mattp

"High Camp" rocks. I haven't been there for 10 years but I worked and skied there for several years and it is sweet terrain for touring. Ski-mountaineering opportunities and truly alpine opportunities are limited but for backcountry skiing it is tops times three and it is pretty cool to ride a snowcat to 5,000 feet and stay in heated cabins. There is also some reliable ice climbing about 40 minutes' ski from camp.

I don't know if this is a common practice (I've never heard of it) but one time when I wanted to control speed on a descent because we feared a possible crevasse fall and wanted to keep the ropes relatively stable between us I put the skins on backwards. Duct tape came in handy because the skins were not set up to install that way. We had an easy time skiing (actually walking) down a glacier, though, although it felt weird to creep down steep rolls with everything tilted the wrong way. If we are talking abut controlling sleds on decent, controlling the skier is also important. This may be a useful technique.

I have at least a large crate of gear for such an endeavor. Seriously. Old 'biners are perfectly fine though some may have sticky gates, and old cams, while not worth anything on any kind of "retail" market, would probably hold a fall. I have some borderline antique ice screws as well.

I just checked and waynessite.com is available for three years for something like $60.00 and you can get it hosted for not too much either. Then you'd have a consistent e-mail address (for example, wayne@waynessite.com) for as long as we use the current URL format, and if providers come and go you don't care. DO IT!

!! it's been, what? 9 years of cc.com? !! The images I harvested from the site to show at random made us look pretty good, huh? You CAN meet people, share beta, waste your time, and raise money for stuff like purchasing Index on cc.com. Great night, Jon and Porter. Good schwag, beer, slides, and more money for Index. A good time was had by all.

That and celebrating 9 years of cc.com, viewing some fantastic slides, and having a couple of beers. The sausage they serve isn't bad, either. (Hint: get the ragin' cajun.)

Fred was "blissfully" aware of the show when I talked to him. I think his main problem at the O'Neil event was that he has a hard time hearing when there is a lot of background noise and, like most people who are hard of hearing, is uncomfortable saying "What? I can't hear you." Fred will get himself there, I suspect.

I don't think they had teeth on the ice axes made 109 years ago. I could be wrong. Without any real specific knowledge of ice axe development my general "take" is that it is more like mid-century.

That little flood problem is serious. If you try to drive through it and your fan hits the water, you're likely to stall out in the middle of the lake. Meanwhile, the water carries all the silt away and we are left with a cobblestone roadway. It is too bad the Forest Service doesn't have a budget for this part of the raod: we need a whole gang of Nepali laborers or a backhoe.

Cool, Mark. I think I can make it. That road needs some lovin.

If you suffer insomnia, you'll pay the doctor ten times as much for repeat visits and new treatments and stuff that doesn't work as opposed to if you actually got the right diagnosis and a simple cure on the first visit. Along the way, you might try a bunch of "alternative" therapies that on any objective scale show no signs of benefit, and much of this will be based on payment rather than outcome. How sensible is that?

Jay, While you have for a second time criticized me for not reading your article all the way to the end I believe you have not read my reply all the way through either - or at least not stopped to think about what I said rather than look for an angle to criticize it. In a nutshell, what I said was that you raise a point that I agree with, but I don't agree with your conclusion. I agree with the idea that our current system distorts any rational analysis of outcomes vs. cost, and that the proposed "reforms" being discussed in Congress do not directly address that. I believe a public option has potential to do so, but only if it is widely subscribed to and only if the government bureaucracy that you decry actually does its job (I'd give you 3 to one they'll do a better job than private insurance, though). And, lest I simply give you an opportunity to jab more and discuss less, I'll concede that I did slightly overstate my case on the "for-profit" thing. Obviously, it is legal in France for a doctor to make a profit on a hernia operation. It is systemic profiteering that is illegal. blog New America Foundation I'll give you 3 to 1 odds that a government agency won't be as motivated by profit as private insurance, too. Here's a little light reading on this topic though it is not, as you might request, based on peer reviewed studies. It also acknowledges that a government-paid system can support profiteering and, at the end, the author concludes that government funded health care is not "the" answer to expensive health care. I find this persuasive, and this is one reason why I find your original link, at the start of this discussion, interesting. I don't subscribe to the idea that you may think some on the left do that all we need is single payor. I think we need a different reimbursement scale as well. NewYorker "

I participate in medicaid hearings on a regular basis. Today I had a hearing concerning the costs, benefits, and risks associated with a particular course of action. I have also been making my own healthcare decisions for decades and am familiar with the decisions made by friends and families over the years. I have also had a lot of experience with private paid services and private paid insurance coverage. I don't know if you are an expert or not, but I must certainly have had a different set of experiences than you.

