slothrop

<> Sure, Mountain Woman, but the page is still wayyyy too slow for its content. There's too much on one page to scroll through without it being annoying, first of all. Worse, the page loads a bunch of mountain photos from big image files and then squeezes the images smaller using the 'width' and 'height' attributes of the <img> tag. This means you download more than you need to see the pictures on the page, and your computer does extra processing to shrink the unnecessarily-large images. All it takes to greatly speed things up is for the author to manually resize the images and leave out that height/width BS. A minute is too long to wait, anyway. It should load in more like 10 seconds. </>

Is that a stogie? Looks like a fun outing, thanks for the TR.

Wow, nice work, guys.

"Easy", Faith No More (Lionel Ritchie) "Hey Jude", Wilson Pickett, who has about a billion times more soul than Paul McCartney "Take Me Home, Country Roads", some punk/ska band (John Denver) "Hallelujah", Jeff Buckley (Leonard Cohen) the song from Cool Hand Luke ("Plastic Jesus"?) covered by The Flaming Lips numerous surf rock classics covered by the early incarnation of Man or Astro-man? I've heard Tori Amos' covers are quite good, and that she played only covers during her entire residency at a club in NYC. I liked Jane's Addiction's "Sympathy for the Devil", but the original is still badass, especially the bassline.

All the in-browser image resizing is killing that page. It takes about 2 minutes to load on my DSL connection.

Fun times at Index today! We did Thin Fingers and damn if it wasn't scary to be hanging by two lobes of a green Alien. chucK joined us and did laps on Godzilla while I tangled in my aiders. I got so excited about reaching the ledge that I did the mantel, forgot to unclip my etriers, and had to downclimb to unfuck myself. Good fun. Index rocks!

Ah, there's JoshK and his disdain for the "irrational exuberance" economy again. Sorry to hear about you joining the unwashed hippies in the ranks of the unemployed, trask. Relax and have a !

Word. Thanks for the suggestions. Thin Fingers sounds good. But what about getting into the hand crack after the first section? I can't remember if you can aid that, or just have to make the step across from the little pedestal on the right. Whatever, I'll just see how it goes. I was hoping to get on an unpopular free route (or a route that's usually just aided) so I won't make everyone wait for hours as I bumble up the wall.

Hey all you Index wall climbers! I'm recuperating from an injury but am itchin' to climb stuff. My bum foot won't let me make the hike in to do the first winter ascent of the south face of Forbidden, so I want to learn to aid climb while the sun shines tomorrow. What are some good first aid routes to try at Index? I was thinking about City Park, since it's got a bolt ladder start and looks like it's just one crack to the top (correct me if I'm wrong). I can rustle up some aiders and whatnot, but I don't have any fancy aid gear, like offset cams, WC Zeros, skyhooks, or teeny tiny nuts. Any suggestions for an aid route that can be done with several standard alpine racks' worth of gear? Oh, and I'd prefer to do clean aid since I don't want someone to shoot me off the wall if I get off route and start nailing some free climb.

Colin Powell seems like an honorable man, and I don't believe he would lie to serve his personal interest. He disagrees often with Bush, and especially Cheney, on policy issues (see NY Times article). That Powell spoke as he did to the UN is a testament to Bush's will to invade Iraq. Something must have convinced Powell that didn't convince me, but perhaps it's the larger picture that's more important in discovering why Powell presented what he did with a straight face. Here's some wild speculation for you. Powell's probably a practical guy, so once he's convinced that Iraq is dangerous (degree of danger compared to other threats notwithstanding) , he can begin to see Iraq's defeat as a 'show of force' that could help defuse problems with other threats, like North Korea. He's thinking more geopolitically, rather than about the horrors of war (dead Iraqi children, burning buildings, dead American soldiers) that he's so well acquainted with and that reactionary leftists can't see past. Would invading Iraq really piss off Islamic fundamentalist terrorists? It would give them fuel for their propaganda, but how big is Iraq in the Muslim world? Can you think of any country who actually supports Iraq because it's a great nation, or an important ally, or a paragon of Islamic virtue? Iraq is basically a dictatorship whose leader co-opts anything to feed his ego (hence the endless mosque- and palace-building). Religious piety is not Saddam's strong suit, and for whatever reason we're invading Iraq (oil, money, chestbeating rights, target practice), it's not about Islam vs. Christianity, never mind Bush's brainless Crusader rhetoric. I'm not sure what my point is, but there it is. One more thing: the only guilty parties in the incident with the Kuwaiti baby incubators are the PR company who solicited false statements and the misguided Kuwaitis who played along. That's some sickening 'end justifies the means' bullshit. Sorry for interrupting the spray with my pseudo-intelligent rambling.

