mattp

I second Hanman's priorities here. I'd also add that 9 out of ten of the old 1/4" buttonheads (many if not most of them are actually 5/16") are actually quite strong - based on the amount of effort required to remove them when doing replacement. I'd also like to clean up the Big Tree routes, to improve the opportunities for more moderate climbing and, in the case of Big Tree I, what should be a good gear pitch at about 5.6 now includes some grubbing about. I doubt anybody would object if you installed a new belay station on Charlie Chan's.

I had no problem with the Beckey Route on a Sunday last August, though admittedly there was a party immediately ahead of us and we had to wait a bit for them and, correspondingly, there was a party behind us who had to wait for us. On the rappels, too, there was some "communication" involved. However, I came away with no complaints. Watch out for how other parties may send rocks tumbling your way, try not to bombard the next group, and allow for third party delays, and you'll probably do fine. Its not as bad as the rush hour traffic that you probably deal with every day.

Yup. I'd say a good time was had by all.

Careful there, PP, or I'll add you to my suit. In fact, that does it. You're in. Will you accept service or do I have to send the process servers after you?

Nope. There are three elements to my claim: (1) I wasted my time. My post-count at 7,000 posts is my evidence. Res ipsa loquitur. (2) It was Jon and Tim and your fault. I may have a harder time proving Jon and Tim are responsible, but your frequent baiting of me, for which I am not responsible in any way, is clear proof in your case. (Maybe I'll drop Tim and Jon, and just name YOU. You got a deep pocket?) (3) I suffered damage as a result. I have at least one witness who will testify I'm suffering an elevated heart rate.

Good idea. I'm thinking about suing Jon and Timmy for wasting the last four years of my life for me. The ba&*%rds have been lying to us all along, saying our participation here is only a matter of personal choice. Maybe I'll name YOU as co-defendant.

Off White is right: why DO you hate America? Have you ever considered running for office, so you could actually do something to help fix our wretched society like maybe fix that wasteful school system that you complain about or straighten out those spendthrifts in the State government?

Lets see: Owens Corning and those other companies deliberately hid the information from the public for - what was it? Decades? I have not followed how the whole business actually ended up, and I know that once the train started rolling there were certainly lots of people who jumped on for the ride when they didn't have meritorious claims and plenty of attorneys who were less than scrupulous were drawn by the prospect of making lots of money, but I would say that the legal system actually worked much better than you suggest: companies who clearly were shown to have hidden the dangers of asbestos usage, and who had refused to help the victims or their widows were taken to the cleaners and we are no longer exposing millions of workers to this hazard every year. Again, if you believe in personal responsibility, I suppose you might say that the executives who were responsible for this should have gone to jail and all of their assets seized, but most of us would say that is too extreme and that business would be crippled and the Chinese would rule the world if we held poor entrepeneurs responsible in this fashion.

Where did you get the idea that "the profession" was arguing that there was no need for any reform whatsoever? In the last Washington election, for example, the Trial Lawyers sponsored referendum that would have held attorneys who filed fivolous lawsuits more accountable for doing so.

OK, so they should have been fined. Should it have been enough of a fine to really hurt? Should the INDIVIDIUALS involved have been held personally accountable, or should just the shareholders have seen a reduction in the value of their stock value?

What makes ME sick is the insurance companies trying to fool the public into thinking that legal liability is what is driving a medical industry crisis, or the President's saying that all the asbestos claims are frivolous, or all the completely bullshit fabricated stories of "outrageous" personal injury lawsuits. There are plenty of jerks in the legal profession, and maybe more than in many other but certainly not all professions, but the fact is that it is indeed all about justice. I think we've got a fairly good system and trial lawyers are part of what makes it work. I'd hate to think how our society would look if there were no lawyers, but those who waste all day long on cc.com were running the legal system.

Allright then. I'm likely not available for three or four weeks, but I'll gladly take you up on this but send me some email and we'll put something together. mattp at seanet dot com

OK then. We are talking about the limits of "personal responsibility" and where government regulation is needed or where legal liability is the answer. I'm glad we've at least gotten that far. Now: do I understand you to say that the tobacco industry did not do anything for which they should have been sued? Or do you think the perpetrators of large-scale fraud and deceipt should have been jailed? Or should the tobacco companies have been allowed to continue to foist misinformation and manipulated products on the market without any intervention?

