Peter_Puget

I too can ateest to the usefulness of Trig. Just last week I was straining to stay awake in a meeting that was seemingly endless when all of the sudden I was inspired to design some garage gyms. Trig was essential in calulating the dimensions. Too bad I didn't have a trig functions on my calc and had to resort to quick approximations. But everyone thought ole Peter was hard at work taking notes and checking the numbers that were being spewed forth. My homework ought to be doing simple sums by hand as without a calc. I am worthless!

Dude, I was just catching up on my sleep over at summitstrokeyourpost.com and I saw that our boy 'Tiva referred to a female forest ranger as a WHORE....now THAT is classy. That guy's got it GOING ON, man! [ 06-09-2002, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: poptart ]

Thanks Dru. Maybe thats why I haven't seen any! By the way did REI stop selling Friends?

Anybody try these guys yet or will I be the first? Haven't even seen tham but a tiny voice in my head is saying buy buy buy!.

Hate to come down on you MA but somebody has too. I was surprised and saddened as I read your TR. How can you be so irresponsible? While you may consider it fun to risk your life so brazenly think of the many lurkers who may/will get the wrong idea. First: You did not register your ascent. Second: Imitating "Twight's climb all night in one big push" style was uneccessarily dangerous. Would it have killed you to bivi? Third: Solo? What would have happened if you fell and started a chain reaction? What if the large woman passed you and then fell herself? You would have suffered a long night under her thigh. Such behavior gives the sport a bad name. Remember all that equipment you have can never take the place of experience. PP

Lambone - How narrow are they? Long? Weird thing is that they state that the new (and patented) design resulte din a stronger unit. This must be true only in the micro sizes as whe I compare the larger zeros with other brands they come up short! I must be missing something. SO Lamb are you buying some or sticking w/ aliens?

Tried that this evening. It's a bit different but seems to do the job.

Courtenay – I have been doing standing calf raises with a tad bit over 400lbs. I think that this much weight is resulting in shoulder pain. Have you heard of this happening? Do you have any suggestions for calf exercises that do not require a bunch of weight on the shoulders. Seated calf raises do not seem like a good exchange. Would you suggest just dropping weight and going for more reps? I am currently do four sets of fifteen and holding 30” at the end of each set. Wondering, PP

Also, 60 years ago this week was the Battle of Midway. Something worth reading about too.

OK I admit it. I am jealous of Scott. Sure, he gets a lot of shit from the goofballs on this site BUT after checking out his own site. (NWOG.org); seeing that he has several trip reports on WTA, more on Summit Post,it’s obvious that the guy gets out a lot – quite often in fact. Plus he seems to have fun doing it. All this Toaist philosophy on another thread when we have a living master right here. This winter my climbing high points were exchanges between myself and the Pope. Now I am bummed I won’t get into the shape I want to be when I get down to the Valley this fall. Scott’s just out having fun. I have never been to the top of Si- don’t think I will ever care to make the hike. Don’t give a darn about Rainier either for that matter. But I do know how it feels to outside and have fun and it seems that Scott does too. [ 06-05-2002, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: Peter Puget ]

Pay to Play is a nice phrase yet has the potential to ultimately corrupt our system. (In other words really it can f#@% things up). 1. Compel the organization to start making profit based decisions to maximize its empire not its mission. FS has already done this with incredibly bad logging contracts. 2. Removes at least partially control from the legislature/people. Washington Example One way WA State Parks gets funding is from a fund called “Parks Renewal and Stewardship Account” This fund is formed from “money raised directly from the State Parks system” When the legislature first allowed this reservation of funds, it was stated that it should have no impact on how the amount of general funds were to be allocated each year. Thus PSRA was a windfall originally designed to help the State Parks dept. make improvements and catch up on deferred expenses. In 1989-91, it was 21% of parks Budget. In 1999 it was 37%. Clearly the legislature began to reduce appropriations to the Parks dept preferring to instead let it earn its own way. Thus begins a dangerous spiral. Now here we are with a statewide deficit and some parks are now threatened with closure. Now if you are a Parks Director faced with such a landscape how do you weigh competing alternates? The answer is simple: you go with the ones that will pay their way. Do we really want the FS to follow this same road? This road forks into two options. The “wilderness” areas with their support groups. Groups which have been unfriendly to climbers in the past. The government can say he we can’t support the roads and so on for these areas so lets call it a “wilderness” and make these guys happy. Then to offset it we will develop the hell out of these other areas. I know this is written poorly but I had 30 seconds to write it and wanted to get these thoughts out.

Erik - You crack me up.

Crazy is right. To not climb such a large feature on a route is clearly not freeing it. It is more obvious if you reverse the portion of the climb that was not free. By your (Dru) rational Lynn Hill freed "Tribal Rights." Anyone with half a brain would see the goofiness in that claim but you are making the same claim whit regard to the Black Dike. This of course in no way takes away from the free climbing that was done. With regard to the unfreed roof: I say hey if it can be free with bolts, bolt it. PP

The steep face on Bear is not 2,000 ft. While steep and impressive the only way to get 2,000 feet out of it is to add the slabs on the bottom. It is these slabs which make the face not very attractive. If it was truly a 2,000 overhanging face it would be world famous despite the gruesome approach. The buttress is btw a much better route than Slesse.

Damn! Well there is always a post climb beer!

