mattp

W - it looks to me as if you are trying to pretend you implied something you didn't, or didn't imply something you did. Your cut about the tampons was offered as some kind of slap or insult, wasn't it? Viewed from my high and mighty mount, it looks as if you made a rather un-funny joke based on the premise that the guy would be insulted about being called a girl or, if it was a girl, the mention of tampons in her purse would suggest she has having her period and this would be insulting. Either way, lame in my view. Then you appear to want to regain some stature here by attacking marylou. Grow up.

It is true that an overhang will result in some outward force on a piece of gear, but I believe that climbers who are used to falling off of overhangs onto bolts (gym climbers, largely) will develop a habit of jumping away from the rock as they fall - and this may not be a good practice when they fall on stoppers.

Chris T, Forrest, Jon, and Dustin (maybe others too) make some good points here: wearing a helmet MIGHT prevent a head injury, and it really isn't that much of a problem to wear one -- at least at a downhill ski area. I still wonder, though, about the image thing. When I asked "how many of you wear helmets when rock climbing," a few of you answered "always" but aren't there others who are proud to wear a helmet with aerodynamic shapes and paint job when skiing because the helmet signifies the fact that they take risks by skiing fast and jumping over cliffs, while they DON'T wear a helmet when rock climbing because that makes them look like a gaper? Do any of you consider wearing a helmet at Castle Rock the sign of a "mountaineer type," who must be ridiculed at all costs? I'm not against helmets -- honest. There are almost certainly times when a helmet would make a big difference and I gotta commend anybody who wants to be smart in their persuit of recreational sports. I doubt, though, that the guy who skied off a cliff at Alpental would have been saved by a helmet. Be careful, you guys, because I don't think the helmet is going to make skiing safe for you.

Getting back to my point earlier about climbing helmets, I'll repeat what I've said before that I have had three friends suffer serious head injuries from leader falls, and such injuries are quite common, so it always amazes me to see so many climbers fail to use a helmet when leading. How about it, those of you who are advocating wearing a ski helmet - do you wear a helmet when rock climbing? If not, why? Is there perhaps some image or marketing component to our decision making here?

Lots of kids, whether in an official race or not, ski like a bat outta hell. I agree.

Warning: stay away from the hill when Fejas is there!

I think that's probably right, Ed. If you are going to go out looking for trouble, like racing or cliff jumping or whatever, a helmet is not a bad idea. But for most of us, whether cruising the groomed runs at Crystal Mountain or skiing backcountry up on Jim Hill Mountain, the chance of hitting our head would seem to be so remote that I just can't quite see a helmet as a real important item and for backcountry skiing in particular, where you spend 90% of the time slogging up hill, it really seems out of place to me. Of course, I have skied some pretty gnarly stuff in the backcountry where I could easily have fallen over a cliff or taken a slide for literally thousands of feet but in these cases I think schnitzem may well be right that a helmet wouldn't do me any good.

I damn near agree with Dru here, too. Tacky for sure. (Perhaps no worse than lots of what appears here, but definitely tacky. ) Aren't we just one big happy family today?

I have been wondering all morning about just what Schnitzem has said. I won't go so far as to say ski helmets are stoopid, but I do wonder just how necessary they are. A quick google search of "ski injuries" discloses almost no mention of head injuries or the advisability of wearing a helmet, and I would think that for a racer or a kid it might be a good idea but for most of us??? I don't believe I have ever in my life heard of anybody suffering a serious head injury while skiing -- except some Kennedy guy. For comparison, how many of those who are discussing ski helmets would consider wearing a helmet when crag climbing? Just curious.

"I don't need the ten essentials "

Groping in a muddy sandstone offwidth I once grabbed a bat.

The Darrington Ranger Station reports that the Clear Creek Road, the road that leads to most of the crags in Darrington, is blocked about a mile or mile and a half from the Mountain Loop highway (the woman at the desk didn't know if it was a washout or exactly what the damage was, but it happened during the recent rains and flooding). This would mean a 4 or 5 mile walk to Three O'Clock Rock, further for Exfoliation Dome, The Comb, or Green Giant Buttress. The road up Squire Creek was blocked by a massive washout two years ago.