Are you guys who are all in favor of personal responsibility going to tell me that if you bought a house and it turned out there was a crack house next door, it was your own fault because you should have spent enough time there to discover this before you bought? If you get laid off, are you going to forego unemployment? If you place your money in a bank that turns out to be a bad investment are you hoping it is covered by FDIC or do you just accept responsibility for the fact that you should have known better? If your car turns out to have an exploding gas tank, do you say “well, it was my fault: buyer beware?” Do you benefit from laws requiring fair disclosure in real estate transactions, unemployment insurance “imposed” on business by law, Federal banking regulation, automobile safety standards, etc. etc.? Are those who argue for personal responsibility and damn the legal liability lawyers not thinking, subconsciously if not consciously, that all the bad things are going to happen ot other people and they are suckers who deserve it?

Do you know how to run a scrub brush? If you wanna come along some time, I'll gladly show you up some climbs in DTown and we can mess around looking at protection and stuff like that, but I might want to combine it with some cleanup activity.

Jay, Why are you all for "personal responsibility" but not for "corporate responsibility?" We have this legal entity called a corporation, and it works very well to shield investors from potential losses associated with what the enterprise: they stand only to lose the amount they have invested and are not ultimately responsible for any financial disaster or serious harm done by the corporation. Officers and employees can get liability insurance, or in the case of employees they can rely on respondeat superior if they were simply doing their job. Everyone involved is protected. Everyone except the victims of corporate fraud, lying, market manipulation, pollution -- you name it. Which would you rather have: (a) a tort system where someone can sue if they can show that the corporation actually did something wrong and that wrong caused real harm? or (b) government regulation of everything, including the content of cigarette adds and the temperature of coffee, in addition to automobile safety, toxic waste disposal, and air pollution standards. It really has to be one or the other, or some combination of both. Clearly, we have seen that with very little financial incentive to do anything but to maximize short term profits even if business activities may be inflicting serious and long-lasting harm, business is not going to make the "right" choice. Maybe the cigarette company officials should have ended up being jailed rather than their companies sued, but that does not seem to be a popular idea with anybody involved in any business.

Jay: you are right that many of us learned that tobacco was bad for you when we were children. However, that does not negate my point: tobacco was sued (and lost) not just because they sold it, but because they lied about it and manipulated people. And those lies and manipulation were found to have caused harm. Would you rather we had government more actively involved in policing the tobacco industry and preventing their lying about it or their manipulating the product to make it more addictive? If you are concerned about public safety it is either one way or the other: (a) the industry is responsible (financially in a major way) if it does wrong (ie. lawsuits), or (b) the government oversees the industry, possibly in all phases from advertising to manufacture and distribution. The third choice: no liability and no government regulation means any company that can successfully sell something does so. That's great rhetoric, but an unrestricted "free market" does not work in controlling the use of dangerous products that are advertised in deceptive and clever ways, that are addictive, or that cause risks that are shared by those other than the direct users.

I have not read through this thread to see if anybody has made this point or not but, as I understand it, the reason big tobacco was held accountable was not due to their being a scapegoat for anybody's lack of self control. They were shown to have hidden a great deal of information about the dangers of smoking, depriving the public of the information they needed to make an informed choice. In addition, I think there was something about how at least some companies (was it Phillip Morris?) were manipulating the nicotine levels to make their product more addictive that natural tobacco. A similar argument has been used to ridicule the woman who sued McDonalds for serving coffee too hot: she has been the constant target of right-wing ridicule from folks all up in arms over a "lack of personal responsibility." Stella Liebeck did in fact sue McDonald's for failing to adequately warn her of the danger in that hot cup of coffee, but the coffee was so hot it was truly dangerous and she didn't just scald herself -- she suffered third-degree burns that required skin grafts to repair. I believe she showed that McDonalds knew they were serving coffee too hot for safety (though maybe this particular cup exceeded their established standard), but they were shown to have known they were serving coffee dangerously hot but decided it was worth the risk for business reasons -- cheaper to take that risk than have people complaning the coffee is too cold when their staff are slow to serve it, perhaps? If somebody can sue McDonalds for making them fat, you can bet they are going to have to show that McDonalds did more than serve food for which there was a market.

Last time I heard a discussion of this point, Fairweather, it was exactly the other way around. The Seattle metropolitan area, and I think King County alone as well, pays more in taxes that are used to fund roads, services etc. benefitting the rest of the state than the other way around. Actually, we self-centered urbanites who you hold such disdain for would be better off if we just kept our tax money to ourselves and let the rest of the State fund their own budget.

You missed your chance, dude! Has "the boss" inspected your work on his pad yet? Glad you're on your way back, Kurt.

