mattp

The grips on the flicklock ARE comfortable. I am curently using a pair and I have not found them to be as foolproof as suggested above - if the locks are adjusted so that I can easily undo them they don't grab the pole as well as I'd like, and I have pulled the wrist strap off by catching the pole on a tree and now it won't stay on the pole very well. For me, there are pluses and minuses for both and the next pair of adjustable poles I buy will probably be whatever is cheapest. Meanwhile, I'm thinking I might go back to trying the fixed length again.... Cracked is right, of course, longer for up hill and shorter for down hill is generally not a bad thing thought like I said, the time that I REALLY want longer poles is when skiing gently downhill, not up.

Icy snow at a ski area????

Sorry to ruin your put-downs with some discussion there, Klenke. By the way: you couldn't climb your way out of a paper bag, you suck - and you swallow. Better now?

I disagree with you there, Al. References to "you better take tampons" or whatever are offered on this board as a put-down of the targettd person, with the insult being that they are some kind of coward or crybaby or whatever. I don't think there has ever been such a reference that was offered in a spirit of the celebration of any positive quality of women or of the (male or female) target of the post. As to whether his joke was funny or not, that is a different matter. It is certainly true that boys will be boys and one may argue that they thought it was funny or that it really wasn't all that deeply offensive, or "lighten up -- it's only spray."

Did the Leavenworth station say what they meant, Lammy? Did they close that Eightmile road less than a week after opening it?

It's looking as if we might be able to see the sky tonight. Cool!

Forrest - I agree with just about everything you said. My main point was that fashion or image concerns may lead some people to think helmets are cool at the ski area whereas they are dorky at exit 38 (and for most of us, I think the helmet is probably more important on the crag than on the ski hill). My second point was that, for the kinds of accidents where some people are trying to suggest a helmet would have made a difference - a high speed collision with a lift pole or a tumble off a cliff, the helmets are of limited help. As I indicated already, I agree with you that wearing a helmet in a downhill ski area is easy, probably not uncomfortable, and might make a difference. I do not criticize anyone for wearing a ski helmet but, rather, I am suggesting we think about why we make the decisions that we do. That is all.

Screw lock poles are OK, and not difficult to maintain. I've been using twist tightening adjustable poles for twenty years and have only once broken one. Water gets inside and the screw mechanisms get corroded, and the plastic thingy that grips the insides of the poles gets polished so they fail to stick after a while, but you can rehab the mechanisms as follows: 1. pull the poles apart 2. clean up the threads on the screw mechanism with a piece of steel wool and lubricate it with bike lube or something 3. run steel wool in and out the barrel of the pole on a stick (like cleaning a gun barrel) 4. rough up the plastic thingy so it will grip the barrel of the pole by "sanding" (gouging it, really) with some 50 grit sandpaper. Good as new. I find the flicklock poles difficult to adjust sometimes. Maybe I'm just weak. Beater poles are good. I strongly agree with the recommendation to use some beater poles in the ski area. How often do you need to adjust the pole length when downhill skiing anyway? Get a pair of fixed-length poles from the Salvation Army and you won't care if you drop one off the chair lift or break it in a treewell or have it stolen at lunch time. I'm not sure I really need adjustable poles at all. Even in the backcountry, I am finding that I don't really adjust the pole length very often. I like being able to shrink the poles down for putting them into the car or putting them on my pack for some technical climbing, but on most outings I set the poles at about 135 cm and leave them that way, whether going up or down hill. The most frequent time I adjust the pole length otherwise is when touring out (down) a logging road --- longer poles are much better for trying to get some glide going in this situation. Some times I will adjust the poles to two different lengths when I'm going to do a long traverse or climb an endless set of switchbacks, but usually I don't bother. Probe Poles are questionnable. As noted above, your ski poles do not work very well as probes even if you have some fancy ones that screw together with the intended purpose being to use them as probes. I've used them this way as a tent pole for a megamid, but I've had them break when using them this way when it got windy because the connection mechnism probably wasn't designed for sheer strength.

Yeah. F'ing eh right. Catbird sucks donkeydicks, too.

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?