Sometime ago a 6/21 Index Pub Club/Solstice /Bacchanal was proposed. Bronco seconded the motion and of course it promises to be the event of the year. If you make to only one Pub Club make it be this one. PP Guns and knifes will be checked at the door.

When I first started thinking about this issue I was blindly assuming that aid climbers would simply not climb the route because they would not want to use hammers on a clean free section and that free climbers would eschew the route because of the shitty pro. Shitty I might add for subsequent ascentionists not me. I was laboring under the assumption that our actions had basically made the climb not an option for many and honestly was wondering if that was such a good thing. From the responses here it seems that at least with regard to aid climbers the consensus is that they will hammer away regardless. Is this really what people think? What are the ethics of aid climbing? Months ago in a discussion with “W” regarding the bolting of an aid climb (which he was against) I asked whether he would not nail a climb if he could imagine someone climbing it cleanly. He did not answer that question but did say something to the effect that some of my questions were “difficult.” Not too long ago in a thread regarding Town Crier, I asked Lambone this question about aid hammering ethics: “As far as fixed gear: what if removing all the fixed gear made the route impossible to climb clean. What if it changed the rating to C5 [Town Crier is C2 currently]? Does the original rating of the route have any implication on the nature of the fixed gear that is acceptable?” Should ethics guiding our actions, at least if we want them to produce tangible results here in the real world, be based on pie in the sky notions of how people should act in a “sinless” world or as we know them to act in the real world? Fern – I can’t imagine wanted to smack down someone in the situation you describe. As far as it being “my” route” Not even close! In fact the achievement itself is all in the doing. After aiding it I have already sussed out that it is a possibility for me to free it, so in a real sense all the “achievement” is is the product of climbing more than I have been and gym time. Hardly something to be proud of. The enjoyable thing for me is the process. I guess it is obvious I am bored at work thinking of going back to the Valley in the Fall! PP

Erik/Lambone – I am sworn to secrecy on the location. The first section in question has been freed with a new bashie (an old chounaird alum head) and some runout climbing. My question was/is not really about adding bolts but rather asks: is it a good thing to free a route by removing fixed gear and thus creating a runout free route? Lambone’s “don’t bolt it because then you are removing an aid challenge” is interesting because by removing the heads and free climbing it, we have prevented many who previously aided the route from climbing it unless they choose to hammer stuff in a free pitch. We have in essence done what Lambone admonished us not to do. PP

I guess to be more explicit, my sense is that short of the most amazing hooking I can imagine to aid the pitch we have freed would require a hammer. Since it has been free climbed sans hammer wouldn’t it be “bad” to nail it. The badness comes from not only damaging the rock after it has been climbed free but also by messing up the holds used in free climbing it. A formerly moderate aid route now has free climbing that makes it too hard for 90% of those who previously climbed it. Plus placing a bashie which is great right now and will suck in a couple years will make it less than desirable for free climbing. Heads are removed by me at least (most w/o cables by the way) with a center punch and needlenose. They are really variable as to how difficult they are to remove. Clarification: I said jams but I didn’t really mean jams in the usual sense. I meant finger holds and indentations/grooves. Dru – Isn't a LA is really just a poorly designed chisel? Using a chisel doesn’t mean you are trying to chip the rock. Lambone’s quote: “However, proclaiming this success on a public forum, yet not telling others what, where, or when this took place is just kinda lame.” Lambone – The 6th word in my original post is “trying” It is a long climb and we haven’t tried all of it yet. As far as keeping it secret, it is 1,000 miles away and since we can only get there a few weeks ago and next fall, we do not want to spill the beans on specifics. When we asked out local sources about it they all advised against asking around much so we didn’t give someone an idea.

A friend and myself are trying to free climb an aid route with several sections protected by a bunch of fixed heads. Obviously these guys are not only ugly but they are getting in the way of essential jams. The problem is that by removing the trash (which we did in some sections) we are making the use of hammers mandatory. In a sense one is now, it is just that currently the hammer is only needed when a head pulls or more likely the cable breaks. The question is should we have removed the heads?

quote: Originally posted by Attitude: quote:Originally posted by sk: Questions: Is calling anyone a cock sucker an insult, or just a guy? Is calling a guy a cock sucker simply homophobic? Answer: The very nature of an insult is to call someone something bad. The people who suck cock are het women and gay men. Ergo to call someone a cocksucker as an insult is to imply that they are either a het woman or a gay man, and that that is somehow bad. I am sure that I am going to get dogpiled by some het men on this one. I encourage you to go try this out on your mother's friends, kind of like the c**t/ni**er pet names we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Not only that, it is in poor taste, and lacking in creativity, but you already know that. Have a happy day.

Hmmm...poptart doesn't zip up with girls too often...I mean those crazy experimental days of college were FUN and all, don't get me wrong...but, well, I dunno, I guess that MIGHT be sort of interesting.....

I have a new (slept in 4 nights) Marmot Arroyo sleeping bag, right hand zipper. You have a Marmot Arroyo bag in similar condition with a left hand zipper. Want to trade? [ 05-28-2002, 08:35 AM: Message edited by: poptart ]

quote: Originally posted by wayne1112: Yea I saw them cleaning one of them up. It was below the east face of Lib Bell . Thank goodness, hopefully covered up the worst of my gaper sloppy turns from yesterday. There's got to be some good in it.

You think just because you have been downhill skiing since you were a tot, that AT skiing will be EASY.... Oh, wait....uh, never mind!