slothrop

Here's a view of J-berg and the C-J Couloir from this past weekend:

Word. Thanks for the info, Caveman.

What's the speed limit on the trail?

dammit, man! so much for the onsight!

Sorry to see you go, pope. At least you were more reasonable than Dwayner. This banning and editing is getting out of control.

that story is dumb from both perspectives. um morning radio shock jock. what do you think his job is? what a bunch of whiners. get on with your bad selves. don't cry about it, do something about it. It sounds like the pissed-off cyclists were doing something about it. They asked the radio station to apologize and to run bike awareness spots or somesuch. Since the station manager was unaware of the state laws that permit bicycles on roads, obviously there is some education to be done.

Here's my bit of talk - action: Long approach in winter, looks kind of gnarly. Did you send it yet, Bob?

Homeland security is being paid little more than lip service. The agency itself is still "getting their act together" (source: GAO) and has relaxed civil service rules that arguably make it the least desirable federal agency to work for. Not to mention the fact that state and local security programs are utterly underfunded and undersupported by the federal government. Even New York has some pretty laughable security problems and it's definitely underfunded (firehouses closing, etc.).

The Patriot Act allows law enforcement to monitor your communications (phone, email, fax, web, library records, credit card records) and even allows wiretaps of those "proximate" to you, all without a court order (violates Amendment IV, illegal search and seizure). Furthermore, such searches and seizures may be conducted without your knowledge, in advance or after the fact. The act also relaxed restrictions on the ability of the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies to spy on Americans. All of these powers are, as Beck mentioned, not restricted to the vaguely-defined crimes of terrorism. Some of the erosion of liberties is not directly a result of the Patriot Act, but part of the overall changes in Justice Dept. policy under Ashcroft and Bush. For example, if you're suspected of "terrorism", you can be shipped to Cuba (where no one can hear you scream), police do not have to release any information about you or your arrest to the public record, can hold you indefinitely without charges, can cause your lawyer (whenever they get around to letting you have one, maybe after interrogation) to be under a permanent gag order for "national security" purposes. All of those things have already happened to people, US citizens included. The Patriot II Act hopes to enable the government to strip you of your citizenship at their discretion (among other things)! I think it's pretty weak to sit there and hope that someday the courts will wake up and realize that this law has brought us closer to becoming a police state like East Germany, where everyone had a file with the State Security Service.

The US has more people... so that means it has more doctors and nurses. What's your point? When you paid $10, the government paid the rest, which really means that all your fellow citizens paid a fraction of a cent each for you to get two major surgeries and to help pay the salaries of several doctors, nurses, and hospital staff (jobs). I assume "Hillary Care" was Hillary Clinton's proposal for a health care system. Is Congress voting on such a system? No. Why bother to mention it? Government holidays in France and their health care system are totally different things. We certainly don't have the same holiday culture as a European country. The increase in the number of physician's assistants and in the duties given to less-trained staff has given our doctors more time to play golf on self-imposed vacations, anyway. And I would bet that elderly people dying in France has a lot to do with where they live and the fact that they didn't have air conditioning, rather than a poor health care system. You seem to be making very tenuous correlations here, Fairweather, without any evidence or investigation.

That short fist crack at the base of GNS (first pitch of Aries?) kicked my butt the first couple times I did it. I had to pull on gear because my technique was weak . There's really just one move you have to commit to -- getting a foot in the crack.

If you can't digest more than a sentence at a time, trask, then give up all hope of ever being well-informed and give up your right to complain about the sound-bite media.

Fairweather, what exactly do you mean by "single-payer gov't-sponsored health care" and why do you think it's a bad idea? Just curious. I heard a fascinating bit of news on NPR the other night. The head of the General Accounting Office, whose 15-year appointment began in 1998, was speaking at the National Press Club about the financial state of the union. He said, basically, that we're in deep shit unless we make serious changes to how the government spends money. This includes reforming Social Security (a relatively small task), reforming health care (including Medicare and Medicaid, a huge task), and budgeting for the long term. Boring, right? But it was amazing to hear from someone who devotes so much care to being non-partisan and apolitical. That's good news, good media coverage. All this bitching about how bad Clinton was and who supported who when is totally nonproductive. It doesn't make any sense to refuse to point out the shortcomings of the current administration just because the last one had serious flaws. We can't even re-elect Clinton, it's not possible! So fucking forget about it already! Let him go around sucking at the teat of his fanbase for the rest of his life, who cares? He loves the attention and his fans love giving it.

You can get a family rate for any group of people at Stone Gardens. I asked Stone Gardens about this the other day and was told that you had to show some kind of proof that you live at the same address with your "family members", like a bill or license or something.

Nice job!

Fun Sunday at Index with Dan, who hadn't been on granite all summer . We did the first part of Aries (fist and finger cracks) up through the little groove to the upper part of Pisces and the top of GNS. Next was Roger's Corner and Breakfast of Champions (woohoo!). We were dried up like raisins by then, so we retreated to the shade (one of the best features of Index, IMHO) to gape and snack for a while. We finished off the day with Princely Ambitions and I finally got to lead that second pitch, where I sprained my ankle this past winter. There was a big pool full of spawning salmon in the river across from the parking lot, but they didn't look tasty, so we had a and at the diner in Gold Bar while the traffic inched down Highway 2. Great day!

