a pound and be synthetic insulation IMO (not down). Hood is a matter of preference although it's cheap insurance in the event of an unplanned bivy or crappy weather. These types of jackets are available for around $100-$150 if you shop around. Examples would be the Arcteryx Nuclei and Patagonia Nano Puff Hoody off the top of my head.

     

    The layers you listed are perfectly fine. Add a pair of soft-shell pants and you have it covered for about 95% of outings. I went with cheaper and used gear when I started out but had a young family. It's really a matter of preference and means but I can say that there's been a few miserable experiences when I've wished I'd spent the extra money on better gear. That being said, it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools and some of my partners who have ratty coats and packs can (and do) hand me my ass on a regular basis.

     

    Good luck!

    Mt. Hood as a First lead?

    in Newbies

    Posted

    For a potential alternative Mt. Adams is relatively close, offers higher altitude and is less technical by the standard route. That being said, if you're a competent rock and ice climber and have taken a glacier travel course, you should be fine on Mt. Hood.

     

    Obviously a good weather forecast is important but I'd also recommend a weekday climb if possible. Good weather on a May weekend can be quite crowded on any route ascending the Hogback.

    Mountain Athlete Training Plan Feedback?

    in Fitness and Nutrition Forum

    Posted

    There is currently a similar but free plan at www.gymjones.com you just have to register. I think the upper five plans on this page are free, I'm into the second week of the "operator" and while not radically different from other training I've done, it is nice to have a varied program that I have to check a box each day. You can check them out here: https://gymjones.com/training-plans

     

    A good place to start might be better definition of your goals, what are your climbing objectives this summer? Steep snow or 5.12 cragging?

    [TR] Colchuck Peak - North Buttress Couloir, unplanned bivy 3/7/2015

    in Alpine Lakes

    Posted

    I don't know you guys or your experience level so feel free to ignore this post.

     

    Sometimes things just compound, you were light on calories, sounds like you climbed slow, messed with protection and ropes too much, had route finding issues, didn't have good gear for a bivy. These things along with shorter day light combined to provide an epic. Any one of those things by itself doesn't cause the epic.

     

    Nobody got hurt which is great, good lessons and experience were gained. Maybe dial it back a bit and get more comfortable on easier terrain. I've had a few partners that were strong technical climbers but totally uncomfortable unroped on exposed but easy terrain. Knowing when you need to rope up is an important progression for everyone and everyone has a different tolerance.

     

    I've found it's also helpful to be thinking about potential bailout difficulties as you're climbing and you eventually will reach a point where its easier to bail upward and forget about the possibility of descending down the route. This is also good to discus with your partner before the climb starts as well.

     

    As someone who has pulled the plug on a few climbs, it's been helpful for me to listen to that little voice in the back of my head, it's right more than it's wrong. It's perfectly fine to back off of climbs you know you're capable of, just have to develop more trust in your intuition than in your ego. (i.e.- we should be able to climb this no problem so let's keep going despite moving slow)

     

    You guys (and I guess the guys who did it in 10 hours) were pretty slow. It's been 10 years or so but myself and 3 other guys climbed the NBC car to car in an easy day. We may have roped up at the top of the couloir. I know some freak who used to do it as a conditioning climb in 5 hours, car to car.

     

    Hope that helps and thanks for sharing the story, it's a good one.

    Bertha/Traffic Woes

    in Spray

    Posted

    Interesting Article from here: http://www.hcn.org/issues/47.4/big-dig-big-disgrace suggesting that new roads don't alleviate traffic congestion. I never thought of it that way but the concept makes sense to me.

     

     

     

    Along the Seattle waterfront, beneath 60 feet of earth, lies a monument to human ingenuity. Her name is Bertha, and she’s the biggest tunnel-boring machine ever built: longer than a football field, heavy as the Eiffel Tower, endowed with a tooth-studded face five stories tall. Like a giant earthworm, she can chew through dirt and eject it as slurry; in good soil, she’s capable of digesting 35 feet per day. On one of her Twitter accounts (@BerthaDigsSR99), she has over 14,000 followers. She is, in every respect, a marvel, come to rescue Seattle drivers from an unsafe and unsightly elevated freeway.

     

    There’s only one problem: She’s broken.

