mattp

And here, at "Marmot Manor," above "Excalibur Rock," near the shores of "Lake Viviane" in the Enchantments:

Here's a picture of Peg and Bill (center of photo) and their dog Aaron at High Camp:

Last Friday, the Wenatchee World ran such a piece. web page Some here may enjoy hearing that Bill retired early from Boeing so that they could spend more time in the mountains. He and Peg moved to Leavenworth, and had a house where they invited lots of similarly minded people to come and stay. Most of their visitors were young and some had long hair. I'm not sure they saw it this way, but it was at times derided as a "commune" by their neighbors. Bill was very active in local Leavenworth politics and Peg, too, could be quite vocal on environmental matters. In one interview, Bill proclaimed he had left Boeing because he no longer wanted to be a "wage slave," and the pair of them served "Russian Tea" at their rustic backcountry resort. This was enough to get them branded as "communists." They had a very intense spiritual thing going for the mountains around Leavenworth and they devoted the second half of their lives to this passion. They were (are) good people.

Bill Stark and his wife Peg may be best known to Cascade climbers through their names of various features in the Enchantments: Lake Viviane, Aasgard Pass, Merlin's Tower, Rune, Talisman and Valkyrie.... These two began exploring the Enchantments in 1959 and fought quite a battle with the Forest Service to have their names adopted when the local District Ranger had named the lakes after girlfriends or given them more "institutional" names like "Inspiration Lake." Fred Beckey's use of their names in his guidebook tipped the scales in their favor. Peg and Bill also founded a back country ski business on McCue Ridge, above Highway 2 near the rest area east of Stevens Pass. Many who post on this site have visited that "resort." Some have gone up there to enjoy the magnificiant touring in high, but gently rolling terrain, while others have gone ice climbing at Lake Julius or hiked in the high meadows. I and several others who lurk at this site learned to telelmark ski from "the old goat." Bill touched many lives. He will be missed. Peg survives and lives in Port Townsend.

With regard a climb like the South Face of Jello Tower, I think that my own view of the difficulty has been greatly impacted by changes in my style of climbing. When I was a pup, I didn't mind throwing in a piece and gunning it to the next rest stance which might be as much as fifteen feet up (or more in some cases), and I didn't mind taking what by today's standard are considered big falls. I never got badly hurt doing this, but I no longer like taking such risks. That willingness to throw myself at something got me up lots of climbs, though, and I was able to lead the South Face of Jello Tower and think nothing of it at a time when 5.9 was really my limit. Hell, the pro was right there and somehow I always seemed to make it to the jug. Today, I think there are much fewer climbers young or old who are willing to plug and go if it means even the possiblity of a moderate fall, and by this I mean something more than a sport fall where the bolt is at your knees or above, Consequently, we don't learn to simply sprint through something where "the sequence" is not clear before nearly every move. This is part of why a very technical 5.10 face sequence requiring back stepping and very specific weight transfers is often seen as much "easier" than a 5.9 chimney whereas they would have been viewed quite differently "back in the day." It doesn't explain all the trend toward uprating many of the old classics, but it explains some of it. I'm not saying the South Face is in any way run out or that the pro is not right there in front of you - it is - but I do think that climbers who might not have the technical skills needed to climb it carefully, move by move, can probably gun it and grab the jug if they can simply free their mind enough to do so. (I wonder, too, if a hold may have broken off some time in the last 30 years.)

Marcus- You've linked the html pages that display the images, rather than the image files themselves. When viewing an image in the gallery, right click it to get the .jpg address for the image. Then, if you paste that between the image tags in yhour post, you'll get the photo. One problem, though: your originals are 2500 pixels wide, and will blow out the page so this thread is unreadable and we can only see a quarter of the image at a time. P1 variation: The meaning of offwidth: Bandana brotherhood: These are the "medium" sized versions of the image files, automatically created when you upload to the gallery.

How is the monster log about a half mile beyond the Three O'Clock trailhead?

You missed it, Otto. The TERRORISTS shut down cc.com last night.

I don't think you are correct there, CJ. Certainly, some people will post whether or not they are going to be flipped a bunch of crap, so maybe you mean traffic volume is not necessarily directly related to spray tolerance? You don't really mean that nobody could ever be discouraged by how their posts are received - do you?

