mattp

Folks are going to do what they are going to do, I guess, but I believe that attempting to show that "climbers can police themselves" in this manner would do little or nothing to impress either the Forest Service or the Alpine Lakes Protection society that we are a responsible user group. Should there erupt some big uproar, it would support just the opposite conclusion. Those who are unhappy with the existence of Infinite Bliss should, in my mind, work toward spreading their message rather than pursuing or promoting vigilante justice. In this regard, I commend Joseph Healy for his activities at Beacon, and RainDawg for his (former?) efforts in teaching new climbers how to climb clean.

Most of the route lies in a geologic hazard area, that's for sure. Maybe they should have used a jackhammer to make divots in the rock surface so the bolts and hangers could have been installed sub-grade, or maybe drilled #4 stopper pockets so you could just climb with a rack of #4 stoppers.

Doctors are always saying stuff like that. Next they'll tell you that smoking is bad for you or that you should wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle.

Cle Elum: the south France of the U.S.

I have taken three-year-olds rock climbing and as long as Mom and Dad were OK with it, they've done fine. My brother took his son up a climb in the 'Gunks when he was three and now he's our ropegun. Two might be too young.

We get it Duchess, Ashford is rainy. But North Bend is Ashford WITHOUT Mt. Rainier. I think Jens has a pretty good list, though Kenford has an OK idea of places a little more spread out and MCash is right on the money about thinking one might find a good setup in Ellensburg and have access to Seattle amenities without paying the price of admission. i could live across the street from JB and we could argue politics just for fun. But hey: as long as we're dreaming, what about the south of France? C'mon, guys. You could live a few hours from Verdon and Chamonix, and have a winery in your back yard, a ***** chef down the street, good weather, and public medicine. Oh, that's right: they hate freedom. Back to the U.S. again, I'd have to say WA, OR and CA are all there is. Utah and Colorad are for vacations, not residence. I've lived and worked in MA, FL, MI, CO, NM, UT, CA, OR, and WA, and the west coast is for sure where I wanna stay. Except maybe France... and lately I've been wondering if Thailand might not be bad.

I once read that the #1 cause of death for Mtn. Goats is falling. There's definitely places where I've seen a goat climb something where I would want a belay and, if no pro was available, I'd be thinking a bolt might be pretty nice. I don't need that bolt and nobody I know really does either, but I don't think it is doing any real harm. That is a spectacular beginners route and if somebody wants to be able to comfortably string it up for newbies I really don't object.

To the extent that you are unhappy with an ongoing tide of retrobolting and unsightly sport climbing development or whatever it is that you may be concerned about, I would think you might look at our fifty year history of climbers policing others through chopping bolts and vilifying the bad guys a chumps or worse, and conclude that more than the occasional crowbar expedition and scathing letter in a climbing magazine or combative post to cc.com is needed. As I indicated on the prior page, I think there are cases where this or that removal has influenced behavior toward more restrained bolting – and some places I think this has been good but in other locations I think it has actually been unfortunate. It is unfortunate where we continue to kill trees with slings on them when a pair of bolts and some chain would solve the problem, or keep using a sandy eroded mess of a descent trail, or maintain climbs in what are generally thought to be a hazardous state even by climbers who are very well capable of climbing a given route. I’m not saying everything should be "safe," but I think in the case of Peshastin Pinnacles, for example, some judicious retrobolting here and there would actually be a good thing. We could debate this point, and I'm sure somebody will be quick to point out that there has not been a "bolt war" at Peshastin, but I believe that fear of controversy has driven some of the management decisions over there toward a bit too conservative and my point is, really, that bolt chopping has the most influence over those who are already prone to act cautiously in such matters and is probably least effective at influencing the rogue newbie with a power tool or climbers who may have little experience outside of a sport climbing area. It has proven largely ineffective as a means to discourage the growth of sport climbing and I think it has had relatively little influence toward increasing interest in so called "trad" ethics. More direct communication is part of the answer. I have just about uniformly heard from climbers whose routes are criticized on this board or in other forums that not one person has ever tried to contact them directly about the matter. It won't go well if you call somebody up and tell them that you think their latest installation which they may have thought about in depth and maybe spent a lot of time and money on is a piece of sh%t, and it pretty much always goes poorly when you post that same critique on a public bulletin board and expect "that bastard" to suddenly wake up and agree that you are right. Hopefully we can find a slightly more communicative approach. Many of the ongoing conflicts over bolting and chopping are driven as much by personality issues as they are by ego, ethics, or anything else. Discussing these matters with others outside our own group of friends is certainly a good start -- hopefully this can help us sort out where we are overly focussed on an old argument with "that guy," and maybe where our justifications for our actions are marginal or our message unclear. In my opinion, the route developer or retrobolter should carefully think about what they are doing, so should the chopper – and then it would be good to find a way to actually talk about it although most climbers I know hate the idea of meetings and climbing area management groups. However, where bolt chopping has led to the result that I presume the bolt choppers desire (more restrained bolting practices), it has usually happened where they have influenced climbers who are acting as a climbing management group even though they may not have not been formally designated as such so they are hard to locate or contact.