I wasn't really convinced by what I read and saw of Powell's presentation. If this was supposed to be the show that impressed UN security council members enough to cause them to join the US' side, it was underwhelming. I'm not an intelligence analyst, but you'd need a lot of faith to believe that what those pictures show is what the US says they show. Iraq's obviously a fucked-up place that could stand to be ruled differently. But it's so ineffectual compared to North Korea, which actually seems like a threat, what with China as an ally, and considering the vulnerability of Japan (financially and militarily) as noted in articles referenced previously. So. Why not send a few hundred more UN inspectors running around Iraq for a few more months? It's just a matter of time before Iraq really fucks up and we discover a chemical missile, or an Iraqi soldier shoots at a UN van arriving 15 minutes too early to the inspection site. Give the arms inspectors more time so we can concentrate on North Korea. I think George W knows Iraq is an easy target, so why not wipe it out? It's not really a brave stance to talk about invading Iraq, but dealing with N. Korea takes some balls.

Well if the deforest service is allowing them in there then they are to blame and that was the entire point. It doesnt matter who owns the land it's on if it fucks up the wilderness. They seem concerned about bolting in some places but a nice shitload of crap in the wilderness is ok. I think NxNW's point was that the USFS *isn't* letting them dump all that shit. They try to catch them doing it, but it's impossible with the number of staff they have. It's helicopter vs. ranger on foot. Thanks for the insight, NxNW. I wondered why the tool got nice SUVs and computers, etc., while the stuff that really matters, backcountry maintenance, gets little funding. Bad policy decision, especially when you see that only fine collection, not real law enforcement, gets done with that money. I wonder why the USFS cops have such a bad reputation for being meter-maids who are useless for tracking down real criminals? There are LE officers who aren't assholes like that and do get the dirty work done -- why don't any of them work for the USFS?

Some 14-year-old from Finland will have the thing cracked in two days. Scary shit, though.

Shahid's offer of friendship won me over, and I've joined the Alpine Club of Pakistan (Faisalabad Branch) as a Lifetime Member. I get a copy of the PAJ every year, and all the curry I can eat at the annual barbeque. Due to the Muslim prohibition against drinking, everyone smokes the ganja. Every alpine hut in Pakistan (for club members only -- sorry, wankers) is like Muir on Saturday. Sorry About Dresden is a band from North Carolina. I like their name... you know, the Allies' firebombing of Dresden in World War II. They play some good indie-rock music, too. Iain, bring on the FRESHIEZ. I haven't seen that sig in a while. Or how about more sexy gnuplot graphs?

Your friend has some great photos, especially the series of the Pickets.

Did it wash the choss off Guye Peak so I can go send it leashless without worrying about rockfall?

Oh no, not the dogs thread again! Yours is cute, Birdy, but that picture makes it look like he's gnawing on your unit.

This Hamilton Mountain? Do you mean "hardest and most committing mixed crag climb in the state"?

I was looking for approach shoes this past fall and tried on the Exum Ridges and Mt. Masters, among others. I ended up getting the MMs because I thought the Exums were too much like running shoes (I've already got those...). I have narrow feet and need a little more stability, and the MMs are beefier for sure. I've only had them less than a year, but climbed the north face of Vesper with them. Mmm... slabby!

How can you guys leave out Vbouldering? It's "hip", with snotty editors and writers who look down on roped climbing. I got an issue in my Christmas stocking from a well-meaning but clueless benefactor. It had a whole feature article on the hot issue of bringing your dog to the crags, er, boulders, as well as two pages on "First Aid Tips for Your Animals". "Subscribe, Bitch" taunted the subscription ad a few pages in. According to Heath, Pimp Daddy of Publishing, Vbouldering "ain't no corporate climbing rag". It sure is a badly-written climbing rag, though, with some cool photos here and there.

AlpinistAndrew has it right. I was in a phone interview the other day and the interviewer asked what I do in my spare time. "I like to climb." "Oh... Have you climbed Mt. Rainier?" Whenever my (non-climbing, mostly) roommates ask about my trips, I start to tell a story and their eyes glaze over. I've always attributed that to being a terrible storyteller, but maybe they just don't get it. I've gotten them both to go to the gym and they like hiking. One of my roomies even went to Exit 32 with me once, and the other owns crampons. Still, they just aren't climbers. My girlfriend likes to hear my stories *and* she likes to climb. Even better, she's sympathetic when I come back all sore and dirty.

That's the top of the second pitch on Midway.

18/20, bitches.

The journal (AAJ, the big book) is great. I read it mostly to gape at climbs I'll never do. There are some entertaining stories in there, but also a lot of boring trip reports that are only useful if you're going to climb Peak 6848 in the Karakoram or whatever. The quarterly AAN is a little booklet and isn't much of a read, with a lot of ads and pictures of club members at meetings. Oops, the article I referenced said that the only murdered trekkers were traveling without guides or porters, not necessarily alone.

The recent American Alpine News, in an article by Greg Mortenson: Fairweather, who's Ned Gillette?