I realize I'm a little late in the game, after four pages, but I think Gary raises a valid and, for cc.com, important issue. As I read it, Gary's initial thesis was that more people would post trip reports and offer useful information if cc.com was more civilized, and I think this is true. I know dozens of climbers who rarely post here or who have quit posting because of the inane, obnoxious, or downright rude treatment that even the most serious topics sometimes draw on cc.com. If we were a little more consistent about segregating the wheat from the chaff, I think we probably would see broader participation. My view is that if some guy posts yet the fifth trip report about Mount Stuart in two weeks and you find this boring - you should scroll on past. If some guy puts his foot in his mouth while asking a dumb question about what knot to use for a belay anchor, you really don't have to smack him in order to bask in the knowledge that you are superior. On the other hand, ChucK said it on page one of this thread and I agree: there has been greater restraint recently than at some periods in the past, and in fact we DO have quite a lively and varied discussion here as well as many of us are able to waste all day at work or perpetrate a bait and bash any time we want. Two years ago, I don't think that someone would have gotten a helpful response if they asked what kind of boots to wear for a climb of the standard route on Mount Adams, or what kind of bolts to use in conglomerate. Meanwhile, you can find a partner for an evening workout or contact information for the bush pilot who will serve your next expedition, and the site has become the home for most reports of new alpine climbs in the region.

PP, I've been wondering about that. It always seems a bit of a nuisance to wind the tape around my hands, and I do think that even being careful to avoid taping in a manner that constricts the muscles I may still be doing to to some extent, but I have yet to adopt the gloves andI think a carefully applied tape job offers better coverage. By the way, CB, I don't think the tape on the palm of my hands has ever caused any problem, but the convenience of the tape gloves is certainly a worthy consideration.

How do you think they'll portray this scene: This woiuld make for good entertainment, eh KK? web page

ABC is apparently re-editting the movie. New York Daily News If this is typical of the truthfulness of the film, then I'd say the flap is justified.

Who? Bush?

This is not quite on topic, but there may be another question associated with taping your wrist. When you make a fist, your wrist expands a little bit. My guess is that if you tape around your wrist with your hand held in a neutral position, you will reduce your power to the hand and fingers in some way. When I had an elbow tear some years back, I would use a band of tape around my forearm just below the elbow to prevent fully firing the muscles that controlled my hand and attached just above the elbow.

If it bothers, you, CJF, turn off our computer or go brows myspace.com.

I guess the question about this documentary is this: is it a documentary or drama, or is it propaganda. Given current politics, it is hard to believe it is not some kind of propaganda but of course both Dems and Reps are going to try to spin it their way nonetheless. This Time Magazine article presents a fairly lengthy history of the Bush administration’s pre-911 efforts to combat the terrorism threat which was drawn to their attention by Clinton officials. They Had A Plan Mostly, it reads to me as if there were bureaucratic and political impediments to getting a serious anti-terrorism program in place, not just along the lines of a national conscience or large scale consciousness such as W alluded to in his first post, but also at a more ground-level or interoffice kind of level. In part, the outgoing Clintonites presented a plan to pursue Bin Laden and the Bushies didn’t want to endorse something set up by their predecessors. THere were, however, other prioirities among the Bush people: the missile defense system, for example, and Rumsefeld's light and fast military. Neither this article nor anything else I have read suggests that Clinton was particularly effective on terrorism and in my opinion, Bush hasn't really been either - but I bet historians could spend a great deal of time debating this question of who was “better” on terrorism - or who would have done what under different scenarios. I’d have a hard time swallowing it if this “docudrama” suggests that Clinton was responsible for allowing 911 to occur and Bush was not. I think Crux raised a good question: who is going to pay for this documentary.

Are you saying that if we did change our lives, or perhaps rethink our foreign policy in the Middle East, the terrorists would have won? My guess is that is not quite what you are saying, but we've heard statements along these lines...

My number 1 partner for a couple of years now. My nephew, Toby.

P.S. Don't tell mom we forgot the helmets.

If you lost a chalk bag at Pineapple Pass, we have it.

Climb: The Tooth-South Face Date of Climb: 9/4/2006 Trip Report: ChucK reported five cams stuck on this route last week, so Toby and I thought we'd go take a look. Somebody must have read the report and gone up there with a coathanger. We saw two fixed pieces yesterday. Thanks, ChucK. We didn't score any booty, but the Tooth is truly a Cascade Classic. (In fact, it is probably better than the Gritscone and Bruce's Boulder and Mt. Pilchuck - combined!) It was a little warm, but we had a great day and the ice cream after we were done was pretty good too! Gear Notes: peanut butter and honey sandwiches Approach Notes: lots of rock hopping

Again, maybe you and I are not reading the same newspapers, Fairweather, but the book referred to at the start of this thread says it and the Washington Post editorial so proudly cited by JayB even admits the fact that the ultimate source of the Plame leak was the White House. As far as I've seen, nobody is debating why the famous memo was circulated in the White House, either. Maybe you are confused but you shouldn't be. Not just because of this affair, but due to their consistent lies, self-dealing that boggles the imagination, getting us into a disastrous war, doing all they can do to shred the Constitution, and just the fact that the whole dam lot of them are a bunch of crooks and liars -- they SHOULD be led off to prison in handcuffs.

It was good, but I'd only give it a b+ . It was a little muddied in its logic, I think and it wasn't as direct as it might be. When is somebody really going to start the heavy hitting and come on out and call a spade a spade?