mattp

You guys have a valid point. Yes, there IS some real exchange of information in there. But really there is very little that is new, and I don't think anybody has any sense that there ever will be anything new said in any of these threads -- do you? The discussion virtually always if not absolutely always degenerates to some situation where somebody is calling somebody else an arrogant prick, two guys are arguing about some ridiculous semantic nuance, and anybody who really wants to try to deal with the issues is put down as being "too serious" or somebody tries to intimidate them to make them go away. That is OK. It IS the cc.com that so many of us know and love. But our love of gamesmanship and bullshit comes at a price.

This thread demonstrates why we have pretty much never been able to have a real discussion of bolting or other similar issues on this board. It more or less boils down to a game of “gotcha” and a competition to see who can twist/manipulate/distort or put others down most effectively. Then when that fails to amuse, everybody heaps on out and out bullshit or completely irrelevant whatever and then pretend it is all a joke anyway. Too bad. There were some real issues buried in there. Carry on.

I think some of the anti-Mount Rainier stuff is a little overstated here. Yes, there are lots of peaks with more challenging climbing packed into a smaller overall effort, or better rock, or perhaps a more aesthetic profile, but Mt. Rainier is awesome. It dominates the skyline as viewed from the Puget Sound area and a sizeable part of eastern Washington, it is probably the biggest thing for a thousand miles around, and it is just plain cool. I've climbed it a dozen times by six different routes and I'm sure I'll be back for another go. Do it, Transplant!

"Up until the late 1800s, the Rubenesque women painted by Rafael and Renoir were the female ideal. Extra weight on women was a sign of being rich and healthy. Things began to change in the early 1900s. Plastic surgery and corsets became popular. The 1920s saw the Age of the Flapper. Thinness was the new sign of wealth. Dieting and sports became favorite pastimes. Scales started to appear in both bathrooms and kitchens. By the middle of the century, silhouettes began to soften again. For the first time, cosmetics were widely available and used. The female ideal in the 1950s was Marilyn Monroe, a curvy size 14. Bikini sales skyrocketed. The 1960s brought the birth of miniskirts, tights and Twiggy. For the first time in history, a woman who was severely underweight became the female ideal." web page

JayB - are you just blowing smoke again? How much do you know about renaissance art? "Full figured" women were quite the rage and are museams are FULL of picures of women who would be thought overweight by our modern standards.

I often use the square knot with the double fisherman's on the tails when my partner is afraid of the Euro Death Knot. As stated, I prefer it to the double fisherman's by itself because it is easier to untie.

BigW: Whether you quit climbing, join the Moonies or the marines, or find yourself a millionaire or street-person, those people you complain about will still be your family. Your buddies you could have spent the day with, burning bowls or whatever, may or may not be with you ten years from now. I’m not belittling the challenges of being obligated to spend a day with, and forced to interact with, people who are hard to be around – we all feel that – but stick with it. It’s worth it, no matter how weird they are. -Sappy old man.

For skis, the standard side straps are plenty long. If you want the option to put bulkier items like sleeping pads and tents and ropes on the side of your pack, ask for extra long side straps. Bulky items carried on the side of your pack will interfere with arm movement, but there are plenty of times when I seem to want to do this. I had him put a side zip on mine, a half circle access port on one side. I stuff a down coat into that area of the pack as I load it, and I can pull it out at rest stops and stuff it back in without opening the top of the pack. Dan was hesitant when I asked for this, but when I explained the fact that I like to carry the pack without a coat on but have access to it at rest stops he decided my modification had sufficient "merit" that he'd pollute his perfect design with it. I have been happy with this modification.

I first learned to use and appreciate the EDK when climbing in - you guessed it - Europe. My German partner said the German Alpinverren Norm was 30 cm tails on your EDK used for rappel ropes. They were even using it for rappel slings, where we exclusively use the water knot and where I see no advantage in the EDK.

The EDK is not exactly the same as an overhand with long tails. The "EDK" is not a follow-through knot like what I believe folks in this thread are calling "overhand" (it is also called a "water knot"). In the EDK, the two tails are on the same side of the knot, rather than on opposite sides. Water Knot, commonly used to tie runners and rappel slings: Euro Death Knot, commonly used to tie rappel ropes together: I have never seen the EDK "flip." Has anybody here ever experienced that? I only use it for tying ropes to rappel, so the loads are generally relatively small and I assume that more than body weight plus a little bouncing must be needed to make it flip.

I am usually skeptical of the idea that a hard catch may cause pro to fail. In hard rock, anyway, I generally think your gear is usually either good or bad and even twice as much or half as much peak force probably won't make the difference, but in sandstone doesn the pro sometimes just rake out of the parallel sided crackes? If so, I suppose it could have made a difference here.

