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mattp

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Everything posted by mattp

  1. 1988 Toyota 4x4 pickup, regular bed for sale as is. It needs a head gasket and maybe a starter, and one speaker is slightly blown. Other than that, it is a cool climber's vehical with only 165k miles on it. Burgundy red truck and canopy, with a 4x4 brush bumper on the front, comes with an extra set of studded tires and chains. No reasonable offer refused.
  2. Way to go, guys! Marko - don't feel bad about spilling the pot. My friend Bill tells a story of dropping the pot on the first winter ascent. He says he was scooping snow outside the tent and only momentarily lost his concentration when hit in the face by a gust of snow or something. It took a minute or two before he realized how serious it was, and then he told Steve that they might have to abandon the climb because they'd now have no way to produce water. But they figured out that if they held their plastic cup over the stove at just the right distance they could melt snow without melting the plastic. They did this for the next three or four days. Needless to say, their ramen or whatever they had came out sub-optimal.
  3. I don't believe the area along the trail, say, fifteen switchbacks up is owned by the irrigation district. This area was logged when they did the "salvage" operation and I am pretty sure it is F.S. land.
  4. "the two men walked out onto Highway 12 just east of White Pass around after 4 p.m. Thursday." Right on, guys!
  5. mattp

    The Dubya

    Were you born yesterday?
  6. From the south Sound area, I'd head for the Tatoosh Range (in Rainier Park) or the Olympics for easily accessible and relatively moderate climbs (assuming that is what you are after). Check out Mount Ellinor or Mount Washington in the Olympics, and Pinnacle Peak or Castle Peak in the Tatoosh. The standard "summer" routes make good winter outings on all of these except Pinnacle Peak, where you should approach from the Castle-Pinnacle saddle rather than traverse the steep open slope NW of the peak. All of these involve some exposure to avalanche danger, with Ellinor probably being the safest of the bunch.
  7. Good question, Ross. I don't know the answer, but I believe it to once have been reported (like, maybe 20 years ago however) that there had never been a case when both ropes in a double or twin rope system failed. I don't know how many times a single rope has actually broken, but I have heard of plenty of times when one was cut over an edge.
  8. mattp

    The Dubya

    ChucK - My problem with the whole thing is that I don't know what we are doing there but that I believe almost nothing of what our president tells us. I am sure it has something to do with oil and a lot to do with all kinds of things we may never know about, but freedom, democracy, domestic security??? It's all a big lie. And those guys think Bill Clinton was a disgrace because he lied about getting a blow job.
  9. mattp

    The Dubya

    Greg - I don't for a minute doubt what you say about Saddam's misdirecting the benefits of the food-for-oil program. I am not arguing that he is a good guy. I do, however, question just about everything he tells us about this war. Can anybody really believe points 1, 2 and 3 -- and that these are our main reasons for wantint to invade Iraq?
  10. mattp

    The Dubya

    Trask - It is "nucular" powers that GW fears. No, I don't think we should sit back and allow nuclear proliferation, but if you look atour dealings with N. Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, you have to agree that if you were running N. Korea you'd be building up your nuclear weapons program as quickly as possible and that, if you were Saddam, you'd be trying to do the same thing! You may argue that is precisely why we have to invade Iraq now, but so far I have seen nothing to indicate that Saddam would ever send one of those weapons our way because to do so would surely result in our justifiably flattening him and he has shown over the last 50 years or so that he wants to hold on to power. And what ChucK says -- if we have evidence that Saddam is anywhere near developing nukes, why can't they tell us about it?
  11. mattp

    The Dubya

    Greg- I think SC's right that we HAVE contributed to the poor living conditions in Iraq for the last ten years. One might disagree about whether the sanctions were justified, but I don't think there is much doubt that they have adversely affected Iraqi people more than they have hurt Saddam himself. Don't get me wrong, I believe that we did have to do SOMETHING when he refused to adhere to the agreements but I question what it is that we are doing, and what our real goals in all of this are and I think those three "goals" as presented to us by our president are complete nonsense. Remember when, during the campaign, GW debated Gore and said that he thought we should not send our troops around the world to promote democracy and freedom? Has he suddenly changed his mind or is it, perhaps, something else that we are after?
  12. mattp

    The Dubya

    Point 4 is really part of point 1. Unlike our friend ChucK, I do not believe it for a minute.
  13. I'm with ChucK. Its all those other people out there that really piss me off. Especially when I go to climb one of those "select" climbs in perfect weather on a saturday and there are hundreds of them, all using those stupid bright pink stiffy dogbone draws. That really pisses me off.
  14. mattp