Climbing is a lot of work, and lots of times its scary. If I made a list like Dru's and Carolyn's, it'd be full of lots of moments where I had some kind of reflective experience almost outside of the climb itself, like when sipping scotch and smoking a cigar upon arrival at an Alaskan basecamp or when lingering in the alpine zone at sunset when there was no longer pressure to hurry, or maybe when sitting at that big ledge and taking off those too-tight shoes and soaking up the sun for a few minutes' rest in the sun... But then there are the exciting moments, too, where an acute awareness of exactly where you are comes into focus: looking around at the 360+ degrees of sky while on that summit ridge, or seeing that eagle, soaring, BELOW you, or when you find the critical passage through that rock band guarding an alpine route or whatever.... And there'd be those sensuous experiences like the cold beer you left in a mountain pool, or that thank-god hold right in the middle of the crux... But what is good about climbing? Not much, really – it's a bad habit that threatens our family lives and our professional careers and might even kill us - but it gives us a reason to be EXCITED!

We have some snow level fluctuations ahead still ... NORTH OREGON CASCADES-CASCADES OF LANE COUNTY- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...GOVERNMENT CAMP...PARKDALE...DETROIT... SANTIAM PASS...MCKENZIE PASS...MCKENZIE BRIDGE...WILLAMETTE PASS... OAKRIDGE 940 AM PDT WED OCT 22 2003 .TODAY...BECOMING MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON. FREE AIR FREEZING LEVEL 11000 FEET. PASS WINDS SOUTHWEST 15 TO 20 MPH. .TONIGHT...RAIN EARLY...THEN SHOWERS AFTER MIDNIGHT. BREEZY. SNOW LEVEL LOWERING TO 5500 FEET. PASS WINDS WEST 15 TO 25 MPH SHIFTING TO THE SOUTHWEST 10 TO 15 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT. .THURSDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY. SHOWERS LIKELY IN THE MORNING...THEN A CHANCE OF SHOWERS IN THE AFTERNOON. SNOW LEVEL 5500 FEET. PASS WINDS SOUTHWEST 10 TO 15 MPH SHIFTING TO THE NORTH IN THE AFTERNOON. .THURSDAY NIGHT...PARTLY CLOUDY. SNOW LEVEL 8000 FEET. PASS WINDS EAST 10 TO 15 MPH. .FRIDAY...MOSTLY SUNNY. FREE AIR FREEZING LEVEL 13000 FEET. PASS WINDS NORTH 10 TO 15 MPH. If you want to go hit a bunch of rocks, tomorrow is the day to go skiing.

Geordie - we've talked about the historical tension between climbers and rangers at great length and I am only acknowledging the situation for what I think it is. I do encourage folks to look ahead and try to find where we can work with you guys, though, and I've already said that I totally agree with you about that particular trail - it is annoying but how hard is it, really, to STAY ON THE TRAIL in one of the most popular areas of the entire North Cascades National Park?

Just don't do it. Yes, that stoopid trail is more than a little annoying, but it really doesn't take all THAT much longer than the shortcut and the Cascade Pass area is a high use area that I for one am glad to see them manage with an eye toward containing impact. If you want to go brush out a trail in some logging slash below the new wall by Zeke's drive in, nobody will probably care but if you start cutting trails in the Park you are just going to get the rangers to be even MORE active in disliking and disserving climbers. I honestly feel that rangers have generally lied to me and discouraged my climbing plans more than they have given me useful information or helped me, but this "fuck em; we'll just take matters into our own hands" attitude is not the answer.

