slothrop

To restate the obvious: an autoblock is great for keeping control of the rope, but it doesn't obviate the need to double-check the ends.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/163748_climber08ww.html

If you get into a routine of double-checking everything, weighting and testing the rap line before you unclip from the anchor, and making sure the ends are down or tied, you will ingrain good habits in yourself that may make rappelling safer. Your spidey-sense may alert you if you skip a step in this routine, even after you've gotten over the fear of rappelling. It took me about half an hour to rappel from the top of a climb for the first time (at Smith on a busy day, no less). I think I rechecked everything about ten times. Lowering off the chains, to me, is even more dangerous, since there are two people who can screw up. For that reason, and because I never practice it and don't have a developed routine, I never get lowered off the chains.

Interesting, iain. I don't think any of the people giving CPR had a mask and latex gloves were in short supply.

The climber fell to the trail at base of his climb and then down the next tier of columns to the talus. There was a very narrow gully/corner directly below the climb.

That's not the first time I've heard that today.

I saw the climber fall from where I was at the Riverview area. My partner and I had just started our lunch break when some commotion attracted our attention. We saw someone fall from near the top of the upper tier of columns at the Sunshine Wall, hit the base, and tumble over the next tier to the talus below. I called 911, my partner (fleblebleb) went to assist the victim, and I ran to meet the incoming medical folks at the main parking lot. Someone from the Grant Co. Sheriff arrived, followed closely by two fire dept. EMTs, whom I walked with back to the Sunshine Wall area. By then, an Army helicopter from Yakima was 12 minutes out. There were quite a few climbers helping the victim, including a nurse who took charge. I was very impressed by the determination of the ad-hoc rescue team, who kept up CPR for at least 30 minutes, even though the fallen climber was clearly in very bad shape. Cheers to all of you who helped out, and to the EMTs, paramedics, helo crew, and other rescue workers. When the helicopter arrived, we spread the word that the rotorwash might cause rockfall, so those not directly involved in the rescue moved away from the scene and huddled close to the walls. We secured several ropes and lots of gear lying about so it wouldn't get blown around. During the rescue, two large crowds gathered above the upper and lower tiers, which made me nervous, since the hovering helicopter was not far away from them (visions of Mt. Hood...). The helicopter did a lot of circling, and dropped a paramedic and litter in a series of many passes and landings. Watching from afar, I couldn't really figure out what the plan was. Eventually, the victim was loaded, the helicopter lifted the litter and then the paramedic on a winch, dropped them off at the ambulance waiting on the road, and headed back home. I don't know any of the details of the accident itself, but the way the rope was lying below the climb made it look like a rappel gone wrong. I heard a lot of third-hand details, but I'll let the people who told me repeat them here. The climber was a man in his forties.

Yeah, but most newbies will be inept by definition. There are safer places to practice your ineptitude than others.

My first gear lead was some shit-encrusted chimney at Vantage. I placed all my gear in one-move intervals from the bottom, so naturally I was running it out when the crack got wide near the top. There was no anchor at the top and I didn't have any 12-inch cams to build one with, but (surprise!) someone had bolted the column to my left, so I traversed around the column, fighting huge rope drag, and reached for the bolts. I was gripped, but not as scared as my girlfriend, who cleaned the pitch and faced a big scraping pendulum around the column. This was also my first time belaying up a second, so I was concentrating so much on dealing with my belay clusterfuckage that it didn't even occur to me to take my shoes off at the hanging belay. My feet were still numb when I finally got to the ground. Oh, and it was getting dark.

I actually agree with Dustin here. I sure wouldn't want to be a moderator, though, and spend all my working hours trying to delete the male infiltrators' spray.

I tried NE Slab of DA TOOF as my first alpine mixed climb. Bwahahaha! Luckily we dug a quick avy pit and found a slab, so we turned around.

My bag is packed to climb Chair Peak, but I'm up for anything -- cragging, ice, aid, etc. Anyone else got the day off tomorrow? S'posed to be sunny! Ralph (206) 726.1314

Well, good on ya for being honest. I know a guy who is no longer able to return anything he got at REI... he's living the "ethically flexible" dirtbag life.

Why? Here's why: Sure, REI sucks, but you're breaking your side of the customer service relationship when you try to screw 'em over.

Nice job. Now get back to studying.

Yeah, even SUVs aren't safe from semis: http://www.dowagiacnews.com/articles/2004/01/23/news/dnnews4.txt Better trade up to a Mack, all you Expedition drivers. But then again... http://www.komotv.com/news/mnewsaction.asp?ID=29560

Is this "adventure racing"? Dude on the left has a nice ghetto-style pant leg.

Marriages are carried out in town halls and in Vegas drive-thrus all the time, so I'd hardly call it a purely religious institution anymore. Even if gay marriages are allowed by the states, a gay couple would still have to find a place to get married, and that place is less likely to be a church. Churches should still be free to refuse to marry gays.

He wouldn't share his coke. Share and share alike.

Well, yeah. The kind of ideological rubber-stamping you describe is definitely bullshit. It doesn't matter to me who's doing it: fans of Stalin or Hitler or Bush or Clinton or the liberal PC police or the Ashcroft thought police. I just didn't get how Trudeau's comment implies that he was unaware or tacitly approving of the Gulag system. *shrug* I'll just go back to feelin' the good vibes now. Cheers!

Wow... that's all sloper.

So when you accidentally download some pr0n from one of trask's old threads, your Ashcroftian network admin catches you, and you get fired, then are unable to land another job despite that education you worked so hard for because you unfairly got marked as a child pornographer (unfair, but not unprecedented), you will not expect nor ask for any sympathy. Perhaps your sentence for child porn is light and you get out in 3 months, but are denied the right to use a computer at work as part of your punishment. But you used to be a computer programmer, which pretty much means you can't work, by court order! Will you refuse state-sponsored job training so you can find another career? The preceding is known as a thought experiment, so you can pick it apart in detail for its absurdity, but you'd be missing the point. So you think that it's all cool to work hard for a bit, then sit on your laurels while others work hard. Using your privilege to avoid work while living off of the work of others (i.e., being a worthless fuck) is ok with you? If you think about it a certain way, you're getting the poor people's money, because their low wages allow you to purchase your J. Crew sweatshop clothing for less money. But God forbid I should question the invisible wisdom of the free market system.

Guess I hadn't been following the overgeneralizations of JayB and mattp w/r/t who liberals might support in some vague way. Perhaps Trudeau was indeed aware that the Gulag system was the method by which the Soviets industrialized and settled the Arctic. Perhaps he wondered why there wasn't another way to take advantage of Canada's vast amount of frozen land. It's hard to glean much insight into Trudeau's thinking with only one third-hand quotation and an article written years later on the place he visited when he was quoted. And then you imply that liberals are "darn" (could you be more specific?) by associating a contextless quotation from a former Canadian prime minister with some hearsay about what he must have been thinking (or rather, not thinking), then mentioning that said Canadian was a prominent liberal. Thus, liberals have some kind of negative energy associated with them: "they may be smart, but they sure know how to disregard the facts" or something like that. Huh?

Subvert state law? So if states passed laws respecting gay marriages, you'd be all for it? How does knowing someone's married suddenly conjure up hardcore movies of their sex life in your head, man? What difference does it make to you if two people are married, gay or straight? If I read the NYT front page lead article correctly, Bush wants to ban gay marriage in order to protect the "sanctity" of straight marriage: How does banning gay marriage == protecting straight marriage? Anyone? Bueller?

"Dude, why is that guy measuring the crack with calipers before he sticks a cam in?"