    The Dubya

    GW told the troops this morning that they would be going to Iraq to fight for freedom. To all of you who are bored at work I ask if you believe any of the following: 1. We are going to Iraq to liberate oppressed people. 2. We have to disarm Saddam because he may use his weapons agains the U.S. homeland if we don't stop him now. 3. We will be less vulnerable to terrorism if we go to war in Iraq.
  15. Under a different president (Clinton) the same District presided over the "salvage" of timber damaged by the first of the Leavenworth fires and the operation did not appear to be oriented toward the "salvage" of damaged timber, thinning, fire prevention or anything else but plain old logging. I watched slingload after slingload of fullly green (unburnt) trees being flown down to the landing, and if you walk up the Snow Creek trail and look at the stumps it is pretty clear that they were harvesting the big trees and leaving the little ones behind. How much fire hazard can be left after two massive fires and how could anyone believe that more cutting in that canyon would be any better?
  16. Peter- It sounds as if you do not do much backcountry skiing, or are not much of a fan of powder skiing. Yes, if you want to be safe you should stay home in such conditions as when there is a "considerable" avalanche hazard (or maybe you could go out but stay in dense timber). But if you want to ski fresh snow, that is exactly when you WILL head for a slope just like that which they were on. As I noted in my earlier post, they clearly made some mistakes and, as need not be stated at all, those mistakes were fatal. You can draw some lessons about safety evaluatation from this incident, but the idea that they did not apply common sense, or that they were somehow wreckless, ar not among them. -Matt
  17. Both Colonial and Pyramid were a heck of a lot icier than that when Daylward and his buddy climbed Watusi a couple of years ago. I may have a picture of Pyramid somewhere, with FAT ice on it.
  18. Or how 'bout another story for the "Fun" thread? I'm sure you guys must have once had a good day that wasn't all about spraying on the internet.
  19. If your ski technique is at all sloppy or if you walk around much with crampons on, you are going to continue to rip your pants in that area. In olden times, we used to wear gaitors but now they are considered too heavy for the one-day superalpine X-tream approach to climbing.
  20. mattp

    chair peak

    The avalanche center reports that "2 to 5 feet of snowfall accumulated at Hurricane Ridge and at sites near the Cascade crest last week." More is on the way, and freezing levels are rising and expected to rise to 5,000 feet Wednesday before starting to fall again while it keeps snowing. This means there should be lots of deep snow, maybe a layer of crust somewhere, and very little ice or rock pro available. This is probably not the best time to go looking for technical climbing in the Snoqualmie Alps.
  21. mattp

    Feathered Friends

    I'm with Puget -- you can have good and bad service in just about any store. It does seem silly that FF won't trade in an unused ice axe, but that policy in itself won't keep me from shopping there. Far more important to me is what they stock and whether or not the staff know what they are talking about and I think they carry good equipment and it has been many years since, in the old days when Fletcher was there, I have had somebody at Feathered Friends pitch me a load of bullshit. Watch out for the quality control on their down products, though.
  22. mattp

    Avvys

    The south slopes of Granite Mountain can be very difficult to evaluate because of all the cross-loading that takes place there.
  23. Scot- I'm sorry, but I disagree with your statement that it is "really scary to hear about an organized group going out in the backcountry during considerable danger conditions." Just about any time when there has been recent snowfall -- that is just about any time you will find powder skiing anywhere but in a shaded north-facing bowl -- the avalanche hazard will be rated "considerable" or above. We can, and I am sure that plenty of people will, second guess their decisions and their party management. After all, there had been a significant amount of recent snow and it sounds as if they failed to ski one at a time and spot each other, etc. But I believe that most backcountry skiers do not stay home or even stay in the woods when the avalanche hazard is rated "considerable" and I find that most of my frieinds are too impatient to properly spot each other and ski one at a time unless they are truly scared. Today's paper said the avalanche ran only 400 feet, so I bet it was not one of those huge slopes that any of us would immediately be afraid of.
  24. I believe that those "ruins" on the way to Green Giant Buttress are the remains of a mining camp, and that at one time there was a "tram" that ran up the hill to the old mine on the hill accross Copper Creek from the Buttress. The waterworks may have been used to power the thing but although I know nothing about mining machinery my guess would be that it was more likely used to process ore or something because I can't imagine how gravity fed water pressure would produce enough power to drive a tram. Dawn Erickson (who works in the Darrington Ranger Station) knows something about this.
  25. Murray and McDermott are embarassments and GW Bush is not???? You guys are tripping!
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