specialed

10-4. Zion ain't harder than anywhere else, and I'm aid climbing big wall weakman.... I just make Erik lead all the chimneys

This pitch in attached photo is by far the sickest, phattest, best ice I've ever seen in Field!!

I think Dean's linkups in El Cap are more impressive than a Slipstream / Polar / Weeping Wall linkup. Much harder (and probably just as dangerous) to climb El Cap in three hours than Polar Circus or Weeping Wall.

B.Y.O. Index death lynch squad eagerly awaits Sloth Man and his hammer and pins.

Benowitz has a humanistic component to his writing that Twight lacks. But not that its as good as Twight's.... Death, , and climbing.

Samet's recent article about posers / sprayers classified by geographic region or something of the like was dumb as hell. Boorish and stale. His article about the "sub" belay slave thing was only marginally better. Just not really all that funny. Jeff Apple-Benowitz on the other hand who writes for Climbing is way good. His writing (mostly of Alaska alpine shit) is real, jaded, and good. Not a whole lot of good, satirical climbing writers out there right now, except for Jon Sherman.

Lick my nooksack

There must be lots of in Oly

Hmm... perhaps you are corrent Mr. Brayshaw, but I think it is difficult to grade remote alpine climbs with the same system as used for pure rock climbs just a couple of minutes or hours from the road. That essentially makes the grading system irrelevent for remote alpine endevours. But maybe that's the point G-Spotter was making in the first place.

South Tacoma Way strippers aren't good enough?

While the route might go in a day, the grade infers the approach as well. I have not done Nooksak, but I think the standard is to bivy above Price Lake the night before. So a standard ascent would take two days. Most routes on Early Winters are III's. Except maybe for some on the longer east face, like East Butt of South Early, which I think is a IV.

There is also lots of great free climbing there

Sad, very sad, sad, sad, sad performance. The rule for Vegas is one hour partying for every two pitches of climbing. So sounds like you're in the hole for maybe 40 pitches or so. Routes on the panty wall don't count.

They all suck. Index sucks.

V means it would take the average party two days to do the route car to car right? That is a pretty broad definition so between two routes that are rated V one might be more committing, harder, or take longer than the other. It offers a good general picure of time commitment for a route that's all. Makes sense to me.

You're going... you tell us.

Dylan is planning to climb either grid bolted choss, grid bolted choss, or perhaps grid bolted choss.

The sad thing is its all actually true. The names and faces have been changed to protect the innocent, but the stories are true from the long and strange climbing careers of Dwayner and Pope.

Mine's definetly bigger.

Good points Matt. I wouldn't hesitate to travel in similiar valleys when I though avy conditions were considerable and just stay out of well known slide paths. But I do think this year's weather patterns and events have been unusual and have contributed to the formation of some very weak and funky (hoar frost) layers, as often happens in years of low snow pack.

Well now you know bitch.

Epinephrine: 6 hrs car to car, or 6 hrs on the route?

Clearly extra high avy danger in that area right now. They've had a wierd ass winter. Really dry and cold fall and early winter, then warm and wet, and then cold. Now warm spell again apparently. I'm sure their snowpacks got all sorts of funky layers goin on right now... sketchy. I'd personally stay away from Roger's pass unless conditions were more normal and stable. Ofcourse its never going to be perfectly safe but safety's relative.

Bring lots of sawed-off and baby angles for shallow angle placements

"It was too local," i.e. it didn't mention Boulder or Yosemite once. How do you expect to get anything published in the mags when you don't make one reference to Estes Park, the Diamond, or speed climbing El Cap? Noone wants to hear about the PNW because that might actually infer that Boulder isn't the center of the universe. Maybe if you wrote an article on the history of climbing in Boulder Canyon you might get published... no wait someone already did that.