mattp

In really cold weather, your boots and water bottle will freeze in the foot of your sleeping bag if you have a long length bag and put them below your feet. Also a bag that is the proper length will keep your feet warmer, and weigh less for the same overall warmth. I'd go with a bag that fits you. A water bottle and a radio in the bag is generally no problem; a pair of boots or boot liners may make life a little less comfortable. Most bags will have enough room to tuck them behind your knees (mine always have, anyway), but I bet some may not. If you are getting a ~0 degree bag, my guess is that you will be using it most often in temperatures that are not far below freezing. In these conditions, in a tent, your boot liners may not even freeze truly hard if you simply wrap them in your coat and use them in your pillow. Most people insist on some goretex or dryloft covering for their sleeping bag. I currently have one with such a covering (the first I have ever had), and a couple lighter bags without. If you are careful, I think you don't need the dryloft - even if winter camping and sleeping in snowcaves or under a tarp. I used to teach three-week Outward Bound courses with a down bag and a tarp for a shelter, at all times of the year. I did not have a goretex or driloft shell on my bag, and I didn't use a bivvy sack. In eight years, I only once had a wet sleeping bag -- Once! And you know what? It wasn't that cold outside -- that's why it was so wet. (But then again I hiked uphill both ways to and from school in a blizzard, even in July.)

You may find some soft snowbridges and a crevasse fall is possible, but I highly doubt that, in May, the Carbon Glacier will be so busted up that it will be extra challenging just to cross it -- at least from the standpoint of crevasses. The possibility of deep snow or breakable crust, or maybe for poor visibility, will likely be greater issues than crevasses as you cross the Carbon.

What are you doing there to set of the trigger mid-crap? If you calmly go about your business, you should have no problem.

The username "Dwayner" is currently on the "disabled" list.

You ever try James Joyce? I thought the book was thoroughly enjoyable, that's all. Great characters, I thought the accident scene was truly spectacular, it was all about NW and stuff, and I actually found it quite gripping.

The Comb has some of the best 3-4 pitch 5.10 climbs at Darrington and the hike up to it is quite nice as well, with lots of ferns and wildflowers, and some very impressive big trees. With the exception of "Baloney Dome," it is probably the shortest access hike of any of the Darrington crags listed in Dave's new book. The Comb has been somewhat neglected, though, because the base area is rather steep and unfriendly and the access routes were never widely known. If you try to thrash over there from Three O'Clock Rock, as I believe is suggested in Smoot, you will be sorry. While the place is a little scrappy even by Darrington standards, routes like The Troll, Over the Rainbow, Tongue in Cheek, etc. are WAY good, though they start with some funky scrambling or a short bit of vertical bushwacking. David Gunstone's climbs are quite good, too, though they have some odd climbing and funk between the good stuff. There is one very spectacular and steep arete climb that looks as if it is probably quite hard and somebody once said their friend thought somebody's cousin put it up and it was 5.12 - I can't remember whether it is listed in Dave's guide but it is to the left of the climb called "Annihilator" and to the right of Skykrider. For a cragging experience, it is a good place because you can easily do three or four climbs in a day and get in quite a few pitches - but be prepared for some bush. Do not; I repeat - DO NOT - try to go there with the old Washington Rock Climbs guide or even the Traveller's Guide. You need Dave's new book for The Comb.

I heard women like them.

A short spell of high freezing levels is not necessarily a bad thing for the backcountry snowpack. If the freezing level goes way high, let's just hope it comes back down again and we're back in business the following week! By the way, Josh, I too have had a good time skiing in the rain before. Just take an umbrella for the lift, and wear your PVC. You'll shoot rooster tails of water, but it's consistent, easy snow on the groomers.

Ehmic, if you didn't get more than 20 pages into it I think you are not qualified to pronounce it as "a bomb." One of my favorite novels of all time, Sometimes a Great Notion, takes about 75 pages of drudgery to get started.

I bet you are quite right about that - even IF my guess about the basis for the urban myth that eating snow dehydrates you is correct, you probably lose more water through breathing, sweating, and elimination than heat production. I'm just wondering if there may be some basis for the old urban myth. (However, wouldn't it be a "wilderness myth," rather than an "urban" one?) P.S. -- If you try that gu and ice trick at the bar, just be sure you are at the right kind of bar and it may be OK.

