slothrop

Isn't planning for a super-secret private party something that could be done over PM, email, or you know, the phone? Or do you all just like to spray about how you're cool and everyone who's not invited isn't?

Aid @ Index and XC skiing, most likely.

Gary, Mike Adamson is going to send his trained army to kill you now.

Yeah, I didn't think you could beat your chest and suck corporate dick at the same time, but kayak guy proved me wrong.

That is definitely true. A one-flusher in the US can turn into a four-flusher over there.

I got a free book, some delicious salted cured meats, and a nice comb from the Rainier Club bathroom!

If I ate an entire "bar" of halva, I'm pretty sure I'd puke. I usually only eat a small wad of the stuff at a time. I've got a half-pound block, about the size of two packs of playing cards, that contains 1,120 calories (480 from fat). $1.95 at Trader Joe's -- that's as much as two of your usual energy bars, if you get 'em on sale, and 3 times the calories.

Snickers are tasty and cheap, but they are another one of those bars that will break your teeth in the cold. Dru, almond butter is the shizzle (AB&J!), but you're right about the halva being made of sesame. MREs come with squeeze packs of peanut butter. Convenient like Gu, but... it's peanut butter. Mmm.

Yeah, Balance Bars are the most edible and don't turn into jawbreakers in the cold. Halva is also a calorie-packed, lightweight food that's pretty damn tasty and has some fat as well as sugar (it's basically almond paste and sugar, I think). Twight mentions halva in one of his books, if I remember correctly.

My Ice Flow gloves took almost two days hanging in my house to dry out after I soaked them through on Saturday. Hands stayed warm, though, and seams are intact. *shrug*

Steak and Guinness pie, left over from last night. Mmm... beef and beer, baked together in harmony.

Yeah, don't let them pay you for eating free food and having free drinks. Beer goggles or not, a Buick SUV will never ever be a good idea.

She looks like a greyhound caught in the headlights. What are you talking about?

Damn, it's really pretty out there. Thanks for the photos.

eric8 and I climbed the first pitch of this route yesterday after spending most of the day at Alpental. It was getting dark, so we skipped the second pitch and exited left into dirt instead of going up the obvious central curtain. The rootball of the fallen tree gave excellent tool placements. Fun little route with a minimal approach! Here's how it looked. Too bad you can't see the running water... And here's Eric leading:

Get an ISP that doesn't block traffic for those programs.

See #5 in my list above.

Damn. I want 8 weeks of vacation... - lead some water ice - learn to tele turn in the pow-pow - climb Dragontail - multipitch aid climbing, use some hooks - not go broke

Iain, is your avatar a white tiger scratching a record, or have the prions started their dirty work on my brain?

I think you're the only one around here who would know this, catbird.

Ditto. I only wear my windstopper gloves for biking on days like today, as they never dry out when wet. You could buy my Dry Tool gloves and wear them with liners for winter climbing. They're nicely dexterous, just too small for my long skinny hands. You could rappel with 'em, too -- they've got nice leather palms.

I used one of my prusiks as a piece of pro once by jamming the knot into a crack, a la that German guy.

I bought those Cassin crampons and don't like 'em much. They come with anti-bot plates, but those don't attach securely in the front. The screw that lets you adjust the length requires another tool (you can't just use one of the strap rings like on my Charlets). I haven't had major problems with their performance, though. I used them for easy glacier approaches this past summer.

I agree that the browser bar thingy in the upper right corner is needless duplication. If the only purpose of the frameset is to make it easier to print something without the nav elements or ads, then why not replace the frameset idea with a print button that loads a printer-friendly version of a page, without the extra stuff? The days are past when repeatedly loading navigation elements should slow down your server or your clients. If you're really worried about it, just change as much of the navigation stuff you can into images so that clients can cache them. You have some broken <A> tags that change under a mouseover even though they're not links. For example, all the checkbox labels in the Search box flash orange even though they don't link to anywhere. The fonts are unreadably small in my browser. Oh, and clicking Greenland took me to the Canada section of the guide. Overall, the site's a good idea. Nice work.

Soccer once a week, biking, yoga, running. My current winter training regime adds snowshoeing, sitting deskbound doing work (builds endurance and mental fortitude), and pulling plastic.