hakioawa

You can have a fall above 2. look at this guy. If he falls he goes more than twice the length of his leash! I've always given a leader slack, but it had more to do with not pulling him off.

While climbing some slab up in squamish this weekend, I had the opportunity to explain fall factor to a partner. Fall Factor (FF) = Length of Fall (LF) divided by Length of Rope). So FF = LF/LR The point of protection is to minimize FF. While leading out on a blank slab from the anchor, something occurred to me. Lets say the first piece is 30 from a bomber anchor. If I fall on a tight belay at the first piece I have a fall factor of ((30' + 30')/30') = 2. On the other hand if I have say 20 feet or slack I end up with a fall factor of ((30' + 50')/50' = 1.6. So falling farther on a loose belay is better. Assuming of course I don't hit anything on the way down. Does this make sense?

Since I started driving one of these I've never had trouble with parking tickets at snow creek wall.

I have a MSR rapid fire. Its the big brother of the PR. As far as not burning all the fuel. Its true if you are lazy. The canisters get cold as you burn the fuel. If you burn them on snow they usually have a nice snowball attached to them when you are through. As they cool their efficiency goes down. Most people think these stoves do not do well at altitude. This is NOT true. The higher you go the better they perform. The efficiency is a positive function of both temperature and altitude (actually an inverse function of atmospheric pressure). So the best place to use these stoves in high up in the mountains during a hot summer day. The worst place is at sea level during a cold day. If the stoves don't do well high up, it is because it is because the decrease in temperature overwhelms the decrease in atmospheric pressure. Since you can't decrease atmospheric pressure very easily, you must increase the temperature of the fuel. What I do is take he lid of my pot, fill it with boiling water and rest the fuel canister in it. This immediately increases the heat output of the stove by a LOT. Maybe 3X. If you keep this water hot, you will use almost all the excess fuel.

I've been looking into getting a set of double ropes for alpine routes (50mx8.5mm). Generally I climb longish moderate routes. N. Ridge of stuart etc, usually with a group of 4 or so. I'm curious what people think or doubles. Is it worth the weight and rope handling? I would think it would be quite nice to have an extra rope when rapelling. 3 ropes with 4 people should make routes with lots of single raps go fast. Any thoughts?

Expensive lighters suck. I bought a clear placstic one at REI for $40. It generally does not work above 6K feet. The cheap ones work better. I think the flint ones work best. They put out a big enough spark, that you may be able to get something lit w/o any fuel.

Get a bunch of hang tags with prices on them and attach themn to the bottle cap. Then you can say they are "New".

Just picked up the book this weekend. Nothing too new, but some of the stories are pretty good. I'm looking forward to Early monring spire and cathedral peak. Some of his ratings sounded a little high to me. Is there any concensus on if this book overrates routes?

Also to PT head land uses AA batteries. So you can use the cool Energizer Lithium photo batteries. These are much lighter and last a whole season for me.

Good luck. I don't know of any service like the one you describe. You should have no problem getting to marblemount. Beyond that is a little more problematic. One thing to try is to hitch. I'd find my way to the 65th St Park and Ride in Seattle near green lake. Get there at about 4:00pm on a friday night or 4:00am on a saturday morning. Look for Subaru's. Bring plenty of coffee (the closest coffee shop will be closed), donuts, and a lot. If you are lucky you will find 20-30 people headed to Washington Pass or Cascade Pass. There is enough to do near Washington pass to keep you busy for weeks. Pack light!

I've been planning to ski from the summit of Rainer for a while now. So far the plan has been to ski the Emmons route. With today's sun I've got this huge urge to ditch work and head up. But getting to the Emmons route is proving problematic. So the question is, what are the best ski routes from paradise? Anyone have any experience in sking above Muir? We can find a decent line I might just have to get out of here now! Also, anyone know if the road to the white river camp ground open? If not how long would the ski in be?

1mm of tape could make a difference. Wire in made of on lots of little strands, maybe 1/10 of a mm. So the radius of curvature is something like 11x larger with 1mm or tape. Its the radius of curvature that is the issue.

This one is pretty good Pass Report

A,F,C,D,E,B,A,C

Did you say the gym was the ONLY place to learn to climb and (Mountaineer?) safely? I guess nobody prior to vertical world climbed safely!

I have quite a bit of experience in this area. I've dislocated my left shoulder about 20 times and had 2 surguires. The second one seems to have taken. Here are my sugestions. First forget what you saw in lethal weapon. You cannot simply slam it back in. If you do it is likely to do trememdous dammage! Second, time is of the essance. the quicker the relocation happens the better. With time, the muscles tend to tense up and it becomes much harder to relocate. I'd say if you are more than 2 hours from medical attention trying to relocate a shoulder is a good option. But be aware that you may fail. The most important thing is for the patient to relax. It is really really painful. But relaxation helps a lot. Sit them down, give them a dirnk of water. Talk to them. Tell them to relax every muscle in thier body. Feel for tense muscles and tell them to relax them. Make them WORK at relaxing them. If you have any pain killers give them to the patient (with mophine my shoulder generally goes in by itself!). They may not help but the placebo effect will be in full swing. Whatever method you choose two things are important. Go Slow and listen to the patient. The relocation process should not be terribly painful. At least not much more so them just sitting around with a dislocated shoulder. For me the relocation can take 15 minutes of slow steady pressure/motion. It takes time. And the slower you go the more likely you are to suceed. What ever you do, once the shoulder is re-locatied, or you give up, stabilize the shoulder with a sling or two. Good luck

I'm sure this could turn into a flame war, but. . .I have the tracker. I've used a few more too. I'd say for shallow, single victim burials it is the best around. It is very easy to get on the flux line and stay there. You really don't need to worry much about alignment etc. Fine searches are a bit tougher with the tracker. Since you cannot manually adjust the "volume" the fine search reline completly on the digital read out and if it is having a tough time "tracking" you will end up with a larger area to dig. The M2 and others seem to have a bit better range and seem to perform better with multiple victims, and for a well trainer user are just as fast as the tracker. Ortovox has just come out with a new digtal 2 antenna beacon call the X1 that if getting good reviews. If you don't plan to practice a LOT I would definately go for the Tracker.

It was just snow blowing aroung on top.

Wow! 20 posts and not one from Caveman, Pope or Drul.

Its easy to be logged in twice! Just use two computers. Of Netscape and IE at the same time.

Interesting how the same people who are complaining about the survey being too long are argueing at length about that fact.

You pay extra to get them broken in.

Fall. Thats my advice. Or, if you can find 2 belayers, set up a top rope with a loose belay. They with the second rope belayed from below, "lead" a pitch with variable quality placements and fall on each one. The top rope is there as a backup. You can start by placing a peice, down climbing a few feet below it and taking a little fall. Then fall from a position level with the piece. Then above it. You will quickly figure out a "good" vs. "questionable" placement. The only downside is the wear on your gear.

I'm in. Can't ever seem to get there on Tuesdays.

I friday night and did the same. Good stuff. As it turned out the patrol was not real excited about us climbing. They didn't stop us but our timing was less than great. We had our rope pulled by 10:10. But the lift stops at 10:00. I ended up having beers with a couple of the Alpental patrolers at Crystal Saturday night. They suggest next time to get out a bit earlier so as to be down by 9:30 or so.