I don't get it. Mr. Bush is our president. What he says and does matter a great deal. How are we supposed to feel about him if one believes, as I do, that he is taking us in the wrong direction and that he is doing so at the behest of big time criminals and despots? Sure, one can be so obsessed that they say and do stupid things or ignore obvious evidence that rebuts their assumptions, but I'm glad there are folks obsessed with the task of defeating him in the next election and I don't think it is wrong to question his explanation of his motives for cutting taxes or awarding contracts to Halliburton. Rather than a serious article that sheds real light on some new issue or something, I think the article is merely an attempt to generate some kind of "lets rally behind the president" emotion. However, I suppose I'm with Burgesss-Jackson on the "malevolence" thing -- to an extent. They are doing us a great disservice where some of our Democratic "leaders" are willing to let the economy falter or stifle the war effort just to improve their own chances in the next election. But I'm not sure they are motivated by "Bush hatred" as much as their own lust for power and their drive to please their own consituents or backers.

Several posts talk about the importance of showing respect. I completely agree, and I often wince when I see folks second-guessing what happened in someone else's tragedy or calling someone an idiot or whatever – particularly if I think it likely that family members or friends of the victim are going to read it. However, it always strikes me as odd to see someone who may be hiding behind an avatar in the first place offer condolences to someone who is never going to read this bulletin board, with respect to the loss of a person that the poster never knew and probably has no closer connection with other than the possibility that they will read a write-up in ANAM one day. I find it particularly odd when the person who posts as if he or she is hanging their head in mourning is one of those who spends all day every day insulting people on this bulletin board. Customary or not, these anonymous posts of condolences on the Internet often strike me as an empty exercise that really doesn't have much do with showing respect in any meaningful way.

Once upon a time, I went up there for a summit attempt over the Thanksgiving weekend and it was fun to be up on the mountain when nobody was there (we were just about the only party at Muir for three nights) but the weather kind of sucked. For the next two months, high winds and high precip will probably be pretty much the dominant forecast and you'll be lucky to get more than a day or two of stable good weather in a row. Good luck!

Now that it's been raining for a couple weeks, this would be the time to go for sure.

I agree with MtnNut that it is probably a better "shortcut" early in the season when brush and rocks are covered with snow. The frustration with those switchbacks is not new. I believe that folks like Manning and Spring raised the issue with the Feds thirty years ago, and a certain Mr. Beckey may have gotten into the act as well. Cry as we might I wouldn't expect them to do much for us, though, because they generally don't really build many new trails or even do a lot of maintenance on those that they have -- other than the roadside trails that are for families like Big Four Mountain or the Rainy Lake trail at Rainy Pass (they built a nice new trail at Thunder Creek Campground a few years back, too; and yes, I know that all of these are not exactly in the Park). I understand that they did a nice job on the re-route of that Eldorado Basin route a few years ago (I haven't been there when the snow was gone), but that was in response to a real erosion problem and it was not done in order to provide a more pleasing experience for hikers too impatient to follow a perfectly good trail. Although I agree with some of Erik's sentiment, I can't really argue that they ought to let a bunch of untrained and unsupervised yahoos from cc.com go up there and tear into the hillside at Cascade Pass, nor do I think this is a higher priority than, say, fixing up the trail to Boston Basin. Write your Congressmen about it, but don't expect much to change any time soon.

SATURDAY THROUGH MONDAY...MOSTLY SUNNY DAYS AND CLEAR NIGHTS. WIDESPREAD NIGHT AND MORNING FOG ON THE LOWER SLOPES. FREEZING LEVEL 12000 TO 14000 FEET.

Pineapple Express? What are you guys complaining about. I bet the summit crater on Mount Raininer picked up a good load of powder.

I'm with Minx on this one. That gollum joke was funny the first 50 times, but at this point it just shows a lack of creativity for folks to keep on posting it. Lets have more haiku or something.

Exactly. It is an example of exactly what I am talking about. Had they had a single "bomber" piece of gear anywhere in their system, they probably would not have fallen to the ground. I don't know whether these guys had read John Long or not, but there is very little chance that marginal pieces at the belay ledge would have held if they had been properly equalized, but failed because they were not.