Indeed, backcountry snow is quite a different thing from groomed runs - and generally more challenging. In addition to powder, you'll have to master muck, slush, breakable crust, avalanche debris, stump jumping, and all kinds of horrors that one never encounters "on piste." When I was learning to telemark I spent a lot of time skiing the chopped up unpacked snow off the edges of the groomed runs. That stuff is quite challenging, and you can learn a lot about fore-aft balance and hone your weight control for initiating turns there.

Experiment with your front-to-back balance while traverssing. Head accross the slope, with one ski in front of the other perhaps a foot or so, and drop slightly as if you were going to make a turn. Move your body forward and backward over your skis till you find the balance point, trying to keep your hips forward and your upper torso more or less vertical, rather than throwing your ass out behind and leaning forward to compensate. Shuffle your skis back and forth a couple of times as if linking turns, then initiate a turn after you have just imprinted the feel of keeping in balance over your skis.

Indeed, working hard and sweating causes you to use up water. You also lose a lot of water through breathing, and I am speculating that you may also use it during the conversion of food or body fat to body heat or muscular energy. Clearly, excess body heat is a frequent bi-product of exertion, and I doubt that eating snow results in a net-loss when you are warm. However, I don't think this guy was producing excess body heat if his core temperature was in the 80's when he was found. If water is indeed used up in the process of metabolism (nobody here seems to know), his situation may not be analogous to that of the sweating athelete and eating snow might in fact have generated a net loss. Biochemistry is not a simple science and "obvious" truths frequently turn out to be incorrect, though, so even if my "guess" is correct about the use of water in metabolism, there may be some other mechanism or factor that would offset this loss.

MrE - In fact it is not as easy as you suggest to "split" threads. It takes a lot of cut and pasting and you frequently have to mess around with UBB code to clean it up after you are done. With that and erratic connection that I am experiencing lately, which seems only to be corrected by logging off and back on again, it might have taken Alex quite a bit of time to do as you suggest. Should he have? Maybe – but just what was so important about an argument over whether catbird was qualified to talk about clinical depression?

The question is, "does it consume water for you to generate body heat?". It looks to me as if you are arguing for the sake of argument. If you want to refute my speculation, hit the books.

I just did some googling on dehydration and eating snow, and the references that come back talk about just what I already said, i.e., using up body heat/energy. From that, I would conclude that eating snow in lieu of drinking water could lead to excessive expenditure of body heat/energy to warm the snow to liquid, which in turn could lower body core temp, leading to hypothermia. I think if you look at how we produce body heat through metabolism, you may well find that water is used in that process. If by eating snow to drink water you have to use up X number of calories to melt the snow, and if you in fact use more water processing X number of calories, you would have a net loss. It has been 25 years since I read anything about biochemistry, so at this point I am just making this up, but I bet therein lies your answer.

Chicken- I can't quite tell what you meant, but if you are implying that you think it nuts to go on an avalanche-prone slope to dig a pit to evaluate the avalanche hazard, you may be correct but that is pretty much what you have to do if you are going to evaluate the hazard on that particular slope. You can't dig a pit in the trees and expect it to be representative of that open avalanche slope nearby. Frequently, we try to pick a slope of similar aspect and steepness that may be representative of that big nasty avalanche slope nearby but not quite as dangerous because it is smaller or it may not be perched over a cliff, but even in this case we must realize that our "sample" may not be the same as the other slope. Indeed, quite often we DO in fact cautiously venture onto the slope in question in order to dig a pit. Nuts?

Accross the street from the parking lot, Sunday January 5: The ice on this thing (Alpental Falls?) was somewhat thin and rotten where lower angle, and the vertical bit shown here was detached.

