Bronco

Look how upset he is! Dang uppity trees!

Tree attacks logger's vehicle http://www.madsens1.com/ouch.htm

In Gator's book on climbing Rainier, he suggests taking one asprin every 8 hours starting a day or two before the climb and continuing through the climb. Twight is suggests Garlic tablets for increasing circulation. I take them once per day just prior to and durring the climb. I don't know if it's mental or not but, I tend to stay warmer in the cold and experience less difficulty at altitude than most of my partners. Maybe it's because I'm just "stout".

Nice TR Tom! Bug, Mt Baring sits NORTH of HWY 2 so it's properly placed in the North Cascades Forum. I think you can easily do the trip in 5-6 hours car to car in late season. However, I also went up there once in April and glissaded down one of the creek beds from the top of the ridge to the road. They were scoured out from spring avalanches. Pretty fun jumping the occasional moat over open water.

What do you know, I found a black and white, but it looks like a doug-fir. That Madsens gallery has some sweet pics!

You mean like this big old cedar?

He must not have seeen the memo. Fortunatly I have an extra -

cool!

Check with local community colleges also, they usually offer evening/weekend courses. I took a course in college to be a "certified" first responder and leaned a lot. It seems that most scenarios discussed would be easily applied to a "wilderness" setting.

Ditto for me. Also seems to help with altitude related problems. Regarding one of the above posters, I saw a dramatic improvement in the speed I completed my early morning run when I started wearing less. It's been my experience that it takes more work to get your heart rate up when your body is trying to keep warm. Run naked!

kill 'em.

I've been trying this with the applications to the Sierra Club I've been recieving for the last couple years. I send back pictures of oil wells and logging and whatnot. They just keep sending them to me.

Can't get anything past you, can I? (note to self, lay off the self depricating humor, it's just not working around here, must be too subtle, even for the "thinkers")

Here's some good reading on an account in Australia where 4 men suffocated in a snow cave dug into a cornice. It's not that hard to do aparently. http://www.vnrs.org/Trivia_etc/Deadly_White_Blanket/deadly_white_blanket.html Oh yeah, it's just CO not CO2 dummy!

Man finds pack loaded with $500,000 cash WENATCHEE -- A pedestrian who found a backpack filled with nearly $500,000 near Ellisforde likely helped disrupt a drug deal, Okanogan County officials said. The pedestrian found the pack full of money hidden along Highway 97 north of Ellisforde on Friday and called authorities, Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers said. He declined the name the pedestrian. Law enforcement officers believe the cash was destined for use in the drug trade, Rogers said. Deputies took the cash and replaced it in the backpack with police magazines and other police materials that gave it a similar weight and size, then they put it back in the brush. David L. Taber Jr., 35, of Oroville, who allegedly drove to the location about 7:30 p.m. Friday, picked up the backpack and drove away, was arrested and made a court appearance Monday on money laundering charges in Okanogan County Superior Court. Associated Press

I climbed it a couple years ago, stopping to TR the top pitch of the "sport route" in about 10 hours car to car. Pretty easy day trip.

I think he's talking about CO2 build up, not O2.

Sounds like you're criticizing this youngster for wanting to buy a ticket from a private party who legally paid for the voucher but did not use it. I have no problem with this. I don't think loaning your season pass to a friend is ok though. Like most businesses, the resorts will probably increase ticket prices by "whatever the market will bear" not just what they figure they lost to fraud the previous year.

Definetly rent and borrow ice tools before you buy. Pick a few you think you like and try them out. Search for ice tools on this website and read up.

You guys seem a little uptight. I've been in sani-cans when the villiage idiot (there's usually one lurking around) trys to pry the door open with a shovel, takes pleasure in dropping bricks down the vent stack, wails on the sides of the sani-can with a 2x4 and the best prank, using a dozen screws to fasten the door shut and take the sani-can (with you inside) for a tour around the jobsite on the forklift. Try taking a crap with all that going on around you and you'll pray all you have to tolerate is watching someone just rinse off their hands instead of trying to concentrate on not getting blue "sanitizer" all over your ass.

After a brief analysis my best guess is that a small piece of cornice or ice (or Joe Simpson) blew off the top of the slope, landed mid slope and triggered a point release slide and caused the funny shaped crown.

Isn't there a story about some ubergeek scientist/engineer around here getting their coffee spiked with some chemical and it knocked them out or killed them and they were revived or something like that? CBS? Do you know anthing about that?

Any route on the N. Face of Der Eiger!