I wasn't referring to the boldness of the first ascentionist, but to the boldness that the climb requires. Again, the experience of the FA is going to be totally different, and who can say if the FA really didn't hang on a hook when placing each bolt, etc. blah blah blah. I guess I'm thinking of the climb as a creation rather than as the experience of the FA. You can tell all the stories you want about how bold you are, but the climb will be there longer than you.

Gee, pope, isn't it up to the first ascentionist to decide what their climb "is all about"? Isn't it still bold to face a 30-foot runout, even if you've done the route before, on TR or otherwise? Wouldn't you prefer a climb that requires some boldness and uses fewer bolts? Has anyone been sued yet for their bolt-placing decisions? I betcha Fred Beckey would be in some deep shit for all those 1/4" buttonheads and rusty pitons...

Fern, I agree that leaders bolting on lead will certainly be focused on getting good gear, for obvious reasons, but I know that I don't always make the best route-finding or gear-placement decisions when onsighting something. Maybe you're mistaking survival instinct for thoughtfulness. Matt brings up some ways in which ground-up onsight bolting might leave you with a less well-thought-out route. When pre-inspecting a route, you gain some larger perspective that could be useful in placing bolts more judiciously. Establishing a bolted route ground-up and climbing such a route are completely different experiences. The first ascentionists are creating something, and spend much more time, thought, and effort protecting the route. All the followers have to do is clip the bolts, not place them or think much about where they are. They don't have a choice, since the first ascentionists (not the rock itself, to anthropomorphize some more) have decided where you can place gear! If someone's going to bolt a route, they might as well take the time and effort to create a climb that's got thoughtful protection, since they're already mediating between the rock and the climber (contriving) and thus taking away from the purity of the experience. I'll agree with Matt that it's odd to contrive bolt placements in order to force the crux to be freed. But if you can do it, say by placing a bolt at a nice stance three feet lower, and the crux is not a one-move wonder that will have outmatched parties winging on the bolt year after year, why not force the move? I think it's interesting to be faced with such a challenge. That's what I mean by being "honorable" -- facing up to a challenge that forces you to be bold. But I can see that there are more questions to consider when bolting a route, since the effects of your choices last as long as the bolts in the rock.

Bah, shows how much I know!

Interesting point, Matt. I guess I was thinking of honor in terms of the rock itself, asking climbers to meet the route on its own terms and not aid past the hard part. Of course, I've pulled on gear before, but if the route is set up so that you can't aid the crux, there seems to be a certain aesthetic value in that. I agree that safety is of more concern than aesthetic perfection, but there may be times when you can trade a little safety for greater aesthetic value. Again, I haven't done any FAs, so I'm just theorizing here. It doesn't seem right to claim a free ascent if you haven't ever redpointed the whole route (and thus gained the ground-up leading experience even if you bolted the route on rap). There's some degree of pre-inspection, rehearsal, and cleaning with putting up a new route from above, right? So how can the FA's overall experience not be different than that of those who climb the cleaned, bolted route later? Is the FA's experience less honorable since he/she has studied the route in detail from above, while others will have to onsight it? Or are you arguing that FAs from the ground up are more honorable than those done on rappel? Might not ground-up bolted routes suffer from less-than-ideal placements or unsafe runouts? There was some discussion a while back about retrobolted or rap-bolted routes providing more thoughtfully-protected climbing.

Yeah, I wouldn't have placed a bolt ladder on the Grand Wall if the rest of the route can be reached at 10d. I've never climbed the Grand Wall, and I'm not trying to be Dwayner , but bypassing some 10d climbing with a bolt ladder seems like poor style. All I know about Lovin' Arms is that it's at Index and I haven't climbed it. Come to think of it, a pendulum is not great, but one or two bolts is less displeasing than a bolt ladder.

I agree with Ryland (in theory, as I've never placed a bolt). It seems more honorable to make the crux un-aidable when possible, safe always. As to bolt ladders: even if the "majorly hard" section is utterly unprotectable with natural gear, I wouldn't place a bolt ladder just to link features in the most aesthetic way. Is there no other way to get between the interesting features in question? A pendulum, perhaps, or an less appealing traverse? How hard is majorly hard? Totally blank and overhanging, or just 5.13d? If it's climbable, but beyond your ability, then I'd say leave it to someone who can free it. Just my thoughts, I've never done an FA.

No, like he said, the passenger threw a drink at one of the cyclists, which is assault, and the driver tried to run them off the road, which has to be a crime, as well (reckless driving? attempted murder?). Beating some dude up because of all this is not a great idea, but you can't say the driver and passenger don't deserve lawful punishment for that kind of bullshit. The fact is, cars (and larger vehicles) are much more dangerous to bikes than they are to other cars, so drivers have the responsibility to avoid them just like they do pedestrians. I'm all for special licensing requirements for RV drivers, too, especially since so many old people drive them. I drove my dad's 40-footer this summer, and it was fucking scary.