Beck

Drove up to Chinook Pass today and shredded the Northwest glades of Natchez peak today- A foot of fresh, fluffy powpow in the shade, and nice soft settled snow in the sun, yoyo'd and got some great turns! didn't hit a rock once! Go soon, tomorrow will probably still be quite nice up there... freshies!

Liquid Sky is one of the more bizarre films out there, and Caligula is a shocking! showcase of roman excess...remember the decapitation machine that ran over people buried in the sand? Naked Lunch is wierd. Attack of the Killer Clowns is pretty bizarre. The Seventh Seal is bizarre and haunting and excellent cinema as well. or Powaqquatsi, good and maybe bizarre? How about the film with Randy Quaid as a cannibal father feeding people to his children? I can't remember the name, i think Lynch might have done it but not sure... Eraserhead is just plain wrong. I heard Russian Ark(2003) was not bizarre, but the first full length film done entirely in one uninterrupted shot. Two plus hours of steadycam shot entirely inside the Hermitage showcasing Russian history in live action scenes. Some Hitchcock was mainstream bizarre, and on TV the Twilight Zone was pretty bizarre for its day. I don't think any show comes close to the psychological freakieness of the Twilight Zone. my vote goes to Liquid Sky or Eraserhead.

frame or rucksack, two different packs, but you know that already. TNF Vapor 80's on sale at Sierra Trading Post. 5,000 cubic inches, four pounds and change with lightweight carbon fiber stays. I have a predecessor of this frame system and packbag and have to say TNF did this pack line right... check it out if you want a large capacity, light internal frame pack.

Will be leaving Seattle AM to go early season skiing up at Chinook Pass if the road is still open... rock skis and mellow messing around and yoyoing both sides of the highway. Back to town the same day, unless anyone wants to go up overnight. PM me if you're interested.

...just put tele bindings on another set of rock skis- Research Dynamic Helidogs, free! at Snoq Ski Patrol ski swap this weekend, heel lifts, $14.00, and old Rattrap bindings with cables, $15.00, three bucks for shims, total investment into a new set of tele boards, 32 bucks and tax! Got to love it!

...fourteen pair! But I use about a half dozen-seven of them mostly, and the BC tele boards most of all 4 main sets of tele boards... inbounds, backcountry touring, powder fat boys and one set rock skis. one set BC metal edge waxless. one set xc touring waxable, one set wood xc skis. No randonee setups yet but am considering it and then i've got a bunch of project boards and old straight downhill boards and some old skis best left to kindling, but it adds up to over a dozen boards. I still need that next pair though....

you want as much skin underfoot with a couple of mm of ski exposed, but the benefits of a moderately wide set of straight skins are: versatility. they will fit more of your skis, and you can loan them out to other people. the edges don't get mucked with jacket fuzz and pine needles as quickly because when folded there is no glue exposed. they are easier to fold in high winds. they are cheaper, and as ryland and iain mentioned, there is less difference than you would think, and some of it is about technique. I ski the backcountry on some midfats with over 100 in the tip and 70 something in the waist and run straight 70 skins and have never noticed a disadvantage on the skin track. I have skied up pan point with these no problem as well as no wax skis w/o skins and wax as well. technique matters as much as whats underfoot. rule of thumb on buying straight skins: if a ski is 72-76mm in the waist, get 70 mm skins. If a ski is 76-81mm in the waist, go for some 75s. 81-86, 80 mm skins. and so on.

what happens when you go to use shaped skins on a ski with different sidecut or dimensions? Do most of you have a separate set of skins for each set of skis in your quiver? There are a few more compelling reasons to run on straight skins...

67) variable...

dust... and a reference online for inuit language... www.realduesouth.com/Nation-Snow.htm

hey, I'm just telling it like it is. It's a word, there's an inuit word for tree well. their language is well documented at the arctic cultural institute. I wrote a short paper on it. tree well, "quaminik" one of the words in the inuktitut 'dictionary'. I'll make sure to ask an inuit next time i run into one. I'm still going for a tarp over a trench than an igloo or snow cave for most quick trips. if your buddy wants to build a quinzee or an igloo, let them. But people should dig a couple for practice in case you absolutely need one sometime, or for a big base camp somewhere...but get your buddies to do most of the digging... volunteer to melt water and make dinner...

"Let's drop the packs and see if we can climb out of the whiteout..."

actually, bug, that is incorrect. The inuit peoples have over 100 words for snow in their language inuktitut, which means, rather redundantly, "To sound like an inuit" here are some examples of inuit words for snow. Aput -snow piqtuq -blowing snow quinzhee -snow shelter sitilluquq -snow making cracking noise pukak -first layer of snow imalik -wet snow additionally, ikuktitut was the subject of as famous anthropologic scam and resulted in a contrived, made up inuit language to be legitimized with anthropologists. I'm not refreshed on the whole story, but a couple british researchers made up a language with over three hundred words for snow, and this is where that misconception came from , bug. but the real inuktitut language still has over 100 different words for snow and ice in its many forms- let's get the ukiuq (winter) started -some aniuvak (snow on hillside) will make for fun skiing... just don't fall in the quaminiq (tree well!)

are they both offset quilted? baffled vs. sewn thru? examine the weights of the insulation.... and body weight of insulation (oz./sq yard)compared between the two, vs. sleeves. are they both the same fill? they are both going to be great coats, I think. The DAS is almost too warm for lower cascade stuff, but you be the judge...