There’s definitely something to that article, Jay. To be sure, healthcare reform as presently proposed is merely going to put more people into the existing system and fix little of its ills. To the extent that you believe health care should be a for-profit enterprise at all (something that is illegal in many civilized nations), we should find a way to link profit with outcomes, not with procedures. The article suggests that day-to-day expenses would be linked in this fashion if they were not covered by insurance but I think the same problem – that of providers profiting from procedures and not from outcomes – exists with respect major medical services. Personally, I think the idea that the solution lies in having everybody make “market-based” decisions about their own care priorities and efficiencies is folly. I don’t think you, I or anybody else is really in any position to say to their doctor “no thanks. I don’t need that procedure.” Certainly not based on any rational analysis. And I don’t think competition, if it is based on simply being able to advertise wart removal or flu shots for less than the shop next door, is really the answer. It’s nice to see something other than the argument “government isn’t the answer,” though. But wait: that is really the thesis, isn’t it?

I've done a lot of extended trips in cold but not really cold weather (winter and spring in Cascades and Sierra) where body heat was all it took to dry things. If you sleep under a tarp or can leave the tent open so moisture can escape, you can dry completely sodden clothing by wearing it or taking it to bed (if taking things to bed, thought, you have to take relatively small items like socks or mittens, and put them on your belly). In colder weather, and if you are using a tent, (particularly a gortex tent), it is not so easy. You can have some success if you take a stove into the tent and dry out things with that external heat source, but you will really only dry the morning frost and little more.

$9,730.00 raised tonight. Thank you all.

It was chilly in Darrington yesterday but the shoes sure worked well! I think it made things a half-grade easier.

There are some good books listed here. Here are a few more: "Upon that Mountain," by Eric Shipton (1943) is a classic that has some real precious passages. There were many things I did not like about climbing, and there were brief periods of bitter disillusionment: being waken at 1 a.m. form a deep sleep of real physical fatigue, and having to turn out into a cold hard world of stale bread and boots and cracking lips – it was many years before I became resigned that grim business of the midnight start … Thomas Hornbein's "The West Ridge" (1965) is pretty good and the pictures are excellent. At four the oxygen ran out, a most effective alarm clock. Two well incubated butane stoves were fished from inside our sleeping bags and soon bouillon was brewing in the kitchen. Climbing into boots was a breathless challenge to balance in our close quarters. Then overboots, and crampons. ‘Crampons in the tent?’ ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘It’s a hell of a lot colder out there.’ "Mount Analogue" (1952) by Rene Daumal, is another classic. You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know Slightly more modern (still dated but very much irreverent) "Downward Bound" (1975) by Warren Harding is definitely worth a read. 'Good Evening! What can we do for you.' 'We've come to rescue you.!' 'Really? Come now, get hold of yourselves - have some wine In the book Ascent, published by Sierra Club in 1980 and edited by Steck and Roper, is a good story written by Mark Twain: The conquest of Riffelberg. …we roped ourselves together and went at that rock. For some time we tried the hook-rope and other means of scaling it, but without success – that is, without perfect success. The hook caught once and Harris started up it hand over hand, but he hold broke and if there had not happened to be a chaplain sitting underneath at the time, Harris would certainly have been crippled. As it was, it was the Chaplain. …

That's great, John. I've looked at that line every time I've driven highway 2 eastbound for literally decades. Thanks for posting this. Nice colors this year, huh? Is that related to the fact that we had a dry summer, or a sudden cold snap in the Fall, or what?

I'm not really a mushroom guy, but I think aminita muscaria is most known for psychedelic properties and has widely been publicized as deadly poisonous, but if braised or steamed I think it is supposed to be relatively safe to eat. I've never tried it and I don't think I will, though. Better to stick with something that doesn't have so much potential to hurt you! Nice pictures, by the way. They cause me to think about past trips to the Olympics as well.

I don't know about the video, but whenever I use a Meunter (or is it "Munter") I find that I get absolutely no rope twist if I am using it to lower or belay from a fixed anchor at or above my stance. The key is that it only works this way when the load and control ends of the rope are both hanging down. If I rappel on a Meunter, I get a twisted rope. It is actually an excellent knot for lowering somebody. I used it in a rescue situation once, very much to the astonishment of one of the accident victims who expected some use of their gris gris. As to the original inquiry? I have minimal problems with my ATC guide. Given my experience with the Meunter, though, I suspect that a minimal re-orientation of the brake hand, or maybe the addition or subraction of an extra leg twist (changing the way the rope feeds into the brake), or maybe the addition of an extra 'biner or different attachment point for the brake biner (changing the way the rope feeds out of the brake) or something similar to that may be the cause of "sometimes I get the twisty's and sometimes not."

Looks like some kind of granite or similar rock to me. Hmmm.

A lot has changed in a week. Check out the colors: High on Jacob's Ladder, four routes left of Westward Ho. Chilly! Clear Creek valley from the base of the Dome.

Tvash had a point, or a couple of points. Good ones. But is his view of the book or movie the only "right" one? No. Part of what makes the story so compelling is that it has so many layers to it. Armchair analysis from beginning or experienced climbers alike, literary criticism, and just plain "wow" are all perfectly appropriate topics for discussion.

The Kone is pictured on a topo on my website: website Topo: Great Arch Area Topo