     

    Bertha’s saga began in 2001, when an earthquake damaged Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct. In 2009, city and state leaders agreed to replace the perilous viaduct with a 2-mile-long double-decker tunnel. Such a tunnel would require a custom-built machine, and on April 2, 2013, Seattle’s mechanical savior arrived on a barge from Osaka, Japan. “Nice place you’ve got here,” Bertha tweeted. “I was expecting rain.”

     

    As it turned out, Bertha would be the one who needed saving. On Dec. 3, 2013, she hit a steel pipe; soon after, she overheated. Workers eventually discovered that the bearing seals on her face had suffered damage. Bertha ground to a halt, 1,023 feet into an 8,000-foot dig.

     

    More than a year later, Bertha has barely moved another inch, the timeline for completion has been pushed back 20 months, and Seattleites are restless. The viaduct is still standing, shaky as ever. Buildings in nearby Pioneer Square have settled and cracked, perhaps as a result of attempts to rescue the stalled drill. In January, two Republican state senators introduced a bill that would kill the $4.2 billion project altogether. “We can’t just continue to pour billions of dollars into a hole with no sign of success on the horizon,” said Spokane’s Michael Baumgartner, one of the sponsors.

     

    Bertha’s proponents argue that if the viaduct comes down without a highway to succeed it, all those displaced vehicles — up to 110,000 per day — will worsen the city’s already nightmarish gridlock. But growing evidence suggests the relationship between highways and traffic doesn’t work that way. To the contrary: If you don’t build highways, the cars won’t come.

     

    Imagine living in Los Angeles. Once a week, you shop for groceries at a pricey supermarket two miles away. You could save money at the Walmart 10 miles down the highway, but with traffic that becomes a half-hour trip. So you stay close to home.

     

    Now imagine that the city adds an extra lane to the highway. Surely, you think, the traffic will dissipate; now it’s worth driving to Walmart. But you’re not the only one obeying that logic. Once the road is expanded, more folks use it to shop, visit relatives, go out to movies and restaurants. Soon, the highway is as clogged as ever.

     

    That’s exactly what happened when L.A. opened an expensive car-pool lane on I-405 last May. Four months later, traffic was a minute slower than it had been before. Economists call this phenomenon “induced demand”: Build more roads, and people will drive more. “What’s interesting is that traffic increases in almost exactly a one-to-one relationship with road capacity,” says Matthew Turner, an economist at Brown University and author of a 2011 paper called The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion. “You cannot build your way out of problems.”

     

    Back in the mid-2000s, many community leaders argued — and still argue — that Seattle didn’t need to replace the viaduct. Improving surface roads and transit, they said, would be cheaper, safer, and more compatible with greenhouse gas reduction goals. But the so-called “surface/transit option” never got far. Abandon the highway, then-Gov. Christine Gregoire said in 2009, and “you can shut down business in Seattle.”

     

    Seattle’s traffic is undeniably terrible — the fourth-worst in the country. Yet driving rates in Seattle and Washington state have largely been stagnant — and, in some places, falling — for over a decade. National rates have also dropped every year since 2004. The trend is probably generational: Young people drive far less than their parents did. “Bertha, to me, is a failure of imagination,” says Clark Williams-Derry, deputy director of the Sightline Institute, a Seattle sustainability think tank. “It comes from a mindset that can’t conceive of a world in which traffic volumes might be falling.”

     

    Eliminating highways could help expedite driving’s decline: According to one review, up to 25 percent of traffic simply disappears when road capacity vanishes. In the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and the fatal, seismically induced collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct, San Francisco decided to tear down two elevated highways, the Embarcadero and Central freeways, and replace them with surface boulevards. The much-feared congestion crises never materialized. As it turns out, even improving public transit has little influence. Only downsizing roads can change driving habits.

     

    Nonetheless, Bertha will almost certainly survive: Too much money and too many reputations are at stake to entomb her now; the bill to kill the project didn’t receive so much as a hearing. Bertha recently began crawling toward an access shaft, from which a crane will hoist her head to the surface for repairs. “There’s really no fiscally prudent course other than the course we’re on,” Gov. Jay Inslee said recently.

     

    Though it may be too late for Seattle to turn back, other cities contemplating car-friendly mega-projects would be wise to learn from the city’s struggles. “In the 1950s, bigger and more complicated seemed better,” says Williams-Derry. “But today’s transportation solutions are distributed, based on technology, more incremental, more efficient. Bertha is not a 21st-century solution.”

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