slothrop

This is excellent beta. I have a friend in Portland I need to visit and I had no idea the variety of eating and ogling establishments.

Wow, where can you do that? DOWNTOWN PORTLAND... Yeah, but WHERE IN DOWNTOWN PORTLAND?

Wow, where can you do that? Headed to Mt. Torment Sunday, maybe cragging Saturday.

How about six gnarliest? Triumph (winter) Summit Chief (winter) Willis Wall um, etc.

Sound advice. Note that the beer is not for you.

Sorry, man. I'd be more peaceful if I were out there "ripping it up" or something instead of sitting inside on a sunny day.

I do make websites, hoss. Stealing someone else's content without credit is weak and stupid. Especially when you're advertising a business with someone else's uncredited photographs.

Hi Courtenay, that must have been you that I mistook for my friends. I saw you coming down Aasgard Pass and walked over to meet you by the lakeshore.

Were they yelling at each other in German?

Looks like you're out of luck, Scott. Now that trask is stroking your poles, he won't take kindly to you giving your "HC reward" to one of the other boys.

iain, were you the one with or without skis? I was there in the blue tent with my girlfriend, I think we met you and your partner at the trailhead.

For sale: Tubbs Peak 30" snowshoes, lightly used. Like these , but with a different front binding. Crampon-thingies 'n everything. They're too big for me (160 lbs.). After hauling them around this weekend and not using them, I've decided they don't deserve a place next to my skis. $75 and you'll be doing this instead of postholing:

Dru, you need to parlay your useless trivia knowledge into something a little more lucrative.

Nice job, Gary! Sorry we missed you guys up there. When did you come out on Sunday? We made it back to the trailhead at 6.30pm that day. Saturday we lazed around the lake and Sunday morning we went up the Colchuck Glacier. We met three groups who were up there to climb Triple Couloirs and all of them turned around. The runnels looked completely gone.

Danger! Avalanches destroyed the website this morning and what's left of Caveman's brain sluffed off when the sun hit it. Beware.

I know I've stopped regularly checking the NWAC site for avy conditions, so I thought I'd pass this on: http://www.seawfo.noaa.gov/products/SABSEA If you can do this on the snowpack, you're probably safe: Have a great weekend!

Great photos!

Despite a recent rumor to the contrary, the new green Beckey is not out yet. I asked about it at REI yesterday and the clerk called Mounties Press, who said it hasn't been printed. That is all, resume spraying.

Was the rope running to the same side as the gate of the hanger-end biner? That's the only way I can imagine the gate ending up facing up. I think lummox is suggesting that the bolt end could have opened the biner as it rotated upward. I orient the biners on my draws the same direction so that the gate won't turn upwards when I climb past it (clip away from your body, move away from the bolt). I just saw a Petzl pamphlet that shows a draw unclipping itself from the bolt end. The scenario in this case is that the draw was backclipped, then the rope moved to the other side, bringing the sling against the gate of the bolt biner.

Another vote for Givler's Crack. Fun, fun, fun. 200 feet of easy jamming after the face-climbing crux. Belay on top of the flake (short 1st pitch). There's another 5.8 nearby, at Alphabet Wall or whatever, but it's one pitch, right off the road, and hard for 5.8.

I've only used a directional for belaying a second, in which case any falls are like on top-rope: low forces. Your anchor should be safe enough to take such forces (doubled, as they are, by the pulley action of the directional), so you could just run it through the anchor for convenience. But why not throw in another piece for the directional, anyway? That's what you expect the leader to do ("protect the belay").

It seems to me that you can have a no-extension anchor or an automatically-equalizing anchor, but not both. Only a compromise between the two is possible. I'd prefer a method that gives you the flexibility to easily rig according to which the more important feature of your anchor at the time. For sketchy gear, I'd say you want to minimize extension. I don't really see how an automatically-equalizing system (sliding X, unknotted cordelette, the Trango thingy) is that useful if you have a belay stance you can hang out at and not move around a lot. The anchor is for the belayer, anyway, so the load shouldn't be on the anchor if the leader falls, sideways or not. If you know the leader's gear is going to cause you to be pulled sideways, arrange your anchor appropriately. A cordelette is nice because you can statically equalize the pieces very easily, then eliminate extension with a figure 8. The webbing used in a sliding X is just like a cordelette, anyway, just shorter and usually without a knot. Tie a knot in the X and you eliminate extension, too.

Colchuck NBC's in there, for one. Not that you'd need any more beta than a search on cc.com for the 17 TRs from last month. The photos are excellent.

I guess you missed AlpineK's slides of the Cassin Ridge.