The birds did not nest near the crags this year, so the closure was lifted once they figured out where the nest was. WCC Site

People do what they do for a variety of reasons. For sure, anybody who takes it upon themself to chop bolts has decided they know best what is “good” for the crag, and that requires a certain egotistical orientation. However, the same can be said for the climber who put the bolts there in the first place - or at least the climber that takes it upon themself to retrobolt an existing climb. So, yes, maybe we do things like this to feel important. But that doesn’t really answer the question. We believe that we are doing the right thing, and your question is really about how one could think they are doing the right thing to remove a bolt and leave an empty hole or (worse) a bent or broken stud. I think most people who chop bolts are thinking they are making a statement about a trend in climbing that they disapprove of. Climbers have been doing this for fifty years - literally - and it is not always clear that they are really making the point they desire, but there is no doubt that at least some times and in some places a bit of bolt chopping has changed other climbers’ practices in the desired manner. In other places or at other times, it has only made a mess, fueled animosity, or worse. my article on this

Nope, they didn't. Senate: 77-23; House: 296-133. Further, even if all of them thought it was justified "at the time" it would not necessarily follow that the war was in fact just. Can we read that quote from Hilary Clinton again?

Since this thread is titled “you’re right, Mattp, I’ll take this opportunity to point out that I argued, three years ago, that the U.S. plan for Iraq was long term military presence. At the time, the “right leaning” posters on this site called me “paranoid” just as they did when I argued, a year or two before that, that the President lied to take us into Iraq, or when I stated in 2003, that our invasion of Iraq would lead to increased support for Al Queda Today our Secretary of Defense confirmed my argument. We are planning a long term military presence in Iraq.

PP, it is pretty simple. The cost of providing services that will be reimbursed by insurance is much greater than that for those who will pay their own bills. The increased cost is due to all the forms, delay, and BS imposed by the insurance companies, which is clearly as much or more an effort to delay and reduce their payout as much as it may be aimed toward reducing fraudulent claims. The person who is actually going to pay their own bill doesn't much benefit from delaying payment (assuming they can afford the services they purchased), but the insurance company who invests the money entrusted in their care benefits HUGELY from delaying payment. This is why the insurance companies ALWAYS delay payment, while the person paying for their own treatment generally preferss to "pay as they go." The very real affect of allowing a discount for paying on the date of service (exclusively available to those who actually pay for their own services because an insurance company cannot and never does this) is to impost a surcharge on insurance billing. This isn't advanced math. The ideas that receipt of payment concurrent with treatment is better for the healthcare providers, and that delayed payment and extra red tape is bad for them and expensive are not mutually exclusive.

Are you saying that students in private schools work harder than those in public schools? I don't know for a fact, but it is just as likely the other way around.

Better public education to produce the qualified workforce that we need to remain competitive wouldn't hurt, either.