Here are a couple of shots of the pitch I show as pitch 4 on the topo:

Climb: Exfoliation Dome-Sunday Cruise, Witch Doctor Wall Date of Climb: 7/22/2006 Trip Report: (Saturday and) Sunday Cruise I first walked up to the base of Witch Doctor Wall in 1985, planning to climb “Sunday Cruise" (III 5.9) but the view from below scared us off. Yikes! That thing looks steep and mean! I had climbed plenty of long and hard routes by then, but this thing just looked like doom, and the bushes hanging all over the route didn’t look inviting either. Over the years, I’ve heard various things about it. “Not a recommended route” (aspirant guidebook author). “Nothing but choss and filth” (guidebook author). “Stacked flakes led us to bail from the first belay.” (experienced Western Washington cragger and bush master). “I didn’t think it was bad.” (member of the first ascent party). “A neglected classic; the crux pitch is really good.” (ardent rock climber with a taste for the remote and obscure). Figuring the truth lay somewhere in all of these statements, I just had to go. Catbird, his friend Jim, and my next door neighbor Jay signed on for the adventure. Looking at the guidebook, we noted that there were two “trivial” pitches, 5.4 and 5.6, followed by three pitches of harder climbing, 5.8 and 5.9. How hard can it be? I asked Brian. So, setting out on one of the predicted hottest days of the season, we decided to make a late start of it, figuring we could stay in the shade by roping up just before noon for this east - facing route. Right away, we figured out this was going to demand more of us than we had bargained for. The approach hike following a route scratched in the duff by David Gunstone as one of his last contributions to DTown before he was killed in a climbing accident in Squamish, but the devil’s club and salmon-berry got in some good licks and all of us were quite thirsty by the time we got to the base of the route. Then I realized that I had brought two left shoes, not a good way to start a climb. The first pitch, reported at 5.4, turned out to be more like 5.8. The second, reported to be 5.6, turned out more like 5.9. A steep pitch on flakes and corners followed. I cautiously worked my way up, testing everything and trying not to smear too much on the lichen covered surfaces where they could be avoided, and found myself facing a difficult step-across that seemed to require yarding on a loose flake. I set a semi-hanging belay, and brought Jay up. Catbird and Jim, hot to trot, climbed through our station with Jim in the lead, and he found a way past the flake. My buddy Jay gladly accepted a belay from above as he left our station. On my way past, with nobody below, I sent the offending flake to its doom as it shattered into a zillion pieces on the slabs below and the resultant shrapnel peppered the area where our packs were stashed. Carborundum, anyone? The upper pitches required a combination of bush pulling and wandering about on occasionally good rock, but with lots of lichen and the odd loose flake thrown in just for fun. At least three times, we climbed small trees and stepped back onto the cliff from their top branches. High on the route, Brian briefly aided on two pieces of gear to surmount a lichen-infested under-cling. We crawled behind a flake/boulder type thing, with a body chimney behind it. Never sure of where we were going, we felt we were in good company. Bail slings and even bail gear was strewn along the path. The last pitch actually turned out pretty enjoyable! Our late start and slow, meandering progress on the route led to a late top-out. It was just starting to get dark as we pulled over the top. Fortunately, I had been on that side of the dome two weeks earlier, looking at the Checkered Demon line, and I knew the rappel route. We rapped in the dark, six rappels, back to the base. This left us with a short walk back to the water hole, and we each gulped down two quarts. We had planned the shade thing right, but it had been a long climb on a very warm day! I mused, “You know, it’s like 1:00 in the morning and if we just sit here and nap for a couple of hours it'll start to get light and that hike out will be a lot more pleasant.” Jay agreed, and I think maybe Jim did too, but Brian was having none of that. March or Die! My wife is going to be worried, and we gotta go! We staggered back to the car at 3:30. ------------------- Conclusion: Sunday Cruise is one of those climbs that you gotta do only if you are a Darrington buff or simply want to climb something on that side of the Dome and you don’t want to do one of the excellent aid climbs nearby. All of the information I had was accurate: it is a neglected classic, and not as bad as some of the stories, but there is a reason it is neglected and it is far and away the dirtiest climb in Darrington that is contained in any guidebook save, perhaps, routes like “Avoidance” on Green Giant Buttress, or “Bushy Galore, on Three O’Clock Rock. I'm glad we did it, but I'm not in a hurry to repeat the experience. If you’re into this kind of thing, here’ a topo of the variant we did (we may not have been on the original line all the way): [topo revised 7/27/06] Gear Notes: Because of the generally insecure climbing, the route takes a lot of gear. Doubles to 3" recommended, though you might use a 4" piece if you had it. Many long slings needed. Approach Notes: The approach is not bad, but it is definitely not a sandals affair. An hour and a half to the base.

What I want to know is what's he doing with the vice. Straightening it back out?

I have never had any problem with cotton.