plexus

Finished my 8-dy work week. Heading out tomorrow for 2 1/2 days of bouldering and mountain biking at Buena Vista. Not much more you can do when your belay slave... er I mean wife is in India.

Couldn't the guys just jumped on Rewritten and joined up after the first pitch? People complain about Index, my experiences tell my Squamish and Eldo are much, much worse. I have yet to do more then Mosquito on the Smoke Bluff Connection due to crowds, and that was because it was raining when I climbed it.

Wow. Nice. I agree with you, I've been at the base of the thing and it ain't no 60 degrees.

So what I'm learning from this thread is that JG is the Flying Circus climb of Index?

Ditto. You never know who can back up their chestbeating. The more humble the climber, the better they are.

How was the traverse Kyle? How much of Ragged Ridge did you encompass?

Wow Alex, Sounds like deja vu on my two attempts to ski the Easton. Although the first time I got a hitch up the road by one of the sled heads. The second time after skiing up to pass the trailhead, I couldn't even see the mountain. I'd be out there skiing in the nearly 2 feet of new wet stuff we got over the weekend but the avy conditions are less than ideal right now. Hopefully tomorrow before work I can get some turns in.

I'll take the filleting of my forearm any day over last year. That's when I tore the flexor tendon in the same forearm at an indoor bouldering cave. Got a whole four climbs in and two leads for 2006!!

No this isn't a nonprofit nor a fundraiser for some special cause. It's that yesterday less than a mile into my mountain bike ride, I crashed like an idiot. There must have been a cone of extreme gravitational pull at the area. Came out of a turn, started resetting myself to prepare for a jump, hit some loose dirt, bam! Unfortunately, if I was going faster, I could have rolled out of it. If I was going slower, I could have ran off. Instead I was going at JUST the right speed to remove most of the skin from my right forearm. So now that I am probably going to be out of climbing for two weeks. Climb for me! Please! Ski for me! Please! And if you are climbing for me, can you go do St Vitus Dance on the Apron? There was always a line whenever I tried that. Sincerely, slightly-skinned plexus

Werd! My feeling is well-established areas such as Index, Squamish, etc. should be how they are. In Colorado there are climbing councils for such areas as the Flatirons and Eldorado Canyon, which I thought was the oddest thing when I moved here from Washington. While I don't agree in bringing governing bodies into creation for climbing, when climbers aren't able to police themselves, it could be a necessary step.

Castlewood Canyon cobbles, South Platte granite -- um, yeah, gonna tape up. I would like to be able to use my hands before three days later. I've gotten my hands more trashed on Pikes Peak granite offwidths than Joshua Tree.

Anytime you can save $100 or more of retail price, it's a good deal. My friend loves his havocs and I know too many people that think Dynafit bindings are the shiite. Go for it. And don't beat yourself up if you find cheaper prices after you get the setup.

The guy has spent countless hours up there cleaning climbs, taking notes, etc. I know, I've been up there on a few of those excursions. If you climbed there first, you could have made the names of the climbs. As for the quality of the guidebook, as Blake and anybody else can say, it is a confusing place. It took me a couple of years of rigourous scouting to find all of the walls and climbs that were in his private notes that he gave me a copy of. Some of the climbs were great, others not so great -- that has more to do with the odd type of rock that Mount Erie is consisted of. Having lived in Anacortes before it was great having the place there. It was also great having the knowledge to go to one of the non-descript walls when on a weekend and all of the higher-profile walls were taken.

Is this blowdown blocking to where you usually drive to and park or is it afterwards. You've had to hike the road for around a mile before you get to the trailhead for a few years now. I have one of Shurlock's winter photos of Snowking as my desktop. I wish I had tried to ski it when I still lived out there.

They should test him to see if he's juiced like a baseball player.

How the hell did your ski end up in a tree?!

Better than it was today at St. Mary's (no longer a) Glacier: Talk about hard slab, you can barely see my carve marks on the right. My high point was where the angle changed and the snow cracked and whomped under my skis.

I LOVE THIS SETUP!!!! Hit Copper Mountain in Colorado today with my K2 Shuksans and Silvretta Pure Performance bindings, and by the fourth run, I was skiing better in these than I do in my alpine setup. They are a little skittish when going steep and fast. But when my friends were so kind to drag me down blacks all day long and dropping down into Spaulding Bowl, they handled wonderfully.

Backcountry skiing outside of Brekenridge for me. Have to break in my new Shuksans. It'll be in the 60s all next week.

Ordered a set of Pure Freerides this morning. I had a lot of people telling me to go that way, both on this board and off of it. Thank you for all of your help. Those that do have them, did you shim your bindings at all? I know some bindings, you want to put a plate in the back of the binding.

So after a year of cutting my teeth on some 404s, I'm in the process of upgrading my AT setup. I just got a pair of K2 Shuksans and wondering which bindings to go with: Silvretta Pure or Fritschi Explore. Given how much I have invested in my boots, Dynafit is not an option. I don't ski hard enough to need a DIN up to 12 like the Freeride Plus offers. The best way to describe my skiing is a few miles approach, a few runs on some slopes, back to the car. I had one person tell me the problem with the Silvretta Pure is how it is manufactured, when you are in free heel mode, the binding shrinks towards your toes. Thanks for your help

Way to go guys. Put in the calf exercises on Saturday it looks like!! Glad you had some fun.

It's Chicago!! I grew up there. There is maybe 1 in every 100,000 people there that has been higher than Skokie. And people that write for web sites of TV stations are on the lowest level in the newsroom.

Who's Reardon? The only Reardon I know of has a big old beard, robbed a bank and was a closer for the Minnesota Twins. So that about sums up how I feel about the Golden Piton award.

I like the third picture, mainly because it's the point of pushing off and thinking two things almost simultaneously, "This is going to be fun" and "Was this a good idea?"