mattp

Nice one, Dwayner! Keep writing like that and you can be in the "in crowd!" It might be time for a Tacoma event one of these days. Allison - Of course most of this is argument is just for argument's sake. Half of the time, that's why you post. Ray - That was the Blue Star. The Blue Moon is in U. Dist, and by your standards might be too full of dirty hippies (at least on Grateful Dead night) but it is an OK place, though crowed and with small tables. The strip mall in Totem Lake? I remember some place in Redmond...

But Erik- Wouldn't it be sweet if the taxpayers built a monorail line to Der Leavenworth, with a stop at Index? Visualize progress.

I thought we were talking about the New Orleans for next week. And there was some talk of an Eastside event in the not too distant future....

Those look like just the thing for a multi-directional anchor.

Well said, Spankerman. The plain fact is that most of those who complain about the smokey venues almost never show up at pub club. I agree with the "whiners" that it was too smokey at Teddy's two weeks ago, though (I guess that makes me one of them), and I'd be happy to go to a "suck-ass" bar once a month or whatever. I will also point out that there was almost no smoke at all in that non-smoking part of the Lockspot this week and I bet that, had she been there, even Minx would have been able to wake up in the morning without taking sudafed . This is kind of like the Eastsiders who argue that we owe them a date in Issaquah or Redmond but when we go there hardly anybody shows up or they all go home by 10:00. I'll gladly drive over there once in a while, and it may be overdue, but I wouldn't drive there every other week.

I'm not worried about the black suburbans, though indeed I think one could make a case for the idea that 1984 is here, but I hate logging in to a site, knowing that all information I give them will be used to send me targetted marketting that my spam filter may not intercept.

Aye aye, sir.

Its OK, Trask. Somebody should tell me to shut up and go back to work, too.

Fleb- Splitting a thread might be a good solution but (1) I don't know how to do it, and (2) we shouldn't have to. I might see if I Jon can help me try it with that Chair Peak thread, though.

Fleb- I understand why you or Ray or anybody else might not want to be moderated on. Even though it is obviously personal, try not to take it personally. What I saw in that thread appeared to me as if there was some effort to push the margins a little bit, and I don't remember your post in particular but the general point is lets try to keep spray in the route reports forum to a minimum and, as the sprayer's say all the time: it's the internet and it is really no big deal. If I or Ade or anybody else are not doing a good job, you can complain about it here or send PM's to Jon or whatever, but try not to get too upset. Just because you may be proud of your sarcastic remark of offended that it was removed doesn't seem to me to be grounds for advocating a battle with the management of the site.

So, when faced with the drug-crazed axe wielder, is it more honorable to beg for mercy or to grovel?

If you mean that groveling includes the large measure of submission and perhaps the disiplay of fear, I agree they are not the same. Do you truly think it is always dishonorable to display submission and fear? What would Buffy do?

If it were allowed, I might use a waist belay for a smaller partner or a "slab" route. Maybe that's why they have rules, to prevent idiots like me from getting somebody hurt!

I disagree with the assertion that there is no honor in groveling. Groveling can be honorable if to do otherwise is futile and one believes that, by groveling, they can serve the greater good. I bet Chepe is pretty good at it when Ray's got a dog biscuit in one hand and a whip in the other!

Dru- You may be right that I only saw the word "buttnuget" in Cavey's autosig and this may have led me to misinterpreted the exchange. If so, Cavey should consider an autosig that isn't intentionally obnoxious. But what I saw was six or eight posts, I believe all but one contained some kind of rhetorical put-down or at least the assertion that another poster didn't know what the hell they were talking about, and don't think Cavey's autosig was the only graffic nastygram. I concluded that this banter was going to continue and that it was not relevant to a discussion of Big Four or Colonial and could just as easily have been undertaken in another thread, perhaps in the Spray forum. Jon and Tim have been requesting that the route reports threads not fill up with garbage since just about the beginning of this board, and I will try to see if I can help that along in the forums that I moderate. The "rules" have not changed and I really don't think there is much that is unclear. The only difference is that Jon has decided to ask that people actually follow them. In the forums that I moderate I will try to my best to do so fairly.

I failed the belay test at Stone Gardens and they were not very impressed with my assertion that I had been climbing longer than they had been alive and that I could assure them I've never dropped anybody. They told me that they always hear this crap from old guys like me and they didn't really need that kind of attitude in their gym. I think the gym operators feel that they have to make sure everybody does things a certain way or they may be either perceived as an unsafe gym (which might affect their bottom line if mothers wouldn't let their kids climb there) or legally responsible for an accident. The best policy for them is to have a specific rule, and forbid their staff from allowing any exceptions.

In the interest of truth, justice, and the American way, I should apologize to Fern. I misconstrued her words yesterday because I said she had admitted not following the Big Four/Colonial thread closely on Friday, but what she had actually said was that she had been following the thread but couldn't be sure what was there at the moment that I erased it. I misread her words to suggest that she had not been following the thread very closely. Sorry, Fern.

Post deleted by mattp

Another way to view the question of whether a hiking traverse is the actual traverse is to look at other mountain routes. Both Shishipangma and Broad Peak, for example, have difficult summit ridges and parties commonly climb to the fore-summit and call that a complete climb, though the actual summit is perhaps a half mile distant or something and slightly higher. Here in Washington, most climbers report climbing Mount Rainier when they haven't not crawled over to the actual highest point on the crater rim. Or another example: what people normally call the "North Ridge" of Mount Stuart, for example, enters onto the ridge at mid-height, and leaves it a few hundred feet below the summit. So one could call this "Part of the North Ridge" and reserve the name "North Ridge" for those who climb the lower portion of the route and the gendarme pitches (probably less than 5% of the climbers who climb the "North Ridge". The Ptarmigan Traverse was first done WITH the peaks whereas the N. Ridge may have first been done WITHOUT the start and finish but my point is that the usage of names for routes in the mountains is highly subjective, and you have to ask questions to be sure what is meant. If somebody says they did the Ptarmigan Traverse, you know that most people consider that completing a hiking traverse with perhaps a peak or two added in, so if you want to know what they did you have to follow up and ask them which peaks they climbed. If they say none, I wouldn't bother to argue that they have no right to claim they did the traverse.

Dan - Did you try that steep line a couple hundred yards left of the NE Slabs route, that starts with a vertically trending pitch to a diagonal left trending ramp? Were you planning to follow the ramp and head around to top out on the S. Face or to bear up and right to complete the climb on the E. Face?

If you are interested in the discussion of moderating the route reports forum, most of it is on pages 1 and 2, and 5 through 7. For the spray, simply read three posts in a row anywhere in the discussion and you will be up to speed.

According to the sprayers, Mr. K, you can easily just scroll through pages and pages of what you don't want to read and pick out what is important to you.

Ray - Let's wait and see if now there is now a rush to climb Sperry Peak. Sweet ice climbing with an easy approach !

That was one of the better trolls we have ever seen around here.

I state this just about every time this topic comes up and just about every time I state this I get flames for it, but I have found pickets to rarely be useful in the Cascades because for the most part the snow is too soft for me to really think I could rely on a picket and if it is technical ground I'm looking for rock pro or ice instead. Occasonally there is some good harpack of some kind or maybe rime but I usually don't belay on that kind of surface and, if I do, I am hesitant to trust a picket alone. I carry pickets on most winter outings, and in summer snow they sometimes make a pretty good anchor if buried sideways like a deadman. Oh yes, and I like the two footers.