Sorry there, Doctor B, but you are full of you-know-what. If you want to spray the word "cunt" all about, you are free to start up your own website. Here, it has been made clear for over a year now that it is not a favored term and you bandy it about at peril of having your post deleted or changed. Yes, there have been some clumsy edits and the moderators cannot always tell what you intended or who may think your brilliant gem is witty rather than offensive, but there is no question: if you put the word "cunt" into your post, there is a significant chance it will be removed. Personally, I think the sensitivity over that particular word is overdone. But you know what? It doesn't matter. The fact that some people are deeply offended by it and that it will likely draw a moderator's attention has been made abundantly clear. As to moderating in general, I am sure all of us would agree that there have been some clumsy edits. However, Minx is right on: you guys are a bunch of whiners. Marylou complaining that a word she has so often complained about was not removed properly? Catbird who frequently posts what he hopes will provoke an off-topic argument complains when one is removed from a thread about somebody being upset by witnessing a death? Trask, who starts threads with the sole premise being for all the participants to call each other a cum sucking shit eater thinks moderating is too heavy-handed? Dotor B thinks the site sucks because he can't write "cunt" whenever he wants? C'mon, folks. Overall, this is a pretty loose site and you can carry on like a bunch of idiots late into the night if you want. That's why most of you who are now whining about the moderators post here - because you aren't nearly as free to do so in any other climber's bulletin board. As a result, there are some blurry lines and, yes, we can be arbitrary at times. Minx is right. If you don't like how some particular thread was moderated, feel free to ask questions about it or to start up a new thread in Spray and see if your brilliant diatribe is accepted there rather than in the middle of somebody's attempt to discuss something else. However, don't be surprised if your complaint falls on deaf ears when you complain that you called somebody a cunt and it got deleted.

Anytime is a good time to dig a pit, and for the next few days the conditions are likely to be quite variable and with blustery weather and likely shifting winds, I wouldn't be surprised to see different structures in the upper-level snowpack from one slope to the next. While I'm not sure you are going to see a more interesting profile now than any other time, this is a time when I would be likely to dig pits and make some decisions based on what I found.

tomtom - I think he is talking about the fact that you can very easily break off a bolt when you over-tighten the nut and it takes surprisingly little force. I don't think lubrication will help prevent this.

I note several comments about how he should not have been there alone both here and in the press. Is there some reason to think that if there were two skiers, both of whom were unable to tell which way was which and didn't know the terrain (two matters we are speculating about), they would more likely have found their way back to the highway? Similarly, it was argued here that he was an idiot for failing to bring avalanche gear. There was no avalanche burial, so an avalanche beacon would not have made any differences, but perhaps an avalanche shovel would have been useful to help him get better shelter - though this too would probably not have resulted in his rescue any sooner, would it? And then there are those who have criticized him for not have a map and compass. How many people who ski out of bounds at Alpental carry a map and compass? I bet some of us who have gone to climb Chair Peak or The Tooth have even thought these unnecessary upon occasion. This is a fascinating story and I'm interested in learning what actually happened - or at least laerning more about what happened, but as we speculate about this and that scenario I wonder what others may have to say about these "fundamental mistakes" that have been said to demonstrate a profound lack of experience or judgment.

Ramsey- Go back and reread above and you will see that I did NOT suggest that it would be necessary for one to be able to solo WI 3 in order to be either comfortable or safe on Liberty Ridge -- he had cited that ability as an indication of his skill level and, in the post that you refer to, I said "if you can solo WI 3 AS WELL AS if you have significant experience on big mountain routes" and then I noted the importance of being able to downclimb steep terrain. In my subsequent post, I specifically stated that technical difficulties are not the crux of the route. In my opinion, your competence on big mountain routes and your ability to descend steep terrain would be much more important than any ability to climb water ice. You are correct in thinking you will not find sustained 70-80 degree water ice on Liberty Ridge and even an ability to solo WI 2 is not necessary. In this and in just about every other thread on the topic I have tried to indicate that technical ability is NOT what counts on Liberty Ridge. Indeed, I believe that over the last 25 years since "that book" came out, many many climbers have gone up there thinking that it won't be challenging because they have greater technical mastery than the given technical rating, and they go up there to find out they are totally unprepared for the big mountain experience of Liberty Ridge.

Maybe so. I notice it was a forecast for Wednesday January 7, and it was posted here on this board at 10:00 pm on the 7th, and the message from Fairweather was that it is going to be bad out there "for a while." With fluctuating freezing levels and additional rain and snow predicted for the next several days, I am sure conditions will change and this current avalanche warning may be removed while Fairweather goes out there and pulls the first ascent of the century behind our backs! That *&%$ must have paid off the staff at NWAC, and maybe the higher ups at NOAA as well as the owners of this site. Seriously, a warning of extreme hazard on Wednesday, when heavy snow is falling over deep and uncosolidated light snow on top of an old crust, is not at all surprising. But these kinds of cycles tend to pass quickly around here. Watch ongoing forecasts before you conclude you have to stay home this weekend.

But Dru, aren't you sitting on the golden tablets? I thought Moroni or whoever it was came from Chilliwack.