MysticNacho

REAL men bump each other off the road. And don't live on mercer island.

REAL men hang from hooks and hand drill bolts, in the rain.

REAL men let the lenses freeze to their eyeballs.

Hmm.... looks like spire rock to me.

HOLY SHIT!!! I saw that guy too, only a few WEEKS later on the trail down from Buck Creek Pass about 5 miles from Trinity. He was on his way out finally but wasn't going to make it that day (it was late). He asked me if I had any cigarette rolling paper. It seems he had run out. Right... You know I heard about a guy once with a whole bunch of suitcases hiking in the North Cascades. He would walk 500 feet or so with one suitcase, walk back and repeat the trail with the next suitcase, and so on. Apparently he was in some sort of mid life crisis and on a leave of absence from his wife. Some park rangers went up to check him out and see if he was sane, all was well. Same dude, ya think? ALL THE WAY FROM BRIDGE CREEK!?!?!

- Hiking in the Olympics last August when I hear a huge series of crashing noises coming from the hillside above me about 50 ft away. I had seen a bear only a half hour before, and my first thought was that this was another, larger bear. But whole trees were falling over! What was this, a dinosaur?! Soon I found out as the mystery burst out of the woods and on to the trail a few feet in front of me, coming to a gentle stop. It was a huge iceblock the size of a car! It had fallen out of a little glacier several hundred feet above me, and damn near smooshed me on the trail. - Hiking down from Island Peak in Nepal with my buddy Nick. We're trying to pass this sherpa guy who is herding his dozen yaks down the valley in front of us. Trouble is, the trail isn't very wide, there's a cliff on the one side, and everytime we try and filter our way through the yaks he yells and whips 'em to speed them up, blocking us from passing. We finally get through by running inbetween the yaks, all the while the guy is pushing them faster and faster, yelling in Nepali, with this big grin on his face. We finally get through and round the next corner, resuming our original pace, when we look back up and see the dozen yaks runnning at full speed with this red faced, yelling guy driving them on, trying to smoosh us or something. There was one of those really long foot bridges coming up, and we didn't want to share it with a dozen yaks, no matter how strong it looked, so we ran and ran, crossing the bridge just before the yaks got to it. We lost them in the next village 5 minutes later. - But the strangest yet happened while Nick and I were trying to cross a 17,000ft pass in Tibet, carrying too much gear and far from acclimatized, walking at a snails pace. The sun was starting to set, and the top of the pass wasn't even in sight, although we figured it to be close. Exhausted, we flopped our packs down and started to set up camp, when this Tibetan fellow comes RUNNING up with a pack equally as huge as ours and smoking a cigarette. "That bastard!" I thought. I could barely breath as it was, and this guy is puffing a Marlboro! We hadn't seen another soul in two days, and were a bit surprised. Speaking out of the language section in our travel book we learned he was going to visit his uncles mother or something like that in the village 4 days away, and that the top of the pass was just around the corner, maybe a half hour away, with a lake and good camping only 300 meters down the other side. So with this guy following our every footstep, we shouldered the packs again and set off. We reached the top of the pass at sunset, and looked down the other side to see the lake at least a two hours hike away, to which our exhausted minds said "screw that." (The only map we had was the drawing in the travel book, we didn't know where this crap was) We set up camp at the top of the pass with this Tibetan dude watching us the whole time, like he was watching TV. Annoyed by the staring and pissed at his poor grasp of locations, we tried to shoo him away. Especially since it got down to -20 or so at night and he was only wearing a t-shirt. Eventually, when it was totally dark, and figuring he was expecting to stay with us in our tent, invited him in and gave him some bread. We "chatted" for awhile the best we could given the language barrier and then he suddenly left, walking down the other side of the pass in just his t-shirt, to spend the night god knows where freezing his hiney off. Now that was weird. You mean your guide?

I'm still waiting for the bags that are completely water proof, breathable, and weigh under 1lb.

Not such a great place.... if there's a guy with a telephoto lens and a box of crackerjacks peeping behind every boulder!

Hey isn't the gate closed at the Mountaineer trailhead for maintenance or something? That's a long hike.

Even though I won't show up to this one, I'd thought I'd help all y'all out: Where to, kids?Owl & ThistleZoo

Too bad the mountaineers trailhead is closed, eh?

Well, now you have two claims to fame! Not only Muir on Saturday, but you got your ass kicked by Yoder himself!

Went to vantage a month ago and camped next to a bunch of hillbillies who kept shooting the cliffs opposite the feathers with their shotguns well into the night, shouting "f*&^ ya! wooooo!" well into the night. That you and yer pals, Trask?

Speak for yourself. Also, --to quote Ann Landers-- "wake up and smell the coffee": Saddam is going down one way, or another. Get out the lemon juicer, whiner. Didn't Ann Landers die?

UW rock!

Uh, Index is going to be terrible this weekend. Stay away!

Hmmm.... I think I'll show up and be the youngest person there again. I like the Alki, I'm poor, and they serve nice cheap burgers. Plus, who can argue with the view?

hey, I've seen that same porno. It ain't pretty... feathers flying, honking, oy!

Sure sounds like a lot of effort so far at rebuilding. Kabul must be a great place.

This bolting debate isn't nearly as funny as the DDD one. I am bitterly disappointed.

You're all just insanely jealous you didn't think of them first.

Waterfall has been going every time I've been there

What? The mountaineers ain't publishing the new book?! Who f'ed up!?

C'mon, the countries in this part of the world are ALWAYS clamboring to get business through any means possible. They all have websites, foreign contacts, and second-hand russian climbing gear. It doesn't surprise me a wink that some guy found out that America has climbing chat boards and is trying to net customers in some hard times in a hard country. America tourism in the himalaya has plunged in recent times, due to 9-11 and regional conflicts... who can blame the guy? If you don't like it, don't read it, or at least make fun of his mother.