I'm not exactly sure what you wrote there, PP, but I think you may have misread what I posted. The cost of collection is extremely low if the self-paying customer pays at the time of service -- and they offer these "pay at time of service" discounts in recognition of this fact. I have seen these discounts offered not only at every physical therapy / massage / etc. provider I have been to, but they offer the same thing at outpatient clinics including one run by Swedish Hospital here in Ballard. These clinics are NOT serving rich people.

In my own personal experience I have never switched insurance without encountering a pre-existing conditions clause. The best coverage I have ever had as a self employed individual may have ben Group Health, and it really kind of sucked when I needed physical therapy or other "extra's." Every small employer I know has found the cost of insuring employees to be extremely burdensome. Many self employed people I know have only catastrophic coverage or none at all because of the cost - a "personal choice," you might say, based on their need to buy lattes or whatever. My wife is a massage therapist and she provides a specialized treatment for lymphedema, common in cancer patients, but a condition our own Olyclimber recently had from another cause other than radiation therapy. Even when her services are prescribed by a doctor and fully covered under the terms of a policy, the insurance companies delay payment and try to negotiate the price and etc. This discourages her and virtually every massage practitioner from serving insurance patients. Virtually every clinic, doctor or other provider you go to has a deal where if you are self-paying, you can get a hefty discount - 30% if you pay the date of service. This is their way of getting around the insurance company policies that say they cannot charge extra for insurance billing. The cost of waiting six months to be paid (no exaggeration) and filling out all the paperwork is HUGE. My wife and I almost never go to the doctor - we've been seen less than a total of ten times in the last five years. We don't get good preventative care. Yet we pay $6,000 a year. It sounds to me like maybe you, ericb, don'e know how well you have it.

You didn't recognize the name of the author as your hero from way back?

I vaguely agree with Seahawks on this cynical view of things! Not quite, but he DOES have a point.

Good stuff, Pete!

We haven't mentioned it because it hasn't driven costs through the roof. I believe there are a few specialties where litigation has been a factor in driving up costs - like delivering babies for example - but overall it has not been near the factor that the insurance industry lobbyists portray it to be. I can't remember the statistic, but liability is a tiny percentage of the cost of healthcare. I think I've heard 1% or 2% from various sources (here's one link) If there is one particularly risky area of practice like delivering babies, that practice is actually expensive when you consider the actual costs like those associated with mothers dying or having to care for a permanently disabled child and etc. which are real costs but indirect costs of that practice. You free market people ought to consider that maybe liability claims in such cases are actually a symptom of the "market" working as it should - even if the result is that we have more concentrated practice of - what is it? Ob-Gyn? Maybe there is in fact a benefit to be had from "the market" pushing people to the hospital for deliveries where, if complications arise, services are available. Maybe a smaller field of practitioners, more highly trained so they can avoid the mistakes that lead to liability, would be a good thing. And, compared to the alternative which at least in some cases will be to provide welfare for the orphan children of the dead mother or maybe the state ends up caring for the disabled child - might it make more sense for the doctors to have insurance? If we think this forces too many out of practice, might we consider a subsidy of those particular insurance premiums? Evil socialism, you cry. We could argue the merits of home birth or access to neighborhood ObGyn's, and we could argue forever whether in the case of a risky area of practice there should be more government oversight, regulation and fixed procedure in an effort to make it safer, or whether a liability based system is more efficient, or whether mothers should just be expected to take their chances no matter what the standard of practice might be. Overall I think the statistics make it pretty clear that the so-called "medical malpractice crisis" is a myth used for political purposes.

It must have been a bad day. He only cursed once or twice in passing, or when I dinked with the camera too much. Here, he's saying: "put the F'n thing away and belay!" He growled at the crux moves, though.

We're not talking about forcing anybody into any system, JayB. The wealthy - or even maybe the motivated - will always be able to opt out and purchase whatever they may desire.

OK then. We agree: basic health should be universally covered. We can argue forever over what might be "elective" or "cosmetic," I bet. But Jay recognizes that, at least in principal, all should be covered. As you point out, JH, his assumption that even most average citizens can pay for their needed care if they have any extraordinary needs or end up having to - god forbit - change insurance companies and encounter bars to coverage of "pre-existing conditions" is just all in the mechanics. But we agree on the basic premise - no?