mattp

Jopa- I can't really quarrel with your statement that you do not feel you can judge other people in any real way other than to say that you may one day find yourself in a position where you are one the parties in court, in effect asking others to decide in your behalf, and you will then have no legitimate complaint if all the jurors are 55 to 75 year olds who may not be inclined to understand your situation.

And I also have this one:

Dru - No, I don't, but I have this one:

Dru - Are those you parent's records or have you been sneaking a peak at my vinyl collection? I believe I have a copy of just about every one of your choices so far.

Jopa, the thing is you cannot and you do not "opt out" of our legal system unless you decide to leave the country and relinquish your citizen. You can pretend to have done so, until the day that you are mugged or the day that you are involved in some terrible accident or are arrested for a crime, or ..... then you'll need that system.

I'll cast my vote for going ahead and showing up if you are called for jury duty. It is generally a good experience to serve on a jury and you will probably learn something (though sitting around in the jury room is pure boredom). Jopa - though I could be wrong, I think you are copping out on your civic cuty and citing "freedom of choice" and "I don't have a right to judge my peers" is probably more of a justification for you just not wanting to do it than anything else. Yes, it is confusing and maybe even scary to sit on a jury and feel responsible for someone else's fate in that way - but it IS how our system works. One of the problems with juries is that you cannot get a jury that is representative of our society in part because most folks don't want to serve so the jury pools are dominated by retirees and lower level employees of large corporations that pay their employees their full wage while they are on jury duties (like Boeing or something).

Find a place where you can dig UP into a big snow bank and the diggings will fall out your front door, saving a lot of work (most people look instead for a spot with a flat area immediately beneath a steeper snowbank, because it is a little more comfortable to start digging in such a location). A good night in a quiet cave can more than make up for the work involved - as opposed to sleeping poorly in a wind-rattled tent. Also, if you are going to be in there for a full winter night - all 16 hours of it - the additional comfort is a big plus.

You are right, Cavey, but it is easier to ask again than to run a search - and quite often the search function doesn't work anyway. Meanwhile, you never know if somebody might have some new views on the matter or maybe even some current information.

It should be quite interesting! If anybody wants to head up there from Seattle, we might want to carpool.

When the weather is nice, some will find the Aasgard route better because you spend more time above timberline, looking at the views. However, even though it is maybe 1/2 mile shorter with a few hundred feet less elevation gain, I don't think it is any easier because the trail is better coming in via Snow Lakes. At this time of year, Snow Lakes for sure is the way to go because you'll be able to retreat back down the way you came if the weather craps out on you. Chances of weather crapping out in November: huge.

My experience with empty bolt holes is that they can be VERY hard to find -- Twice I've stood there on the exact same footholds from which I drilled a hole and had a hard time finding the empty hole that I had drilled several months earlier! This was in Darrington, were debris washes down the cliff and forms a camouflaged trap-door over the holes, and maybe this wouldn't happen at Smith, but aside from this issue I'm not sure removeable bolts are a good idea for the reasons stated above and this is just one more reason not to use them.

As I noted in another thread, somebody (ScottP?) scratched a path through the slide debris and drove their car up there last weekend.

It might be pretty good for fall Alpine in the North Cascades: FRIDAY NIGHT...MOSTLY CLEAR. FREEZING LEVEL 2000 FEET. SATURDAY...MOSTLY SUNNY. FREEZING LEVEL 3000 FEET. SATURDAY NIGHT...PARTLY CLOUDY. FREEZING LEVEL 3000 FEET. SUNDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY. FREEZING LEVEL 4000 FEET. SUNDAY NIGHT...PARTLY CLOUDY. FREEZING LEVEL 4000 FEET

Somebody scratched a path through the washout and I believe they drove their regular car up there on Sunday.

Yeah, we've discussed metal wands vs. bamboo wands before and, like any other discussion on this board, there were those who stuck to their guns no matter what the other side said. Meanwhile, I was spouting off as to how I have never felt the need to use wands since the very first time that I went to try Mount Rainier in 1977, and I like glaciers and climb a lot of mountains in bad weather. People from both camps assaulted me for saying such a thing, but I'll say it again: learn how to navigate and leave the wands home -- or at least don't bring more than just a handful to mark some key crevasse crossing or something. Yes, it is probably a good thing that somebody wands the standard route up Mount Rainier and the wand police will pick up errant wands and so forth so that the path is marked correctly, but in most other situations where I see people using wands they are unnecessary and end up scattered about as trash.

Why would testing a clove hitch around a large diameter anchor be of any relevance? We use clove hitches on carabiners, don't we? That was one thing about Kurt's reference to "testing" the clove hitch that I didn't quite think was directly applicable -- he "tests" it on tree limbs that are much larger in diameter than a carabiner and have a textured and comparably soft surface, and he probably uses a static rope that has handling characteristics that differ from a climbing rope and this may affect the way the hitch grabs the tree limb.

Every pitch has a different character to it, and it is unique for a six pitch climb because nowhere is there any "truly easy" stretch or any "truly big" ledge system (after the first one). Also, it follows nearly a plumb line, and it is so cool how it tops out with no transition between near vertical wall and flat woods. Also, somewhat rare for Western Washington, there is only about 20 feet of veggie mess on the whole thing! Oh, and there are almost no bolts on it but it protects well pretty much the whole way.

BP described pitch 5 as 5.10c A0 or 5.11, but it should be noted that if you step out onto that face about fifteen higher, you can traverse to the crack/flake at 5.10b or so without any A-0. Because it was originally done the way that BP went, the topo and the route rating has been a little confusing on this point since the beginning of time. I'll add my vote for DH/LA as the best 5.10 climb around.

I used crack-n-ups successfully way back when, but it has been many years since I did any real aid climbing and I gotta say, they did send me pitching into space without warning a couple of times. I'm not sure they are likely to pop out and stab you in the forehead, but hard aid climbing just plain scares me anyway.

These beauties are in Mattp's museam of nuts: The left is an SMC camlock, and it was actually an "advanced" model that came out some time ca late '70's. It has channels on the straight side so it works somewhat like a tricam. The middle one is a (symmetrical) Chouinard hexcentric #6, purchased about 1972, and the right one is made by Peck and roughly the same vintage. Where's your picture, PP?

I'm not sure, but I think the ones in that old Chouinard catalog that you posted the link to may be "symmetrical" too. The text says they fit in three different attitudes, but the pictures look rather symmetrical. I'm going to have to go home and rifle through my box of old hardware and take a look to see if I may have some.

I have some old symmetrical ones that I believe were made by Clog, and also some that are round that may have been made by CMI or somebody like that.

I think PP may be right about that. I don't think I want to place my hex's in the "no twist" configuration mentioned by Lummox, at least not in anything like a parallel sided crack where the differences in the dimension between twist-right or twist-left and no-twist are significant. Sounds good on paper, though.