I agree with Dan about McHale pack volumes. I have a 7k McHale pack that I never use. If you really want one that size, I'll sell you mine cheap. I also have a SARC, and it is plenty large even for extended winter outings or expedition climbing, but more appropriately sized for the regular overnight or even a day-trip with a boatload of gear. I'd second Dan's suggestion about considering the lighter fabric, too, though at risk of inflaming the gram counters around here I'll say that for a pack of this type, which you are going to fill with at least 30 pounds of gear, and often more, the extra two pounds of pack weight saved will not be all that significant. (If you take a lightweight approach to everything, however, like food, tent, ropes, miscellaneous camping gear you don't need, sleeping bag AND pack, it will add up to great savings in weight.)

Katahdin, in particular, is an awesome mountain. If you climb Washington and Katahdin in the winter you are well on your way to being ready for a trip to McKinley. In the spring, they'll offer good opportunities to learn some mountaineering skills, and in the Summer you need a guide for neither unless you go out of your way to find some rock climbing in one of the cirques. At any time of year, you can probably learn a lot from your friends at Acadia. As to your gear purchases, you should probably try to purchase gear that will serve what you are going to focus on for the next year or two. The tent you describe sounds as if it would be great for general use and the large panels of fine mesh will be great in a New England black fly season but extra zippers and potential leak areas will not serve you well if you take that tent to Mt. McKinley. Down v. synthetic? I believe that with care you can learn to keep your down dry enough that the advantage in terms of weight and compactness outweighs the worry of soppage, but you may not need to focus on light weight and compact packing at this point in your career and the synthetic is also probably cheaper and in some respects more comfortable. You'll likely get different advice from everyone you talk to and good luck sorting it all out.

Like I said, Jay, I could be wrong about my assumption that the mortgage deduction proportionally benefits the middle class more than the wealthy, and your first reference appears to make good arguments about how the deduction is larger for wealthier families and may even encourage people to buy bigger homes or borrow more than they should, but neither of your references actually disputes my guess that, as a percentage of income and considered in comparison to other tax planning measures (both with respect to earned and unearned income), the mortgage deduction is probably more important to the middle class. Both references seem to make a good argument that the mortgage deduction costs the US a lot. I'm not a tax policy expert, but my wealthy clients all seem to have bigger fish to fry.

Put another way: JayB is frequently defending Bush's handlling of the war; by his logic he is a hypocrite if he doesn't enlist.

Rhetorical? Yes. Subtle? No. JayB is making an absurd jab that shows only that he is cynical and derisive toward those he disagrees with on tax issues. To begin with, I don’t think the mortgage deduction is aimed at the rich so much as the middle class. (My bet is that the wealthy may have sizeable mortgages in some cases, but the resultant tax deductions are peanuts on their tax return. Certainly, the amount of their income spent on the mortgage pales in comparison to their actual income, especially if you include not just wages and other taxable income, but long term income in the form of capital gains. It is those who strain to meet the mortgage obligation that take a tax deduction that is really meaningful in terms of their tax burden.) Even if I’m wrong, I'd wager a guess that nobody here has ever decided to contribute to good governmental policy by deliberately paying excess taxes or refusing a deduction -- least of all JayB. He may have donated $ to some right wing interest group or other worthy cause, and he might have even given money to help the needy at some point but I'm pretty sure he hasn't sent a check to the general fund and expected it would have any effect on the plight of his less fortunate brothers or that it might help reduce the budget deficit. There is nothing hypocritical about taking honest and legal tax deductions even IF some of us feel we are under-taxed as a class. Voting for or otherwise supporting tax reform is one thing; sending extra money to the IRS would be just silly. And singling out the mortgage deduction and saying we ought to eliminate it in order to make the tax code more progressive is damn near as silly.

Didn't somebody else point out (maybe it was Kerry) that of all the people in Washington, there is no prominent player with LESS credibility on Iraq than Cheney? Go Dick!

Last I remember hearing much about this, trickle-on economics was generally agreed to be a political idea that had no substance --- even by most Republican economists, I thought. Jay is truly hard core. Two questions I have to add to Chuck's query: Is there anything here that shows that reductions in the top marginal rate actually CAUSED the poor to be able to buy more TV sets? Are the poor getting richer if they have more TV sets? How do you determine their actual wealth?

Ok then, Mr. Nuance, tell us what he's done WELL. Then tally up what he may have handled in a less than stellar manner. Let's get a little "balance sheet" going.

and proud of it. You gotta admit, though, this latest "duck" looked like a "quack."

Are you referring to Bush's obvious attempt to divert attention from his being caught lying to us? He's obviously lied again when he says that a senator from New Jersey or a governor from Vermont had access to the same intelligence he did.

I agree here, too: the Democratic party is a disgrace. But that is no reason to give the administration a free pass on this nor is it a valid reason, in my opinion, to suggest that only a very small handful of politicians can complain: the fact is we WERE misled and manipulated even though some of us knew something about some of it at the time.

Roger that.

Yes, even the pro's can screw up. I had a guy at Marmot fail to realize that you need to tap the holes when there is a metal top-sheet, and the tech at REI once told me that I had destroyed my skis by drilling those holes in the tip an tail (the holes supplied by the manufacturer). They'll likely do a better job than most of us, however.