"leaving the igloo" was a respectable way for native people to die in the Arctic. this is anthropologically documented and is possible Nanook acted on this social custom. When an elder got to be a burden, they would leave the igloo to freeze to death or otherwise pass away for the good of the group... what an extreme social adaption..

a tree well is a nice shelter, too bad you're not supposed to cut boughs off trees anymore, you can always make killer evergreen bough and snow roofed shelters that are warm and dry. a trench is easiest, particularily if you have snow that can be cut into blocks to make the roof. don't forget to put a cold 'sink' for gear storage and a place for cold air to leach down into. digging a actual quinzee is way too much work and time IMO. but letting your buddy dig it is acceptable. Having dug far too many of those bastards as places to sleep, its best left to the greenhorn who thinks wasting four hours making a shelter is worth it. Up high in Patagonia might be a different story though... I'm experimenting with a betamid with two megamid poles for a winter circus tent. looking forward to more field tests this winter. and a tent isn't too bad if it's lightweight and you've got a snugglebunny. Then the 14 hours of winter darkness don't seem so bad....me and this swedish girlfriend, we used to LOVE going winter tent camping! And I remember the time, me and another girlfriend and a german girl we knew, it was a dark and stormy weekend in a VE-24... oh, wait, not those types of stories... pyramid shelters are great for winter too. I have also see the fly from a Sierra Designs clip flashlight set up as a roof over a big snow 'cave' dug up at Castle saddle in the Tatoosh... If you wear the right soft shell, you can just dive right into a snowbank and do just fine... I've never tried it with a bivy sack and sleeping bag, but i'm betting it works just fine. and lightweight tarp thingies are the way to go. I've got a funky siltarp thing that sets up like a four sided tent over skis as well, with peak vents for a sub one pound viable winter shelter for two. i think digging a snow shelter should be done as a survival exercise if you haven't done it before, and that's pretty much it. I wouldn't build an igloo unless i was hunting polar bears and had a woman with an usik chewing on my mukluks when i got back with the umiak and a haul of narwhal blubber.

working, robbob... its how i get all my productive work done... back on topic...the less time you spend in a dangerous situation, the less time exposed to risk, so i can see some factoring is possible, but only until an accident occurs. If the accident isn't fatal, when the shizzle hits the fandizzle is when what you brought or not is going to possibly make or break you.

Next Wednesday-Thursday up to a high pass, car camping with the boards...

is risk a quantifiable equation? perhaps insurance adjusters and actuaries can rely on a mathematical formula to determine a level of acceptable risk. However, in the mountains it is much more vicereal... you leave your sleeping bag at home, you may go hypothermic. climb without coat, be ready to go hypo. who's been a victim of hypothermia? it's an interesting process, and quite deadly....Shivering violently as your body tries to generate heat until your core temperature cools below 97, your brain begins to slow and your functioning becomes impared and delusion sets in. at a point you begin to feel warm again. if you go to sleep now, you will not wake up. many people have died from neglecting to bring gear. look at any edition of AINAM annual. Light and fast may mean deciding to run out of food three days before the end of a climb. but you may not summit. or climbing in a single 60 hour push. but you will be miserable. however, embarking on a sufferfest doesn't mean you have to place personal survival on the line because you are going "fast and light" life is worth the weight. leave the rest of the crap behind.

great dancing curtains of light glowing green and pink illuminate the sky, cascading waves of color and streaking southward like fiery tendrils... last time I saw the borealis... glad to have seen them plenty of times. check out www.spaceweather.com

it's called....beer bong! to heck with the hydration bladders! I used to run around out in the mountains of Nevada with a canteen of water and a canteen of tequila. This was pre hydration bladder days or I would have made up some nice iced margaritas for the run. A camelback with a margarita bladder and a water bladder side by side... perfect for canyoneering!

damn, Dave, thats a good idea! I think the North Face tents have been good tents, much better when they were made in the USA but the mountain tents are still pretty bomber. They've got a nice four man expedition tent right now at a good weight, good one for Denali. An older tent the North Face had completely dialed in, was the three hoop Westwind. Two person Denali worthy tent, 5# 14 ounces in a stuff sack. If people shop Ebay, this is a great tent to snag up. I've seen Fred B. with one, not that that means anything... that fly issue will probably be problematic, as a difference as little as an inch could make for a lot of flap. You could always customize a not quite well fitting fly if you were handy with a sewing machine.

I don't know, I'm going to try skiing this weekend... I don't think everyone is a season too early. You can esentially wear your skis November to May or June here in the NW. Me and some buddies skied snoqualamie pass loop Melakwa Lake to Snow Lake on the first of July a couple of years back. I'm not postholing in Nov. or going to the Icicle with a rope in March... There is one season, that season is NOW!

if you want cheap wands, go up to rainier on a weekend in the spring when the mounties and other groups are practicing... you can score HUNDREDS of wands they've used to do wierd shit with around camp... some of these groups use more wands to stake out their camp 'safe zones' and 'snowmelt snow' than you would need for the entire Ingraham Gl route in a whiteout!

I'm a bit confused by this reverse skinning technique, don't I have to have one skin on one way and one the other for good performance on either tack? David, I think we both need some ski lessons whatever you get, you can make some auxiliary "grips" out of duct tape on each pole about 6-8" below grip. Besides being a good place to store duct tape, it works great as grip for the uphill side of the traverse- instant shorter poles! who adjusts their poles on each switchback anyways? is this taught in basic or intermediate classes ? and straps should generally be dispensed with unless you are in full kick and glide mode, I want to be able to drop my poles if there's a slide... I hear Varmint Mountain Works is making some new snafflehound skins that have grip in both directions!