May be some impact on accessability if the State performs the clean-up anytime soon. Monte Cristo site polluted Heavy metals left from mines closed decades ago make it one of the most poisoned areas in the state, although the risk to visitors is low. By Lukas Velush Herald Writer Twenty-one long-abandoned gold mines clustered around a remote ghost town make for one of the most polluted sites in the state, Department of Ecology officials said Thursday. The Monte Cristo area in the mountains 60 miles east of Everett, is contaminated with such high levels of arsenic and other toxic heavy metals that the Ecology Department gave the site its highest ranking -- a one on a scale of one to five. The state also announced that a former fuel site in Arlington has officially been cleaned up. The old Arlington Fuel Stop at Highway 530 and I-5 was listed on the state's hazardous sites list in 2001 and has been removed because the owner has removed all contaminated soils. Soil and water tests taken at several locations around Monte Cristo show unsafe levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium and antimony, all heavy metals that are dangerous when ingested, said Geoffrey Crofoot, environmental health specialist with the Snohomish Health District. Although arsenic occurs naturally in the region's mountains, it normally takes some external force such as mining to introduce it into the environment where it can possibly be consumed by people. Crofoot sampled the most likely polluted locations, the places where mine tailings had been left behind. Those include sites where ore was crushed and loaded onto trains, and places where tailings were dumped. Although the toxic metals found at Monte Cristo far exceed state standards, the danger to hikers and others remains low because so few visit the remote location, Crofoot said. The only way to get there is to hike more than four miles down an old road. The pollutants are in the soil. "Unless you're eating large handfuls of the stuff, you're not going to have any problems," said Crofoot, who did an assessment of the site for the Ecology Department. The risk of contamination would be much higher if the site were in a highly populated area, but "the fact of the matter is, you have these piles of polluted ore 60 miles away from anywhere," he said. Still, it's important for those who visit the site to be careful. "It comes back to the common sense of washing your hands and cleaning the material (dust) off before you leave," he said. There is a danger that the pollutants could work their way into the public water supply system, said Caitlin Cormier, an Ecology Department spokeswoman. "When you have contamination on your site above certain levels, then it must be cleaned up," she said, adding that the site had never been tested before because of budget constraints. The mines closed in the early 1900s, and it may be difficult to hold a private company responsible. The U.S. Forest Service, the state Department of Natural Resources and private citizens now own much of the land. Now that the site has been listed, the Ecology Department will figure out how to clean it up. If a responsible party cannot be located, the state may have to pay for it. The state has not yet come up with a cost estimate. Arsenic is the biggest problem, Crofoot said. About 25 percent of every ton of ore left behind at the mines is arsenic -- a level so high that some companies switched to mining arsenic when their dreams of finding gold didn't pan out. For perspective, that same ton of ore contains 1 percent to 3 percent lead, mercury, cadmium and antimony, all levels that violate state standards. Miners flocked to Monte Cristo after prospector Joseph Persall in 1989 found an outcrop of rock high in heavy metals -- including arsenic -- that made him think there might be gold. After he made his discovery, a railroad spur was put in, a smelter was built in Everett and mining began in earnest, Crofoot said. Little gold was found, and the rail line and Monte Cristo itself were hit with a constant barrage of avalanches, floods and other natural disasters. Mining activities largely ceased in 1912, when the rail line shut down. The Arlington fuel stop was listed as a level 5 site, the lowest in the state's ranking system for polluted sites. The owners had to clean up petroleum-contaminated soil. It was operated as a Gull station in the late 1970s, then Texaco took over in 1989 and found contaminated soil. Texaco removed the soil, but the groundwater was still polluted. The current owner, Balbir Singh, entered the Ecology Department's Volunteer Cleanup Program after the state listed the site as contaminated in 2001. Groundwater tests now show the site is clean.

An atheist was taking a walk through the woods, admiring all that the accident of evolution" had created. "What majestic trees! What Powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself. As he was walking alongside the river he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly charge towards him. He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in on him. He ran even faster, so scared that tears were coming to his eyes. He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer. His heart was pumping frantically and he tried to run even faster. He tripped and fell to the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw the bear, right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him. At that instant the atheist cried out "Oh my God!...." Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent. Even the river stopped moving. As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky: "You deny my existence for all of these years; teach others I don't exist and, even credit creation to a cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?" The atheist looked directly into the light: "It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask You to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps could you make the bear a Christian?" Very well," the voice said. The light went out. The river ran again. And the sounds of the forest resumed. And then the bear dropped its right paw ........brought both paws together.... bowed its head and spoke: "Lord, for this food which I am about to receive, I am truly thankful."